Saturday, December 31, 2005
AP Reporter May Be Paid State Department Operative
Anthony Fenton reported on 12/27on Flashpoints that Régine Alexandre, an AP reporter and a stringer for the NY Times, was on the payroll of the State Department through the USAID's National Endowment for Democracy. Since May 10, 2004, she has filed at least 10 reports with AP on Haiti. Alexander, a Canadian, was trained by NED to participate in the "nation building" in Haiti while she was active as a reporter. The general story has been confirmed elsewhere, although it's being spun as being less explosive.
Meanwhile, the news on the major outlets is this: Two members of the Organization of American States have been kidnapped in the Haitian capital, police have said...The two OAS employees - a Guatemalan and a Peruvian - were abducted while driving on a road near the international airport. The Haitian spouse of one of the two OAS workers was also abducted with them in Port-au-Prince, police said. They were a short distance away from the Cite Soleil neighbourhood, where several kidnappings and shootings have taken place.
What the Beeb won't tell you is that many of those kidnappings and shootings have been committed by the Haitian...um, government?... and the UN. Flashpoints, on the other hand, tells us that parts of the slums, notably Belaire are turning into ghost towns as a consequence of violent raids by the UN.
In addition to breaking stories the regular media refuses to, Flashpoints is a lot of fun to listen to. Totally over the top. For example, As'ad AbuKhalil saying that the Iraqi press is forbidden to refer to it as the American occupation. What are they, AbuKhalil asked, heavily-armed tourists? I don't endorse Flashpoint's worldview, but every American should listen to it occasionally, if only to understand what real dissent sounds like, and how absolute the propaganda/consensus control of the US is.
More blogs about politics.
