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Amid Internal Investigation Over Leaks to Media, The Centre for American Progress Fires Two Staffers

The logo for the Center for American Progress in seen, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018, at their office in Washington. The major liberal policy group is raising the ante on the health care debate with a new plan that builds on Medicare to guarantee coverage for all. Called “Medicare Extra for All,” the proposal to be released Feb. 22, 2018, by the Center for American Progress gives politically energized Democrats more options to achieve a long-sought goal. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The Center for American Progress office in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 21, 2018. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

AMID INTERNAL INVESTIGATION OVER LEAKS TO MEDIA, THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS FIRES TWO STAFFERS

“He is a consummate team player who will raise whatever concerns he has through proper channels, but at the end of the day, he’s on board with the team.”

One of those fired, Ken Gude, was a senior national security staffer. He worked at CAP since 2003 and previously served as the progressive think tank’s chief of staff. The notion that he would have leaked the exchange just doesn’t square with his time at CAP, said one of the sources close to the situation. “Ken loves CAP and has dedicated 15 years of his life to the organization,” said the source. “He is a consummate team player who will raise whatever concerns he has through proper channels, but at the end of the day, he’s on board with the team.”

A CAP spokesperson acknowledged two employees were fired as a result of the leak investigation, but said that the leak was not the reason they were fired: “We are not going to discuss internal personnel matters, but no one was fired at CAP for leaking or whistleblowing.” Internally, however, multiple members of CAP leadership have used the leak as the leading rationale for the firings in multiple settings, sources said. Gude did not return requests for comment.

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

FREXIT? The “Gilets Jaunes” will Not Let Go

FREXIT? The “Gilets Jaunes” will Not Let Go

Will France, under Macron – Implosion 2 – become a candidate for exiting the EU thanks to the Yellow Vests?

The “Gilets Jaunes” will not let go. Not even – or especially not – after Macron‘s half-hearted, rather cynical and grandstanding concessions – of “too little and too late” – which when analyzed constitute a new lie, especially regarding the increase of the minimum wage. It was clear from his face, these concessions, of a President who campaigned on the basis of “never make any concessions”, were fake, as fake as his fake attitude of an apologist could be. Even without listening to his words, his body language of arrogance gives him away.

This past weekend, on Saturday, 15 December, another more than 100,000 Yellow Vests were marching on Paris; countrywide some 200,000. The police to oppress them, as officially reported, was about the same as the weekend before, 8,000 in Paris, close to 90,000 throughout France. Military assistance was not missing. Besides, in a state of emergency, who distinguished between police and military?

Interestingly, the international press – the MSM – is taking it seriously. Why? They fear that this relentless movement may spread to other countries, even countries beyond Europe – like “Trump Land”, the United States of America. And why not. The same malaise of capital being shifted upwards to the detriment of the poor and middle class exists everywhere, may even be most pronounced in the US, but nobody talks about it and pays attention to it, lest the people would have awakened to the growing disparity long ago – and taken to the streets massively – within the inner circles of the Washington Belt Way.

Chapeau to the French. Although their forefathers were among the most vicious and miserable exploiters,  in human history – when they ravaged for hundreds of years West Africa – and the elite still does, unbeknown even to (most) of the Yellow Vets.

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

Enemy Of The People

Enemy Of The People

There has never been a time when normal people did not know the media was biased and biased in a predictable direction. For every non-liberal in the media, there were at least ten liberals. The ratio was probably higher, but then, as now, some lefties liked to pretend they were independents or some third option. The media used to invest a lot of time denying they had a bias and an agenda, but the only people who believed them were on the Left, which had the odd effect of confirming they had a bias and an agenda.

The thing is though, the media seemed like it was biased in a predictable way. In the 1980’s, for example, the newspapers featured stories about the so-called homeless crisis on a weekly basis. That’s when we went from calling them bums to pretending their only problem was a lack of shelter. Once Clinton assumed power, the homeless stories disappeared. It was a running joke for a long time, because it was so obvious, but also because it was so predictable. Everyone got the joke, except Lefty.

As many have observed, the mask began to drop during the Clinton years when so many media members quit their jobs and went to work in the administration. It’s hard to maintain the illusion of independence when there is a revolving door between the media and left-wing political operations. That’s when CNN became known as the Clinton News Network, because they were so hilariously in the tank for them. Some tried to maintain the ruse, but any pretense of objectivity ended in the 1990’s.

Again, there was still a sense that it was just bias and that it was predictable and therefore you could adjust for it.

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

DOJ, Rosenstein Working To Better Spy On Journalists, Target Leakers

Over the past few months, the Department of Justice has been quietly engaged an effort to revise its guidelines governing the rules for seizing records from journalists – especially when it comes to leak cases, reports The Hill‘s John Solomon.

The effort has the potential to touch off a First Amendment debate with a press corps that already has high degrees of distrust of and disfunction with the Trump administration. –The Hill

Current guidelines were established during the Clinton Administration – “long before WikiLeaks was a twinkle in Julian Assange’s eye,” and were designed to balance a journalist’s First Amendment rights and the investigative interests of law enforcement. They require prosecutors in most cases to exhaust all obvious investigative methods for identifying leaks before they go after a journalist’s records – and free-speech rights.

Multiple sources familiar with the ongoing DOJ review tell me that it has two main goals. The first is to lower the threshold that prosecutors must meet before requesting subpoenas for journalists’ records; the second is to eliminate the need to alert a media organization that Justice intends to issue a subpoena. –The Hill

Supervised by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s office following the departure of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the revisions are not yet finalized according to Solomon’s sources – who note that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker is aware of the effort but has not been given a final recommendation.

“Sources close to Whitaker say he will await final judgment but, in recent days, has developed reservations about proceeding with the plan,” writes Solomon.

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

Here’s What an American Economic Collapse Could Actually Look Like (And How It May Be a Lot Different Than Folks Expect)

Here’s What an American Economic Collapse Could Actually Look Like (And How It May Be a Lot Different Than Folks Expect)

When we think of “economic collapse” our imaginations usually lead us immediately to the desperation we’ve witnessed in places like Venezuela or Greece. We think of starvation, a complete lack of medical care, and waves of suicide by people who simply can’t survive. We imagine an apocalyptic societal breakdown that is immediately visible.

Here in America, I suspect the collapse is going to look a lot different than it has in these other countries…at least, at first. And in my description, it’s entirely likely you’ll see that many of these signs have been happening all around us for years.

It will be gradual.

The thing with collapses that we see in the media is that we are seeing the end results of events that have been slowly declining for years. Venezuela was one of the wealthiest countries in the world back until the mid-1980s, due to their rich oil reserves. Then oil prices collapsed and their fall began. It was actually several decades though before it was truly evident that the country was in trouble.

Preparedness bloggers here have been sounding the warning bell since 2008 (at least) when our economy went into a recession. While the US managed to dig its way out of that to at least an illusion of renewed prosperity, it’s questionable how much of that return was real and how much of it was propaganda.

It’s unlikely that we’ll see just one event that says clearly to everyone, “Hey, our economy has collapsed. The Great Depression 2.0 has arrived, today, January 14, 2019, due to X event.”

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

Integrity Initiative: By all means smear & attack, but at least be honest about it

Integrity Initiative: By all means smear & attack, but at least be honest about it

Integrity Initiative: By all means smear & attack, but at least be honest about it
We’ve all met those people who describe themselves as laid back, when in reality they’re just one loud noise from a mouth frothing breakdown. So when something describes itself as having integrity, be wary.

Enter the Integrity Initiative (II), Britain’s very own government funded influence network which is currently in the process of having its underpants revealed to the world. There’s no doubting it’s an initiative, the jury’s out on the other bit. Some of the people behind it are alleged former spies (can you be a former spy?), a calling not often linked to integrity.

There’s a good chance you may not know much about the Integrity Initiative, the mainstream media is not exactly straining to tell you about it. Labour MP Chris Williamson suggests that’s because a number of mainstream journalists have signed up to work with it.

Media not covering Integrity Initiative scandal because they might be ‘involved’ – Labour MP to RTThe only time II briefly attracted the attention of the mainstream world was when it became clear it had been pushing conspiracies about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s links to the Kremlin. That’s not a good look for an organization which receives cash from the Foreign Office.

It describes itself as non-partisan, but then as we’ve discussed, it also has “Integrity” in the title. Maybe it can get away with it, always worth a try I suppose. It also claims to be “combating propaganda and disinformation,” but as you’ll see for yourself on its Twitter account, it’s simply a stream of invective and criticism about Russia. If you want to spend cash smearing an entire nation, fine, fill your boots, but don’t then act all moral about it.

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

Fake News? How About No News?

Fake News? How About No News?

Trump gets flak for characterizing the mainstream press as purveyors of Fake News. But what about no news at all?

Isn’t lack of coverage even worse than biased coverage?

Well, how much news have you heard or read about the gilets jaunes – or “yellow vest” – protests in France? CNN hasn’t got anything on its main page today (Jan. 9). Neither did NBC or CBS. Lots of the usual – endless – carpet-chewing coverage of Trump, though. And also of such important stories as “Want to Pay off Your Mortgage? Try Frugal Minimalism.”

You might think France, a major western European country, coming unglued – and on the verge of its government outright banning “unauthorized” criticism of its actions – might at least be  . . .  well,  news.

Instead, nothing.

Which is very interesting, given what the yellow vests are protesting. This being chiefly the purposely punitive taxes on fuel – diesel especially – imposed by the French President, Emmanuel Macron. In the name of “climate change” – but really in the name of squeezing average Frenchmen (and women) out of their cars. These taxes – already extortionate and brutally regressive – were on track to increase the cost of a gallon of fuel to more than $7.

This brought the French not to their knees – but to the streets. The yellow vests – which are reflective jackets every French motorist is required by law to keep in their vehicle, to be worn in the event of an emergency – were donned for a different kind of emergency.

And Macron buckled. The tax hike has been rescinded. But did you read about it?

Probably not – unless you went out of your way to look for it. Mainstream press coverage of this effective protest has been as scanty as its coverage of the reason for the yellow vest protests – which by the way continue, notwithstanding Macron’s retreat.

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

Selected Articles: Media Disinformation and The Protest Movement

In Pictures: The Largest Strike in History Is Happening in India Right Now

By Ben Cowles, January 09, 2019

Around 150 million people began a two-day general strike in India today against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anti-Labour and anti-trade union policies in India.

A Majority of Americans Do Not Believe the Official 9/11 Story

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, January 09, 2019

The media has NEVER EXAMINED the evidence or explained the analysis provided by scientists, architects, engineers, pilots, and the first responders who experienced the explosions of the World Trade Center twin towers.

Everything the Western Mainstream Media Outlets Get Wrong When Covering Poor Countries

By Tamara Pearson, January 09, 2019

From de-prioritizing the lives of locals in poor countries, to downplaying global inequality, racism, and condescension, the way Western news agencies do international news is deeply harmful.

GM Crops, Pesticides, Corporate Duplicity: Bayer Has Never Been Transparent in Its Life!

By Colin Todhunter, January 09, 2019

Mason is scathing in her response and begins her letter by saying, “Bayer CropScience has never been transparent in its life.” She makes it clear to Baumann from the outset that she considers Bayer CropScience and Monsanto “criminal corporations.”

The War on Syria: Are the White Helmets preparing another Chemical Weapons False Flag?

By Mark Taliano, January 09, 2019

It should also be clear that the war is not a War on Terror, since the Western-supported terrorist forces that existed in Syria, dubbed “the largest terrorist army on earth”, is estimated to have numbered almost 500,000 terrorists at its peak.

War Criminals at Large

By Dr. Daniele Ganser, January 09, 2019

The historical facts for the period from 1945 to today show a completely different reality: time and again, democratic states in Europe and North America have participated in wars of aggression and terrorist attacks in the past 70 years.

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

A New Narrative Control Firm Works To Destroy Alternative Media

A New Narrative Control Firm Works To Destroy Alternative Media

The frenzied, hysterical Russia narrative being promoted day in and day out by western mass media has had two of its major stories ripped to shreds in the last three days.

A report seeded throughout the mainstream media by anonymous intelligence officials back in September claimed that US government workers in Cuba had suffered concussion-like brain damage after hearing strange noises in homes and hotels with the most likely culprit being “sophisticated microwaves or another type of electromagnetic weapon” from Russia. A recording of one such highly sophisticated attack was analyzed by scientists and turned out to be the mating call of the male indies short-tailed cricket. Neurologists and other brain specialists have challenged the claim that any US government workers suffered any neurological damage of any kind, saying test results on the alleged victims were misinterpreted. The actual story, when stripped of hyperventilating Russia panic, is that some government workers heard some crickets in Cuba.

Another report which dominated news headlines all of yesterday claimed that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort (the same Paul Manafort who the Guardian falsely claimed met with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy) had shared polling data with a Russian associate and asked him to pass it along to Oleg Deripaska, who is often labeled a “Russian oligarch” by western media. The polling data was mostly public already, and the rest was just more polling information shared in the spring of 2016, but Deripaska’s involvement had Russiagaters burning the midnight oil with breathless excitement. Talking Points Memo‘s Josh Marshall went so far as to publish an article titled “The ‘Collusion’ Debate Ended Last Night”, substantiating his click-generating headline with the claim that “What’s crystal clear is that the transfer to Kilimnik came with explicit instructions to give the information to Deripaska. And that’s enough.”

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

Beyond Kafka: How Youtube & Facebook Keep Purging Alternative Media

Beyond Kafka: How Youtube & Facebook Keep Purging Alternative Media

The guillotine’s blade fell again, one year later. On December 2017 already, my 5-years-old Youtube channel Sayed Hasan, mainly translating speeches from Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, was completely removed by Youtube, along with its 10 000 subscribers, +6 millions views and +400 subtitled videos of anti-Zionist & anti-Imperialist content. I then denunced this censorship in detail in my article Kafka 2.0: How Youtube’s Political Censorship is Exercised. And just around New Year’s Eve 2019, the +6000 Subscribed Facebook Page Resistance News Unfiltered, along with all its similar content, got deleted without explanation. The only thing left online is a cache view of the page dating back from this summer.
Cache view of the Facebook Page Resistance News Unfiltered, August 2018
I had created this Page at the beginning of 2018, since no other place can compete with Youtube and its near-monopoly on video content, in order to reach a broader audience. But it was deleted without explanation by Facebook short of its first anniversary. I can’t even know the precise date of termination. Youtube did at least bother to send emails notifying of the removal of a video or of a whole channel, but Facebook has only internal notifications for posts removals. Here is how it happened. 

I got two warnings from Facebook, dated December 24th and December 25th, 2018:

When I logged in on December 28th and saw these messages, I immediately appealed the decisions through the automated procedure, as shown above, though the specific posts alledgedly violating the Communnity Standards weren’t even accessible, since they had been removed. It means that I didn’t –and still don’t– even know which posts got me these “strikes”. 

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

Back to the USSR: How to Read Western News

Back to the USSR: How to Read Western News

Back to the USSR: How to Read Western News

The heroes of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers visit the fictional borough of Eatanswill to observe an election between the candidates of the Blue Party and the Buff Party. The town is passionately divided, on all possible issues, between the two parties. Each party has its own newspaper: the Eatanswill Gazette is Blue and entirely devoted to praising the noble Blues and excoriating the perfidious and wicked Buffs; the Eatanswill Independent is equally passionate on the opposite side of every question. No Buff would dream of reading the “that vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette”, nor Blue the ”that false and scurrilous print, the Independent”.

As usual with Dickens it is both exaggerated and accurate. Newspapers used to be screamingly partisan before “journalism” was invented. Soon followed journalism schools, journalism ethics and journalism objectivity: “real journalism” as they like to call it (RT isn’t of course). “Journalism” became a profession gilded with academical folderol; no longer the refuge of dropouts, boozers, failures, budding novelists and magnates like Lord Copper who know what they want and pay for it. But, despite the pretence of objectivity and standards, there were still Lord Coppers and a lot of Eatanswill. Nonetheless, there were more or less serious efforts to get the facts and balance the story. And Lord Coppers came and went: great newspaper empires rose and fell and there was actually quite a variety of ownership and news outlets. There was sufficient variance that a reader, who was neither Blue nor Buff, could triangulate and form a sense of what was going on.

In the Soviet Union news was controlled; there was no “free press”; there was one owner and the flavours were only slightly varied: the army paper, the party paper, the government paper, papers for people interested in literature or sports. But they all said the same thing about the big subjects.

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

A Majority of Americans Do Not Believe the Official 9/11 Story

A Majority of Americans Do Not Believe the Official 9/11 Story

“Conspiracy Theorists” Now A Majority

TruePublica, a British website that has avoided the 9/11 issue, has had its fill of ignorant journalists at the BBC, Huffington Post and other propagandists for the military/security complex. The constant, shrill demeaning of experts and distinguished people who have raised questions about the official story has convinced TruePublica that skeptics who need so much shouting down must have a point.

The media has NEVER EXAMINED the evidence or explained the analysis provided by scientists, architects, engineers, pilots, and the first responders who experienced the explosions of the World Trade Center twin towers. The media has never asked for the release of the multiple videos that recorded whatever struck the Pentagon. The media has never investigated whether cell phones worked in 2001 from the altitudes at which the official story claims calls were made.

Instead two-bit punk presstitutes, such as the BBC’s Chris Bell and the Huffington Post’s Jess Brammer andl Chris York, label experts with knowledge and integrity “conspiracy theorists.” These presstitutes knowingly use a cover-up term that the CIA put into use via its media assets to discredit the expert skeptics of the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President Kennedy.

The fact that the carefully presented evidence is NEVER ENGAGED EXCEPT WITH NAME-CALLING is a strong indication that the evidence is true and cannot be refuted.

TruePublica is such a mainline site that, in its own words, it does not even “publish news sourced by RT,” a far more reliable source of news than the BBC, CNN, or New York Times. However, it has dawned on TruePublica that after 18 years an ad hominem attack remains the only defense of the official story. 

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

Why One Should Distrust the News

Why One Should Distrust the News

Why One Should Distrust the News

An article by the BBC on “The world’s most nutritious foods” ranks the healthfulness of foods on the basis of an article at the supposedly scientific PLOSone journal, titled “Uncovering the Nutritional Landscape of Food”. That study is based on a dataset that entirely ignores antioxidant-content of foods. Antioxidant-content has come to be recognized during recent decades as constituting perhaps the most important factor in nutrition. It’s probably even more important than vitamin-content and than mineral-content and than protein, carbohydrate, and fat content. So, the basis upon which the article’s ranking was done is the factors that were known about, in 1950, to be important, but that are now known to be far less determinative of a person’s health and longevity than are foods’ anti-oxidant contents. Neither the article nor its underlying dataset even so much as just mentions “oxidant” anywhere. The authors of the BBC and PLOSone articles and of the underlying dataset were apparently entirely ignorant of the findings in nutritional research during the past 60+ years — findings about antioxidants, which have transformed our understanding of nutrition. (Furthermore, there were many other important methodological flaws producing that PLOSone ranking, not only its ignoring antioxidants.)

This is not unusual.

(Incidentally, “ORAC Values: Antioxidant Values of Foods & Beverages” is a ranking of foods on the basis of antioxidant-contents, as measured by ORAC; and this is likely a far more accurate indicator of the relative healthfulness of foods than is the ridiculous BBC-PLOSone ranking — but far fewer people are being exposed to it.)

Here’s another example of the untrustworthiness of news-media and of other allegedly nonfiction presentations, even in many ‘scientific’ journals — but this one will be an example from what has become overwhelmingly the world’s leading encyclopedia: Wikipedia.

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

Thinking about American Totalitarianism

Thinking about American Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism evolves.

Yet what remains the same through time is the attempt at total control.

Today, control is veiled not overt.

Control weaves its way both totally and surgically into our everyday lives.

Totally, in the master narrative it weaves about “living in a democracy”.

Today, no one lives in a true democracy.

Elections, parties, political personalities are all fraudulent constructions hiding real power.

The media and the entertainment industry are focused on creating a consumerist-nationalist imaginary where shopping and waving the flag are effective daily remedies to ward off any uncomfortable existential doubts.

Both business and the nation still reign in the hearts and minds of millions as the “true Gods”.

The revolution of the “multitude” is far, far away.

Empire, American Empire, is neither setting, fading, or waning. On the contrary, its tentacles stretch throughout every conceivable path and production of biopower.

The expansion of American power that began in earnest after the Great War has continued unabated.

The world is more American now than it has ever been.

Surgically, America through its unrivaled mastery of technology, organization, and capital can pick and choose the actors and actions it wills to manipulate or eliminate.

American global networks of surveillance and suppression have grown and deepened. The threat of world revolution and terror are convenient stories to both mobilize and mesmerize the multitude.

A Hitler and/or a Bin-Laden will always conveniently appear when needed.

Consumption, in all its forms, is the only ideology and it is highly effective since it is based on basic biological processes. The pleasure centers of the brain have lent themselves to the construction of a life of bodily gratification. Thus the ideological celebration of the body has become the new ideological prison of the mind. Nietzsche’s “last man” is the middling subject of our present day totalitarianism.

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

Banishing Truth

The investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, in his memoir “Reporter,” describes a moment when as a young reporter he overheard a Chicago cop admit to murdering an African-American man. The murdered man had been falsely described by police as a robbery suspect who had been shot while trying to avoid arrest. Hersh frantically called his editor to ask what to do.

“The editor urged me to do nothing,” he writes. “It would be my word versus that of all the cops involved, and all would accuse me of lying. The message was clear: I did not have a story. But of course I did.” He describes himself as “full of despair at my weakness and the weakness of a profession that dealt so easily with compromise and self-censorship.”

Hersh, the greatest investigative reporter of his generation, uncovered the U.S. military’s chemical weapons program, which used thousands of soldiers and volunteers, including pacifists from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, as unwitting human guinea pigs to measure the impact of biological agents including tularemia, yellow fever, Rift Valley fever and the plague. He broke the story of the My Lai massacre. He exposed Henry Kissinger’s wiretapping of his closest aides at the National Security Council (NSC) and journalists, the CIA’s funding of violent extremist groups to overthrow the Chilean President Salvador Allende, the CIA’s spying on domestic dissidents within the United States, the sadistic torture practices at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by American soldiers and contractors and the lies told by the Obama administration about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Yet he begins his memoir by the candid admission, familiar to any reporter, that there are crimes and events committed by the powerful you never write about, at least if you want to keep your job.

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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