• Home
  • Author
  • Reviews
  • Hooper’s War
  • Tom Joad
  • We Meant Well
  • Visuals
  • Contact
  • Media Respond to State Department Firing Demand

    March 31, 2012 // 1 Comment »

    Read more about the State Department seeking to fire me:

    The Atlantic

    Washington Post

    Democracy Now!

    Huffington Post

    WUSA, Channel 9 in Washington DC

    Zomobo Video Compilation

    Diplopundit

    Mother Jones

    The Alyona Show

    Daily Kos

    Common Dreams

    Project on Government Oversight

    Whistleblower.org

    Voice of Russia

    OpEd News

    TomDispatch

    Antiwar.com

    Pacific Free Press

    Find Law Legal News

    Nation of Age

    Mutiny Radio

    AlterNet

    YouTube


    If you’d like to help, here are some ways you can help.



    Related Articles:

    • Want War with China? You Can Help!
    • Requiem: Is This the Last 9/11 Article?
    • In Search of Biden’s Foreign Policy
    • The Last Question About 9/11
    • The Worst Day of the Afghan War
    • Special Immigrant Visas (SIV): A Brief, Sad History
    • Afghanistan Mon Amour




    Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.

    Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq

    Fearing the Truth

    March 1, 2012 // 3 Comments »



    Three more news sources have picked up on the sad story of the Obama Administration’s vicious use of the Espionage Act and other extra-legal actions to silence whistleblowers.

    The New American quotes ABC News’ Jake Tapper, the reporter that raised the whistleblower cases at a White House press conference. Tapper said “it’s not like they are instances of government employees leaking the location of secret nuclear sites. These are classic whistle-blower cases that dealt with questionable behavior by government officials or its agents acting in the name of protecting America.”

    The New York Times also weighed in on the issue of government retaliation against whistleblowers:

    The majority of the recent prosecutions seem to have everything to do with administrative secrecy and very little to do with national security.

    In case after case, the Espionage Act has been deployed as a kind of ad hoc Official Secrets Act, which is not a law that has ever found traction in America, a place where the people’s right to know is viewed as superseding the government’s right to hide its business.

    Indeed, the paper noted the irony that while former CIA Officer John Kiriakou is being prosecuted aggressively merely for leaking some information about waterboarding to journalists, “none of the individuals who engaged in or authorized the waterboarding of terror suspects have been prosecuted.”

    The New American adds:

    The administration doesn’t always rely on prosecution to teach whistleblowers a lesson. It has other ways of retaliating against them, as Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren learned when he wrote the book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. Van Buren is still employed by the State Department, but he has been stripped of his security clearance, transferred to what he calls “a meaningless telework position,” threatened with prosecution, and otherwise harassed. As a result, he writes, “a career that typically would extend another 10 years will be cut short in retaliation for [his] attempt to tell the truth about how taxpayer money was squandered in Iraq.”


    The story of whistleblower retaliation also was featured on the Daily Kos, which included this quote from my NPR “All Things Considered” interview:

    And I find that, yes, it is worth it, it was worth it, and it will be worth it to answer that level of hypocrisy and demand from that Secretary of State, Madam, why is your institution not allowing me the same rights that you’re bleating about for bloggers around the world? Why not here at home?





    Related Articles:

    • Was There a Coup Attempt on January 6?
    • New York Notes
    • Top Gun II Review
    • The Specific “Why” Behind Russiagate
    • Inflight Masking Fight Club
    • What Went Wrong During the Pandemic
    • Dear Elon Musk:




    Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.

    Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq

    Daily Kos: Fear the Noise of Democracy

    February 2, 2012 // Comments Off on Daily Kos: Fear the Noise of Democracy

    The Daily Kos runs an article today comparing shamefully the tactics used in Korea to stifle bloggers that offend the government there with tactics used by the US State Department to accomplish the same goals.

    South Korea brought the recent charges under its National Security Law – which bans “acts that benefit the enemy” but fails to specify what those acts are. Apparently, tweeting satirical images, as a blogger there recently did, counts as “acts that benefit the enemy.”

    “This is not a national security case; it’s a sad case of the South Korean authorities complete failure to understand sarcasm,” said Sam Zarifi, Asia-Pacific director of the human rights group Amnesty International. Of course, this week, the State Department proved it was equally unable to understand sarcasm, ordering me to remove the State Department Seal from a satirical blog I posted.

    The article concludes by scolding Mrs. Clinton’s Department of State:

    Stifling speech is the stuff of dictatorships, not democracies. If the U.S. is to be a leader in democracy, the State Department should take the lead and encourage free speech, even critical speech.

    Our government, like the one in Korea, fears the noise of democracy and instead prefers the silence of compliance.

    Read the entire piece on the Daily Kos.



    Related Articles:

    • Diplomatic Diversity Fails (Again and Again) at State Department
    • Deterrence, China, and the U.S.
    • Deterrence Works, Propaganda Fails in Ukraine (So Far)
    • Three Questions to Ask About America Not Fighting a War with China
    • What’s the Point of Cancellation (Halloween Edition)?
    • America Won’t Be Fighting a War with China over Taiwan (So Why the Fuss?)
    • Biden’s China Policy is Dangerous




    Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.

    Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq

    Freedom is Not Free

    September 27, 2011 // Comments Off on Freedom is Not Free

    The story of my interrogation by the State Department, over a link dating from August on my blog to a Wikileaks document already on the web (I was accused of disclosing classified information because of the link!) is all over the web.

    If you have not read it at TomDispatch, or are a State Department employee blocked by a firewall from reading TomDispatch, you can still see the article on a growing number of mirrors:

    CBS News

    Huffington Post

    Salon

    The Guardian (UK)

    Le Monde Diplomatique

    Politico

    Mother Jones

    Wikileaks Forum

    The Nation

    Jon Wiener at The Nation

    Michael Moore

    Guernica

    ZNET

    The Rebellion

    Atlantic Wire

    American Conservative Magazine

    Democratic Underground

    Lobelog

    al-Arab online

    War in Context

    Gary Null

    Open Market

    SpyTalk

    Pacific Free Press

    warandpeaceinthemiddleeast.com

    Buzzflash.net

    Nation of Change

    John Brown’s public diplomacy blog

    Truthout

    Antiwar.com

    Oped News

    Common Dreams

    Daily Kos

    Empty Wheel

    American Empire Project




    Related Articles:

    • Was There a Coup Attempt on January 6?
    • New York Notes
    • Top Gun II Review
    • The Specific “Why” Behind Russiagate
    • Inflight Masking Fight Club
    • What Went Wrong During the Pandemic
    • Dear Elon Musk:




    Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.

    Posted in Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq

Buy Peter’s Books on Amazon!


We Meant Well


Hooper's War



Recent Posts

  • Was There a Coup Attempt on January 6?
  • Justice, Albeit Late, at Oberlin College and Gibson’s Bakery
  • Five Unanswered Questions for the January 6 Hearings
  • Viewpoint Discrimination May Bring 1A to Social Media
  • What Will It Take to Come Home to the Democratic Party?