Oct
01
2009

Lockerbie in the Propaganda System

Release of Al-Megrahi evokes selective history

Pan Am 103 memorial garden--Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

When Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi, after serving 10 years of a life sentence for allegedly blowing up the Pan Am 103 airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, was granted compassionate release due to terminal illness, the ensuing controversy was loud and indignant. Al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, returned home to what was angrily described in U.S. media as a “hero’s welcome.” Recalling the bombing, which killed 270 people, many U.S. family members, political leaders and journalists felt that the decade in prison was not enough. But the media’s simplistic tale of villainy and impunity requires a very selective reading of history. [...]

Aug
28
2009

Spencer Ackerman on CIA torture documents, Ed Herman on Lockerbie

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: A few months ago it seemed like Dick Cheney wouldn't get off your television screen, insisting that secret CIA documents would prove that Bush torture policies saved the United States from further terrorist attacks. Well those documents have surfaced, along with a 2004 CIA inspector general's report. So what's in these documents? And has Cheney been vindicated? We'll speak with reporter Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent about that. Also on CounterSpin today, "Outrageous and disgusting" is how White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs described scenes in Tripoli where Abdel al-Megrahi was greeted on his [...]

Jun
05
2009

Fred Clarkson on Tiller murder; Adam Serwer on Sotomayor

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: There’s been a lot of coverage of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, allegedly killed by and anti-abortion activist. But there has been relatively little discussion of the culture that such violence arises from, where mainstream anti-abortion figures regularly demonize abortion providers—and we’re not just talking about Bill O’Reilly. We’ll talk to Fred Clarkson, who has been monitoring and writing about anti-abortion violence for years. Also on the show: As the vetting process of prospective Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor goes forward, Americans can be forgiven for not actually knowing very much specific about [...]

Apr
10
2009

T.R. Reid on Sick Around America, Mark Danner on torture

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Sick Around America, the recently aired documentary on PBS's Frontline purported to ask why the US can't finance universal health care the way other developed countries do. But the picture was at best incomplete, since it seems some options were considered off the table. We'll hear from reporter and author T.R. Reid, who worked on Sick Around America as a follow up to his Sick Around the World from last year, but who disassociated himself from the domestic version when he saw what producers had done with it. What was wrong? We'll find out. [...]

Nov
21
2008

Kai Wright on the Proposition 8 vote, Andy Worthington on Guantánamo

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The victory of Proposition 8 in California has, at least for the moment, put the brakes on gay marriage in that state. The post-election recriminations are flying, but the main story we're hearing is that black voters turned out in droves—to support Barack Obama, and to defeat gay marriage rights. Is that narrative correct? We'll ask journalist Kai Wright. Also on CounterSpin today: According to the New York Times, Newsweek and NPR, for Barack Obama to keep his promise to close the Guantánamo detention camp, will be next to impossible, extremely complicated and easier [...]

Jun
01
2008

From Water Torture to 'Waterboarding'

Media rehabilitate torture as aquatic sport

On May 13, 2004, a novel euphemism was delivered into the public lexicon by anonymous “counterintelligence official” sources cited in a New York Times article. The piece reported the CIA had been using “a technique known as ‘water boarding,’ in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.” The technique was described by the Times as one of several “methods [that] simulate torture.” Before long, Alan Dershowitz (Boston Globe, 5/15/04)—the Harvard law professor who advocates for a system of “torture warrants" (San Francisco Chonicle, 1/22/04)--had coined a brand new catchphrase by [...]

Mar
01
2008

Letter Exchange

Paraguay’s Tri-Border Area: Who’s Hyping Whom?

I’m not in a position to speak for or about other American reporters or newspapers that have written about the Tri-Border Area (TBA) and its ties to Islamic extremist groups. But since April Howard and Benjamin Dangl refer to one of my articles (New York Times, 12/15/02) in the oh-so-snide first paragraph of their report (“City of Terror: Painting Paraguay’s ‘Casbah’ as Terror Central,” Extra!, 9-10/07), erroneously attributing to me personally the views that were in fact expressed by the numerous intelligence officials I interviewed, I feel obliged to set the record straight and enumerate the cascade of false assumptions [...]

Mar
01
2008

Rediscovering Somalia

Press downplays U.S. role in renewed crisis

Barundi peacekeepers prepare for deployment to Somalia--Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/US Army Africa

After years of paying scant attention to Somalia, U.S. media suddenly rediscovered the war-torn African nation in 2006 when a coalition of Islamic courts and their affiliated militias imposed peace on feuding warlords and began enforcing religious law. A U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion soon loomed, and the Bush administration made the preferred story line clear. "The Council of Islamic Courts is now controlled by Al-Qaeda cell individuals, East Africa Al-Qaeda cell individuals," announced Jendayi Frazer, U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs (Voice of America News, 12/14/06). "The top layer of the courts are extremist to the core. They are [...]

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