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I am not a journalist. But I was the first to write an expose about Markos Moulitsas as a person who applied to the CIA and the first and only person to discover that during his involvement with the CIA he was operating Daily Kos. I also wrote about the impossibility of his claims as a child to have witnessed communist guerillas killing students and professors in El Salvador.
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:
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. |
