I have recently written to students and others connected to Narco News and the School of Authentic Journalism both publicly and privately about the strong amicable associations and connections between the ICNC and right wing extremists like Michael Ledeen who has been justifiably accused as being the author of the Niger Forgeries, as he has been exposed as a forger using the same methodology in the past.
Today I read that there was an upheaval at the The School of Authentic Journalism about all the subjects that I wrote about just prior to the school opening in February.
http://narconews.com/lab/node/33
There is no mention of the upheaval in the Narco News bulletin. There is only positive news in the Narco News Bulletin about the school. Instead it’s printed in some obscure website that is associated with the School.
I sent information about the queer associations publicly and privately. The only people that I know of who have written about these subjects are Eva Golinger a author and Venezuelan journalist who mentions the ICNC briefly as being anti-Chavez and Stephen Gowans. I discovered the connections independently and then read that Stephan Gowans had made the same discovery. His analysis is superior.
In any case, the Students attending the School of Authentic Journalism especially those from Venezuela's Telesur, wanted to know why one of the "professors" there, a Jack Duvall, had been part of an organization that attempted to overthrow the regime of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Apparently the Telesur students wanted an explanation as to why Jack Duvall was teaching there along with 3 other professors from the ICNC and demanded he be banned from the school.
This caused Al Giordano to ban the students from participating in the school in the future. He also banned anyone from Telesur from perhaps…ever coming to the School for Authentic Journalism ever. If they were to be accepted, they would have to sign an agreement to behave in a manner that Al Giordano would approve of.
Al Giordano:
"I do not plan, at present, to invite any TeleSur employees or correspondents to future schools, not as professors or as students, unless and until they either resign or are fired from TeleSur, or unless and until TeleSur takes affirmative steps to correct the sabotaging behavior of its correspondents at the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism."
The students from Venezuela were protesting that 4 of the professors teaching them were part of an organization, the ICNC, which had trained people to overthrow their government through strikes, mass civil disobedience, seeking high-ranking defectors from the armed forces and through journalism.
Al Giordano’s response to this is that it’s all about Money.
“Among those who received their air travel, room, board and other costs fully subsidized were three current correspondents of the media organization TeleSur, the international TV network that is funded by the governments of Venezuela and other left-leaning countries in the region. A total of $2,300 dollars was spent on air travel for the three of them, funding which they happily accepted to attend the school knowing full well that it in part came from ICNC. A TeleSur intern from Washington DC also attended the school as a student, at the urging of that news organization’s Washington correspondent Reed Lindsay (who himself was unable to attend the school as he is reporting from post-earthquake Haiti).”
What Al Giordano is saying is you accepted the Money from the ICNC so you should do what other people who accept money do. Keep your mouth shut. The money is in effect then a bribe. It’s used to influence behavior. I suspect the students knew nothing about the ICNC and it’s connections to right wing organizations that seek the overthrow of democratically elected governments like the one in Venezuela until they read about it just before coming to the school.
Al Giordano then states that he believes that the Telesur students came to the school for the purpose of disrupting the school intentionally.
One thing that we have always taught at this School – it was the late Gary Webb who first said so at the 2003 School of Authentic Journalism – is that an Authentic Journalist must always be willing to be fired from his or her job (or internship) to do this work well. My own conclusion is that the TeleSur employees at the School behaved as if they had received a sudden pressure from their news organization to disrupt the School’s work, and acted out of fear and panic. Whether or not TeleSur’s chain of command was involved in creating that impression, I do not know. But the fact remains that they behaved that way and admitted as much to me and to others that they felt they had to proceed as they did in order to protect their careers at TeleSur.
In the above paragraph by Al Giordano we see that he is clearly Anti Chavez. He’s attacking the Venezuelan state run media, Telesur. This is in complete compliance with the objectives of the ICNC, who seek to overthrow Chavez as admitted by Jack Duvall who some believe is connected to the CIA and who has served with neo con James Woolsey, former head of the CIA in a truly bizarre organization called “The Arlington Institute”.
In any case, 22 people signed a letter of protest and only one of the signers is from Venezuela.
I am a little surprised that they did not pay attention to the connection between Michael Ledeen and Peter Ackerman. It’s Ackerman’s money that actually funds the School for Authentic Journalism in part. Ackerman and Ledeen are friends and write articles together. It’s much more explosive than any connection between Jack Duvall and James Woolsey, who it is claimed don’t know each other.
One of the particpants at the school, a Jesse Freeston had the following comment:
I’ve never lived under a government that I felt a strong desire to defend from internal threats. I’ve also never been to Venezuela, so won’t comment on the Chavez gov’t. But unlike me, the people organizing that meeting clearly felt like the Chavez government is worth defending. So I am incapable of knowing what it must feel like to be in a room with someone who just admitted to providing help (however indirectly it might have been) to groups trying to overthrow that government. I’m not sure how I would respond, but I imagine I would be motivated to do something, something quick, something rash. Especially when the group in front of me (in this case ICNC) wasn’t exactly forthcoming about the details of their participation, nor very understanding of my concerns (I am referring to the first plenary where the information came up, I was much more satisfied with their detailed responses during the 6-hour marathon meeting).
Maybe if they are looking for investigative journalists they should give me a call. I am looking for a new kind of employment and would be open to any offers. I have a lot of leads, too.
14 comments:
Giordano didn't say he would ban TeleSur people from the school. In fact he said the opposite and you selectively used only part of the quote. Here is what follows immediately after the tiny part that you took out of context:
"Unfortunately but necessarily, that includes my friend and colleague Reed Lindsay, who so strongly recommended the professors and students that attempted, in his absence, to derail the School’s work for what they believed was more important to them. He vouched for those individuals and therefore shares some responsibility for their bizarre authoritarian behaviors.
"Colleagues: You might respond to that last statement with some shock. You might ask, “What? Did Giordano just declare a purge of TeleSur correspondents from the J-School?” If that sounds heavy handed, well, it is. And it is also exactly what the TeleSur correspondents and some others tried to do to others during the School: Purge individuals because of their organizational affiliation, appointing themselves in charge of a project that they did not construct, to which they were invitees just the same as any other.
"Truth is, I am not going to ban Reed or other TeleSur-related colleagues from future schools. I simply wanted you to think I would do such a thing for the time it took to read the last paragraph, just long enough to remind of what a disgraceful thing the TeleSur correspondents at the J-School attempted to do to others who were invited there."
Well that's pretty ambiguous....I think he's straddling the fence. He's saying both things. You left out the part where he says if they are "invited" back they will have to agree to conditions he sets before they are invited.
That's, in essence saying sure you can come back, but only if you submit yourselves to my will....that's a backhanded invitation that no one would accept.
You don't seem to understand how to read and understand what's written above, below and inbetween the lines.
I am available for employment by anyone who wants to hire me as a journalist.
I have lots of leads on much bigger stories.
It is instructive that in the very same post where you are nailed red-handed for twisting a quote to mean the opposite of what it said that you also pimp yourself out pleading "hire me as a journalist."
You do realize that what you did here would get you fired from any ethical newspaper or media organization? Your aspiring career would have lasted one day.
I know what a pimp is.
What do the Venezuelans say about Giordano's statement? Do they feel as you do, or do they recognize that his statement is intentionally ambiguous so he can both ban them and conditionally un ban them. Like so many politicians he's saying two things at once so he can refer to either one depending on the defense he seeks to mount. I think that's a fair interpretation especially given that he admits to some kind of mind game which I don't grasp myself in the following comment.
" I simply wanted you to think I would do such a thing for the time it took to read the last paragraph, just long enough to remind of what a disgraceful thing the TeleSur correspondents at the J-School attempted to do to others who were invited there."
Ethics are a joke amongst journalists. And the concept of Ethics or "ethical behavior" is something that is generally used for the purpose of beating people over the head with rather than for the purpose of promoting accuracy.
You don't have to be anally "ethical" if you are able to tell the truth, you merely need to tell the truth. The truth cuts through everything including phoney ethics. The idea of ethics is to give something that college professors can teach and corrupt politicians can accuse each other with.
The Truth is all inclusive. It's not man made, ethics is man made.
But in any case the link with his full commentary is available in the diary so it's all included for everybody to see...I tried printing the whole thing but something to do with Sql whatever that is prevents me.....
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22 people signed a letter asking the ICNC a series of questions, out of 69 people at the School. That hardly merits the title of, "students revolt." If you want to know what students look like when they revolt, check out Seoul in 1960, Paris in 1968, Washington, D.C. in 1970, 2000 in Belgrade, or 2009 in Tehran.
22 Students is roughly 1/3 of all students.
Were 1/3 of the students in Seoul protesting?
1/3 is a lot.
And certainly the description of the events by Giordano describe the students demanding the withdrawal of the 4 ICNC people.
C'mon Peter Ackerman writes articles with Michael Ledeen one of ...if not the most utterly outrageous Neo Cons of them all.
ICNC is a faux progressive organization...it's a missionary style organization that imagines it knows what's best for everyone else and then proceeds to mess everything up.
Stu Piddy
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Great work, Stu!
on Ackerman, and Giordano saying that he had one of Venesuela govt leaders as a member of his school...
well here is what Ackerman, in 2007, thinks of Chavez...
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=313
Now Giodano claims to be a friend of Venezuela….and says Morales is of his school of authentic journalism…But here is Ackerman in 2007 on Chavez:
‘Though today’s autocrats are thus swimming against the tide of history, they are swimming hard. The casus belli of their new counteroffensive has been the triumph of the “colored revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine, which brought greater political freedom to millions. Claiming that “foreign influence” is to blame for such events, and concerned that colored bells may soon toll for them, today’s autocrats are determined to root out democracy advocates through police harassment and intimidation, false accusations and arrests, revoked registrations and shuttered offices. Security forces in China, Venezuela, Egypt, Iran, Zimbabwe and the former Soviet states of Eurasia have been among the most single-minded in this effort, forcing a number of democracy assistance programs to close. There is also evidence of coordinated activity among authoritarian regimes. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez visited President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus in July 2006 to bring him good news: “There are many possibilities now for forming a strategic alliance to save the world from madness, wars and color revolutions.”
It is tempting to dismiss the likes of Hugo Chávez and Alexander Lukashenko as small-time opportunists destined for the dust-bin of an increasingly democratic history. This would be a mistake. The autocratic offensive against democracy and its promoters is a serious challenge and should be a high priority, especially for any American administration espousing a Freedom Agenda as its central theme. ‘
well here is what Ackerman, in 2007, thinks of Chavez...
Brian
Wow.
I just got pointed toward this page by someone asking me..."did you really say that"?
Your selective use of my quote is nothing short of slander.
Here's the above quote attributed to me WITH the two preceding sentences in bold that Stu felt justified in leaving out:
I’ve never lived under a government that I felt a strong desire to defend from internal threats. I’ve also never been to Venezuela, so won’t comment on the Chavez gov’t. But unlike me, the people organizing that meeting clearly felt like the Chavez government is worth defending. So I am incapable of knowing what it must feel like to be in a room with someone who just admitted to providing help (however indirectly it might have been) to groups trying to overthrow that government. I’m not sure how I would respond, but I imagine I would be motivated to do something, something quick, something rash. Especially when the group in front of me (in this case ICNC) wasn’t exactly forthcoming about the details of their participation, nor very understanding of my concerns (I am referring to the first plenary where the information came up, I was much more satisfied with their detailed responses during the 6-hour marathon meeting).
To see my post in full, you can find it at http://www.mediahacker.org/2010/02/re-narco-news-and-the-icnc/
On one hand your research into the school appears to be motivated by some concern that those of us at the school were in some sort of vulnerable position due to the presence of ICNC and Jack Duvall. While on the other hand you seek to harm the participants by consciously misrepresenting us in your writing. Leaving one a little confused, and not willing to ever trust your writing again.
I posted your comment and put the part that wasn't present before in bold.
I don't see how it changes anything. But you do.
As always, I note that most of the arguments presented by people like Al Giordano are procedural. Rather than arguments about how Narco News isn't really independent and does business with an organization that has is not only associated with people like Michael Ledeen, but does business with them and shares the views of a known slanderer.
Why don't you look up Michael Ledeen and investigate him. Then you can better understand Peter Ackerman, then you can better understand Al Giordano, then you can better understand what your participation in the school entails.
Instead of focusing on whether a sentence was left out. In my opinion the inclusion of the sentence doesn't alter a thing.
Well, I have been a reader of Giordanos work for some time, also donated money. However, his propensity to censor comments, his lackluster coverage of the Honduras coup, the fact that his funding and disoersment of funds isn't totally transparent and available for public view--these are some of the things that incline me to think the man is anything but authentic. He is also an Obama apologist of sorts.
Naive kids from privileged backgrounds are his target.
Indeed, he could very well be part of US psyops--counter intelligence (no pun, I promise).
Of late, there is a distinct dearth of valuable analysis with repect to events in Latin America. With all the journalists he has "trained", why such sucky websites and so little in the way of compelling journalism with respect to Latin America? It's weird, and I suspect that this is a scam.
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