Media Manipulates the "End" of the War in Iraq

Originally published at Truthout.


Just as the media lied to help us get into a war, they are now lying us out of one.

In the introduction to season five of HBO's critically acclaimed series, "The Wire," Det. Bunk Moreland and fellow murder investigators laughed as they duped a hapless, young street gangster into confessing to a murder by pretending a copy machine was a polygraph test. "The bigger the lie, the more they believe," he said.

The statement reflects the political dialogue in this country perfectly over the last month, ever since Barack Obama touted the troop drawdown in Iraq in an August 2 speech in Atlanta and leading up to tonight's Oval Address celebrating the "end of combat operations in Iraq." The president, the DC establishment and the media have been perpetuating a lie on a massive scale: the war in Iraq is now over, they claim.

But this is patently misleading, as Andrew Bacevich, of Boston University noted in a recent essay. "For the rest of us to pretend that this unnecessary and ill-advised war has ended would only add one more lie to a pile that is already too large," Bacevich said, noting that internal strife between sects, an increasingly defiant Kurdistan and recent attacks in Baghdad, prove that the war in Iraq is by no means over.

Sadly, it is not merely the president and others who have a political motive for perpetuating the myth that the United States has ended out national nightmare in Iraq. More troubling has been the performance of the mainstream media, which, in print and on television, have been witting pawns in this massive deception, reporting on the war as if it were truly over, celebrating this historical moment and ignoring crucial details, as they mislead the American public about the nature of the US role in Iraq. The woeful media performance is just the latest of what has been an especially regrettable eight years of media coverage of Iraq

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New Figures Show Student Loan Debt Exceeds Credit Card Debt

Originally published at Campus Progress.

More evidence of the depths of the student loan crisis surfaced this week when the Federal Reserve’s latest numbers revealed that student loans now account for more consumer debt than credit cards.

Outstanding student loans now total $829.785 billion -- about one third of the $2.4 trillion consumer debt in the United States, according to FinAid.org. For the first time ever, this number surpasses total credit card debt, which, according to the Fed, is now $826.5 billion, down considerably from its high point in late 2008.

The drastic numbers are causing some to wonder if the student loan crisis will be the next bubble to burst for the U.S. economy, especially given that default rates are at least 20 percent, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education (and potentially much higher, according to some sources).

“The growth in education debt outstanding is like cooking a lobster,” says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and FastWeb.com, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “The increase in total student debt occurs slowly but steadily, so by the time you notice that the water is boiling, you’re already cooked.”

The reasons for this increase in student debt are numerous. Tuition is rapidly rising past the rate of inflation and the unemployment figures, especially for recent college graduates are staggeringly high.

Further, as Campus Progress recently reported, since 2005 student loans have not been granted bankruptcy protection. This has saddled borrowers with life-long debt and has given the banks enormous leverage when negotiating repayments. For example, lenders will often settle at credit card debts at discounted rates, knowing that borrowers could otherwise declare bankruptcy. With private student loans, however, the banks demand the full balance plus interest in fees. Legislation exists in the House and the Senate that would add bankruptcy protections, but it remains to be seen if a bill will pass, and if so, what the specific language will look like.

The silver lining of this latest news is that it could bring desperately needed attention to this brewing economic disaster. Student Loan Justice, an organization that advocates on behalf of student borrowers, issued a statement in response to the new numbers that says “media coverage of credit cards exceeds coverage of student loans by a factor of approximately 15-to-1 based on unscientific news surveys conducted since 2007.”

Clearly, more media attention to student loan issues is warranted given the scope of the problem. “It is our hope that this issue will be exposed to the same level of media scrutiny as is given to credit card debt, and even subprime home loan debt, “ the statement continues. “It is only under the light of serious investigative journalism that this problem will be identified correctly, and solved appropriately.”

Indeed, with outstanding student loans now surpassing credit card debt and a huge chunk of these borrowers falling into default it is clear this crisis has become impossible to ignore.

The Flotilla Story U.S. Media Won’t Report: Ignoring evidence that counters Israeli claims

Originally published in Extra!, the monthly magazine for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

Michael Corcoran and Stephen Maher

At a June 10 press conference (Cultures of Resistance, 6/10/10), passengers from the Mavi Marmara released new footage of the Israel Defense Forces’ deadly May 31 raid on the ship, which killed nine activists attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli blockade. Days earlier, another video was released allegedly showing the IDF beating and then executing a U.S. citizen, although the identity of the passenger in the video has not been confirmed (Informed Comment, 6/10/10; Tikun, 6/10/10).

Obviously, two videos alone could not possibly tell the whole story of what happened that night, but they did offer some of the only images of the tragic event that had not been hand-picked for release by Israel, which confiscated virtually all of the photo and video footage taken on the ship and released only heavily edited snippets (Lede, 6/2/10). This new footage offered revealing glimpses into the bloody raid on the ship that countered the narrative Israel had been successfully spinning in the U.S. (FAIR Media Advisory, 6/1/10).

In addition to possibly showing the execution of a U.S. citizen by the IDF, the footage included images of the IDF shooting either rubber-coated steel bullets or live ammunition from a helicopter, seemingly before commandos boarded (Democracy Now, 6/10/10), and firing indiscriminately at crowds (Ali Abunimah, 6/13/10). Separate photos from Turkish papers and survivors’ testimony also revealed that flotilla passengers were treating injured IDF soldiers (Democracy Now!, 6/10/10; Ali Abunimah, 6/6/10), contradicting Israeli claims that soldiers had been taken hostage, as well as its insistence that the passengers of this "hate boat," as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it (Reuters, 6/2/10), were not humanitarian activists but violent extremists.

While independent media (Democracy Now, 6/10/10) and the foreign press (Guardian, 6/11/2010) covered the new evidence, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today all failed to even mention it in their newspapers--although Times blogger Robert Mackey did post the footage (Lede, 6/11/10), arguing that it gave "a better sense of the timeline of the raid," and making the video's absence in the Paper of the Record's print edition all the more troublesome.

The U.S. corporate press similarly ignored other important evidence that contradicted Israeli claims. This included detailed testimonies of the activists and journalists onboard the vessel, as well as GPS coordinates showing the flotilla accelerating and turning away from Gaza and deeper into international waters at the time of the attack (Ali Abunimah, 6/7/10). This blackout of evidence continues the long-held practice in the U.S. media of ignoring stories that reflect poorly on Israel and other U.S. allies (Extra!, 1/10).

After the attack, U.S. media wasted no time enabling Israel's aggressive public relations campaign (Extra!, 7/10). TV outlets uncritically replayed dubious video clips that were heavily edited, out of context and lacking timestamps (e.g., Hardball, 6/1/10). These clips showed passengers fighting off commandos with kitchen knives and whatever else they could find, but did not show the moments preceding the raid, leaving crucial questions unanswered. Despite there being no way to know the whole story, publications such as the Washington Post (6/6/10) offered no caution in reporting that "Israeli commandos were violently beaten by passengers as they boarded the Mavi Marmara," and then "opened fire in self-defense, killing nine activists."

Many Israeli claims reported unflinchingly by the U.S. media quickly turned out to be egregious lies or distortions. For instance, as journalist Max Blumenthal noted (Max Blumenthal, 6/22/10), a press release Israel issued claiming that associates of Al-Qaeda were on the boat would later be "corrected" by the IDF when it was unable to provide any evidence. The Washington Post editorial page, (6/1/10) which suggested that the activists--"a motley collection that included European sympathizers with the Palestinian cause, Israeli Arab leaders and Turkish Islamic activists"--had "ties to Hamas and Al-Qaeda," failed to issue its own correction.

Israel also released an audio tape it claimed to be of passengers on the Mavi Marmara making antisemitic slurs ("go back to Auschwitz") and warning the IDF to "remember 9/11." The tapes contradicted others the IDF itself released earlier depicting the same exchange between the Israeli navy and the activists on the flotilla that did not contain the bizarre comments (Max Blumenthal, 6/4/10).

Israel soon admitted that these tapes were doctored, though it said they were merely condensed for length, and released a longer version that still contained the slurs (Max Blumenthal, 6/22/10). However, this subsequent release was also problematic. On the new version, the IDF is again heard calling a different boat in the flotilla, the Defne Y, not the Mavi Marmara. Similarly, Huwaida Arraf, the activist who is heard responding to the IDF, saying, "we have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter," was not on the Mavi Marmara, but the Challenger One, another flotilla boat (Ma'an, 6/5/10). But the U.S. media again failed to report on this manipulation, and some outlets (e.g., Washington Post, 6/5/10) reported on the audio clips without hinting that there were doubts about their authenticity.

The op-ed pages were also predictably one-sided. The New York Times, for example, published an op-ed by Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren (6/03/10), who alleged the activists were "religious extremists" committing an "assault, cloaked in peace," and claimed, without a shred of evidence, that the activists had made propaganda videos before the assault showing "passengers 'injured' by Israeli forces" (Max Blumenthal, 6/26/10). The Times, it seems, did not bother to ask for copy of this alleged video before publishing such an extraordinary claim.

Given the large amount of time and space devoted to excusing and justifying Israeli actions, the lack of attention provided to the activists’ stories and evidence has given the public an incomplete and one-sided portrayal of events.

"Sadly, the U.S. press just decided to pretend we really don't exist,” said Iara Lee, the activist that smuggled out the hour-long video of the scene, in an interview with Extra!. “The media there is very controlled and almost all of the coverage [about the videos] came from the foreign press and the independent media."

Michael Corcoran (MichaelCorcoran.blogspot.com) is a freelance journalist based in Boston. He has written for such outlets as the Nation and the Boston Globe.

Single Payer Isn't Dead: How States Are Keeping the Movement Alive

Originally published at Truthout.


The grassroots single-payer movement in Vermont reflects the growing belief that the fight to make healthcare a human right must come from the states. But will the passage of federal reform get in the way?


Burlington, VT – When Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March, many thought the long and tedious stretch of legislative wrangling and endless debates about healthcare reform had come to an end and the prospects for further meaningful reform would be shelved for years or decades.


But while the country was consumed with the incredibly narrow debate in D.C., dictated largely by drug and insurance lobbyists, anti-abortion politicians, and a collection of conservative Democratic senators with close ties to the insurance and drug industries, another significant healthcare battle was taking place hundreds of miles to the north, in the tiny little state of Vermont, population, 600,000. By the time Obama signed a federal healthcare bill into law, the Vermont Workers' Center was almost two years into its “Healthcare is a Human Rights campaign,” which had the unambiguous goal of abolishing for-profit healthcare in the state and passing a state-wide, single-payer healthcare system that guarantees healthcare as a right to all Vermonters. In May, the Vermont Legislature, under constant pressure from this growing people's movement, passed a bill that could possibly lead to Vermont being the first state to pass a single-payer healthcare system, setting up what could be a crucial phase of the fight for healthcare justice.


If Vermont is able to break this ground, the implications could reverberate well past the borders of the Green Mountain State. The fight for state-wide single-payer here reflects a growing belief among healthcare activists that the path to a universal public system, will not take place in Washington D.C, where moneyed interests have a death grip on the legislative process, but through state houses across the country. Further, the effort in Vermont may prove to be the first test case of the “state innovation” language in the federal reform bill, and could indicate if Obamacare will ultimately serve to enable state-wide single-payer systems or if it will kill them. Finally, the movement in Vermont also highlights a fascinating debate over the rhetoric of healthcare reform. Should advocates point to the significant savings associated with single-payer healthcare and the unsustainability of the current system? Or, should the primary emphasis view the fight for public healthcare as a matter of basic human rights?


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