Wall Street Journal’s Jeanne Whalen busted for more journalistic FAIL
by Urizenus Sklar – Contributing Editor and Interwebs Legend
The Alphaville Herald Editors have asked that I come out of retirement to investigate this WikiLeaks matter, and I have to say that I am more than a little peeved by the whole thing. Is there no one else in the Anglophone world who can report their way out of a paper bag? Wake up journalists! Leave Britney alone and start looking into this! Today I’m again looking into Jeanne Whalen’s Wall Street Journal article, and her claim that a “letter from five human rights groups” was “pressing WikiLeaks to do a better job of redacting names from thousands of war documents it is publishing.” So far, I have found three clear and inexcusable errors.
In order of increasing importance the errors are as follows…
Error #1: It is false that all the signatories to the letter were all working for human rights organizations. TheInternational Crisis Group is not a human rights organization. It is a foreign policy think tank. I leave it to the reader to decide what kind of foreign policy think tank it is.
Error #3: It is false that the content of the letter was to upbraid WikiLeaks; it seems the letter was a request to meet Assange so that they might discuss their concerns about civilian sources and work to find a way to protect them.
All of this leaves open the question of why the letter was (a) leaked to the WSJ and (b) spun as it was by the WSJ. Point (b) is the real corker. How hard is it to accurately report the contents of a letter? Of course, if you then refuse to release the letter to anyone else, I guess you can spin the content however you want.
We predict that within a week, all banks will halt every foreclosure currently in process. Within a month, all foreclosures executed within the past 2-3 years will be retried, and millions of existing home sales will be put in jeopardy.
And like that, mortgage fraud goes global. JPM stock down on the news, as the American foreclosure process is now effectively shut down. More as we get it.
Listen very closely, and you can practically hear the backpedaling: The CDC now admits it’s been badly wrong about flu deaths.
Those vaccine-pushing hucksters have made the wild claim year after year that flu kills 36,000 Americans annually — and they’ve even attacked anyone who’s dared to question their numbers.
But now, they’ve come clean. Not fully clean, mind you, but sort of cleanish. The agency now says flu kills as few as 3,500 Americans in some years, with an average of 23,000 per year overall.
In other words, that 36,000-fatality fantasy they’ve been selling was a wild and dramatic overestimate pulled from their own hindquarters. And the new lower numbers STILL don’t come close to the truth — because any time someone sniffles on their way to the grave, the CDC quickly labels it a “flu death.”
And that’s only when they bother tracking it at all — last year, during the height of the swine flufrenzy, the CDC actually told state health authorities to stop counting while the agency just made up any number it pleased.
In a replay of the Federal Bureau of Investigation‘s infamous COINTELPROoperations targeting the left during the 1960s and ’70s, America’s political police launched raids on the homes of antiwar and solidarity activists.
Heavily-armed SWAT teams smashed down doors and agents armed with search warrants carried out simultaneous raids in Minneapolis and Chicago early morning on September 24.
Rummaging through personal belongings, agents carted off boxes of files, documents, books, letters, photographs, computers and cell phones from Minneapolis antiwar activists Mick Kelly, Jessica Sundin, Meredith Aby, two others, as well as the office of that city’s Anti-War Committee.
Meanwhile, as federal snoops seized personal property in Minneapolis, FBI agents raided the Chicago homes of activists Stephanie Weiner and Joseph Iosbaker. According to the Chicago Tribune, “neighbors saw FBI agents carrying boxes from the apartment of community activist Hatem Abudayyeh, executive director of the Arab American Action Network.”
“In addition,” the Tribune reported, “Chicago activist Thomas Burke said he was served a grand jury subpoena that requested records of any payments to Abudayyeh or his group.”
Amongst those targeted by the FBI were individuals who organized peaceful protests against the imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq and 2008 protests at the far-right Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
WASHINGTON—Some sort of tax cut or earnings or money or something was reported in economic news this week in further evidence that a lot of financial- related things have been going on lately.
According to numerous articles and economics segments from major media outlets, experts on banks and such have become increasingly concerned over a new extension or rates or a proposal or compromise that could signal fewer investments, and dollars, and so on.
The experts confirmed that the stimulus has played a role.
When President Eisenhower warned us against the Military-Industrial Complex, during his farewell speech, many people focused heavily on the “Military” end of it. Today, the “Industrial” part of that Complex is still oftentimes overlooked, as it works behind the scenes.
The WTO, pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, and their ilk are the “Industrial” in the Military-Industrial Complex. They are also what Mussolini described as the definition of Fascism. “The merger of State and Corporate power”.
The WTO, through the TRIPS(The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement, has forced the cost of HIV/AIDS Antiretroviral medication too high for many developing countries that are hard hit with the virus. Anthrax and Avian Flu medication prices were also affected, among others. The WTO’s removal of tariff’s on wood products as well has increased demand for wood furniture and other things, resulting in more and more deforestation.
This is the outcome when Corporations purchase Government approval through lobbying, thus being able to write their own regulations. The people of Seattle, and throughout the world, who protested this blatant Corporate power grab should be applauded. Conversely, the Governments of the world who allowed it, and the Military and Police agencies who enforced it, should be ashamed of themselves, if not punished.
As is stated at the end of the video – “The Revolution starts here”
-More info-
Here is the page with the official definition of the “United States”, from the mouth our own Government: http://uscode.house.gov/uscode-cgi/fa… – scroll down to part 15
With NATO as intermediary, facilitator and Trojan horse, the Pentagon has established itself – with bases, troops and missiles – along the entire length of Eastern Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean.
Two weeks after the United States started its third rotation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Baltic air patrol on September 1, with the deployment of F-15C Eagle fighter jets operating out of the Siauliai International Airport in Lithuania, neighboring Estonia finished a three-year project to upgrade its Amari Air Base in order to accommodate more NATO warplanes.
The opening ceremony for the enlarged base, which with expanded runways is able to host “16 NATO fighters, 20 transport planes [and] up to 2,000 people per day” [1], was held on September 15.
The Estonian base, like its Lithuanian counterpart, is a Soviet-era one modernized and extended for use by NATO, which financed 35 percent of the expansion.
Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo said of the augmented air base that “You could say that it wasn’t just the Estonian Air Force that got a base, but our allies now also have a home, or if you prefer, a nest in Estonia where they can land and rest.” [2] The head of the Estonian Air Force, Brigadier General Valeri Saar, said that NATO aircraft involved in the air policing mission in place for over six years could be stationed at the Amari Air Base in the future.
Gold is breaking to new highs above $1,300 and silver is at 30 year highs closing in on the $21.50 area. I reached out once again to continue my discussions with James Turk out of Europe. When asked about the overnight action Turk responded, “Again, what we saw last night was sideways action which is very positive and characteristic of a market getting ready to explode.”
Turk continues:
“As I’ve been saying all along, it’s extraordinarily rare for markets to set up this way. I can only think of a few occasions in my 35 years of trading when the precious metals have been poised to blast off and this is one of them.”
“In the next few weeks as gold and silver rise it will be from a short squeeze the likes of which haven’t been seen since Cornelius Vanderbilt took on Daniel Drewin the legendary Erie Railroad short squeeze.”
“This action feeds on itself and the resulting upside momentum will act as a magnet drawing money off the sidelines driving prices even higher.”
Regarding gold James stated,
“Given that $1,300 has already been reached, the question now becomes how much further gold will climb on this move? We’ll soon be on the way, rolling towards $1,400, which is halfway to the $1,500 target we spoke about yesterday.”
There could be a tidal wave of buying coming into these markets as other hedge funds and speculators pile into this breakout. The interesting thing to watch here will be how the commercials react to it, as they have already positioned themselves massively short.
The rats are leaving the sinking Obama administration’s ship. Peter Orszag, White House Budget Director, resigned in June. Christina Romber, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, left in early September.
THE ONION…
