The Brennan connection – Did the CIA sanitize Obama’s passport records?
January 23, 2013 by supermario
Filed under Americas
Jerome Corsi
World Net Daily
NEW YORK – John Brennan, the Obama counter-terrorism adviser nominated this week to head the CIA, played a controversial role in what many suspect was an effort to sanitize Obama’s passport records. On March 21, 2008, amid Obama’s first presidential campaign, two unnamed contract employees for the State Department were fired and a third was disciplined for breaching the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate and then-Sen. Barack Obama.
Breaking the story, the Washington Times on March 20, 2008, noted that all three had used their authorized computer network access to look up and read Obama’s records within the State Department consular affairs section that “possesses and stores passport information.”
Contacted by the newspaper, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack attributed the violations to non-political motivations, stressing that the three individuals involved “did not appear to be seeking information on behalf of any political candidate or party.” “As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity,” McCormack told the Washington Times. The spokesman did not disclose exactly how the State Department came to that conclusion.
By the next day, the story had changed. The New York Times reported March 21, 2008, that the security breach had involved unauthorized searches of the passport records not just of Sen. Obama but also of then-presidential contenders Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Again, the New York Times attributed the breaches to “garden-variety snooping by idle employees” that was “not politically motivated.” Like the Washington Times, the New York Times gave no explanation to back up its assertion that the breaches were attributable to non-political malfeasance.
Still, the New York Times report indicated then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had spent Friday morning calling all three presidential candidates and that she had told Obama that she was sorry for the violation.
Iran blamed for cyber onslaught on US banks
US financial institutions are being pounded with high-powered cyber attacks that some suspect are being orchestrated by Iran as payback for political sanctions.
“There is no doubt within the US government that Iran is behind these attacks,” James Lewis, a former official in the state and commerce departments and now a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the New York Times.
While the identities of those behind the online onslaught officially remains a mystery, it was clear they were using a potent new weapon for slamming bank websites with overwhelming numbers or requests for information.
The attackers infected datacenters used to host services in the Internet “cloud” and commandeered massive computing power to back distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, according to security experts.
New Evidence Expected in WikiLeaks Case
FORT MEADE, Md. — Military prosecutors preparing to try Pfc. Bradley Manning said on Wednesday that they would introduce evidence that Osama bin Laden requested and received from a Qaeda member some of the State Department cables and military reports that Private Manning is accused of passing to WikiLeaks.
The prosecutors also said they would present logs of Internet chats in February 2010 between Private Manning and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, including one in which the two men appeared to be “laughing” together about a New York Times article. The March 17, 2010, article said that the Pentagon had listed WikiLeaks as a threat to military operations and security.
The military judge hearing the case, Col. Denise Lind, said Private Manning’s trial would be postponed until at least June 3 to allow consideration of classified information that may be used. The trial is expected to take roughly six weeks.
Federal Judge Rules White House Can Keep Killing Americans In Secret
January 3, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Americas
All in a days work….
United States District Court Judge Colleen McMahon ruled on Wednesday that the United States Justice Department does not have a legal obligation to explain its rationale behind killing American citizens in targeted drone strikes.
The ACLU and the New York Times both filed a lawsuit because they were refused documents about targeted killings by the Obama administration under the Freedom of Information Act.
“There are indeed legitimate reasons, historical and legal, to question the legality of killings unilaterally authorized by the Executive that take place otherwise than on a ‘hot’ field of battle,” McMahon wrote in a 75-page ruling.
“The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me;” she continued, “but after careful consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules — a veritable Catch-22,” she writes. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reason for their conclusion a secret.”
In her ruling the judge cites speeches from both Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, in which they discuss the al-Awlaki killings vaguely, but attempt to excuse their behavior with secret explanations.
McMahon quotes Mr. Holder as saying during a March 2012 address at Chicago’s Northwestern University, “The Constitution’s guarantee of due process is ironclad, and it is essential — but, as a recent court decision makes clear, it does not require judicial approval before the President may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war — even if that individual happens to be a US citizen.”
“Holder did not identify which recent court decisions so held,” the judge replies, “Nor did he explain exactly what process was given to the victims of targeted killings at locations far from ‘hot’ battlefields…”
Though McMahon is clearly troubled by what she is ruling on in favor of the Obama administration, she points out, “As they gathered to draft a Constitution for their newly liberated country, the Founders — fresh from a war of independence from the rule of a King they styled a tyrant — were fearful of concentrating power in the hands of any single person or institution, and most particular in the executive.”
“More fulsome disclosure” of the administration’s legal reasoning “would allow for intelligent discussion and assessment of a tactic that (like torture before it) remains hotly debated,” McMahon wrote. “It might also help the public understand the scope of the ill-defined yet vast and seemingly ever-growing exercise in well over a decade, at great cost in lives, treasure and (at least in the minds of some) personal liberty.”
“However, this Court is constrained by law,” she wrote, and the government “cannot be compelled . . . to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate the constitution and laws of the United States.”
American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer issued a statement condemning the White House for their practice:
“This ruling denies the public access to crucial information about the government’s extrajudicial killing of US citizens and also effectively green-lights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures. As the judge acknowledges, the targeted killing program raises profound questions about the appropriate limits on government power in our constitutional democracy. The public has a right to know more about the circumstances in which the government believes it can lawfully kill people, including US citizens, who are far from any battlefield and have never been charged with a crime.”
The ACLU plans to appeal the judge’s decision as the Obama administration claims that the case should be dismissed.
Assistant General Counsel for the Times,David McCraw, issued a statement:
“We began this litigation because we believed our readers deserved to know more about the U.S. government’s legal position on the use of targeted killings against persons having ties to terrorism, including U.S. citizens. Judge McMahon’s decision speaks eloquently and at length to the serious legal questions raised by the targeted-killing program and to why in a democracy the government should be addressing those questions openly and fully.”
People in America are up in arms over a school shooting that took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults, but seeing as many are not as outraged at the millions that are ripped limb from limb from the womb by a paid hit man with a PhD who was given permission by the mother of the victim for a measly $200 for the murder, I guess I should not be surprised when people not only don’t care about the hundreds of children the Obama administration has murdered overseas, including American citizens who have done nothing wrong.
While I’m not much for either the ACLU or the New York Times, I do think this is a serious matter in which the federal government assassinates American citizens and then denies information as to why or how they are coming to a conclusion about such assassinations, especially in light of the Sixth Amendment. In addition, it is even more disturbing that current representatives find this behavior to be “Constitutional.”
Is the end of the world really nigh? Authorities reassure Russians over Mayan Armageddon prophecy amid reports of ‘unusual behaviour’
December 8, 2012 by Dr.No.
Filed under Uncategorized
Some parts of Russia, which is often said to have a penchant for mystical thinking, appear to have been spooked by the Mayan predictions
Rob Williams
As the 21st of December nears, Russian authorities are attempting to quell fears that the world will come to end amid panic over what some experts claim are the predictions of the Mayan Calendar.
According to the New York Times, there have been scattered reports of unusual behaviour from across Russia, reportedly prompted by predictions of Armageddon.
The reports include “collective mass psychosis” in a women’s prison on the Chinese border, panic buying of matches, kerosene, sugar and candles, and the building, out of ice, of a Mayan-style archway in Chelyabinsk in the south.
According to some experts, ancient Mayans predicted that the 21st of December would signal the end of a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar.
Some parts of Russia, which is often said to have a penchant for mystical thinking, appear to have been spooked by the prediction.
As a consequence the Russian government’s minister for emergency situations has sought to calm panic over the prophecy, saying he had access to “methods of monitoring what is occurring on the planet Earth,” and that he could say with confidence that the world was not going to end in December.
He did, however, make clear that Russians are still vulnerable to “blizzards, ice storms, tornadoes, floods, trouble with transportation and food supply, breakdowns in heat, electricity and water supply.”
Russia’s chief sanitary doctor has also issued similar attempts to calm panicky members of the public, one official has also reportedly suggested prosecuting Russians who spread rumour of the prophecy.
Russia may be the most extreme example of prophecy panic so far, but other countries are also experiencing problems.
In Ukraine the Orthodox Church has issued (a not quite reassuring) message that ‘doomsday is sure to come’, but advised it would be brought about by moral decline and not the: “so-called parade of planets or the end of the Mayan calendar.”
In France, authorities are taking steps to prevent access to Bugarach mountain, which is thought by some esoterics to be a sacred place that will protect them from the end of the world. Reports claim websites in the US have been selling tickets to access the mountain.
Body Count: Just How Many Bystanders Did New York Police Shoot? (THE PICTURE YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE!)
August 26, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Americas
THIS IS THE PICTURE YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE! – share it!
Jeffrey Johnson never fired on police.
Update: The Guardian is reporting that the nine bystanders who were shot (that didn’t include the shooter’s target) were all shot by police.
The most disturbing detail about Friday’s fatal shooting in Midtown Manhattan is the fact that the wounded included bystanders shot by police, and the latest news suggests stray police bullets may account for “most or all” of those wounded. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed that at least some of the injuries came from stray police bullets as cops opened fire on the gunman who aimed at them, but the police haven’t said how many. Rather, that detail comes from the math reporters are doing with the number of rounds police have confirmed were fired.
Fortunately, most of the injuries were minor. As one victim who as hit in the arm told The New York Times: “I guess, you know, stuff happens.”
The Times’ James Barron and David Halbfinger and William K. Rashbaum introduced the arithmetic reporting: “Some of those injured might have been shot by the two police officers, who fired 16 rounds at the gunman, Jeffrey Johnson 58, said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly — based on the number of people shot and the fact that Mr. Johnson’s gun held only eight rounds.” The New York Times Metro twitter account followed up with this accounting: “Johnson had 8 bullets max. Shot 5 at [victim Steve] Ercolino, 2 left in gun, 1 unfired on ground,” suggesting that the only ones Johnson fired were at his intended victim — although that doesn’t necessarily mean all of them found their mark.
Reuters’ Lily Kuo is reporting eight bystanders were wounded in total, not nine. But if The Times’ figures about the bullets are accurate, the total number of injured wouldn’t affect the story that police bullets accounted for all injuries, because all of Johnson’s bullets would be accounted for. The problem is, the available information keeps changing. Earlier in the day, The Associated Press and others were reporting that Johnson only fired three shots at Ercolino, not five, which would have two of his rounds unaccounted for.
The AP’s report now says five. Based on the latest information from The Times, however, and a little math, it looks like stray police bullets are to blame for most, if not all of the injured bystanders.
NYT Insults Intelligence in Latest Syrian Op-Ed
April 10, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
Dear New York Times, It Takes Two to Tango.
an editorial by Tony Cartalucci
April 10, 2012 – In New York Times’ (NYT) latest, anonymous editorial, they berate the Syrian government for not making good on Kofi Annan’s alleged “peace deal,” openly admitted by US policy think-tanks as a rouse to buy time for a floundering NATO proxy force and to be used as leverage to justify a partial invasion by NATO-member Turkey into northern Syria.
More specifically, the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution think-tank, in their latest report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” stated (emphasis added):
“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.” -page 4, Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution.
And now that is exactly what the UN, NATO, and its massive network of propagandists are attempting to sell the public – including the New York Times’ anonymous editorial board.
While the NYT unprofessionally throws around adjectives like “despicable” “brutal” and describes the events unfolding in Syria as “slaughter,” even by the Syrian opposition’s own admissions and throughout reports by “top rights groups” like Human Rights Watch (HRW), they are fighting just as “despicably,” “brutally,” and committing “slaughter” just as readily. That is because it takes two belligerents to conduct an armed uprising – a fact of reality the NYT attempts to sidestep in their desperate appeal to what they must assume is an infinitely ignorant readership.
Photo: The “Free Syrian Army,” whose composition consists of not only Syrian extremists, but Libyan terrorists from the US State Department listed “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group” led by Abdul Hakim Belhaj, are far from the “hapless, helpless” victims the New York Times portrays them as – nor is the current conflict in Syria as one-sides as the Times portrays.
The HRW report titled, “Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses,” is broken into three parts in regards to the rebels forces; kidnapping, torture, and executions. And while the report attempts to focus mainly on atrocities carried out against security forces and government supporters, the mention of civilian victims is made as well. The report states:
“Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.”
Under the title “Kidnappings,” it is stated:
“Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.”
“Human Rights Watch also expressed concern about FSA [Free Syrian Army] kidnappings of Iranian nationals, some of whom the group has confirmed are civilians.”
Under “Executions,” HRW’s report describes the Syrian opposition’s practice of rounding up suspects and killing them without trial, generally on the grounds of confessions coerced through torture. Other executions are simply carried out as reprisals with no apparent offense beyond suspected affiliations being cited.
What responsible government would allow overtly armed factions to carry out such crimes within its borders? What responsible journalist would omit these documented crimes during a discussion over how to end the bloodshed in Syria? Clearly both sides are armed, both sides are fighting one another, both sides are alleging the other is committing atrocities while declaring their own hands clean.
What the NYT also conveniently fails to mention is that the rebels they are so adamant in defending, have outright rejected Kofi Annan’s “peace deal,” in effect rendering the entire deal null and void, declaring their intentions to continue fighting the Syrian government with the constant torrent of cash and weapons pledged to them during the last “Friends of Syria” summit – a summit that disingenuously supported the “peace deal” while openly making provisions to continue the bloodshed. How could President Bashar al-Assad withdraw troops then, even if he wanted to?
Finally, the NYT shamelessly cites hearsay over an alleged “cross border” incident admittedly unconfirmed and involving conflicting reports in an attempt to further demonize the Syrian government and provide the impetus for Turkey, a NATO member since the 1950′s, to establish Wall Street and London’s prescribed “safe havens” and “humanitarian corridors” from which to continue their attempts to topple the Syrian government. As a matter of fact, Today’s Zaman literally announced verbatim that Turkey’s next step would be indeed to implement this very strategy, conjured up not from within the halls of the Turkish government in Ankara, but within the pages of a Fortune 500-funded Washington “think-tank.”
An informed citizen would recognize NYT’s editorial as just another mouthpiece of a singular Western agenda of premeditated violence with predetermined prescribed courses of action prepared to topple the government of Syria – a plan decades in the making. It is not that conditions on the ground have coincidentally converged to justify these plans – it is that professional liars like the NYT, the TV networks and the governments of NATO are creating and/or lying about the conditions on the ground when they otherwise would not exist to justify these plans.
Recognize that we are once again being lied to by the New York Times, just as we were by “Curveball” and Donald Rumsfeld regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the admittedly false “humanitarian” claims made by the Libyan opposition, or most recently by the US government-funded Kony 2012 propaganda campaign. How many more times must we be lied to by the exact same shrill voices before we, as a rule, doubt, question, and challenge everything they say?
NBC Fires Producer in Flap Over Manipulated 911 Call in Trayvon Martin Case
April 7, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Media
The controversy erupted after “Today” aired a segment that made shooter George Zimmerman sound as though he was racially profiling the 17-year-old black youth.
NBC News has fired the producer it deemed most responsible for the airing of a selectively edited 911 call placed by George Zimmerman the night he killed Trayvon Martin.
Sources at NBC who asked not to be identified confirmed a New York Times story saying that a Miami-based producer was fired Thursday, though the sources refused to identify the former employee.
The offending segment aired on NBC’s Today show March 27 but went widely unnoticed until it was highlighted by conservative outlets such as the Media Research Center and Breitbart.com.
Two days after the Today gaffe, Sean Hannity ran a segment about NBC’s manipulation of the 911 call on his Fox News Channel show. The story went viral when the Drudge Report linked to a Hollywood Reporter story about the growing controversy last week.
In the original 911 call, Zimmerman is heard describing Martin as such: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”
The dispatcher then asks: “OK, and this guy – is he white, black or Hispanic?”
“He looks black,” Zimmerman responds.
The version NBC ran, though, was much shorter and did not include the question posed by the 911 operator.
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,” Zimmerman is heard saying in NBC’s edited version.
The difference is significant, since activists have been claiming that Zimmerman had racially profiled Martin. Critics have argued that NBC set out to purposely advance that narrative by condensing the 911 tape to make it appear that Zimmerman’s motivation for assuming Martin was “up to no good” was based on his skin color.
NBC announced Saturday that it had launched an investigation into the matter, and on Tuesday it apologized for its “error” and said it had completed its inquiry.
“We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers,” NBC said Tuesday.
NBC News Admits ‘Error’ of Edited 911 Call in Trayvon Martin Controversy (Video)
Obama & 2016 (The Movie) Will the REAL Obama please stand up
April 4, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Music/Book/Film/Art
Warning:
Dinesh D’Souza (Konkani: दिनेश डिसूज़ा: born April 25, 1961) is an author and public speaker and a former Robert and Karen Rishwain Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is currently the President of The King’s College in New York City. D’Souza is a noted Christian apologist and conservative writer and speaker. He is the author of numerous New York Times best-selling books. He was born and raised Catholic, but is now an Evangelical Christian.
D’Souza challenges beliefs and projects such as affirmative action and social welfare. In the book Illiberal Education, D’Souza argued that intolerance of conservative views is common at many universities.
He has attributed many modern social problems to what he calls the “cultural left”. In his recent book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, he wrote that:
The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11 … the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the non-profit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.
How War Reporting in Syria Makes a Larger Conflict Inevitable
April 3, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Media
We get major-media reports from Syria with increasing frequency. What’s wrong with these reports are that they are generally devoid of power analysis.
This recent New York Times article, for example, headlined “Neighbors Said to Be at Violent Odds in Syrian Crackdown,” is based almost solely on accounts of refugees interviewed in Lebanon. Here’s the lead paragraph:
Sunni Muslims who have fled Syria described a government crackdown that is more pervasive and more sectarian than previously understood, with civilians affiliated with President Bashar al-Assad’s minority religious sect shooting at their onetime neighbors as the military presses what many Sunnis see as a campaign to force them to flee their homes and villages in some sections of the country.
In other words, ethnic cleansing, perhaps a precursor to the kinds of large-scale horrors we saw in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The inevitable conclusion is that any decent person would support international efforts to stop this. Based on past history, in Libya, in Iraq, and elsewhere, that would evolve quickly into military intervention. In fact, on Sunday, the pace quickened. In a meeting Sunday in Istanbul, the US and allies began actively moving toward direct intervention. Arab nations agreed to pay $100 million to rebels and the Obama administration to send them communications equipment.
Yet, the Syria coverage tends to focus only on the misery, not the cause: an uprising intended to overthrow a government and a ruling class. If indeed the Syrian government is arming one group in the country, that is because the government is besieged—and those being armed are members of the same minority sect as the ruling Assad clan. Syria managed for decades without internecine warfare. It is the uprising itself that has massively exacerbated animosity and fear between religious groups.
But the Times’s account offers virtually no analysis of the background to the conflict. Instead, we get awkward, rudimentary disclaimers, in case the reporting turns out to be way off-base:
It is hard to evaluate all of the refugees’ claims because in the Syrian conflict, the longest and bloodiest of the Arab revolts, each side blames the other for sectarian division.
That’s a highly misleading statement because it elides the central issue: who is promoting the revolt, and why? The most authoritative and self-confident of the sources quoted tend to be military officers and officials defecting from the government. Their comments should not be taken simply as independent testimony, since they are, de facto, part of an organized rebel effort to justify the coming Western intervention on their side.
Because the conflict in Syria coincided with the wave of uprisings in other Arab countries—the so-called Arab Spring—does it necessarily follow that the nature of the Syrian conflict is identical with the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc.? Although the media, by and large have failed to note any real differences, they are enormous. Tunisia and Egypt were largely authentic, domestic uprisings, reflecting broad dissent, and came about with no foreign military intervention. Libya was a cynical attempt by foreign powers to ride long-simmering tribal animosities and foster a purportedly domestic uprising that was actually planned, managed and staffed covertly by those outside countries’ militaries and intelligence services. See this article we published on that subject.
Clearly, proper media coverage would focus on the history of Syria, the proximal cause of the uprising, the legitimacy or lack thereof of the authorities, the agendas of the various rebel factions. We need to know why, if that country has long been ruled by a minority, only now are we seeing serious anti-government agitation. In short, we need geopolitical context. And we need to ask why some advocates of open revolution are characterized as victims, as in this case, while other rebels elsewhere—in, say, France or Saudi Arabia—are characterized as terrorists?
Besides, while aspirations to greater freedom are right and proper, not all the people trying to overthrow odious regimes are necessarily pure-minded freedom fighters. And the result after the fall is often not what was promised.
As important is that we look at our own system objectively. In the United States, for example, we pay homage to democracy every four years, but isn’t our political system, like that of these Middle Eastern countries, increasingly dominated by a fairly small number of very rich people? The average American, has very little understanding of what is really going on, or why—either in their own country or in their name in distant lands—and tends to respond to propaganda, much of it funded by this same small circle of interests.
But if enough Americans really got the picture, concluded the system was rigged, and began taking to the streets, we know that the authorities would, just like the Syrians, the Saudis, and so on, clamp down with force. Oh, wait: that’s already happened, all over the country, in myriad ways. We could start, for example, with the aggressive response to various Occupy encampments.
As for why the West is suddenly so passionate about human rights in this particular country, while almost totally ignoring the issue in other places, like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, some possible explanations immediately come to mind.
With American troops pulling out of Iraq just as foreign oil companies step up their production, it is of paramount importance to have a military presence nearby to protect those investments. And what country is right next door?
The very fact that Syria does not harbor major oil reserves is exactly what allows the “humanitarian” argument to prevail unchallenged. It is what allows news organizations to act as if no business or strategic concerns are in play. Importantly, Syria has been a longtime ally of Iran, and therefore removing it has been part of the larger plan to weaken the Tehran regime’s regional influence. And because Syria adjoins the strategically crucial Israel, Lebanon and Turkey—it is a dream hub for bases.
Long before Sunday’s meeting in Istanbul, we had constant hints that the leading NATO countries, along with key allies such as the Saudis (closely tied to the Syrian Sunni opposition), were deeply involved in priming the pump behind this uprising. To continue to pretend, as the media has now done for many months, that this is simply a one-sided tragedy to be ameliorated through eventual military action (which if recent history is any guide will only lead to much more human misery)—well, is that anything less than journalistic malpractice?
