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In Monsters We Trust: US Mainstream Media No Friend of the American People

August 20, 2018

In Monsters We Trust: US Mainstream Media No Friend of the American People

Over the course of his turbulent presidency, Donald Trump has accused various media companies, with special attention reserved for CNN, as being purveyors of ‘fake news.’ In one early-morning Tweet last year, he slammed the “FAKE NEWS media” as the “enemy of the people.”

This week, over 300 US newspapers ran editorials on the same day – an event in itself that points to some high degree of collusion and groupthink – denouncing Trump’s insensitive portrayal of them, as if the notion that journalists were not in the same sleaze league as lawyers, politicians and professional con artists never crossed anyone’s mind before. Even the peace-loving Mahatma Gandhi recommended “equality for everyone except reporters and photographers.”

But is the MSM really an “enemy of the people?”

First, it cannot be denied that the US media, taken in all its wholesomeness, has been overwhelmingly consistent in its ‘style’ of reporting on Donald Trump, the 45th POTUS. And by consistent I mean unprecedentedly critical, misleading and outright aggressive in its guerilla coverage of him. If one is not convinced by the gloom-and-doom Trump stories featured daily in the Yahoo News feed, then a study by the Media Research Center (MRC) should do the job. From January 1 through April 30, evening news coverage of the US leader – courtesy of ABC, CBS and NBC – were 90 percent negative, which is pretty much the same incredible average revealed by MRC one year earlier.

The study looked at every one of the 1,065 network evening news stories about Trump and his administration during the first four months of 2018. Total negative news time devoted to Trump: 1,774 minutes, or about one-third of all evening news airtime. That’s pretty much the definition of a circle jerk.

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

The CIA Owns the US and European Media

August 19, 2018

The CIA Owns the US and European Media

William Blum shares with us his correspondence with Washington Post presstitute Michael Birnbaum. As you can tell from Birnbaum’s replies, he comes across as either very stupid or as a CIA asset.

When I received my briefing as staff associate, House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which required top secret clearance, I was told by senior members of the staff that the Washington Post was a CIA asset. Watching the Washington Post’s takedown of President Richard Nixon with the orchestrated Watergate story, that became obvious. President Nixon had made too many overtures to the Soviets and too many arms limitations agreements, and he opened to China. Watching President Nixon’s peace initiatives water down the threat level from the Soviet Union and Maoist China, the military/security complex saw a threat to its budget and power and decided that Nixon had to go. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy had resulted in far too much skepticism about the Warren Commission Report, so the CIA decided to use the Washington Post to get rid of Nixon. To keep the clueless American left hating Nixon, the CIA used its assets in the leftwing to keep Nixon blamed for the Vietnam war, a war that Nixon inherited and did not want.

The CIA knew that Nixon’s problem was that he could not exit the war without losing his conservative base, which was convinced of the nonsensical “Domino Theory.” I have always wondered if the CIA concocted the “Domino Theory,” as it so well served them. Unable to get rid of the war “with honor,” Nixon was driven to brutal methods to force the North Vietnamese to accept a situation that he could depart without defeat and soiling America’s “honor” and losing his conservative support base. The North Vietnamese wouldn’t bend, but the US Congress did, and so the CIA succeeded in discrediting among both the leftwing and righwing Nixon’s war management. With no one to defend him, Nixon was an easy target for the CIA.

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

Corporate Media: the Enemy of the People

August 18, 2018

Corporate Media: the Enemy of the People

I detest the malignantly racist, sexist, narcissistic, and authoritarian pathological liar and bully Donald Trump on many different levels, and I share none of his sick world view, but the corporate media really is, well (to use Trump’s recurrent phrase), “the enemy of the people.”

Here below is an essay I first published (on the venerable radical Website ZNet) in the late summer of 2015. It is a longer version of a talk I gave (with the help of a translator) in Havana, Cuba in April that same year. It was written from a Marxist and international socialist and anti-imperialist perspective and not at all from a Trumpian, white-nationalist standpoint.

It struck me that it might be worth re-publishing this essay (which was written as Obama’s final term was winding down and many of us expected him to be succeeded by the “lying neoliberal warmonger”Hillary Clinton and did not yet take seriously the specter of pre-fascistic Trump presidency) in the light of recent bizarre developments. “Liberal” CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, the Washington Post and much of the rest of the corporate news establishment are standing up against Trump in defense of blood-soaked U.S.-imperial spy-masters, surveillance chiefs, liars, and assassins like former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – and in defense of the supposedly noble imperial project that these and other current and former top U.S. intelligence and military operatives on Herr Trump’s security clearance “Enemies List” have long “served” in pursuit of what CNN and MSNBC talking heads absurdly call (no joke) “speaking truth to power.”

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

How the Corporate Media Enslave Us to a World of Illusions

June 15, 2018

How the Corporate Media Enslave Us to a World of Illusions

Photo by Mohamed Nanabhay | CC BY 2.0

Nazareth.

For several years now, I have been writing regular posts on my blog with one end in mind: to help open a door for readers and encourage them to step through. I select issues, usually those that dominate western media coverage and represent a consensus that we might term the Great Western Narrative, and try to show how this narrative has been constructed not to inform and enlighten but to conceal and deceive.

It is not that I and the many other bloggers doing this are cleverer than everyone else. We have simply had a chance – an earlier one – to step through that door ourselves, because of a jarring life experience that the Great Western Narrative could not explain, or because someone held the door open for us, or more usually because of a combination of the two.

My personal awakening

It is easy for me to identify my own process of awakening. It began with the dislocation of moving to Nazareth and being immersed in someone else’s narrative – that of the Palestinians. Then, I faced for the first time in my career as a journalist an impenetrable wall of opposition, even from my own former newspaper, the Guardian, as I tried to explain that counter-narrative. In fact, I found that the Palestinian narrative was invariably misrepresented as anti-semitism. These were dark years of disillusionment and the loss of a professional and ideological compass.

It is in such a moment of bereavement – deprived of the consolation of the Great Western Narrative – that one searches for a door to enlightenment. It can be a long journey to find it. My door appeared while reading about the Propaganda Model of Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book Manufacturing Consent, as well as stumbling across a website called Media Lens

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

Then They Came for the Globalists

March 23, 2018

Then They Came for the Globalists

Photo by Francisco Osorio | CC BY 2.0

Thank God for the corporate media. If it wasn’t for them, and the ADL, I’d have probably never discovered that I’m a Nazi. Apparently, I’ve been one for quite some time … which is weird, as I had no idea. Here I was, naively believing that I’d been writing about global capitalism and the realignment of political power and ideology in the post-Cold War world, when all along I had really just been persecuting the Jews. I didn’t think I was persecuting the Jews. But such is the insidious nature of thoughtcrime. When you’re a Nazi thought criminal (as I apparently am), it doesn’t matter what you think you’re thinking. What matters is what the global capitalist ruling classes tell you you’re thinking, which it turns out is often a lot more complicated and horrible than what you thought you were thinking.

For example, I’ve been thinking and writing about globalism, which most dictionaries define as “a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence,” or “the development of socioeconomic networks that transcend national boundaries,” or something like that … which was more or less my understanding of the term. Little did I know that these fake “definitions” had been infiltrated into these dictionaries by discord-sowing Strasserist agents to dupe political satirists like myself into unknowingly spreading anti-Semitism as part of Putin’s Master Plan to destroy the United States of America and establish worldwide Nazi domination.

Fortunately, the lexicography experts in the corporate media and the Anti-Defamation League cleared that up for me earlier this month. According to these experts, words like “globalist” and “globalism” don’t really mean anything. They are simply Nazi code words for “the Jews.” There is actually no such thing as “globalism,” or “global capitalism,” or “transnational capitalism,” or “supranational quasi-governmental entities” like the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank … or, OK, sure, there are such entities, but there is no legitimate reason to discuss them, or write about them, or even casually mention them, and anyone who does is definitely a Nazi.

Now, imagine my horror when I took that in, especially given my repeated references to “the corporatocracy,” “global capitalism,” and “the global capitalist ruling classes” in the essays I’ve been publishing recently. I didn’t want to accept it at first, but the more “authoritative sources” I consulted, the more glaringly obvious my thoughtcrimes became.

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

The Authoritarians Who Silence Syria Questions

February 28, 2018

The Authoritarians Who Silence Syria Questions

Photo by watchsmart | CC BY 2.0

I am loath to draw more attention to the kind of idiocy that passes for informed comment nowadays from academics and mainstream journalists. Recently I lambasted Prof Richard Carver for his arguments against BDS that should have gained him an F for logic in any high school exam.

Now we have to endure Brian Whitaker, the Guardian’s former Middle East editor, using every ploy in the misdirection and circular logic playbook to discredit those who commit thought crimes on Syria, by raising questions both about what is really happening there and about whether we can trust the corporate media consensus banging the regime-change drum.

Whitaker’s arguments and assumptions may be preposterous but sadly, like Carver’s, they are to be found everywhere in the mainstream – they have become so commonplace through repetition that they have gained a kind of implicit credibility. So let’s unpack what Whitaker and his ilk are claiming.

Whitaker’s latest outburst is directed against the impudence of a handful of British academics, including experts in the study of propaganda, in setting up a panel – the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media – to “provide a source of reliable, informed and timely analysis for journalists, publics and policymakers” on Syria. The researchers include Tim Hayward of Edinburgh University and Piers Robinson of Sheffield University.

So what are Whitaker’s objections to this working group? Let’s run through them, with my interjections.

Whitaker: They dispute almost all mainstream narratives of the Syrian conflict, especially regarding the use of chemical weapons and the role of the White Helmets search-and-rescue organisation. They are critical of western governments, western media and various humanitarian groups but show little interest in applying critical judgment to Russia’s role in the conflict or to the controversial writings of several journalists who happen to share their views.

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

Washington has Engaged in Information Warfare, Including Fake News and Trolling, for Years

February 27, 2018

Washington has Engaged in Information Warfare, Including Fake News and Trolling, for Years

The howling in government and the corporate media and among many liberals about an alleged Russian information war, with bots, trolls and fake news being placed in social media to mislead and incite Americans against each other, might lead one think, like Sen John McCain, that we are practically at war with Russia. Yet it’s all actually pretty silly. After all, our own government has been playing this game for decades, both abroad, and also right here inside the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” and against us American citizens.

I know. I was a victim of such an attack, though initially, I didn’t realize what was happening.

Back on August 25, 2005, I published a piece in In These Times titled Radioactive Wounds of War about the devastating damage caused by the US military’s use of depleted uranium weapons in its brutal assault leveling Fallujah, the Iraqi city of 300,000 people that was destroyed by US marines in 2004 as retribution for the killing of four US contractors by the Iraqi insurgents who at the time controlled the city, and for their humiliating defeat of a smaller Marine assault on the city earlier in the year.

At the time I was and had been a contributing editor at ITT, a publication for which I had written regularly since it was founded back in 1978, and was listed on its masthead as such.

As I recount in an article published in Counterpunch on November 19, 2005, titled R.I.P In These Times, the left-liberal news magazine had been promptly bombarded with letters criticizing my article after it came out.

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

War with Iran Was Planned Decades Ago

October 14, 2017

War with Iran Was Planned Decades Ago

Last night, as I reflected on my recent three-part series filled with bold predictions, I began to question whether or not I was being too negative. Upon hearing Trump’s Iran speech today, I became convinced that everything I wrote had merit.

The speech was downright terrifying, serving to confirm all my worst fears about what he’s up to in the Middle East. There’s no way you can listen to that disingenuous rant and not recognize that he’s already made up his mind about war with Iran. What comes next will be a series of U.S. imposed redlines and demands, which Iran will eventually be said to violate, at which point the U.S. will escalate bigly.

I expect the most wretched cretins in America to rally behind the coming war push, including much of the corporate media. We already saw evidence of this earlier today.

Many of you will accuse me of exhibiting unwarranted confidence about where all this is headed, but it’s not that. The reason I feel so strongly about this forecast is because war with Iran has been planned for decades.

For proof, take a watch of this classic video of General Wesley Clark explaining the foreign policy establishment’s post 9/11 plans.

Today’s speech by Trump makes me even more confident regarding what I wrote over the past few days. In case you missed the series the first time around, links are below.

Empire Destroying Wars Are Coming to America Under Trump – Part 1

Empire Destroying Wars Are Coming to America Under Trump – Part 2

Empire Destroying Wars Are Coming to America Under Trump – Part 3

Galveston’s BioLab Amid Global Warming

October 3, 2017

Galveston’s BioLab Amid Global Warming

Ken Kramer grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Houston. As a child he spent a lot of time on Galveston, an island about 50 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico. Kramer experienced Hurricane Carla in 1961 with gusts of 175 mph and a storm surge of 22 feet. It destroyed 120 buildings on Galveston, though the eye was 120 miles away. He also studied the 1900 storm that devastated the island. The Great Hurricane of Galveston is still the worst humanitarian, natural disaster in U.S. history. Somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 people were killed.

Hurricane Harvey’s path.

That’s why Kramer, who was statewide executive director of the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club for 23 years, was first alarmed in 2003 when he learned that the U.S. federal government chose Galveston as the site for a national biocontainment laboratory.

On the site would be a Bio-safety Level 4 lab, the highest grade of precaution taken to work with agents, such as anthrax, ebola and SARs, which can be transmitted through the air and cause fatal diseases in humans for which there are no known cures. The national laboratory’s primary mission would be to develop vaccines against a perceived threat of terrorists deploying biological weapons in the wake of 9/11. Galveston was one of two such post-9/11 labs built. The other is in Boston.

Two months before the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL) was to open on the campus of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), the island took a direct hit from Hurricane Ike on Sept. 13, 2008.

The GNL’s website says the lab can withstand a Category 5 storm and 140 mph winds, though Category 5 storms on the Saffir–Simpson wind scale begin at 157 mph. Though Ike flooded most of Galveston and damaged university back-up generators, the Category 2 storm packed only 100 mph winds, which the lab buildings withstood.

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

The “News” Is Content-Free

July 12, 2017

The “News” Is Content-Free

We’re “your” trustworthy news source, even though we’re all owned by six corporations or billionaires with political agendas.

The “news” has loomed large in The News–a classic self-referential loop in which the media itself becomes its own content. While the controversy over what constitutes “fake news” and “real news” has itself become “the news,” the cold reality is all “news,” “real” or otherwise, is content-free.

The “news” is so devoid of content that a simple software program could assemble a semi-random daily selection of headlines, scrolling banners, and radio/TV “news” reports from a pool of typical “news” stories and insert a bit of context (local highways that are congested, rough neighborhoods where shootings occur, names of local authorities, etc.), and the consumer of “news” would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the randomly generated “news” and the “real news.”

Here’s a taste of the Random Content-Free News Generator Application that would produce “news” that was virtually indistinguishable from the “real” news.

Traffic is backed up near the (insert the usual congestion point) on the I-XX (local Interstate/highway). (TV/video: show randomly selected video clip of slow-moving traffic).

A serious accident occurred on I-XX (TV newscasters look somber if the wreck resulted in fatalities.)

Local Authorities held a news conference to Say What People Want to Hear about (insert hot-button topic): this concern is being addressed by authorities. We’ve got top people working on this–top people. (Newscasters look serious.)

A horrific terrorist attack occurred somewhere in the world–insert semi-randomly selected city, with preference given to Mideast and Central Asian war zones and Western capitals.

Bad weather of some kind is threatening us, or could threaten us shortly. (Insert video clip of flooding, heavy rain, or scorching heat in desert climes, etc.)

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

The Horror! The Horror! (Part Two)

May 6, 2017

THE HORROR! THE HORROR! (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I detailed how propaganda has been utilized by the Deep State for decades to control the minds of the masses and allow those in control to reap the benefits of never ending war. In Part Two I will discuss recent events, false flags, and propaganda campaigns utilized by the Deep State to push the world to the brink of war.

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The use of graphic images, electronically transmitted across the world in an instant, along with a consistent false narrative promoted by the captured corporate media, is the preferred means of appealing to the emotions of those who want to believe atrocity propaganda. Instigating a march to war through the use of unfounded fear, misinformation, staged photo ops, and appealing to passions and prejudices was as revolting to Albert Einstein in the 1930s as it is today to normal thinking individuals.

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.” – Albert Einstein

It seems the level and intensity of the propaganda campaigns has ratcheted up dramatically in the last half dozen years and appears to be reaching a crescendo as we speak.

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

U.S. Propaganda is Embarrassingly Bad (and Why it Matters)

April 17, 2017

U.S. Propaganda is Embarrassingly Bad (and Why it Matters)

When you want to see what U.S. deep state propagandists are up to, all you have to do is take a glance at what meme corporate media happens to be pushing any given week. It’s been almost a decade since I started observing and analyzing the corporate press on a daily basis, and I can now say unequivocally that the quality of American imperial propaganda has gone completely down the crapper.

The believability of some of the stuff being pushed these days defies all logic and is easily dispelled with an ounce of critical thought, yet there it is, in our face on a daily basis almost taunting the intelligence of the U.S. population. Indeed, it appears the current strategy is no more sophisticated that proclaiming any and all dissent as being the result of “Russia operations.” This is done to prevent any actual debate on subjects of grave national importance since the U.S. government knows its claims don’t hold up to any real scrutiny. Why look into the veracity of a deep state claim when we can just dismiss alternative viewpoints as “Russian operations.”

To see what I mean, take a look at some excerpts from a recent article published by ABC News, Behind #SyriaHoax and the Russian Propaganda Onslaught:

As Syrian president Bashar al-Assad called videos of last week’s chemical attack a “fabrication,” a piece of propaganda promoted by a Russian cyber operation and bearing the hashtag #SyriaHoax has gained traction in the United States, analysts tell ABC News.

Following the chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians on Tuesday, Al-Masdar News, a pro-Assad website based in Beirut, published claims that “something is not adding up in [the] Idlib chemical weapons attack.” Its author cited “holes” in the accounts provided by the “Al-Qaeda affiliated” White Helmets leading to the conclusion that “this is another false chemical attack allegation made against the government.”

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

Dan Rather Exposes Corrupt Media – But Back in 2008

April 1, 2017

Dan Rather Exposes Corrupt Media – But Back in 2008

Don’t You Hate Spammy, Sensationalist Click-Bait Like this?

March 20, 2017

Don’t You Hate Spammy, Sensationalist Click-Bait Like this?

So what’s the difference between “fake news,” spammy sensationalist click-bait and so-called “mainstream news” that serves the interests of the corporate-state? It’s getting hard to tell.

We’re inundated with spammy sensationalist click-bait. You know what I mean–the little boxes containing eye-candy photos and headlines such as “you won’t believe how badly these stars have aged,” “7 tricks to losing weight during Thanksgiving,” “These children of celebs are so good looking your jaw will drop,” “9 surprising signs of dementia” and outre classics such as “Hitler’s shocking final words.”

The “news” is “shocking,” “secrets are revealed,” and “surprising facts” are promised. Authorities are always cited as unimpeachable sources, and the headlines are quasi-plausible. (Why wouldn’t good-looking celebs have good-looking offspring?)

But the “authorities,” “facts” and “secrets” are all dubious. The spammy click-bait is self-serving to those promoting the sensationalist content, and to the media sites that promote the spammy content.

According to The New York Times, unidentified sources in the spammy sensationalist click-bait industry report that “We have been told from major, major publishers that we have become their No. 1 revenue provider.”

So the spammy sensationalist click-bait content serves the interests of those originating the bogus spam and the media that publishes it. Talk about a two-fer; no wonder this junk is everywhere in the Corporate Media.

Though the Corporate Media denies it, of course, the lines between propaganda, paid content and actual reporting have blurred. The C.I.A. has played a major role in the Corporate Media for decades. If you doubt this, please study the following:

The CIA and the Media by Carl Bernstein

The CIA and the Media: 50 Facts the World Needs to Know This article by Professor James Tracy first published in August 2015 is of particular relevance in relation to the “fake news” campaign directed against the alternative media.

Operation Mockingbird

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

Video of the Day – Jimmy Dore Dismantles Tom Brokaw and the Corporate Media in 12 Minutes

February 25, 2017

Video of the Day – Jimmy Dore Dismantles Tom Brokaw and the Corporate Media in 12 Minutes

Michael Krieger | Posted Thursday Feb 23, 2017 at 5:08 pm

Very entertaining video. Make sure to watch the whole thing.

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