BBC Report: ‘Sleaze alleged in CIA’
Interesting 9 minute video report from BBC regarding alleged financial and sexual corruption in the US intelligence agency:
Newsnight investigates alleged CIA sleaze
Launch report in stand-alone player
Duke Cunningham (wikipedia)
Cunningham, Randy Duke R-CA (namebase)
Kyle Foggo (wikipedia)
Foggo, Kyle (namebase)
Porter J. Goss (wikipedia)
Goss, Porter J., R-FL (namebase)
Brent Wilkes (wikipedia)
Wilkes, Brent R. (namebase)
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
With Reporters Like BBC Washington Correspondent Justin Webb, Who Needs Republican Spin-Doctors?
With Reporters Like BBC Washington Correspondent Justin Webb, Who Needs Republican Spin-Doctors?
The BBC’s Washington correspondent Justin Webb is truly a fount of misinformation and undigested, regurgitated White House talking-points. Consider this effusion from the BBC website dated January 6, 2007:
Democrats step up Iraq pressure
But in a letter to the president, Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, and House of Representatives Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said adding more combat troops would stretch the US military to breaking point with no strategic gain.
They instead urged a phased redeployment of US forces, starting in four to six months, with a re-emphasis on training, logistics and counter-terrorism operations in Iraq.
The BBC’s Justin Webb in Washington says this is an aggressive move from the Democrats, setting the stage for a huge political battle.
Mr Bush cannot be prevented from sending more troops [emphasis mine–HH], our correspondent says, but he may pay a big political cost if the deployment is carried out amid fierce congressional opposition.
(no byline but attributing these views to Webb)
This is wrong constitutionally, factually, and historically. The US Constitution, Article I, Section 7 provides that:
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.
Article I, Section 8 further provides,
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States…
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress…
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Both the raising of taxes and the war-making power belong to Congress alone (it is this author’s view that the War Powers Act is an unconstitutional surrender and delegation of these powers to the Executive).
Further, as a practical matter, both the Second Indochina War (“Vietnam War” to Americans) and the US incursions into El Salvador and Nicaragua were stopped by Congressional action to disapprove or not approve funding for unauthorized war actions by the executive.
Compare Mr. Webb’s misinformation with this from CNN posted January 30, 2007:
GOP senator challenges Bush on war powers
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate Republican on Tuesday directly challenged President Bush’s declaration that “I am the decision-maker” on issues of war.
“I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider,” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said during a hearing on Congress’ war powers amid an increasingly harsh debate over Iraq war policy. “The decider is a shared and joint responsibility,” Specter said.
The question of whether to use its power over the government’s purse strings to force an end to the war in Iraq, and under what conditions, is among the issues faced by the Democratic majority in Congress, and even some of the president’s political allies as well.
No one challenges the notion that Congress can stop a war by withholding the money to pay for it. [emphasis mine–HH]
In fact, Vice President Dick Cheney challenged the Democrat-controlled Congress to back up its objections to President Bush’s plan to put 21,500 more troops in Iraq by zeroing out the war budget.
Few expect such a drastic move, but there are other legislative options to force the war’s end, say majority Democrats and some of Bush’s traditional Republican allies.
The alternatives range from capping the number of troops permitted in Iraq to cutting off money for troop deployments beyond a certain date or setting an end date for the war.
[Note: not a permalink: article has changed since the above was quoted]
This is not the first time I have noted Mr. Webb spouting his pro-Republican fantasies, see:
And my previous comments to Justin Webb on the BBC:
Balderdash, Rot, and Poppycock
The peculiar assertion by Justin Webb that the Democrats will somehow be blamed for the reputed actions of the Republican Congressman Foley is lacking in any factual basis. This piece is so poorly written it even fails to identify Congressman Foley as the subject, nor does it mention the allegations and evidence pertaining to the issue.
This blog entry is neither news reporting nor news analysis; it is blatant propaganda, pro-Republican pandering and “spin”. Such a preposterous assertion would require more proof than the off-topic quote from a conveniently unnamed and therefore unverifiable “former staffer in the Clinton White House”.
Justin Webb’s reporting is a disgrace to the BBC and to all journalists everywhere and he should resign, or be made redundant immediately.
It is, however, neither the alleged actions of one individual congressman nor of one partisan, biased reporter which will be determinative of the races in other contested Congressional districts. Rather, it will be the fact that the US is bogged down in a war it is losing (Afghanistan) and a war which is already lost (Iraq), coupled with the ongoing assault on the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and the rolling collapse of the economy and de-industrialization of the US which will drive the American people to vote Democratic this November.
–Henry Edward Hardy, posted at bbc.co.uk 6 October 2006
And:
“I predict that the Democrats will get the blame for this [Foley scandal] in the end and not quite know how to avoid it.” –Justin Webb, Oct. 6, 2006
Mr. Webb, please have the courtesy and intellectual honesty to admit how wrong you were in writing those words and how utterly foolish, partisan and ill-informed they look in the aftermath of the Democratic landslide.
–Henry Edward Hardy, posted at bbc.co.uk 10 November 2006
See also:
Move Over Scott Mclellan, Justin Webb Has Drunk The Kool-Aid
Webb blogurl:biased-bbc.blogspot.com
Why the internet will revolutionise politics
We are Biased, Admit the Stars of BBC News
Justin Webb [BBC biography]
On The Lam
With “reporters” like Justin Webb, who needs spin-doctors?
Copyright © 2006, 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Comedian Bill Maher talks about Steve Allen, Lenny Bruce, Condi Rice, 9/11
Comedian Bill Maher talks about Steve Allen, Lenny Bruce, Condi Rice, 9/11
by Henry Edward Hardy
I did this interview with Bill Maher back around October of 2004 in conjunction with a local appearance he was making at EMU in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Bill Maher is probably the funniest and one of the cleverest people I have interviewed (or met). I was really enjoying myself during this interview.
I understand that your career got helped along by [originator and first host of The Tonight Show] Steve Allen?
That’s one I haven’t been asked about in a while. That’s true — you’re making me feel old here. When I first started in New York, there was like three clubs, and you had to belong to one of them … I was a Catch a Rising Star act. And Steve Allen was doing a show in New York called Seymour Gluek is Alive But Sick, which was silly, you know his silly songs, and then there was an MC in the middle of it. When he moved out here [to California], he just, you know, picked me to take over his part — he didn’t want to keep doing it the rest of his life. So you know, when I was 25, that was a kind of feather in my cap.
You had an illustrious film career. I noted Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.
Henry, I can hear your sarcasm dripping there, and it’s appropriate, because it certainly was not illustrious. You know, everybody in show business has to find their way, and when we were young comics coming up, all we cared about, all we thought that mattered, was getting on a sitcom. That was our whole thing — we kind of didn’t realize that we were sitting on the golden goose, which was stand-up. What we were really doing was so much better than trying to get on Benson, or Mork and Mindy. We were young, and that was Hollywood, and that was more money and fame. And so that’s the route I went.
But you see yourself as coming pretty much out of the stand-up or vaudeville tradition?
Yeah. Vaudeville. There’s nothing that’s really different about vaudeville and a guy going out on the road performing an act in different cities — that is vaudeville. In the ’80s, when comedy was exploding, that was vaudeville. We were all on the road, we’d all see each other in the train stations — we were all together back then as young comics — Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, Eddie Murphy. I worked my first gig with Eddie Murphy for 50 dollars at a Chinese restaurant.
You were born in New York City in 1956, is that true?
Yes, ’56, yep.
So obviously you weren’t going out to clubs and listening to Lenny Bruce. He comes to mind because he was so topical, and so trenchant and political…
… and ballsy.
Brave guy.
Brave guy. I just contributed to his liner notes on … a book coming out about him. I said one of my favorite quotes about Lenny was a Chinese proverb, “One generation plants the trees, the other gets the shade.” And I really feel like with Lenny, he planted the trees and a lot of us got the shade. Because I am talking about those kind of subjects that got him in trouble.
Because now you can say “cocksucker” on the air and the police aren’t going to pull you off …
Not just “cocksucker” because lots of guys say that. But I mean talking about religion, criticizing the government. Things like that. You know, Lenny Bruce had nine trials. He went to trial nine times. That’s a lot.
So he paid some dues.
He paid the dues; he planted the trees.
You have a routine about the 9/11 Commission. What degree, if any degree, of foreknowledge about the 9/11 attacks do you think there was by the Bush Administration?
Well, I don’t think there was foreknowledge of the specific attack. You know, when the commission was being set up, issuing their reports and Bush was sort of under the heat of…that he kept saying [Maher imitates Bush voice and mannerisms], “If I’d known there was an attack coming on this country, I would have done everything I could.” No kidding, asshole! We get that. I mean, I’m not your fan, but I don’t think if you knew something about the specific attack, you wouldn’t have done something about it. The bigger point is when Condolezza Rice says things like, [does Rice voice impression] “Who could have ever imagined that they would take planes and fly them into buildings.” Well, you know what, lots of people imagined it. Moviemakers had imagined it. Those two little pricks at Columbine had imagined it.
She had a briefing that said, “Al Qaeda to use airplanes …”
Yes, yes! Exactly.
“…to attack buildings.”
Plus…when your name, what you had is “National Security Advisor,” it’s your job to think about things like that.
So you don’t think she’s done a very good job?
No, I don’t. And you know, this week something else came out that didn’t reflect well on her, which is stuff about the aluminum tubes. The main argument that the Bush administration used for attacking Saddam Hussein was that he, you know, “the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.” Remember that?
Right. Just to background that, the aluminum tubes they claimed were to be used for processing nuclear fuel; it turned out they were missile parts?
Exactly. And the intelligence community really knew this. Again she claims, “Not my job,” like Freddie Prinze [does impression] “Not my zhob, no, its not my zhob.” She tells the President …
Well, whose job was it?
Exactly. If she had been doing her job she would have said, “You know, if you want to attack Iraq, go ahead, but I’ve got to tell you, its not because he’s building nuclear bombs in these tubes. Just stop running around the country and saying that.”
What you’re saying seems to me to say … well, let’s take an analogy of Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel and General Short who were the Navy and Army commanders at Pearl were court-martialed and dismissed from the service. Now who has been held accountable in any way for 9/11?
No, nobody.
Aside from you.
It always gets a rip-roaring response in my act when I say, “you know the only person to have been fired for terrorism is me?”
Bill Maher
HBO: Real Time with Bill Maher
Bill Maher (wikipedia)
By the way, it is interesting to note that Kimmel and Short were exonerated in 1999 by an act of Congress. According to wikipedia (permalink): On May 25, 1999, the United States Senate passed a resolution exonerating Kimmel and Short. They were denied vital intelligence that was available in Washington, said Senator William V. Roth Jr. (R-DE), noting that they had been made scapegoats by the Pentagon. Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) called Kimmel and Short, the two final victims of Pearl Harbor.
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current
Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
The Corporation: Benevolent Giant or Pathological Monster?
The Corporation
Benevolent Giant or Pathological Monster?
by Henry Edward Hardy
Ubiquitous and powerful and yet strangely invisible in our society, the modern corporation is inescapable. We eat, drink, sleep, bathe in, wear and drive corporate products. Their influence is everywhere, but we seldom stop to observe their effects.
Enter filmmakers Jennifer Abbot and Mark Achbar. Their film, The Corporation (2003) is based on University of British Columbia Professor Joel Bakan’s book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. The film is a neo-Marxist thesis padded with entertaining clips from archival material such as old corporate training films and cleverly edited cuts from recent news coverage.Weighing in at a hefty two-and-a-half hours, the film, like Fahrenheit 9/11, mimics the documentary style, but exploits it to present carefully edited interviews and video clips to promote a single, if somewhat incoherent, pre-determined view. These are the movie counterparts of editorial cartoons rather than the journalism per se of more traditional and balanced (and ultimately one might argue, more interesting) documentaries, such as Control Room.
The Corporation asserts that 150 years ago, corporations did not play a major role in everyday life in the United States. Without having seen the film, Professor Noel Tichy of the University of Michigan Business School, and editor of book, The Ethical Challenge: How to Lead with Unyielding Integrity, asks skeptically, “Where do they think people were getting their goods?”
Katherine Dodds is director of corporate communications for Big Picture Media, the Canadian for-profit corporation formed for the purposes of financing the film. She explains that The Corporation is really aimed at large, publicly held corporations. Dodds says 150 years ago, corporations had not yet gained their modern scope and powers granted through limited liability and the legal fiction of the “Corporate Individual.” Yet she recognizes the inherent irony that Bakan and Achbar first needed to set up a corporation in order to benefit from exactly those ubiquitous features of the modern corporation — such as limited liability — they identify as part of the problem.
The point they make, she says, is the change in the legal definition of the corporation. “One hundred years ago, the corporation was not a legal person. It did not require people to put profit above everything else.” The Corporation is effective in presenting this thesis through archival footage and talking-head interviews of left-wing pundits, reformed and semi-reformed capitalists, disillusioned journalists and whistle-blowers.
According to Dodds, the project was first edited to be three one-hour TV episodes before the removal of 20 minutes for the theatrical release. Left more or less intact, one still feels the missing commercial breaks in the choppy presentation. Perhaps this snappy and very visual presentation will better capture the minds of the attention-deficient and quasi-literate MTV generations.
The film initially presents a coherent narrative, before breaking up into disparate “case studies” which attempt to prove that if corporations are to be compared to individuals, then these companies, according the World Health Organization standard DSM-IV, should be classified as psychopaths.
Dodds accepts the fact that people are likely to have different reactions to the film. “There could be those who are like, ‘Dude, tear down the corporation, down with all of capitalism all over.’ You can have differing views on whether corporations should exist at all, but I think where we come down is saying, ‘They should not have this kind of power.'”
While maintaining that corporations are “the wealth producing-instrument in society,” Tichy endorses Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s view that strong democratic institutions, both governmental and private, are needed as part of the necessary checks and balances on strong corporations. In the words of the 1998 edition of the UN Human Development Report, “Strong institutions, free from corruption, are needed to enforce regulations in such areas as rights to land, security of tenure in housing and accurate information on consumer goods to protect the interests of poor people.”
However, the movie compares the modern corporation to the Catholic Church or Communist Party of other times and places. Tichy challenges this notion, saying “Those were monopolies,” noting that corporations do not form a monolithic block in society. Subject to regulation, public pressure and competition, corporations are born and die, or are absorbed, regularly. He says even the very great, such as Microsoft, will be brought down by a combination of consumer preference, competition and regulation in the public interest.
Using as examples AT&T, IBM, Digital Equipment and Compaq, Tichy says the market and the structure of a democratic society will by nature break up unhealthy monopolies and concentrations of political power and wealth.
Tichy also wryly notes that public confidence in corporations as institutions and in businessmen as individuals of good character and public trust is at an all-time low, rivaling the (un)popularity of politicians and journalists.
Resulting from scandals, such as Imclone, Enron and recent cases involving defense contractors, public confidence in business institutions is “terrible,” Tichy says, and that corporations viewing their relationship with the public as “damaged” are “desperate to demonstrate and rebuild trust.”
Dodds warns of companies desperate for that quick fix may use a tactic she calls “greenwashing,” in which a few cosmetic changes are trumpeted and magnified by media manipulation into looking like a whole-hearted reversal of irresponsibility.
Such an example in the film is the designer firm Liz Claiborne, which advertises that proceeds from the sale of a $127 coat go to children’s charities. What the company doesn’t reveal, as the film claims, is that the jacket was produced by women and girls as young as 14, who were each paid approximately eight cents per jacket.
The film does champion some elites, such as reformed capitalist Ray Anderson of Interface Carpet. Having gone through some kind of epiphany after reading Paul Hawkins’s book, The Ecology of Commerce, Anderson cheerfully condemns himself and his fellows as “plunderers” who are destroying the earth. His interview has a queer aura to it, as if filmed for a 1970s-era post-apocalyptic science fiction thriller — a sort of Battle for the Planet of Soylent Green, perhaps. Yet one must wonder exactly how sincere he is since he hasn’t given up the business, and has found such an articulate way of deflecting opprobrium with studied and apparently sincere self-criticism.
While the film is quirky, self-referential, humorous and informative, Dodds says a proscriptive solution isn’t offered because many of the people appearing in the film each have their own disparate ideas and ideologies. Michael Moore, she says, is urging people to get involved in the electoral system, while Noam Chomsky is a “Chomskian anarchist.” She also says the movie is intended as a lead-in to the Web site (www.thecorporation.tv), where specific multimedia presentations from varying perspectives suggest how viewers can “get involved.”
Had it remained a three-part TV series, The Corporation would have been better. As a movie, it is at once both over-long and maddeningly incomplete, yet still eminently deserving of further examination. Without the blistering white-hot sarcasm of Fahrenheit 9/11 and lacking the balanced view of Control Room, The Corporation still has many virtues that make it worth watching. The sound and video editing are very well done, and Abbott and her crew have done yeoman work in assembling and splicing together various archival and historical clips in a way which is both humorous and engaging, and relevant and informative. While the talking heads are tendentious — and heavily edited — there are worse heads than Howard Zinn, Moore and Chomsky to see talking.
The Corporation (IMDB)
The Corporation (Rotten Tomatoes)
The Corporation (wikipedia)
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current.
Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
‘Outfoxed’ Exposes Calculated Bigotry of Rupert Murdoch’s U.S. Fox News Network
Outfoxed
Exposes Calculated Bigotry of Rupert Murdoch’s U.S. Fox News Network
by Henry Edward Hardy
Outfoxed (2004) is a film that takes on the “fair and balanced” pose of the US-based Fox news network. It is a fast-paced and well-focused expose of the blatant partisanship and meanspiritedness of the leading US “news” infotainment network. Outfoxed is a light snack. In 77 minutes it fulfills its mission to undermine the claims of objectivity and credibility for Fox’s programs and personalities.
What is missing from this video’s “radical lite” presentation is depth or context. One wouldn’t understand from viewing this video that Fox owner Rupert Murdoch is, in the words of the Wikipedia, “generally regarded as the single most politically influential media proprietor in the world.” Nor that this is the man the BBC once compared to Citizen Kane. But no matter.
Here are juicy tidbits of Walter Cronkite, characterizing Fox as a “far right-wing organization.” There is vicious, quivering, snarling righteous bigotry from Fox anchor personality Bill O’Reilly.
Ex-CIA employee and former Fox commentator Larry Johnson explains how, when he tried to give his honest opinion on air regarding the inability of the US to fight another full scale regional war while it is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, Fox stopped using him for the remainder of his contract.
Other putative Fox tactics include character assassination, a program stacked 5-1 with Republican guests, distracting or misleading graphics, and intimidating the hapless guest by verbally attacking their families, their patriotism and at last shouting, “Shut up!” and cutting their mikes.
Outfoxed is a product of the Disinformation Company. Their website, http://www.disinfo.com, explained (09/2004) that the company was founded in 1995 by TCI (now part of Comcast, a premiere competitor of Murdoch’s Hughes Electronics DirectTV subsidiary).
The director of Outfoxed is Robert Greenwald. Greenwald’s earlier projects include the mediocre adaptation of the life of antiwar radical Abbie Hoffman, Steal this Movie, and the Farrah Fawcett film, The Burning Bed.
Greenwald’s TV and B-movie heritage shows in his direct and fast-paced, no-nonsense presentation. But in Outfoxed his crew has assembled great damning clips from Fox broadcasts and a host of disenchanted former Fox workers, along with enjoyable and penetrating comments by pundits such as David Brock, Walter Cronkite and Al Franken. Good infotainment, and good talking points for discussion with your left- or right-wing friends or co-workers.
Outfoxed is available through the website outfoxed.org
Wayback Machine for former disinfo.com website associated with this production at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://disinfo.com
A version of this article appeared previously in Current Magazine and on Electric Current, http://eCurrent.com/
Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
Show your support for Scanlyze!
Click the “Make A Donation” link below to make a donation through PayPal using either your PayPal account or any major credit card.
This site is semi-archival. I actively post on @hhardy01@mastodon.social.
Paypal or credit card donation
Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 Henry Edward Hardy.
Recent Comments
Scanlyze 