Archive for June 18th, 2009

Mike Luckovich

Mike Thompson

Chuck Asay

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com

The BBC has again been caught engaging in mass public deception by using photographs of pro-Ahmadinejad rallies in Iran and claiming they represent anti-government protests in favor of Hossein Mousavi.

An image used by the L.A. Times on the front page of its website Tuesday showed Iranian President Ahmadinejad waving to a crowd of supporters at a public event.

In a story covering the election protests yesterday, the BBC News website used a closer shot of the same scene, but with Ahmadinejad cut out of the frame. The caption under the photograph read, ‘Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi again defied a ban on protests’.

The BBC photograph is clearly a similar shot of the same pro-Ahmadinejad rally featured in the L.A. Times image, yet the caption erroneously claims it represents anti-Ahmadinejad protesters.

See the screenshots below (click to enlarge).

“Well I guess it sure was a popular fictional rally for Mousavi, because I later noticed while browsing the news sites a familiar picture on the BBC’s lead Iran story – it shows the same crowd, zoomed in to cut out Ahmadinejad,” a reader told the WhatReallyHappened website. “It is clearly the same protest as in the background are the same tree and odd circular building. However, the BBC managed to outdo the LA times in quality reporting – their actual comment under the photo from the huge PRO-Ahmadinejad rally reads ‘Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi again defied a ban on protests’ – a blatant lie and deliberately misleading description of what is actually occurring in Iran!”

As soon as the truth about the misrepresented images surfaced on the WhatReallyHappened website yesterday, the BBC changed the photo caption on their original article.

This is not the first time the BBC has been caught red-handed using crude image and video framing techniques for the purposes of political propaganda.

During the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, the BBC and other mainstream news outlets broadcast closely framed footage of the “mass uprising” during which Iraqis, aided by U.S. troops, toppled the Saddam Hussein statue in Fardus Square.

The closely framed footage was used to imply that hundreds or thousands of Iraqis were involved in a Berlin Wall-style “historic” liberation, yet when wide angle shots were later published on the Internet, footage that was never broadcast on live television, the reality of the “mass uprising” became clear. The crowd around the statue was sparse and consisted mostly of U.S. troops and journalists. The BBC later had to admit that only “dozens” of Iraqis had participated in toppling the statue. The entire scene was a manufactured farce yet the propaganda technique of blocking wide-angle shots from being broadcast convinced the world that the event represented a triumphant and historic mass popular uprising on behalf of the Iraqi people.

Whatever your views on the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad and the accuracy of the Iranian election results, the fact that the Anglo-American establishment and its media organs are exploiting and fanning the flames of chaos in Iran to provoke further instability is unquestionable.

Indeed, the U.S. State Department, which routinely demonizes the Internet as a tool of extremists and terrorists when it is used to criticize U.S. foreign policy, took the unprecedented step today of requesting that Twitter.com “delay planned maintenance work so that Iranian protesters can continue to use it to post images and reports of unrest,” according to a London Times report.

Mother Jones

Blackwater may owe the government more than $55 million—and one restaurant-quality deep fat fryer.

According to a federal audit reviewing the private security firm’s work in Iraq, Blackwater failed to meet the terms of contracts worth more than $800 million. The audit, released on Monday, found that the company (which recently renamed itself Xe) regularly came up short on the staffing requirements outlined in two of its State Department task orders, issued under the multibillion dollar Worldwide Personal Protective Services (WPPS) contract. For instance, the audit notes, the firm didn’t supply enough personal security specialists for 16 of 19 months under a task order to provide guards in Baghdad and Ramadi—meaning that visiting dignitaries and other officials under the firm’s watch were potentially underprotected.

“The contract states that all positions must be filled 100 percent of the time and that Blackwater is to be assessed deductions when this level is not maintained,” the audit, a joint effort by the State Department’s Inspector General and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, notes. Though Blackwater’s “muster sheets”—schedules showing the number of personnel available for duty—”indicated that Blackwater did not provide the required manning for protection details in accordance with the contract terms,” the State Department failed to invoke a contract provision that would have penalized the company for failing to maintain the agreed upon staffing levels.

In the WPPS contract, the State Department pointed out that understaffing on high-threat protection contracts had proved a “major problem” in the past. And the agency included a clause in the contract to discourage this from happening again. “If manning falls below a minimum or the correct number of personnel are not deployed on time, a large reduction in the award price will be made in addition to not being able to invoice the hours/days not worked.” Government auditors determined that Blackwater should have been docked $55 million for its persistent manpower shortages. And the audit concluded “insufficient manning exposed the Department to unnecessary risk that could have been avoided by full staffing.”

Blackwater/Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell says the company is still reviewing the audit, but disputed the allegation that the firm had not met its contractual obligations. “The government contracting officer determined that Blackwater was compliant with the terms and conditions of the contract at the time they were reviewing and therefore did not apply any deductions or penalties,” she says, adding that “Blackwater only billed for services provided.”

According to the audit, though, this is far from clear. Due to inadequate monitoring by the State Department’s diplomatic security division, “There is no assurance that personnel staffing data was accurate or complete and that correct labor rates were paid.” The audit recommends that the State Department seek a legal opinion on “whether charging deductions for past inadequate staffing would be appropriate”—and the agency has agreed to do so.

Blackwater was also called out for $127,364 in “unallowable travel costs” expensed by contractors assigned to Baghdad and Hillah. As of February, the State Department had been able to recoup $56,457, but $70,907 remained outstanding. “We have not been informed of what the report is referencing but would work with the Department of State to reach a resolution if it became necessary,” says Tyrrell. Given that Blackwater raked in over $1 billion before being booted from Iraq in May, these costs may appear somewhat trivial, but they represent the larger free-for-all in Iraq, when, after the invasion, contracts—along with duffle bags full of cash—were going out the door without proper oversight.

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