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WELCOME TO PETER'S NEW YORK'S (OCCASIONAL) DAILY BRIEFING FOR JUNE 16, 2011.
For Believers, a new chief for Al Qaeda
Former Paki Spy Chief calls Bin Laden raid bogus
US prepares to invade Libya with ground troops: sources
NPR exhibits biased reportage
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For believers, a new chief for Al Qaeda
The BBC reported today that Ayman al-Zawahiri has been named as a replacement for Osama Bin Laden as the head of the alleged Islamic militant group Al Qaeda. The BBC cited a statement by the group making the announcement and reaffirming its opposition to the influence of the United States and Israel in the Middle East. The BBC reported that the statement was posted on an Islamicist website. It did not provide a link to the website, but the media outlet Al Jazeera gave the website address as http://www.as-ansar.com/vb/index.php. The website is written in Arabic script, and Peter's New York was unable to translate it or confirm Al Jazeera's or the BBC's claims as to its content. The BBC did not identify the entity that hosted the website. It is commonly believed in some circles that Al Qaeda is a front group for intelligence agencies of the Western Powers, including Great Britain's M-16, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Israel's Mossad.
Former Paki spy chief calls Bin Laden raid bogus
Former Pakistani intelligence chief Hamid Gul, in an interview with Infowars' Alex Jones yesterday, claimed the alleged attack on Osama Bin Laden's compound by U.S. forces last month was an artificially created event, staged to justify a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. America invaded Afghanistan in 2001 on the pretext that the Afghani Taliban government at the time had been harboring Osama Bin Laden, who the United States accused of masterminding the events of September 11, 2001. Bin Laden is said by many commentators and investigators to have died in late 2001. He was suffering from kidney disease at the time, and the likelihood of his survival for over a decade is seen as unlikely. Gul characterized the alleged killing of Bin Laden as a murder, and gave a litany of reasons to cast doubt on U.S. claims. Gul garnered international attention when, in an interview by Arnaud de Borchgrave in 2001, he contended that the events of 9-11 were staged by government intelligence services.
US prepares to invade Libya with ground troops: sources
Infowars' Jones reported yesterday that he has received information from military and other sources that the United States is actively planning to mobilize ground troops for an invasion of Libya in the Fall.
NPR exhibits biased reportage
Mara Liasson, a commentator on National Public Radio, today characterized the viewpoints of Republican presidential contenders supporting a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East and a cessation of hostilities against the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi as "foreign policy squishiness." During the same newscast, the Republican viewpoint supporting a military drawdown or full withdrawal was characterized as "isolationism." These rhetorical techniques, some believe, demonstrate NPR's bias in reporting.
In another instance of possible bias and distortion, NPR attempted to disparage Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by citing the alleged crimes of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who was the previous president . NPR claimed that the elder Assad was responsible for a crackdown on dissent in the early 1980s that resulted in "as many as" 30,000 deaths. It went on to say that there was no way of knowing exactly how many people died in the crackdown. The implication was that there may have been more than 30,000 deaths, but according to the wording, the converse could be true as well--that there were far less than 30,000. In fact, the phrase "as many as" leaves room for the possiblity that only ten or twenty people lost their lives. The statement appeared to be crafted to bolster inflated claims relating to crimes of the Assad regime, but upon scrutiny, its meaning evaporates.
Future posts will focus upon an analysis of news coverage by NPR and the Associated Press.
Your commentator is Peter Duveen.
