MEDIA ROOTS — Abby Martin of Media Roots and RT extends meaningful and challenging questions to the iconic hip hop artist and activist Immortal Technique, who notes what “seems to be a meticulous strategy to keep anything that is thought-provoking out of the mainstream.”
Like other renegades, such as artists like Zack de la Rocha, Tom Morello, Morrissey and Paul Mooney, independent recording artist Immortal Technique delivers a potent interview on an array of sundry topics. They discuss music, conspiracy, politics, culture and the evolution of consciousness throughout the extended thirty minute interview for RT TV.
Messina
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RT — Hip-hop artist Immortal Technique is a self-described social guerrilla. Felipe Coronel is the real name of the Peruvian-born, Harlem-raised political activist who raps about politics, religion and racism. Since the genesis of the OWS movement, Tech has been an active voice for the cause, and on July 10 a documentary will be released showing his everyday life. He now joins us with more on his beliefs and his work.
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Abby Martin: “Something you rarely see these days in the MTV-generated music industry mainstream: hip hop with a message of raw truth. Felipe Coronel, better known as Immortal Technique, is a Peruvian-born, Harlem-raised hip hop artist and political activist, a self-described social guerilla. Tech’s views about politics, religion, classism, and racism are expressed poetically and powerfully through his lyrics. And some of his albums pack more historical relvance than an entire school history book. To maintain control over his work, Tech has never signed with a label, which gives him ultimate freedom of expression. He’s a vocal supporter of many political movements and struggles for justice. Since the Occupy Wall Street movement started last year, he’s been an active voice of support for the cause. And now a new documentary coming out July 10 gives us an intimate look at his life, music, and activism. Here’s a sneak peek.”
MEDIA ROOTS – Daniel Klaidman, former editor for Newsweek magazine, recently produced a slick and pandering ‘anti-war’, pro-drone, pro-Obama video on the ‘liberal’ website The Daily Beast. The segment insinuated that Muslims in Pakistan are grateful for US drone strikes, even when they kill innocent people.
A portion of the clip humanizes drone operators, saying that sometimes they linger for hours, even days, to make sure they have the right target, illustrating how in one instance an operator waited until a father was finished playing with a child before bombing him to death. Interestingly enough, other reports show the exact opposite–that drones actually target innocent people, and mourners of the dead. Not only do the strikes target innocent civilians, but the reason the administration can tout such low civilian casualties from the strikes is because they automatically consider every military aged male in a strike region to be a combatant.
The video also makes the claim that tribal Muslims fear the Pakistani ‘anti al-Qaeda’ tactics far more than they do US drones. Klaidman must have missed the petition from Pakistani families filed early this year pleading for the US to halt drone warfare in their country.
In this new Orwellian era, where black is white and up is down, a video production style normally reserved for Robert Greenwald, a prolific anti-war filmmaker (who also seems to have softened his approach towards Obama as compared to Bush), with a dash of video music artist Michel Gondry, has been employed to promote the idea of robotic ‘targeted assassinations’. Overall message from this piece of propaganda: C’mon guys, just trust the President and let him do his job! He’s a good guy who means well, just like you and me! Forget about the eradication of habeus corpus or that old fashioned concept of “proving” guilt before murdering groups of people and calling it a day.
Written by Robbie and Abby Martin
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Pro-Drone Propaganda on the Daily Beast
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Abby Martin reports on Klaidman’s pro-drone video on RT TV
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SALON – How is it remotely justifiable — using the standards of “objective journalism” that these media outlets incessantly invoke — for Newsweek to produce a video that has little purpose other than to justify, glorify, and defend Obama’s drone attacks on other countries? Is this not one of the most glaring examples ever demonstrating that “objective journalists” like Newsweek‘s Daniel Klaidman are barred from expressing opinions — unless the opinion expressed is that the actions of the U.S. Government are justified and noble? That’s why Chris Hedges was forced out of The New York Times for opposing the attack on Iraq while John Burns was venerated and made the chief war correspondent after he supported that attack: opinions are perfectly permissible from American journalists only to the extent that they defend official actions. In what conceivable way is it the proper role of Newsweek and its national security “reporters” to produce melodramatic agitprop which vigorously takes the U.S. Government’s side in ongoing, highly divisive political controversies?
Then there’s the content itself. Klaidman (now in the midst of promoting his new book based on ample access generously providedby Obama officials) pretends to speak on behalf of — or to read the minds of — drone opponents by claiming that what really motivates opposition is the weapon’s unique “pinpoint” precision, its “almost supernatural effectiveness.” Actually, what motivates opposition are totally different and very significant facts that Klaidman completely ignores because it would spoil the creepy and uplifting message of that video — Embrace the drone. Love the drone. Become one with the drone — little things like this (“Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals”), and this (“The boy, 16, sitting with me in these photos was protesting against deadly US drone strikes… Three days later he was killed – by a US drone, says Jemima Khan”), and this (“Anwar al-Awlaki’s family speaks out against his [16-year-old American] son’s death in airstrike”), and this (“In Yemen, U.S. airstrikes breed anger, and sympathy for al-Qaeda”), and this (Obama administration “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants”)
MEDIA ROOTS – I was recently interviewed by Aaron Dykes on the Info Wars Nightly News to discuss several issues: the Bilderberg Group and the evolution of the global protest movement; Stuxnet and the CIA’s covert warfare in Iran; the US government’s fearmongering about cyberterrorism; the increasing irrelevancy of the corporate media and the rise of citizen journalism; the alternative media becoming the new mainstream; information as power and applying your passion to effect positive change.
MEDIA ROOTS — The drums of war can be heard in the distance as the mainstream media begins to grease the wheels of the war machine. This time Iran finds itself in the crosshairs of Western aggression as Israel is perched ready to strike. The United States military, now firmly in the grasp of the United Nations, will undoubtedly support Israel’s efforts both directly and indirectly. In fact, the collusion between America and Israel against Iran is already deeply entrenched. The use of the Stuxnet computer worm is an excellent example of both the collusion and existence of an already occurring shadow war.
“Cyber warfare against physical infrastructure is absolutely feasible,” said Carey Nachenberg of the Symantec Corporation during a recent lecture at Stanford University. He is referring to the most complicated piece of malicious software (malware) ever built–Stuxnet. More expansive than any other computer virus ever created, the Stuxnet weapon has new techniques of penetration, sleeping and stealth. And it was reported by the Institute for Science and International Security to be responsible for the sudden Iranian replacement of roughly 1,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility.
One must be very careful when considering these “expert” reports, cited by the mainstream media as fact. The founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and co-author of the previously mentioned report, David Albright, has walked both directions on this path before. In 2003, Albright argued that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs in the lead up to the Iraq war. Conversely, Albright argued that centrifuge tubes found in Iraq were likely not to be for uranium enrichment. To his credit Albright said, “…In this case, I fear that the information was put out there for a short-term political goal, to convince people that Saddam Hussein is close to acquiring nuclear weapons.”
It appears Albright is sensitive to exacerbating intelligence to promote or justify an entrance to war, on the other hand we can see he has some experience perpetuating erroneous intelligence to satiate the war hawk appetite. Nonetheless, we can safely assert that Stuxnet is more non-fiction than the fictional Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On November 23, 2010, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iranian Foreign Minister confirmed that malware had indeed attacked Iran when he said, “One year and several months ago, Westerners sent a virus to [our] country’s nuclear sites.”
While the mainstream media characterizes the war against Iran as an act yet to occur, it can be said Stuxnet is a weapon of war already deployed alongside the use of targeted assassination. The Stuxnet worm and assassinations of nuclear scientists are indeed Declarations of War that violate Iran’s sovereignty. One can only imagine if this scenario was reversed finding Israel and the United States the subject of equivalent Iranian attacks, it would most definitely be viewed as a Declaration of War.
One cannot begin to understand the reasons behind Western targeting of Iran until you consider Britain’s role. Britain created Israel and dominates the trajectory of American foreign policy. In the dusk of the 19th Century, Iran was subjected to British and Russian aggression known as the “Great Game.” The British invaded again in the 20th Century, thus the Iranians have endured 200+ years of invasion, territorial concessions and castration of regional influence as a result of British and Russian imperialism. The seeds of distrust had been sewn for multiple generations.
In 1951, Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iran’s petroleum industry. Britain’s Winston Churchill embargoed Iranian oil and enlisted American President Dwight D. Eisenhower to carry out Operation Ajax. This was the first time the United States had openly overthrown a democratically elected civilian government. The roots of distrust were now firmly taking hold as Uncle Sam lined up to slide down the slippery slope of imperialism. Indeed the clouds of war cast shades of history repeating itself.
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini an expert in Islamic Law and jurisprudence, philosopher, poet, and Sufi mystic returned from 16 years of exile in 1979, to steamroll the provisional government and appoint his own interim government. Iran has been in control of its own destiny since this revolution and this has infuriated Western powers, especially Britain. In November of 2011, the British embassy in Tehran was stormed on the heels of an International Atomic Energy Agency report. The British-Iranian relationship is at a new low. Britain certainly has and will have a hand in assisting Israeli and/or American aggression, since it is the wizard behind the curtain.
The United States made it possible for India to acquire nuclear weapons, opaquely provided Israel with nuclear weapons, clumsily allowed Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons, occupies countries on both the eastern and western borders of Iran and is quite likely the origin of at least pieces of Stuxnet. Iran is infinitely patient to endure centuries of imperialism and these modern Declarations of War. American citizens can only hope these years of diplomacy at the gates of war have provided Iran with the diplomatic savvy to negotiate an aversion to war. America cannot afford the blood and soul of one more American soldier in the interests of British and Israeli imperialism. Iran is sovereign and this sovereignty should be respected, engaged and the resulting goodwill harvested.
MEDIA ROOTS — During an episode of Media Roots Radio last year, Abby and I speculated on who might be behind the infamous ‘stuxnet’ virus, a sophisticated piece of computer malware designed to interfere with Iran’s uranium enrichment process. We guessed that it was perhaps the United States and Israel working in concert on a covert warfare effort with the shared goal of derailing any potentiality of Iran producing a nuclear bomb.
Well, it turns out that our assertions were correct. The United States and Israel essentially came out swinging, bragging about the success of this covert and highly sophisticated act of cyber terror against Iran.
“This account of the American and Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program is based on interviews over the past 18 months with current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program…… None would allow their names to be used”.
So there you have it, another PR campaign in the form of “anonymous sources.” It almost gives it a more exciting extra dimensional tone, instead of the boring old ‘known sources’ we usually rely on.
Software publications and programmers alike are decrying the US government for what they call “opening Pandora’s box.” Some have a more reasoned approach saying that similar clones of stuxnet can be used against corporations and businesses via industrial sabotage. Others declare that this opens the door for a new kind of cyber warfare that terrorists can and will use since we handed them the tools to do it. The latter theory rings of the all too familiar ‘blow back’ hypothesis, one which we try to avoid on this website. With our increasing power and surveillance technologies, where will the United States draw the line in disrupting the activities of other nation states? As long as US troops aren’t dying in battle, most likely no one will notice. And even if they do, people as a whole won’t care very much.
We can safely assume that stuxnet is just an additional tool in the arsenal for the covert war already being waged against Iran. In January of this year, 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a nuclear scientist working on the Iran nuclear program and his driver were assassinated with a sophisticated remote controlled magnetic bomb stashed underneath their car. On November 4th of 2011, an Iranian missile test accident caused the deaths of 14 people, including the head of Iran’s missile program, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, at an integral military research site. Many speculate that this was again a sophisticated form of a computer virus like stuxnet or even stuxnet itself that altered the course of the launched rocket causing it to fly back down directly on top of the observers.
Another Media Roots article entitled ‘Stuxnet, A Declaration of War?‘ describes in detail how the US has been waging a consistent covert war against Iran since 2005 (Seymour Hersh wrote about it). The main difference now is that the US has directly admitted involvement in events that were long suspected to be the invisible hand of US intelligence and black ops. It’s now out in the open, perhaps intended as a game of cat and mouse where the intention is to see what happens when we throw the truth it in their face.
Robbie Martin for Media Roots
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NY TIMES – Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.
At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.
“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.
MEDIA ROOTS – Daniel Klaidman, former editor for Newsweek magazine, recently produced a slick and pandering ‘anti-war’, pro-drone, pro-Obama video on the ‘liberal’ website The Daily Beast. The segment insinuated that Muslims in Pakistan are grateful for US drone strikes, even when they kill innocent people. 
MEDIA ROOTS — The drums of war can be heard in the distance as the mainstream media begins to grease the wheels of the war machine. This time Iran finds itself in the crosshairs of Western aggression as Israel is perched ready to strike. The United States military, now 
MEDIA ROOTS — During an episode of 