Matt Taibbi Flashback (9/11): CNN Sentences Palestine To Death

There was a candlelight vigil in East Jerusalem on the night of the 9/11 attacks, Yassir Arafat gave blood, schoolchildren around the country took part in moments of silence…

Instead, the media showed the same 30-second clip over and over… The obvious agenda was to rally its viewers around the very crudest response to the news: violence needed to be met with more violence and a political clampdown…

Probably no single film clip in recent history has had as much of an impact as the Palestine clip. Summing it up was Ehud Sprinzak, an Israeli expert on terrorism, quoted in Reuters referring to the clip: “From the perspective of Jews, it is the most important public relations act ever committed in our favor.”

Three additional reports below (two from German media):

By Matt Taibbi, reposted from eXile, September 20, 2001 [photos below added by IAK]

Matt Taibbi Flashback (9/11): CNN Sentences Palestine To Death

The US is trying to test China’s reaction to Blinken’s potential visit through media hype and is trying to shape its own image as a promoter for communication

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday dismissed rumors of a potential visit to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the near future, saying they have nothing to share on that, after a number of US media outlets have hyped an alleged official visit by Blinken to China in the upcoming weeks.

China dismisses rumors of a Blinken visit, calling for US sincerity rather than saying one thing but doing another

Related:

Blinken Expected to Visit China Soon

Anonymous sources strike again.

Cuba, Pentagon and White House dismiss reports of China building a spy base in Cuba

Pentagon Dismisses WSJ Report on China Spy Station in Cuba

“I can tell you based on the information that we have, that that is not accurate, that we are not aware of China and Cuba developing a new type of spy station,” said Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Patrick Ryder.

Related:

White House Denies Report That China Is Building a Spy Base on Cuba

“I’ve seen that press report. It’s not accurate,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in an interview on MSNBC.

Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base Focusing on U.S. [according to no one]

The U.S. has intervened before to stop foreign powers from extending their influence in the Western Hemisphere, most notably during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The U.S. and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war after the Soviets deployed nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba, prompting a U.S. Navy quarantine of the island.

The Soviets backed down and removed the missiles. A few months later, the U.S. quietly removed intermediate-range ballistic missiles from Turkey that the Soviets had complained about.

H/T: Emil Cosman

NYT hypes China threat: They’re reading the internet

NYT hypes China threat: They’re reading the internet

That Beijing is mining publicly available information is not new or surprising but fear mongering about it in Washington is good for business.

The Times was passing on findings from an analysis by threat intelligence company Recorded Future, which says a Chinese open-source intel company has been mining publicly available information from the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon think tank, and the U.S. Naval War College.

Related:

Exclusive: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future. The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, […]

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