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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently asked a question of his Twitter following that was so heavily loaded it wouldn’t be permitted on most interstate highways: “Aside from genuine cranks, is there anyone left denying it was the Russians that committed criminal sabotage in the American election?”

Hayes asked this fake question because he works for MSNBC and it is therefore his job, and he asked it in response to a report first made viral by deranged espionage LARPer Eric Garland that a Dutch intelligence agency had been observing Russian hackers attacking US political parties in advance of the 2016 election. Like all “bombshell” Russiagate reports, this one roared through social media like wildfire carried on the wings of liberal hysteria about the current administration, only to be exposed as being riddled with gaping plot holes as documented here by independent journalist Suzie Dawson. The report revolves around an allegedly Russian cyber threat now known in the west as “Cozy Bear”, which as Real News’ Max Blumenthal notesis not a network of hackers but “a Russian-sounding name the for-profit firm Crowdstrike assigned to an APT to market its findings to gullible reporters desperate for Russiagate scoops.”

This “bombshell” overlapped with another as it was reported by the New York Times that at one point many months ago Trump had wanted to fire Robert Mueller, but then didn’t.

*Cough.*

Why does this keep happening? Why does the public keep getting sold a mountain of suspicion with zero substance? Over and over and over again these “bombshell” stories come out about Trump and Russia, Russia and Trump, only to be debunked, retracted, or erased from the spotlight after people start actually reading the allegations and thinking critically about them and see they’re not the shocking bombshells they purport to be?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dutch Lies Over Putin’s ‘Aggression’ Expose NATO War Agenda

February 15, 2018

Dutch Lies Over Putin’s ‘Aggression’ Expose NATO War Agenda

Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte was this week forced to bear a parliamentary vote of no confidence after his foreign minister finally came clean over a dangerous lie he has been telling for two years concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Halbe Zijlstra quit in shame on Monday as the country’s foreign minister after admitting that a story he had peddled about personally hearing Putin plotting to create a “greater Russia” was false. That then forced premier Rutte to endure a “no confidence” motion from parliamentarians. In the end, Rutte survived the vote. If a majority had voted against his leadership, his coalition government may have collapsed.

But the deep damage done to the Dutch authorities will not be so easily repaired by Rutte’s survival as premier. What has been exposed this week is a senior member of government recklessly telling bare-faced lies in an attempt to slander Russia, poison international relations, and ratchet up already dangerous geopolitical tensions.

Zijlstra had claimed two years ago, in 2016, that he had personally witnessed Russian leader Vladimir Putin boasting about creating a “greater Russia” which, it is claimed, would incorporate Ukraine, the Baltic states, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The newly resigned Dutch top diplomat claimed he heard Putin making the remarks while present with others at the Russian leader’s dacha (summer house) back in 2006.

This week, Zijlstra finally came clean and admitted before parliament that he hadn’t in fact been present at the alleged gathering. He still maintains, however, that a confidant who was among the guests at Putin’s dacha informed him of the alleged “greater Russia” plan. But how can we now trust the word of a self-confessed liar?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia In the Crosshairs

February 12, 2018

Russia In the Crosshairs

Defending the latest round of US/Israeli aggression against Syria, US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert struck a Hitlerian note when she blamed Syria and Iran for an act of overt Israeli aggression, saying “The United States . . . strongly supports Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself,” and when she lied that “Iran’s malign activities” and “calculated escalation of threat and its ambition to project its power and dominance places all people in the region at risk.” https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201802111061547754-state-department-syria-israel-escalation/

Adolf Hiter covered his “projection of power and dominance” and his invasion of Poland with the same blatant lies that Washington and Israel use to cover their aggressions. Hitler claimed that Polish forces had crossed the frontier and attacked Germany. That is the excuse used by Israel and its puppets in the White House and Pentagon that blames Iran for Israel’s attack on Syria. When Washington and Israel are shameless in their lies, why does Russia think they are “partners” with whom agreements can be reached?

Eric Zuesse notes that only Syria and Russia complain about Washington’s illegal occupation of Syrian territory, an occupation that has no UN authorization and is a complete and total violation of international law, and Israel’s continual attacks on Syria. Washington’s continuing support for war against the legitimate government of Syria and support for Israeli and terrorist attacks on Syrian and Russian forces are undermining Russia’s efforts to bring peace to the region. Zuesse also notes that Washington and its UK puppet block all UN action against Washington’s illegality. http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/u-s-not-globally-condemned-military-occupation-syria/

Zuesse is correct. But is the continuation of Washington’s campaign against Syria and Russia largely the fault of Russia? Stephen Lendman makes a case that it is Russia’s fault. https://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-blasts-us-attack-on-syrian-and-allied-forces/5628740

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia’s “Dirty Policy of Occupation” of Crimea and Ronald Reagan

February 9, 2018

Russia’s “Dirty Policy of Occupation” of Crimea and Ronald Reagan

On March 18^th, 2014 following a popular self-determination referendum of the people of Crimea the Russian Federation declared reunification with the Crimean Peninsula which was illegitimately transfered to the Soviet Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev. Nevertheless, the western global corporative media, politicians and statesmen classified the act as a matter of “aggression, violation of international law and unlawful occupation of a part of territory of an internationally recognized independent state and the UN’s member”. Russia’s authorities on this occasion issued an official statement that Crimea’s re-annexation by Russia is based on the same self-determination rights as of the people (the Albanians) of Kosovo in 2008 which self-proclaimed independence from Serbia (by Kosovo parliament without any popular referendum) is already recognized by almost all western liberal governments.

The following text is a personal contribution to better understanding of the case of Russia’s “dirty policy of occupation and annexation” of Crimea in March 2014.

Grenada is an independent state, a member of the UN, located in the southern portion of the Caribbean Sea very close to the mainland of the South America (Venezuela). The state is composed by southernmost of the Windward Islands combined with several small islands which belong to the Grenadines Archipelago, populated by almost 110,000 people of whom 82% are the blacks (2012 estimations). The state of Grenada is physically mostly forested mountains’ area (of volcanic origin) with some crater lakes and springs. In the valleys are bananas, spices and sugar cane grown. The country is out of any natural wealth significance but has relatively high geostrategic importance. Economy was and is primarily agricultural with some very limited small-scale industry of the food production nature with developing tourism sector as growing source of the national GDP. The state budget is constantly under a high level of foreign debt (a “debt slavery” phenomenon).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Misleading with Numbers: It’s Worse When the Government Does It

January 31, 2018

Misleading with Numbers: It’s Worse When the Government Does It

Major international comparisons have long concluded that Americans’ ability to effectively utilize mathematics is inadequate. Such conclusions divide students, parents, teachers and administrators into camps that share little more than blaming others for the problems. However, it is unclear whether all the finger-pointing indicates a real desire to overcome our innumeracy. In fact, we systematically misuse numbers to distort reality because we want to fool ourselves, making our ineptitude no surprise.

One of today’s most obvious misleading number games is grade inflation. Teachers have accommodated student desires for higher grades to the point that the median GPA of graduating college seniors has risen around a full grade point since it was about 2.2 in 1965. At some schools, almost everyone now gets As and Bs, and who is valedictorian has become a question of how many “perfect” students will share that title. Students have also pushed to allow A+ grades that count more.

High schools have gone even further. Many make advanced placement or community college courses worth an extra grade point. This has created a competition among students to take as many such GPA-padding courses as possible, especially ones they discover are actually easier than the corresponding high school courses. These and other policies (e.g., statewide comparisons crafted to show that, as in Lake Woebegone, all children are above average) have, however, thrown away much of the useful information such evaluations once contained.

Price inflation is another form of ego-building by manipulating comparison numbers. For most of us, if we want to brag that, say, we make more than our parents did, enough years of inflation can make it so. On the other hand, older Americans use it to “prove” how much better things used to be (e.g., “I remember when bread was a nickel” or “I only paid $22,000 for my house”).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In the Western World Lies Have Displaced Truth

January 29, 2018

In the Western World Lies Have Displaced Truth

Last year I was awarded Marquiss Who’s Who In America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. This did not prevent a hidden organization, PropOrNot, from attempting to brand me and my website along with 200 others “Putin stooges or agents” for our refusal to lie for the corrupt, anti-American, anti-constitutional, anti-democratic, warmonger police state interests that rule the Western World.

The only honest, factual media that exists in the Western World today are the names on the PropOrNot list of “Putin agents.”

The purpose of ProOrNot is to convince Americans that freedom of speech must be halted by destroying fact-based Internet media, such as this website and 200 others that provide factual information at odds with Big Brother’s universal brainwashing as delivered by CNN, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the rest of the utterly corrupt presstitute media, a collection of scum devoid of all integrity and all respect for truth.

A conspiracy of US government agencies, tax-exempt think tanks funded by the ruling interests, and media acting in behalf of a war and police state agenda work to shape perceived reality as it is described in George Orwell’s book, 1984, and in the film, The Matrix. Controlled perception-based reality is only a Facebook “like” away from killing one person or one million or elevating a liar or the warmonger responsible for the killing to hero status or to the conrol of the CIA or FBI or the US presidency.

Here on OpEdNews is an article by George Eliason that reports on who exactly PropOrNot is and who is underwriting the disinformation that is PropOrNot.
https://www.opednews.com/populum/printer_friendly.php?content=a&id=219560

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Untying PropOrNot: Who They Are … and a Look at 2017’s Biggest Fake News Story

January 26, 2018

Untying PropOrNot: Who They Are … and a Look at 2017’s Biggest Fake News Story

A little over a year ago, the deep-state graced the world with Propornot. Thanks to them, 2017 became the year of fake news. Every news website and opinion column now had the potential to be linked to the Steele dossier and Trump collusion with Russia. Every journalist was either with us or against us. Every one that was against us became Russia’s trolls.

Fortunately for the free world, the anonymous group known as Propornot that tried to “out” every website as a potential Russian colluder, in the end only implicated themselves.

Turnabout is fair play and that’s always the fun part, isn’t it? With that in mind, I know the dogs are going to howl this evening over this one.

The damage Propornot did to scores of news and opinions websites in late 2016-2017provides the basis of a massive civil suit. I mean huge, as in the potential is there for a tobacco company sized class-action sized lawsuit. I can say that because I know a lot about a number of entities that are involved and the enormous amount of money behind them.

How serious is this? In 2016, a $10,000 reward was put out for the identities of Propornot players. No one has claimed it yet, and now, I guess no one will. There are times in your life that taking a stand has a cost. To make sure the story gets out and is taken seriously, this is one of those times.

If that’s what it takes for you to understand the danger Propornot and the groups around them pose to everyone you love, if you understand it, everything will have been well worth it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Designing Against Misinformation

December 22, 2017

Designing Against Misinformation

Updated treatment for misinformation in News Feed using Related Articles

Scrolling through News Feed, it can be hard to judge what stories are true or false. Should you trust everything that you see, even if it comes from someone whom you don’t know well? If you’ve never heard of an article’s publisher, but the headline looks legitimate, is it?

Misinformation comes in many different forms and can cover a wide range of topics. It can take the shape of memes, links, and other forms. And it can range from pop culture to politics or even to critical information during a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis.

We know that the vast majority of people don’t want to share “false news.” And we know people want to see accurate information on Facebook, but don’t always know what information or sources to trust—this makes discerning what’s true and what’s false difficult.

After a year of testing and learning, we’re making a change to how we alert people when they see false news on Facebook. As the designer, researcher, and content strategist driving this work, we wanted to share the process of how we got here and the challenges that come with designing against misinformation.

What We Learned

In December of last year, we launched a series of changes to identify and reduce the spread of false news in News Feed:

We made it easier for people to report stories they think are false news
We partnered with independent fact-checking organizations that review articles that might be false
We reduced the distribution of articles disputed by fact-checkers
We launched a collection of features to alert people when fact-checkers have disputed an article, and to let people know if they have shared, or are about to share, false news

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Other Side of the Post’s Katharine Graham

December 21, 2017

The Other Side of the Post’s Katharine Graham

Hollywood loves to make heroes of The Washington Post for the rare moments when it has stood up for journalism – while forgetting the blood-soaked cases of the Post spreading lies to justify wars, writes Norman Solomon.

Movie critics are already hailing “The Post,” directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. Millions of people will see the film in early winter. But the real-life political story of Graham and her newspaper is not a narrative that’s headed to the multiplexes.

The Washington Post’s Watergate team, including from left to right, publisher Katharine Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Howard Simons, and executive editor Ben Bradlee.

“The Post” comes 20 years after Graham’s autobiography Personal History appeared and won enormous praise. Read as a memoir, the book is a poignant account of Graham’s long quest to overcome sexism, learn the newspaper business and gain self-esteem. Read as media history, however, it is deceptive.

“I don’t believe that whom I was or wasn’t friends with interfered with our reporting at any of our publications,” Graham wrote. However, Robert Parry — who was a Washington correspondent for Newsweek during the last three years of the 1980s — has shed some light on the shadows of Graham’s reassuring prose. Contrary to the claims in her book, Parry said he witnessed “self-censorship because of the coziness between Post-Newsweek executives and senior national security figures.”

Among Parry’s examples: “On one occasion in 1987, I was told that my story about the CIA funneling anti-Sandinista money through Nicaragua’s Catholic Church had been watered down because the story needed to be run past Mrs. Graham, and Henry Kissinger was her house guest that weekend. Apparently, there was fear among the top editors that the story as written might cause some consternation.” (The 1996 memoir of former CIA Director Robert Gates confirmed that Parry had the story right all along.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Our National Madness

November 21, 2017

Our National Madness

Fakery and trickery are not solutions; they are a form of self-delusional madness that destroys the nation’s ability to face reality squarely and choose real solutions, no matter how painful the choice and path might be.

The nation has lost its common sense, its soul and its sanity.Can we summarize the source of this remarkably pervasive madness?

Our efforts are now focused not on solving core problems but on covering up core problems, as if covering up problems is a substitute for solving them. Down this path lies madness, for this substitution of false narratives for reality erodes our ability to distinguish not just between reality and fantasy but our ability to distinguish between moral rights and wrongs.

The efforts of those in positions of power are now focused on obscuring the truth, marginalizing critics, blaming malevolent external forces, cloaking self-interest with virtue signaling and staking claims to victimhood. These are the five dynamics that are powering the nation’s descent into madness and dysfunction.

Consider Harvey Weinstein. Evidence is now emerging that Mr. Weinstein and his army of toadies, bullies, thugs, et al. put enormous effort and resources into obscuring the truth, marginalizing critics, and cloaking self-interest with virtue signaling. Next up for Mr. Weinstein’s team of apologists: blame the Russians (or an equivalently malevolent Other), and claim to be a victim of all those testifying against him.

This is the model for everyone in positions of power. The only variation is which of the five will be spewed as a first line of defense, and which will be held in reserve for the last-ditch defense against the truth becoming public.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That are False

November 5, 2017

Democratic party chairperson Donna Brazile talks with audience members before the debate between Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016. (Joe Raedle/Pool via AP)

Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That are False

There is ample talk, particularly of late, about the threats posed by social media to democracy and political discourse. Yet one of the primary ways that democracy is degraded by platforms such and Facebook and Twitter is, for obvious reasons, typically ignored in such discussions: the way they are used by American journalists to endorse factually false claims that quickly spread and become viral, entrenched into narratives, and thus can never be adequately corrected.

The design of Twitter, where many political journalists spend their time, is in large part responsible for this damage. Its space constraints mean that tweeted headlines or tiny summaries of reporting are often assumed to be true with no critical analysis of their accuracy, and are easily spread. Claims from journalists that people want to believe are shared like wildfire, while less popular, subsequent corrections or nuanced debunking are easily ignored. Whatever one’s views are on the actual impact of Twitter Russian bots, surely the propensity of journalistic falsehoods to spread far and wide is at least as significant.

Just in the last week alone, there have been four major factually false claims that have gone viral because journalists on Twitter endorsed and spread them: three about the controversy involving Donna Brazile and the DNC, and one about documents and emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. It’s well worth examining them, both to document what the actual truth is as well as to understand how often and easily this online journalistic misleading occurs:

Viral Falsehood #1: The Clinton/DNC agreement cited by Brazile only applied to the General Election, not the primary.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The myth of a nuclear-free Austria

October 25, 2017

The myth of a nuclear-free Austria

Since Austria passed a law banning the importation of nuclear electricity in 2015 it has claimed to be 100% nuclear-free. But 25% of the electricity Austria imports and over 8% of the electricity it consumes is still of indisputably nuclear origin. Austria’s claim to be 100% nuclear-free is either deliberate misrepresentation or an implicit admission that the Austrian government has no idea how Europe’s electricity grid works. (Inset: Austria’s Zwentendorf nuclear plant. Completed in 1978. Never put into operation. Now a museum.)

In the recent Apple, Google, and how not to go 100% renewable post I described how Apple and Google were gaming the system to claim that they are powered by 100% renewables when in reality they are nowhere close. But gaming the system isn’t confined to business corporations (or the Dutch Railways). Austria does it too, but with a twist. Instead of purchasing “Guarantees of Origin” (GOs) to pretend that it’s bringing renewable energy in, Austria purchases them to pretend that it’s keeping nuclear energy out.

First a little history. In December 1978 the Austrian Parliament voted in favor of a ban on nuclear fission until March 1998, in July 1997 it unanimously passed legislation to remain a nuclear-free country, and since then it has embarked on a crusade to make the rest of Europe nuclear-free too. In 2011 it threatened to file suit to shut down nuclear plants in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and in the same year it did file suit to shut down Slovakia’s Mochovce plant. In 2014 Austria threatened to use “all political and legal means” to stop construction of a nuclear waste dump in the Czech Republic. In 2015 it sued the UK in an attempt to stop Hinkley Point, and just recently it filed another suit to stop the expansion of the Paks nuclear plant in Hungary. Why is Austria suing everybody? Why can’t it mind its own business?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ABC & Fake News

October 21, 2017

ABC & Fake News

Murrow Edward R (1908-1965)

ABC News has indeed violated the principles of a Free Press and is the example why the old Fairness Doctrine should be restored. ABC News has come out and wrote: “Every American president has sparred with the press and fought back against stories unflattering or unfair. But no sitting president has in decades suggested media organizations should be shut down or that the federal government should consider curtailing their content or reach.”

The press thinks it is their right to push their agenda on the people. They no longer report the news, but twist it for their agenda be it left or right. It was back in a 1958 speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association when veteran CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow told a room full of TV executives: “We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent.” Murrow produced a series of reports that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his trumped up witch hunt for communists when it was revealed that he was just making accusations without evidence.

Murrow was one of the journalism’s greatest figures, noting his honesty and integrity in delivering the news. That stature of ethics has been lost which some news organizations like CNN produce fake news not just on Trump, but of everything they touch right down to exaggerating the hurricane in Florida.

Edward Murrow used his position to take on powerful politicians and defend the American people, a free press as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. He also exposed issues such as segregation and warned that the new TV medium was being used to “distract, delude, amuse and insulate” the public.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Political Realignment is Necessary – The Real Struggle is Liberty vs. Authoritarianism

October 20, 2017

A Political Realignment is Necessary – The Real Struggle is Liberty vs. Authoritarianism

Until the American public ceases bickering amongst itself along Democratic and Republican or “left” vs. “right” lines, we’ll continue to be divided and conquered by authoritarians who wield tremendous power throughout both sides of the traditional political spectrum. This isn’t to say there aren’t real, meaningful differences between those who classify themselves on the “left” or the “right,” but it is to say there’s a much bigger battle afoot and nothing’s going to get better until we frame the new political reality for what it is. The most significant, existential struggle at play in these modern United States is a battle between Liberty and Authoritarianism, and it’s extremely important you know where you stand.

While the entire Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution is crucial to our civil liberties, no right is more significant than the First Amendment. If we lose freedom of speech, it’s game over for our society, and we have to understand that authoritarians on both the “right” and “left” are taking shots at freedom of speech as I write this. As such, differences between “right” and “left” should be deemphasized because if we lose the First Amendment, we lose everything.

A major political realignment is not simply a good idea, it’s absolutely crucial to the survival of a thriving civilization here in the U.S. The historical struggle we face today is not Democrat vs. Republican, or right vs. left, but Liberty vs. Authoritarianism.

Let’s get started by highlighting an extremely creepy proposal recently published, titled, Fool Me Once: The Case for Government Regulation of “Fake News.” One of the authors is Ann M. Ravel, who was previously a Democratic Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Public Don’t Care if ‘News’media Lie

October 9, 2017

US Public Don’t Care if ‘News’media Lie

To say that the US public don’t care if ‘news’media lie, is shocking, but I shall here present evidence that it actually is true — not in some mere theory, but in empirical fact.

A typical example of Americans not caring about the truthfulness, nor even about the honesty, of their sources of alleged ‘news’, is that, during the period of October 3rd through the 5^th, there were two news-reports both of which were true, but which, when taken together, display the total disconnect between newsmedia-honesty, on the one hand, and the confidence that the American people have in the nation’s ‘news’media, on the other.

One of these two news-reports was published on October 5^th by the anonymous blogger who has come to be, amongst readers who closely follow and investigate the war in Syria, the most-trusted source of reporting on it, and the article was headlined, “Russia Issues Third Warning Against US Cooperation With Terrorists”, and it provided links to each of the three recent instances in which the US Government was cooperating with ISIS to defeat Syria and its defender Russia, in Syria. It summarily described the ways in which the US had been exposed (but not by US ‘news’media) as having been providing vital intelligence and other crucial assistance to ISIS, in ISIS’s efforts to overthrow and replace the existing Syrian Government (headed by Bashar al-Assad). That report should be read by anyone who proceeds further here, because it covers events that were certainly of top international importance and that might even precipitate war between the US and Russia, but which were reported little if at all in US ’news’media. Of course, it would be very bad for US ’news’media to allow the US to become involved in a nuclear war against Russia and to have hidden, from the American public, the US Government’s provocations which had produced such a war.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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