Ejaz Asi - Information Designer from Karachi, Pakistan

Lately the likes of Minister of Information, Durrani (bay-eemani) and Shaikh Rasheed have been condemning local media channels and have been going on and on about how great media west really has. They have been actually giving examples of CNN and other news channels in America who think of national security and interest first and give news accordingly.

Well, what do you expect from retards who have seen nothing but the Raja Bazar of Rawalpindi or GHQ of Pakistan? To see or illustrate the great free western media which is known as Corporate Media’s responsibilities and reporting news that matter, let’s read on Ten important things Americans were not told about.

The fact that most Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and want the president impeached, is testimony to the native intelligence and common sense of the citizens of this nation.

It sure isn’t thanks to the quality of the news Americans’re getting here in America!

1. Most Americans would like to see this president and vice president impeached and removed from office. Newsweek magazine published a scientific poll last October showing that 51 percent of us favor impeachment (including 29 percent of Republicans!), but the corporate media, which normally haven’t met a poll they won’t publish, didn’t publicize this one. And now, when the numbers supporting impeachment are surely even higher, you can’t even pay a polling outfit to ask the question. No wonder most people who favor impeachment still think they’re odd ducks.

2. There is a bill, filed in the House of Representatives on April 24 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), calling for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Since it was filed, it has gained six co-sponsors, including a member of the House Democratic leadership, Rep. Janice Shakowsky (D-IL). Most major media have ignored this important story completely. Most Americans also don’t know that the Vermont State Senate voted overwhelmingly this spring to call on Congress to impeach the president.

3. The president has been declared a felon in federal court. Yet even after Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled last August that President Bush and the National Security Agency were committing serial Class A felonies and were violating both the First and Fourth Amendments by spying on Americans’ communications without first obtaining warrants, Bush continued ordering the NSA to continue the patently illegal program for at least half a year. In reports on the spying program, the corporate media never mention that it has been declared a felonious activity by the federal court.

4. Fifteen Democratic state party organizations have passed impeachment resolutions calling on Democrats in Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president and vice president. The most recent of these, the Democratic Party of Oklahoma, passed its resolution at the party’s annual convention on May 19. Other Democratic Party conventions, in states from Nevada and California to Massachusetts and North Carolina, have passed similar resolutions. Most have been ignored by the corporate media even in their own states.

5. Bush’s so-called “coalition of the willing” is not so willing and is not really much of a coalition either. When’s the last time you’ve heard how many countries are on board with the US in the war and occupation of Iraq? The reality? Britain, the only significant contributor of combat troops besides the U.S., is pulling out, as Italy and Spain did earlier, and many other countries, like Denmark, Lithuania and others, plan to be out of Iraq by August or at the latest December. One indication of the seriousness of situation: the Pentagon no longer lists the countries that are members of the “coalition.” The only mainstream report I’ve seen laying out this collapse in international support for Bush’s war was in USA Today last February.

6. The Homeland Security Department last year awarded Halliburton $385 million in a no-bid contract to construct prison camps designed to hold tens of thousands of unspecified prisoners in the event of domestic unrest. Meanwhile, President Bush has signed a bill altering the insurrection act so that he can declare martial rule and order active duty troops to take charge anywhere in the domestic US in the event of “public disorder.” No one in the corporate media has reported on these developments or asked the White House to explain what it’s all about.

7. There is evidence that Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, was a patron of the Washington Madam whose client book of high-class call-girls is causing many in Washington political circles—mostly Republicans it appears, who apparently need to pay for their sex—to sweat. So far no mention of the Cheney angle in the corporate media, though they’ve been having fun with the broader story of a political sex scandal. No mention either of how a brave West Point cadet a few weeks ago refused to shake Cheney’s hand on stage when the vice president was handing out this year’s diplomas at the Army’s premiere officer academy.

8. Among the “worst of the worst” of the “evildoers” captured and held as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo were children, some of them preteens and kids who were under 15 when captured and brought to the island of Cuba–so many in fact that the military had to set up a special facility, called Camp Iguana, just for adolescent and pre-pubescent “fighters.” The corporate media have barely reported on this atrocity (the New York Times ran only one article mentioning child captives, in June 2005). The only wider coverage of this outrage came recently when the government tried to prosecute one such alleged child “terrorist”–Omar Khadr–only to have the military judge in charge toss his case out because the government had misclassified him. Khadr, we learned, was captured in 2001 in Afghanistan at the ripe age of 15, making him one of the older child captives brought to and interrogated at Guantanamo. Under international law, the U.S. was supposed to treat this and other child soldiers as victims, not as war criminals. Khadr, a Canadian by birth, instead has spent five years doing hard time in US captivity.

9. Well-researched reports on the rampant theft of both the 2000 and 2004 elections, and on Republican plans for theft of the 2008 election, such as Mark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Again, have gone unmentioned in the corporate media. Books on the subject, like Miller’s and like Greg Palast’s best selling Armed Madhouse, have never been reviewed.

10. And of course, there’s my own book. The Case for Impeachment, despite its having sold over 20,000 copies in hardcover, and despite its having now come out in a mass-market paperback edition, in both cases printed by a mainstream publisher, St. Martin’s Press, has not received a single review in the corporate media. In this, my co-author Barbara Olshansky and I are not alone. None of the books on the impeachable crimes of this administration, including one by Nixon-era impeachment panelist and former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, and one by Judiciary Chair Rep. John Conyers, has been reviewed by a mainstream media outlet.

What we’re talking about here is nothing less than a media blackout of important stories and news.

Thanks to the internet and to the grapevine, and thanks to their basic native intelligence, most Americans seem to understand that we’re being lied to and cheated. What the media blackout of important news does manage to do, however, is keep us all thinking that we are in a minority in opposing things like illegal wars, a trampled Constitution, and stolen elections.

In fact, however, we’re actually the majority. Once we realize this, maybe we will have a movement, instead of a just nation of isolated cynics and complainers.
______________________________

DAVE LINDORFF, a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist, is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of “The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now out in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Update:
A Government Official demanding secrecy and anonymity has met and informed GEO that while his name and affidavit has been attached in yesterdays’ affidavit of intelligence agencies’ masters against CJP, his signatures are fake and he wasn’t informed prior to the affidavit either. Also, according to the records of Ansar Qureshi?, a senior journalist, there were two more high officials from the government whose records of fake petrol/oil invoices have surfaced along with that of CJP.

While the sensational turn in the CJP fiasco continues, we now know that the military and non military intelligence agencies have accused CJP of demanding from them to spy on fellow justices and also to file a reference against 12 such judges. The military top leaders also gave out the names of those.

Now, accusing CJP is another issue but giving out names of the judges is a very wrongful deed from intelligence and judiciary’s point of view. Now you can expect these 12 gentlemen to be indignant about the position of CJP even if the affidavit of spy masters is false. Also, how would they produce information and intelligence reports to the court to support their points and allegations? Would they make it public that they have all the record of phone calls of CJP? and that they have been spying on Judges and so on. How on earth these spy masters got engaged in political and judicial spying and reporting and for how long has it been going on?
With so much information hopefully to be out soon, you could expect the face of things will never be the same ever again…

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As of today, 7th June 2007, Director General Military Intelligence Major General Mian Nadeem, resident’s Chief of Staff Lt.General (retd) Hamid Javaid and Director General Intelligence Bureau Brig (Retd.) Ijaz Ahmed Shah filed a counter-affidavit in response to the affidavit filed by Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry.

The lead council of CJP, Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan has already condemned and thrashed the affidavit saying it’s height of forgery and lies filled with aladdin tales and nothing else. He also did highlight the fact that the affidavit was written (as shown on the file of affidavit?) prior to the reference against CJP. WHOA. If that is the case, DG MI et al. should get ready for some roasting

Lies of no lies, the affidavit of DG MI and IB show how far the government will go to overthrow the CJP at any cost and also it raises the questions of the roles and territorial boundaries of intelligence agencies in Pakistan. I can’t wait to see some videos of Aitzaz Ahsan cross-examining DG of MI and asking him lewd stories of how dark the chapter of intelligence agencies in Pakistan really has been. Whoa, that would be some scene. Regardless of the outcome, no where in the history of Pakistan, some thing of this magnitude has ever been conceived or put into play.

The short version of COS and DG MI’s affidavit can be read and seen at APP.

Affidavit of DG IB.
I, Brig. (Retd.) ljaz Ahmed Shah son of Late Pir Ahmad Shah, presently working

as Director General, Intelligence Bureau, do hereby solemnly state on oath as

under:-

1. I was appointed as Director General, Intelligence Bureau (”DG IB”) in February, 2004, and have continued to work in that position todate.

2. That prior to my appointment as DG IB, 1 served as Home Secretary, Government of Punjab. In those clays I met Mr. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Chief Justice of Pakistan (on forced leave) (”CJP”) and developed very cordial relations.

3. This continued after my appointment as DG IB. We frequently spoke

to and visited one another. During our meetings official work, the political situation, administrative problems and cases before the Supreme Court, amongst other things, were discussed by the CJP. Many times I took the initiative of visiting him and several times he did likewise. A number of times I also visited the CJP as per his desire. All these meetings were very very cordial and friendly.

4. That the CJP was very concerned about the media reports which he felt were damaging him. He asked me as DG IB to probe the matter and assist in suppressing these reports. The Federal Government had also asked me to conduct a discreet probe in the matter as the CJP had raised the issue in his meeting on 13 February 2007 with the President, as well.

5. On 9 March 2007 1 was asked to come to a meeting at the Camp Office of the President’s Secretariat. At 1300 hours I along with the Chief of Staff to the President, DG ISI and DG MI went to the President’s Chamber at the Camp Office. The President, the Prime Minister and the CJP were already there and so was the Military Secretary to the President.

6. That the President had received a Reference from the Prime Minister on 8 March 2007 along with the advice that the President submit this Reference lo the Supreme Judicial Council for an inquiry into the conduct of the CJP. That between 1300 hours and 1400 hours the details of the Reference and some of the findings of the intelligence agencies as a result of the exercise initiated at the behest of the CJP were discussed. That during the discussion the CJP clearly stated that he would face the Reference. In his affidavit the CJP has sought to create an impression that on his refusal to resign the President became furious stood up angrily and left the room. The President did not become furious.

Throughout the meeting he was calm, composed and respectful. He was neither angry nor did he leave in anger. He is also not accurate, as staled in his affidavit by the CJP, that he said to the President, ” I believe, that I am myself the guardian of law. I strongly believe in God who will help me”. Neither these words nor any words to such effect were used by CJP. This meeting concluded at 1400 hours and the President as well as the Prime Minister left for Jumma prayers. The Military Secretary to the President and the COS also left at the same time.

7. That thereafter myself, the CJP, DG ISI and DG MI continued our discussion on the various points and all the material and record was available in several folders.

8. That the discussion was courteous. There was no acrimonious exchange. No one made any threat. The CJP having clearly informed the President and the Prime Minister that he would face the Reference the question of any one of us making any demands of any kind on the CJP simply did not arise. The discussion was limited to the details of the Reference.

9. That at 1500 hours I and the DG ISI also left the meeting. The CJP and DG MI remained there and continued talking to one another.

10. That I have read the affidavit of Lt. Gen. (Retd) Hamid Javaid and this affidavit may be read in addition thereto.

II. That unless specifically so admitted nothing contained herein may be regarded as an admission of any adverse statement made by the CJP in his affidavit.

III. That whatever is stated herein above is true and correct.

More on this later…

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