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The biggest difference between American and Russian news-reporting has been a simple factual issue between the two sides, on what incident started the ‘New Cold War’ between the U.S. and Russia. (The original Cold War was between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and had an ideological, capitalist-versus-communist, alleged basis, but this one doesn’t — so, it’s not really a ‘New Cold War’; it is quite different, but it might be even more deadly.)

The U.S. and its allies say that what started it was in March 2014 when “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” and “the invasion of Crimea” and Russia’s “conquest of land” by means of that “invasion,” sparked America’s sanctions against Russia and NATO’s military buildup along Russia’s borders; but Russia says that what started it was in February 2014 when Ukraine was victimized, as Russian Television reported it, on 13 March 2014, by:

an armed coup. The Maidan do not appoint these people; rather, it’s the US that does it. It’s enough to look at the newly appointed officials: Parubiy, Gvozd, Nalyvaichenko are all people who followed somebody else’s orders, the orders of the US, not even Europe. They are directly linked to the American intelligence.

In the American account, Ukrainian democracy started when the democratically elected President of Ukraine was overthrown in February 2014; in the Russian account, Ukrainian democracy ended when the democratically elected President of Ukraine was overthrown in February 2014, and only after (and in response to) that, did two regions (Crimea and Donbass, both of which had voted more than 75% for that man) break away from, and refuse to be governed by, the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which was now being imposed upon them.

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

Spain Won’t Arrest Separatist Leaders, Blames “Fake News” For Catalan Crisis

October 22, 2017

Spain Won’t Arrest Separatist Leaders, Blames “Fake News” For Catalan Crisis

Following Catalan President Puigdemont’s address yesterday accusing Madrid of “the worst attack since Franco,” the Spanish government has urged Catalonians to accept direct control from Madrid and ignore seditious instructions from the pro-independence leaders.

Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis responded on Sunday with the call to obey Madrid.

“We are going to establish the authorities who are going to rule the day-to-day affairs of Catalonia according to the Catalan laws and norms … I hope everyone will disregard whatever instructions they will be planning to give because they will not have the legal authority to do that.”

“All the government is trying to do, and reluctantly, is to reinstate the legal order, to restore the constitution but also the Catalan rules and proceed from there,” Dastis told BBC TV.

“We are not going to arrest anyone.”

Of course, Dastis could not help himself but fall back on the establishment’s ‘excuse du jour’ for anything that does not fit with the maintenance of the status quo… “There has been a lot of alternative facts and fake news”

Below are details of the powers the Spanish government plans to assume for a maximum six months before regional elections are held as set out in a proposal to the upper house Senate. As Reuters reports, the measures were formulated under a constitutional provision never before invoked in Spain’s 40 years of democracy.

…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…

Understanding the ‘Fake News’ Hysteria

October 16, 2017

Understanding the ‘Fake News’ Hysteria

The mainstream media’s hysteria over “fake news” is aimed less at the few instances of intentionally fabricated stories than at well-reported articles that challenge the U.S. government’s dubious official narratives, says David P. Hamilton.

For the most part, “fake news” is a fake concept designed by the corporate news media to discredit those who challenge the official U.S. hegemonic narrative. The typical MSM fake news accusation starts with some egregious fictionalization and then morphs over to the real targets: the subversives, those who would dispute foundational elements of the official history or its recent approved updates.

The New York Times building in Manhattan. (Photo credit: Robert Parry)

These subversive elements are likely to question important myths, such as the necessity of the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima or – before the Iraq War – Saddam Hussein possessing WMD, and hence must be silenced.

There are people in this world who write what they know to be fiction and try to pass it off as fact. Many of them work for the CIA and related institutions. Then, there are satirists like The Onion who write fictionalized truth. These professional prevaricators are not what draws the ire of the corporate “news.”

The approved rendition of U.S. history is a composite of lies, euphemisms and dubious rationales taught in schools, public and private, since the nation’s founding. It is continuously updated by the corporate news media. There is an army of PR types and psy-op warriors working constantly on this project; some private sector, some public, who often switch roles and sectors, but work hand-in-glove regardless.

The real fake news is the fake narrative that flows perpetually forth from these functionaries of the MSM to dominate the discourse which the billionaire owners allow voiced via their facilities. In this manner, we are all being played, all the time, and have been since birth.

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

The Six ‘Secret’ Tactics of Empire

October 11, 2017

The Six ‘Secret’ Tactics of Empire

The 6 ‘secret’ tactics of empire are strategies of change used by governments, usually covertly, to attain political or military ends through means not normally acceptable to the populace as a whole. The strategies are as follows:

1/ False Flag Attacks

2/ Coercive Engineered Migration

3/ Colour Revolutions

4/ Fake News

5/ Humanitarian Intervention

6/ Proxy Armies

The relationship of the state or a political force to the various strategies depends on the political aim. Sometimes there is a direct and openly admitted relationship to the strategy and sometimes it is fervently denied. The outcome of any such strategy is never guaranteed and, indeed, may even have the opposite effect to that intended. This makes the strategies of change high-risk ventures for the participants as well as those for whom the strategy is hoped to benefit. In some cases these strategies of change seem to be perceived as the only way to change a situation, or at least the most expedient. Their role is to manipulate public opinion on a particular government, state or upcoming political movement to suit the actions, thoughts or desires of another internal or external political force. Like a good magician, the perpetrator of the strategy must make people conscious of the ends but not the means. If the people support a changed environment brought about by strategies of change without realizing or understanding why, then the result can be seen as ‘successful’.

1/ False Flag Attacks

False Flag Attack
Triptych – Oil on canvas – (60cm x 180cm / 23.6 in x 70.6 in)

False flag attacks are actions carried out covertly to look like another group, nation or state were responsible.

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

Facebook Security Chief Lashes Out: “Censorship Is Easy If You Don’t Worry About Becoming The Ministry Of Truth”

October 9, 2017

Facebook Security Chief Lashes Out: “Censorship Is Easy If You Don’t Worry About Becoming The Ministry Of Truth”

In a furious tweetstorm this weekend, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer warned interfering desperate politicians and triggered letfists that the fake news problem is more complicated and dangerous to solve than the public thinks.

As a reminder, we noted that Alex Stamos was seemingly pressured into ‘finding’ Russian evidence after Senator Mark Warner paid the social media company a visit –

A few weeks after the French election, Warner flew out to California to visit Facebook in person. It was an opportunity for the senator to press Stamos directly on whether the Russians had used the company’s tools to disseminate anti-Clinton ads to key districts.

Officials said Stamos underlined to Warner the magnitude of the challenge Facebook faced policing political content that looked legitimate.

Stamos told Warner that Facebook had found no accounts that used advertising but agreed with the senator that some probably existed. The difficulty for Facebook was finding them.

For months, a team of engineers at Facebook had been searching through accounts, looking for signs that they were set up by operatives working on behalf of the Kremlin. The task was immense.

Warner’s visit spurred the company to make some changes in how it conducted its internal investigation. Instead of searching through impossibly large batches of data, Facebook decided to focus on a subset of political ads.

Technicians then searched for “indicators” that would link those ads to Russia. To narrow down the search further, Facebook zeroed in on a Russian entity known as the Internet Research Agency, which had been publicly identified as a troll farm.

“They worked backwards,” a U.S. official said of the process at Facebook.

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

Are You Ready to Die?

October 2, 2017

Are You Ready to Die?

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept exposes the fake news put out by the US Department of Homeland Security (an euphemistic name for a Big Brother operation that spies on US citizens) that Russia hacked 21 US state elections, news that was instantly spread around the world by the presstitute media. The propagandists running Homeland Security were contradicted by the state governments, forcing Homeland Security to retract its fake news claims. https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

The unasked/unanswered question is why did Homeland Security put out a FAKE NEWS story?

Greenwald explains that the US media is so conditioned by the National Security State to see Russian President Putin lurking behind and masterminding attacks on America that it is “now religious dogma”—a requirement—to find Russian perfidy everywhere. The result Greenwald correctly says is that “an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards.”

In other words, the United States no longer has a media. It has a propaganda ministry for the military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Israel Lobby. And the idiot Americans sit in front of the TV and absorb the propaganda, and they read the New York Times and think that they are sophisticated and in the know.

What Greenwald doesn’t address is the effect of the massive amount of fake news on Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Russia knows that Washington knows that the accusations against Russia are false. So why is Washington making false accusations against Russia?

This is a serious question, not only for Russia but for the entire world. All previous false accusations from the Clinton regime criminals, the Bush/Cheney regime criminals, and the Obama regime criminals ended in miiltary attacks on the falsely demonized targets.

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

Morning Joe: Ministry of Truth Is Needed To Fight War On Fake News, ‘Russian Operatives’ On Social Media

September 30, 2017

On Friday’s Morning Joe, Willie Geist hosted a panel to discuss the latest news on the Russian hacking narrative regarding Facebook ads that were purportedly used by Russian intelligence to stoke “racial tensions” during the 2016 presidential election. The panel’s primary reaction, with only one dissenting voice, was to call for increased government “regulation” and financial “penalties in the hundreds of millions” to shut down alleged Russian influencers.

The segment started off with Geist introducing the latest reporting on the topic:

GEIST: Twitter says it has shut down more than two-hundred accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who bought political ads on Facebook. Of the 450 accounts released by Facebook as part of its investigation, Twitter was able to match 22 of them to its own site. The disclosure by Twitter followed a briefing by company officials to staffers of the Senate and House Intel committees yesterday. Following that meeting, the top Democrat on the Senate committee, Mark Warner, slammed Twitter for its presentation.

SEN. MARK WARNER [D-VA]: [playing clip] The presentation that the Twitter team made to the Senate Intel staff today was deeply disappointing. The notion that their work was basically derivative based upon accounts that Facebook had identified showed enormous lack of understanding from the Twitter team of how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions, and, again, begs many more questions than they offered.

(…)

GEIST: The top Democrat on the House Intel Committee, Adam Schiff, also weighed in on Twitter’s briefing to his committee, releasing a statement that read, in part: “… it is clear that Twitter has significant forensic work to do to understand the depth and breadth of Russian activity during the campaign. This additional analysis will require far more robust investigation into how Russian actors used their platform as a part of their active measures campaign…”

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

Hello Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, USA Today, CNN, Washington Post, Slate: Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart

September 29, 2017

Hello Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, USA Today, CNN, Washington Post, Slate: Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart

The biggest purveyors of “fake news” and irresponsible journalism are the news media outlets complaining most about it.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is at the forefront of the latest fake news on Russia.

Maddow’s Rant

Follow

Maddow Blog ✔@MaddowBlog

DHS didn’t bother to tell the 21 states Russia tried to hack during the election until this afternoon.

9:31 PM – Sep 22, 2017

The story went viral of course.

Maddow Blog ✔@MaddowBlog

DHS didn’t bother to tell the 21 states Russia tried to hack during the election until this afternoon. http://snpy.tv/2fH2Atn

Jayne Partridge @JaynePart

Took a pic!pic.twitter.com/rtwguSq2Uo

9:40 PM – Sep 22, 2017

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

The Silencing of Dissent

September 25, 2017

The Silencing of Dissent

The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics. The attacks within this campaign include blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of “fake news.”

No dominant class can long retain control when the credibility of the ideas that justify its existence evaporates. It is forced, at that point, to resort to crude forms of coercion, intimidation and censorship. This ideological collapse in the United States has transformed those of us who attack the corporate state into a potent threat, not because we reach large numbers of people, and certainly not because we spread Russian propaganda, but because the elites no longer have a plausible counterargument.

The elites face an unpleasant choice. They could impose harsh controls to protect the status quo or veer leftward toward socialism to ameliorate the mounting economic and political injustices endured by most of the population. But a move leftward, essentially reinstating and expanding the New Deal programs they have destroyed, would impede corporate power and corporate profits. So instead the elites, including the Democratic Party leadership, have decided to quash public debate. The tactic they are using is as old as the nation-state—smearing critics as traitors who are in the service of a hostile foreign power. Tens of thousands of people of conscience were blacklisted in this way during the Red Scares of the 1920s and 1950s. The current hyperbolic and relentless focus on Russia, embraced with gusto by “liberal” media outlets such as The New York Times and MSNBC, has unleashed what some have called a virulent “New McCarthyism.”

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

In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?”

September 9, 2017

In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?”

THE NEWS FROM the natural world these days is mostly about water, and understandably so.

We hear about the record-setting amounts of water that Hurricane Harvey dumped on Houston and other Gulf cities and towns, mixing with petrochemicals to pollute and poison on an unfathomable scale. We hear too about the epic floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people from Bangladesh to Nigeria (though we don’t hear enough). And we are witnessing, yet again, the fearsome force of water and wind as Hurricane Irma — one of the most powerful storms ever recorded — leaves devastation behind in the Caribbean, with Florida now in its sights.

Yet for large parts of North America, Europe, and Africa, this summer has not been about water at all. In fact it has been about its absence; it’s been about land so dry and heat so oppressive that forested mountains exploded into smoke like volcanoes. It’s been about fires fierce enough to jump the Columbia River; fast enough to light up the outskirts of Los Angeles like an invading army; and pervasive enough to threaten natural treasures, like the tallest and most ancient sequoia trees and Glacier National Park.

For millions of people from California to Greenland, Oregon to Portugal, British Columbia to Montana, Siberia to South Africa, the summer of 2017 has been the summer of fire. And more than anything else, it’s been the summer of ubiquitous, inescapable smoke.

For years, climate scientists have warned us that a warming world is an extreme world, in which humanity is buffeted by both brutalizing excesses and stifling absences of the core elements that have kept fragile life in equilibrium for millennia. At the end of the summer of 2017 — with major cities submerged in water and others licked by flames — we are currently living through Exhibit A of this extreme world, one in which natural extremes come head-to-head with social, racial, and economic ones.

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

Hurricane Harvey, Climate Denial, Fake News and ExxonMobil

September 6, 2017

Hurricane Harvey, Climate Denial, Fake News and ExxonMobil

For well over twenty years, climate deniers have tried to stymie discussion of extreme weather events and climate change. Why? Because extreme weather kills people, destroys property, trashes things and costs billions of dollars. And that’s when people start searching for accountability blame. Hurricane Harvey’s damage is breaking records. Who will pay, remains an unanswered question. What we do know is that a concerted campaign of climate denial, over the past three decades, has measurably slowed down society’s reaction to the climate crisis and has wasted valuable time and money.

For example, in October 1998, the Cooler Heads Coalition put together a “Media and Congressional Briefing” titled “Extreme Weather and Climate Change”, held in the Cannon House of Representatives office building. The sponsoring organizations are a who’s who of ‘free market’ anti-government groups. Many of the organizations are connected to Koch money and most of them were being funded by ExxonMobil in 1998 and subsequent years. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell was the chair of Cooler Heads then and now. CEI received $85,000 from Exxon in 1998. The full roster of Cooler Heads members got over $472,000 in grants from Exxon that year.

The guest speaker was the famous hurricane scientist Wizard of Oz, Dr. William Gray (who passed away in 2016).

In the wake of hurricane Harvey, its important to recall the corporate fake news campaign of 2006 to suppress the discussion of hurricanes and climate change. The campaign was spearheaded by DCI Group, then employed by ExxonMobil, and connected to TechCentralStation, a news site DCI Group set up to insert corporate friendly messages and third party messengers onto the internet before blogs were really a thing. Video cassettes with a prepared news segment were distributed to Gulf state local TV stations.

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

The truth will not be Googled

August 20, 2017

The truth will not be Googled

Google has come under scrutiny by free-speech organisations for shutting down neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, seemingly too distracted to notice the tech giant has been waging a censorship campaign against progressive news organisations that publish content which conflicts with the narrative of the Washington establishment, along with Facebook and Twitter on the grounds of ‘fake news’.

While web-hosting services have been criticised for cancelling the registration of neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, progressive left-leaning sites are losing Google ranking and traffic because of a deliberate move to censor “fake” news by the internet search giant.

New data released by World Socialist Websites (WSWS) revealed that sites such as Wikileaks, The Intercept, Electronic Frontiers Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Organisation, CounterPunch and many other organisations with the audacity to provide context about the activities of federal governments not reported in mainstream publications have experienced a significant drop in traffic after Google altered its algorithm.

(WSWS is an online news and information service founded by the International Committee of the Fourth International, the leadership of the world socialist movement).

Earlier this week, internet hosting provider, GoDaddy, announced it had cancelled US neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, for posting an attack on Heather Heyer, the protester who was murdered at the Klan rally in Charlottesville last week. Google and CloudFlare likewise cancelled its registration after the site tried to move its hosting over to their respective services.

But while these hosting services are being congratulated by some – and condemned by others on free-speech grounds – for ensuring that those looking to commit violence have to work slightly harder to get access to their like-minded Nazi communities, those who own the means of transmission – namely Google, Facebook and Twitter – are still preventing the rest of us from accessing information that allows people to make sense of the world around us.

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

Before “Fake News,” America Invented “Pseudo Events”

August 16, 2017

Before “Fake News,” America Invented “Pseudo Events”

In the wake of the Chalottesville riot, it’s been interesting how quickly the focus has shifted away from the actual events in Charlottesville and toward the public pundits and intellectuals are expressing opinions about the events.

Already, the media has lost interest in analyzing the details of the event itself, and are instead primarily reporting on what Donald Trump, his allies, and his enemies have to say about it.

This is an important distinction in coverage. Rather than attempt to supply a detailed look at who was at the event, what was done, and what the participants — from both sides — have to say about it, we are instead exposed primarily to what people in Washington, DC, and the political class in general, think about the events in which they were not directly involved.

This focus illustrates what has long been a bias among the reporters and pundits in the national media: a bias toward focus on the national intellectual class rather than on events that take place outside the halls of official power.

Note, however, that those quoted rarely have any special knowledge about the events themselves. Their opinions are covered not because they are knowledgeable, but because their quotations fit easily into a narrative that the media wishes to perpetuate.

In a March 2017 column, Peter Klein noted this bias and what economist F.A. Hayek had to say about it:

The intellectual, according to Hayek, is not an expert or deep thinker; “he need not possess special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas. What qualifies him for his job is the wide range of subjects on which he can readily talk and write

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

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