Friday 29th of March 2024

we are getting numb between the ears...

trooth

John Henry’s transfixing play “Republic For Which We Stand” sounds the tocsin against the chosen people mentality that fuels perpetual war, one-branch government, and limitless surveillance in the United States. That un-starry-eyed message is leavened with recurring humor, satire and comedy that capture the full spectrum of vices and foibles in all their moods and tenses. Our Founding Mothers and Founding Fathers come to life, warts and all, to remind us of what made America great.

We are mired in nine unconstitutional presidential wars. None shows any light at the end of the tunnel. The multi-trillion dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex is extending its web everywhere, drawing all power into its vortex. Since 9/11, it has turned millions of wives into widows and children into orphans in the Middle East. No one asks why we have protest marches for women, climate change, and tax disclosure, but none for them. Tis folly to be wise and ignorance is bliss in the corridors of power and the sycophantic mainstream media.

“Republic For Which We Stand” is a breath of fresh air. It dramatizes the birth of the American republic and the wisdom of the founders in entrusting war-making responsibility exclusively to Congress. Yet thirteen successive administrations have flouted the Declare War Clause of the Constitution. When Truman started the first presidential war in Korea, Secretary of State Dean Acheson boasted: “The United States is the locomotive of mankind and the rest of the world the caboose.” Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make arrogant.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-play-against-perpetual...

 

blame russia...

russian hackers...

When news of an ongoing diplomatic crisis between Qatar and a host of Persian Gulf states reached the ears of CNN reporters, they immediately knew who was responsible – Russian hackers! According to CNN, these miscreants managed upload pro-Iranian reports attributed to the Qatari leader on the state's news service.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described these reports as "another fake" while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described CNN as a "mass disinformation media" rather than a media agency.

A representative of the Qatar embassy in Moscow said that Doha has not yet sent any official appeals to Russia regarding the alleged Russian hackers' role in an unfoldingdiplomatic crisis with Qatar's Gulf and Arab neighbors.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy chairman of the Russian upper house International Affairs Committee, said that this may be an attempt to pit the US and Russia, two leading players in the Middle East, against each other.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/cartoons/201706071054399734-qatar-us-hacking-all...

what you see is what they want you to see...

 

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society…is the true ruling power…we are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed…it is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

Thus wrote Edward Bernays in his book Propaganda, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the father of modern propaganda, at whose suggestion, the United States’ War Department, at the time called the National Military Establishment, was renamed the Department of Defence in 1949.

In the ‘age of the corporate media’, where 90 percent of the American media is owned by six corporations — General Electric, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS — down from 50 back in 1983, it is not difficult to understand how what the majority of the ‘public sees and doesn’t see’ depends and is controlled by the agenda of a small number of corporations and ultimately, by those who control them. This is especially the case as it is also the ‘age of the repeater journalists’. Where you have the majority of mainstream journalists worldwide simply ‘repeating the narrative’ portrayed in the powerful quarters of the world media, namely the Western (American) media, and the information they receive from the biggest news agencies (Western mostly), instead of doing their job — ‘questioning what happened’ and ‘investigating how’ it did.

When such impervious power rests in the hands of a handful of individuals, you will of course have a select number of stories being regularly reported by the media. And some stories, never. So what were some of those stories worthy of being covered in the news that were not?

Well one of them is related to the story perhaps most covered in the world media — the US elections. Or rather one who contested the elections — Hillary Rodham Clinton. Throughout 2016, as she was campaigning to become the next US President, Wikileaks constantly proved to be a thorn in her side. But the revelations made public by Wikileaks have largely gone unreported in the mainstream press.

And one of the main reasons is because they involved the media itself. For example, according to Wikileaks, 65 mainstream reporters were working “hand-in-glove with the Hillary Clinton campaign to rig the US elections” (Wikileaks exposes secret list of 65 mainstream media reporters who are part of the Clinton mafia, The Duran, October 28, 2016). And for those who find it hard to believe that she, or the Democratic Party itself, would dare to do something so un-democratic, 20,000 e-mails released by Wikileaks also showed how the Democratic Party worked against Bernie Sanders and “derailed his campaign” (Wikileaks Proves Primary Was Rigged: DNC Undermined Democracy, The Observer, July 22, 2016). Despite the near media blackout, the incident was so scandalous that the Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was quietly forced to step down from her position.

The leaks also revealed that CNN’s political commentator Donna Brazile had sent Presidential Debate questions to Ms. Clinton prior to the debate which, again, forced CNN to drop her. But, perhaps the most important revelations came during an interview of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, by John Pilger, when he said that Hillary Clinton had urged John Podesta, the then advisor to Barack Obama, to “bring pressure” on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, “which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [Islamic State, IS, ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups”.

He further said, “All serious analysts know, and even the US government has agreed, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS and funding ISIS… But that email says that it is the government of Saudi Arabia, and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS.” In the same vein, he added that what is most ironic is that some of the biggest donors to the Clinton campaign also happen to be the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The next story which has criminally gone underreported also involves the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is the war being waged ‘on’ Yemen. Journalists Rose Delaney wrote on September 2, 2016, for the Inter Press Service that “The sheer gravity of Yemen’s conflict should subsequently ignite a deafening global cry for justice, however, as long as the public are ‘strategically’ kept in the dark, little change can realistically be implemented.”

I have already written a piece highlighting the scale of the violence taking place in Yemen in a previous article titled ‘The Tragedy in Yemen’ published by The Daily Star on August 29, 2016. The article also includes facts and figures which show the massive amounts of weaponry being supplied by the US and the UK to Saudi Arabia that have been used on the Yemeni people. But what I would like to highlight now is the fact that no Saudi airstrikes would be possible without the help of the US and UK as Saudi Arabia has no means to refuel its own warplanes (also US and British manufactured) mid-air. Once you understand how damaging it would be for the US to have people learn about what is really going on in Yemen, it is not difficult to unravel why the media has so blatantly failed to cover it.

And while underreporting is what is most often used to shape public perception, one which is even more effective, is misdirecting the public through false reporting. And 2016 revealed further, the extent of the misconception created in the public mind by the media, in regards to the Syrian crisis.

And this relates to another topic that has gone underreported — the mountain of evidence that has come out in 2016 showing that the Syrian crisis, rather than being a civil war, is a proxy war being waged against Syria by outside forces. Some of these ‘evidences’ were presented at the United Nations on December 9 by activist Sara Flounders, lawyer and human rights and peace activist Donna Nassor, Member of the Coordinating Committee for the Hands Off Syria and Organisation Secretary of US Peace Council Dr. Bahman Azad, and independent Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett, ‘who have all visited Syria’ themselves, including Aleppo, recently.

At the conference, Bartlett, who has visited Syria six times in the past two years and has spoken with Syrians in Arabic, in agreement with the other panellists said, “whatever you hear in the corporate media is exactly the opposite of reality [of what is happening in Syria]… our media and the Gulf media has made Syria out to be sectarian which is something the Syrians themselves have denied…it’s a tool to make people confused…believe it’s Sunnis against Bashar al-Assad.”

When the truth, according to the panellists, was that people in Syria overwhelmingly support the government and the army. And they “are tired of the lies and are very well aware of the lies that our [Western mainstream] media and human rights groups are reporting”.

The last, but not least, important topic that has not been reported in the mainstream press has been the collapse of public confidence in the mainstream media. People across the world, as more and more stories are underreported or falsely reported by the media, have shown, more than ever in 2016, that they have lost all faith in the sincerity of the mainstream press to be truthful and unbiased.

Hence, we have had organisations such as Wikileaks filling the vacuuming created by the absence of an unbiased press, attracting more and more people to look towards it for information. And although it is a real shame that these stories and so many others have gone unreported in 2016, what 2016 has taught us is that they can no longer be blacked out completely, largely because of organisations such as Wikileaks and others. And that, dear reader, is the biggest story of 2016, regardless of whether it was reported, or not.

The writer is a member of the Editorial team at The Daily Star.

First published in The Daily Star

read more articles at: 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/04/the-biggest-underreported-stories-of-2016/

the power play to control your "entertainment"...

 

Channel Ten is not insolvent — its voluntary administration is simply a ruse to allow Rupert to take over the rest of Australia’s mainstream media. Managing editor David Donovan explains.

I SHOULDN'T NEED to write about the reasons behind the so-called “bankruptcy” of Channel Ten, because the reasons are blatantly apparent. But, try as I might, I can’t seem to find this sort of commentary anywhere — apart from on social media, of course.

It’s enough to make one think our media representatives are either stupid or corrupt. Heavens! Perish the thought.

Here are the facts.

Channel Ten has gone into voluntary administration. Receivers KordaMentha have been appointed. This happened after shareholders Lachlan Murdoch (7.7%) and Bruce Gordon (15%) refused to guarantee a new finance package — one that does not become due until December. There is no problem with liquidity at Ten — it has good cashflow and is paying all of its bills as they become due. In short, it is not insolvent.

Nevertheless, this voluntary administration, made during the second last sitting week of Parliament before the long winter recess, did allow Communications Minister Mitch Fifield to yesterday stand in front of the cameras to solemnly urge the Parliament to pass his new media “reform” laws. This media package, which also removes the need for broadcasters to pay licence fees, was tabled in the Lower House this morning (15/6/17).

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/media-reform-...

 

see also:

changing the channels...

 

the mockingbird of fake news...

 


The amount of bombs dropped by Americans on the innocent citizens of tiny French Indochina was more than twice the amount of bombs dropped in Europe, Africa and Asia during the Second World War, and this includes bombs  dropped on the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong by American hero Senator John McCain, who proudly ran for president on his military record in spite of Nuremberg Counsel for Prosecution General Telford Taylor having said he would have been proud to have prosecuted US flyers shot down while bombing in Vietnam.[3] 

What mastery of fake news, blacked out news, selected news and outrageously sleazy news discussion, to have been able to continue get a near majority of Americans to accept as heroes, any American who participated in this mega enormous crime against humanity of holocaust proportions visited upon the Buddhist populations of largely famers in three French colonies seeking independence.

In his thundering truthful news sermon Beyond Vietnam – a Time to Break Silence, given in New  York city halfway through the US genocide in French Indochina, Martin Luther King gave an accurate short history of US crimes in Vietnam from 1945 up to the time he spoke,“The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, For nine years we vigorously supported the France in its effort at reconquest of her former colony. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we were paying almost the full costs of this tragic [French] attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated [the United States, under President Eisenhower, blocked the all Vietnam election agreed upon by France in Geneva, an election that Eisenhower later confessed hero Ho Chi Minh would have easily won], started supporting a man named Diem who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition. People were brutally murdered because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, came the long line of military dictatorships. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It’s a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government and the press generally won’t tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning.”

We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men – children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals… children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food, children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. We have destroyed their land and their crops. we poison their water as we kill a million acres of their crops. as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees… they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically, primarily women and children and the aged, as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs…”we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.”[4] 

Because at the time, everyone was used to hearing mainstream media fake news about Vietnam, King’s angry truthful news sermon shook the world. Newspapers outside the US ran the headline in large bold print, KING CALLS US GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN WORLD, but US fake news media vilified King as an ‘unpatriotic traitor’ [5] frightening African Americans in the civil rights movement led by King. [6]King was organizing a second march on Washington to connect the suffering from poverty with the war on the Vietnamese, when he was shot dead,[7] one year to the day after his first truthful news sermon about Vietnam. The frighteningly destructive riots of African Americans in US cities brought about a US media change to heralding King as a civil rights hero worthy of being the only America with a national holiday on his birthday. Fake News producing CBS, NBC, ABC, eventually joined by Fox, CNN and PBS along with New York Times led print media have conspired for a half century to make sure no mention is ever made of Martin Luther King’s 1967 earth shaking sermons Beyond Vietnam[4] and Why I am Against the War in Vietnam in which King had condemned his government as ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world for its atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945 meant to maintain unjust predatory overseas investments, and held all Americans responsible for being unwilling to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the overseas profits US atrocities protect.’[4] News falsifying mainstream media blocks the memory of King’s anti US government nightmarish sermons with over the top lavish amounts of programing praising to heaven King’s civil rights speech “I Have a Dream”during the March on Washington four years earlier when the US invasion of Vietnam had not yet quite reached genocidal proportions. 

Corporate monopoly owned fake news generating mainstream sources of 98% of all entertainment and information have had no problem faking Americans out of awareness of the indisputable and monstrous truths noted in the opening paragraphs of this essay. 

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark feels the if the earlier US genocidal destruction of Korea and corporate media role in portraying it as noble and necessary had been investigated, there is good chance that America’s second and greater genocidal destruction in Vietnam might not have been unable to have been pulled off.

Ramsey Clark points out that US media repressed the history of the 1905 US colonial crime of recognizing Korea as territory of Imperial Japan in return for Japan recognizing US right to own the Philippines,[8] and that US media sanitized the American invasion and brutal occupation after WWII as if Korea was Japanese territory and not a country to liberate. 

Subsequently, mainstream media did not report that US State Department officials, arriving in Korea with the US Army disbanded the government of the Korean People’s Republic installed a week earlier on September 6, in Seoul by delegates from local peoples’ offices elected in all provinces throughout the peninsula, formed when Japan announced intention to surrender (August 10). These State Department officials proceeded without any Korean authorization whatsoever to immediately cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops, establishing a military government, flying Sungman Rhee in from Washington DC (in General MacArthur’s private plane), eventually installing him as president of a separate South Korea Government that include collaborators with the Japanese, and outlawed all strikes, declaring the KPR and all its activities illegal and began a deadly terror of persecution of members of the disallowed Korean Peoples Republic, communists, socialists, unionists and anyone against the the partition and demanding an independent Korea. Instead of reporting the above, US mainstream media reported only insidious fake news about all nations ruled by communist parties. From 1946 to 1949 mainstream news hid from its audiences that US in effect declared war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and sets in motion a repressive campaign dismantling the Peoples’ Committees and their supporters throughout the south, becoming massively homicidal as Rhee’s special forces and secret police took the lives of some 100,000 men, women and children as documented recently by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the National Assembly of the Republic of (South) Korea in 2001. On the Island of Cheju alone, within a year, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents were murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan some two years before the Koreans from the north liberated the South from a hated and genocidal regime. [UN sources and Wikipedia]

 1950, June 28 —North Korea’s army swept down and unified the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US Navy defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea’s ROK military as most of its soldiers either defected or went homeKoreans had themselves reunited the nation America had criminally divided. Fake news justified a second US invasion and bombing of every city and town flat, both in the South and in the North, killing three million Koreans in the their own beloved country. This set the pattern of media preached patriotic insanity about protecting American freedom, that would make the same patriotic insanity digestible when years later America murdered millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians in their own beloved countries. 

1953-2013 — The US using its control over international financial institutions and its power over the financial policies of most of the nations on Earth, keeps in place economy crippling sanctions and trade blockades (only loosening them slightly from time to time in attempts to halt the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea production of nuclear weapons as it faces a US, constantly condemning it in intense belligerency, massively armed with ever new nuclear weapons. (US sanctions obviously violate Principle VI c. Crimes Against Humanity: “inhuman acts done against any civilian population.”)

1945-2013 — The US Government, under control of its speculative investment banking elite, uses the gigantic world-wide reach of its likewise controlled US media cartel to manufacture an upside-down reality regarding US business and government intentions in Korea (and elsewhere), by blocking, slanting, omission, disinformation, misinformation and a virulent demonization of a nation once bombed flat, twice over, by US war planes; a six-decade propaganda campaign surely prosecutable as a media crime against peace under Principle VI c. of the universally signed on to Nuremberg Principles in the UN Charter.5

2013 March — An other example of US media crimes against peace, is the present startling situation, as offered in US TV and print media, namely, that of the somewhat tiny nation, North Korea (size of US State of Pennsylvania), threatening the greatest military power the world has ever seen, possessing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, with a nuclear attack, not for the sake of the bravely warning of its defense and retaliation power to ward of a feared attack from US planes and ships which periodically fire heavy weapons of mass destruction within earshot of its capital Pyongyang as part of frequent military exercises off its coast; the whole world is constantly ‘informed’ of what a madcap menace its leader is, by a Pentagon fed US media, which at the same time is justifying US bombings, invasions, occupations of some three dozen other small nations.When the Korean and Vietnam mass murderous debacles (in the end, the US lost in both cases) were allowed to go uninvestigated, mainstream fake news media was able to inculcate in the public mind a doctrine of ‘Kill communists anywhere and everywhere even in their very own countries to protect American freedom at home.’ This kill communists unofficial doctrine carried through during subsequent US genocidal regime change ‘humanitarian military interventions’ in dozens of other Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern nations. Nearly every country in Latin America has either been invaded or had its government overthrown with CIA fed media fake news assistance.[10] Once the absurdity of murdering for America, even getting killed murdering for America, became worshiped as heroic patriotism, it was easy enough to switch over to hailing the murder of Muslims that media has promoted since 9/11.

On 9/11, 2001 sixteen Saudi Arabians had flow planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The GIs invading Afghanistan and Iraq afterwards were taught by fake news mainstream media to think they were giving merciless ‘payback for 9/11.’ Osama bin Ladin, credited with planning 9/11, had received some funding from the US in Afghanistan after he and tens thousands of Arabs had been invited into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, who had come to the aid of a popular women liberating new socialist government in Kabul under heavy attack from Islamic terrorist warlords secretly funded, equipped and trained by CIA. The second time USA funded Islamic fundamentalist terror was in Iraq when funding and weapons were given to Sunni Iraqis to fight Shiite militias. The third time, when the CIA used veteran terrorists to impersonate a popular uprising against Gaddafi, and presently have destroyed much of Syria aiding a US ordered regime change in Syria.[12] All this has been covered up by CIA fed mainstream media.  

Long trained by CIA fed mainstream media psyop promoting the murder of ‘enemies’ of the United States as desirable patriotism,  Americans now seem to glow with pride when learning of covert US criminal operations, even murders ordered by US presidents. The US government owned Smithsonian TV channel has shown an entertaining history program detailing Eisenhower having put a contract out on popular Congo President Patrice, and initiating further crimes in the Congo, the consequences of which are still seen today, with death having already been brought to at least twenty-five million Congolese. This long continuing genocide in the  Congo has kept central Africa open to further genocidal European exploitation, especially once Africa’s main protector, wealthy Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Chairman of the African Union, was taken out by the greatest use of utterly fake news ever seen.[11] Examples of US presidents authorizing covert homicides can now be openly presented as interesting factual history, of course always within fake news context, e.g. Kennedy’s authorization of the assassination of Fidel Castro; Reagan’s stealth surprise air strikes on Libya in open attempt to assassinate Gaddafi; Bush junior’s pridefully announced intentions to commit what were international crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan; Obama’s serial drone murders. This short article skips over both secret and open crimes assisted by  fake news by all the other presidents since FDR, who, Prof. Noam Chomsky of MIT says would have been hanged if tried under the same Nuremberg Principles that the Nazis were tried under, principles that became international law.

The CIA, arm of the power elite investors in WMD, invasions and bombings and the source of fake news and fake patriotism has, for the first time, a problem with a US president. A ‘crazy,’ ‘mentally unstable’ and ‘extremely dangerous’ President Trump has been saying that “US regime change death and destruction in the Middle East was wrong and the five trillion dollars they cost should have been spent at home on America’s infrastructure,”  that “NATO is obsolete;” that “the US should seek friendship with China and Russia;” that he likes Xi Jinping and Putin, (America’s perennial and sacrosanct mortal enemies!) and that he would get along fine with them. Trump has called two term fellow Republican President, George Bush, a liar for having lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and has voiced suspicion about the 9/11 attack that happened so easily on Bush’s watch. Trump has disputed hailing former presidential candidate Senator John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential candidate, a hero for having been shot down while bombing Vietnam. Trump has asked, “why must the United States lead the world everywhere on the globe and play the role of the world’s policeman, now for example in Ukraine? “Trump asks, “why does the United States always pursue regime changes — Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and now it wants a regime change in Syria, Damascus, when the result is disaster.” Most importantly, Trump has condemned and ridiculed eighty percent of media’s reporters and commentators as pathetic liars, which comes close to the what is in reality that one hundred percent who are willing to preposterously describe America’s running crimes against humanity as heroic deeds in defense of American freedom. 

Trump in his running battle with lying mainstream media has Albert Einstein, the greatest mind of the 20th century, on his side. 

Way back in 1954, even before CIA Operation Mockingbird had gained control of everyone of importance in US media,[10] Albert Einstein described why our civilization continues to be “like an axe in the had of a pathological criminal,”:
“Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.” — [Albert Einstein, Essays in Humanism]

The hight of Trump’s ‘dangerous unpredictability’ saw Trump defending his respect of President Putin. When challenged by his interviewer with, But Putin is a killer! Trump answered, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump later added, “I was against the invasion of Iraq – a lot of people were killed.” “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” In December of 2015, Trump had told MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’ “I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, so you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, a lot of killing, a lot of stupidity.” If the investors in WMD and profitable genocide on Wall Street don’t shut this ‘wildly crazy’ president up, people might get the idea that all the regime change death and destruction starting with Korea were as US Congressman Ron Paul said over and over again during presidential candidate debates in 2012, “illegal, unconstitutional and a horrific loss of life.”

Four years earlier fake news mainstream media ridiculed Obama’s Pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and as a joke televised sound bites of Wright, his finger pointing up in the air and shouting in a angry voice,God damn America for her crimes against humanity!” Wright 

Twenty-five years from now, these candidly frank and un self censored pronouncements of Trump, Ron Paul and Jeremiah Wright will not sound unique. Within twenty-five years a confident socialist China will have slowly replaced the USA as the world’s most influential nation (as China had been for two thousand years without need to plunder less affluent neighbors).  

There is a more sane and harmonious world coming as the USA loses it power to misinform and disinform through it present powerful CIA managed cartel of giant entertainment and news corporations telecasting via satellites. 
An initial change will come in the form of an influx of truthful news and saner entertainment breaking the West’s vice-like grip on sources of information/disinformation promoting egoistic self-indulgence and the West’s ability to promote, disseminate and inculcate lies enabling profitable investments in genocide.

“According to conservative estimates, by 2017, China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy, and by 2050, its economy will be twice as large as that of the United States. Chinese influence will extend well beyond the economic sphere. The full social, cultural and political repercussions of China’s ascendancy will be felt sooner. In the coming decades, the West will be confronted with the fact that its systems, institutions and values are no longer the only ones on offer.” [When China Rules the World -The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order by Martin Jacques] [13]

In a multipolar world, the absurdities, illogic and insanity that justifies US NATO UN genocide will no longer be successfully propagated. These outrageous fabrications just wont wash when exposed to the light of day by new major sources of information powering out of Asia, Africa and Latin America that will appear as world economic power shifts Eastward and Southward.

When the Anglo-American axis no longer controls a reconstituted UN and its courts, some of the news reporting celebrities could be sued in cases where false reporting can be proven to have been accessory after the fact to crimes against humanity. Five Nazi media celebrities were convicted at Nuremberg. Two were hanged, one committed suicide and two received prison sentences. 

Meanwhile, as we wait for pathetically criminal Western media to soon go out of business, Ramsey Clark says, “Keep the Faith.” 

Post Script:Fake news was the hand maiden of the five centuries of European and descendant American imperial conquest of the whole world – even its tiniest islands.

read more:
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/14/mainstream-news-and-usas-heroics-in-vietnam-why-the-silence-about-the-7-million-dead/


Gus:
The sad story is that the real saga continues, peppered with fake news (Saddam has weapons of mass destruction being one of the biggest doozy). Fake news is buttered daily by all the Western media and their controllers, the US government including their "liberal" opponents presently harping about "this Russian thingy". (Note "liberals" in the US represent those who tend to be the "progressive" left (not socialists, god forbids!) and the bleeding-hearts, while in Australia "Liberals" represent the extreme right, bordering on fascism and dictatorship with the soft edges of Christian fundamentalism)

Please see also: 

 

"The Age of Deceit"

 

 

another terrorist attack in london...

The attact today (monday june 19 2017) is only mentioned in the media as an incident. So why? It seems that the hired van ran into a crowd of Muslim worshippers outside a mosque. What to make of it? Two possibilities once we eliminate the "accidental" cause of such event. The Mosque is a Salafist (Sunni) BROTHERHOOD mosque. Get into your head that Saudia Arabia supported by the USA helped foment a military coup in Egypt to remove the brotherhood (Sunni) from government — after the "Arab Spring" there... Why? Sunni against Sunni? This is not new and ISIS (Sunnis) is in the middle of this crap as well. The BROTHERHOOD is a "democratic" organisation while Saudi Arabia is a fierce Kingdom structure. 

Should the Salafist Sunni BROTHERHOOD manage to place its hands on the controls in Saudi Arabia or in other part the region, the Kingdom of Saud (friends of the USA) is a GONER.

Add two and two...

The alternative is that some disgrunted Shia did the deed. Most unlikely but who knows. It could be an extreme right white supremacist or an old man who mistook the accelerator pedal for the brake one.

meanwhile the new york times bullshits outside the crapper...

 

Under direct orders from President Vladimir Putin, hackers connected to Russian military intelligence broke into the email accounts of senior officials at the Democratic National Committee and of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. They passed tens of thousands of emails to the website WikiLeaks, which posted them throughout the last months of the campaign in an attempt to damage the Clinton campaign.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/mr-trumps-dangerous-indiffere...

 

At this point in time, no matter how many stones they've looked under, the US spy organisations HAVE NO PROOFS that Putin ordered hacking into La Clinton's emails. Equally there is no reason for Trump and his henchmen not to entertain cordial relations with Russia.

I know, the major blip is that Russia was supposed to have caved-in in 1999 and have become a slavish vassal to the USA, but Russia succeeded to survive, and foil many attempts by the USA to sabotage its economy.

And of course Russia looks after its people, including 25 million Russians who were living in the eastern block outside Russia, and who were then "living abroad" after the break up of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine and Crimea. With 90 per cent of Russians living in Crimea, the split between Ukraine and Russia was a blow for these long-settled Russians -- soon sorted out by Russia (Crimea being a RUSSIAN province gifted to Ukraine 50 years ago, still within the USSR) -- by retaking what was theirs in the first place. Get a life: Crimea is Russian. Sebastopol was, is, will be a RUSSIAN port.

In regard to the "emails", please idiotic journalists and editorialists at the NYT, don't go pass the concept of an inside job. The "insider is still there", dishonestly exposing the dishonest dealings of the DNC from within. There will be more to come in due course.

robbing the government...

 

Make no mistake, the Australian Government is currently being held to ransom by billionaire media moguls and the hostage is Channel Ten.

As IA's Dave Donovan has already pointed outChannel Ten is not actually insolvent.

It has borrowed only around a third of the total available from its bankers and has another six months to pay back debt. Yet its board pulled the trigger on entering voluntary administration, angering smaller shareholders and causing confusion among analysts.

The current “crisis” at Ten is entirely aimed at pressuring the Senate to pass the Turnbull Government’s media reform legislation, which includes measures to repeal the 75 per cent "reach rule" that stops metropolitan broadcasters merging with regional players; and the "2 out of 3 rule", which prevents any one proprietor owning more than two of the three services – TV, radio and print – in any one market.

Brought to you courtesy of the Murdochracy: Media reform and the Murdoch mafia's Ch 10 con @davrosz https://t.co/x5oxJ93qVC@IndependentAus

— Michelle Pini (@vmp9) June 15, 2017

Ten has been here before. It was rescued from administration in the early 1990sby a team including Malcolm Turnbull and returned to be a highly profitable business for more than 20 years.

The broadcast media sector has been pushing for these reforms for more than a decade. They were close to getting the 75 per cent rule – which the internet has rendered obsolete – repealed in March 2013. It failed because it was part of the ill-fated media reform package that Stephen Conroy tried to ram through the Parliament in the dying days of the Gillard Government and which crashed and burned spectacularly due to a relentless misinformation campaign led by News Corp.

I was an advisor to Conroy for almost five years until January 2013. I dealt with the TV networks on a wide range of policy and legislation, including the switch to digital television, equalisation of services for regional and rural Australia, anti-siphoning, local content regulation — anything in the portfolio that wasn’t related to the NBN, basically.

Mostly, my interactions with the folk from media peak bodies and individual broadcasters were productive. The switch to digital TV went so smoothly hardly anyone heard about it. We passed a lot of legislation with agreement from all parties and worked cooperatively to get some good stuff done.

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/media-moguls-...

Read above:

the power play to control your "entertainment"...

 

see toon at top...

 

mumble bumble in our western media...

How would Western media have responded if it was reported that it was 'highly likely’ that US air strikes had killed the head of ISIS?  We’d have been told, of course, how it proved that the US was the ’greatest nation on earth.' 

We'd also be reminded how grateful we should be that America - aka ‘The World’s Policeman’ - always went after - and got - ‘the bad guys.'

Then there would be those ‘We Came, We Saw, He Died'-style comments from leading US politicians. Donald Trump would be boasting about the killing for the rest of his life.

al-Baghdadi vs. Osama bin Laden - spot the difference

But Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, was reportedly killed by Russian airstrikes, not US ones, so there hasn’t been much fuss made. In fact, many leading pundits and commentators didn’t even bother to tweet the news.

It’s revealing to compare the low-key coverage of the al-Baghadi story to the great fanfare which greeted the news that Osama bin Laden had reportedly been killed by US Navy SEALs in Pakistan in 2011. Then, large crowds - waving the stars-and-stripes - gathered in Times Square and other US cities to celebrate. Former President George W. Bush hailed a "momentous achievement." NATO Secretary Rasmussen lauded a "significant success." The media was equally euphoric. 'Got Him! Vengeance at last - US nails the bastard,' was the splash on the New York Post. ‘Justice has been done - US Forces kill Bin Laden,’ announced the Washington Post. ‘Rot in Hell’! Osama bin Laden killed in secret attack by US forces,’ exclaimed the Toronto Sun.

The headlines surrounding the killing of the head of ISIS, by contrast, have been rather more muted - and skeptical. ‘Russia claims to have killed ISIS leader,’ says Newsweek. ‘Little proof to back Russian claims they killed al-Baghdadi in air-strike,’ declared the Toronto Sun. ‘White House casts doubt on Russia’s claims it killed ISIS leader,’ reported Politico in an article that - surprise, surprise - made it straight to al-Baghdadi’s Wikipedia page.

Although it's true that we still don’t have physical evidence that the ISIS head honcho was killed in a Russian airstrike, it's worth pointing out that we never actually saw physical evidence of Osama bin Laden’s death either.

But it was the US government which claimed to have killed him, so skepticism did not feature in the newspaper headlines. In fact, any doubting of the official narrative in 2011 would have seen you dismissed as a crazy conspiracy theorist. If Uncle Sam says something is true, well, we are all expected to believe it. It’s all very different though if someone else claims to have killed the ‘bad guy’- particularly if the country in question is an ‘Official Enemy‘. Russia killing the head of ISIS doesn't fit the State Department-friendly narrative. So let’s either rubbish it or ignore it.

No need to hurry Theresa - we’re on your side!

Just imagine… if Labour had been the largest party in the House of Commons following the UK election on 8th June, but was nine seats short of a majority. And that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had then spent over two weeks trying to do a deal with the Irish Republican party Sinn Fein - who traditionally don’t take their seats in Westminster - to enable him to form a government. We can be sure that the pressure from the Establishment on Corbyn to step aside and let Tory leader Theresa May try and form a government would have been unrelenting. Elite pundits would be on TV 24/7 telling us that Corbyn attempts to form ‘a coalition of chaos’ was endangering our democracy.

But it’s Theresa May who has spent over two weeks desperately trying to get an agreement with a Northern Irish political party (the DUP), and there’s been no great pressure on her to ‘get a move on.’ It’s more a case of ’Take your time Theresa, whenever you’re ready.’  The Establishment is not always this indulgent of Prime Ministers trying to hang on to power following a loss of seats in a General Election. When Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown lost his majority in the 2010 general election he was told in no uncertain terms that he had to step down with immediate effect ‘for the good of the country.'

"In the space of five tumultuous days, Britain has gone from democracy as we know it to the brink of dictatorship,"declared an editorial in the Sun newspaper as the ‘squatter’ Gordon Brown hung on. Other commentators accused Brown of trying to carry out a ‘coup’.

While it’s true that Brown polled a significantly lower share of the vote to May (29 percent to 42.3 percent) they were both Prime Ministers who lost their majority, but who still, post-election, had the possibility of staying on if they were able to pull off deals with other parties. But their treatment was very different. As Corbyn’s would have been - and indeed will be - if he finds himself in the same position as May next time.

'Target states bring terrorism upon themselves'

Just imagine... if there had been deadly ISIS attacks on Capitol Hill and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, killing 13, and the Iranian President had issued a statement in response that declared, "we underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote... "

Elite newspapers would, I’m sure, be full of 'outraged' opeds saying that the comments showed the 'moral depravity of the Iranian regime.' Yet President Trump published those comments following ISIS attacks on the Tehran parliament and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini and no one in the mainstream seemed particularly outraged - not even professional Trump-bashers.

What made his comments even more shocking is that Iran has been fighting ISIS terrorism in Syria. But of course we can’t really big that up, can we, as it goes against the neocon narrative of Iran being "the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism."

‘Target states’ like Iran can never be the innocent, undeserving victims of terrorist attacks, even when they clearly are. It’s also worth remembering that when the US was hit by the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the Iranian leadership strongly condemned the act of terrorism and candlelight vigils for the victims were held throughout the country. There was no talk of the US falling victim to an 'evil' which they had 'promoted.’ 

US shooting down YOUR planes inside YOUR own country is self-defense!

Just imagine… if the Syrian government and its allies had spent the past six years funding, backing and training anti-government radical Islamist 'rebels' in the US. Then the Syrian Air Force had started bombing the US and unilaterally declared its own 'De-Confliction Zones’ on American territory to protect its ‘assets’ on the ground. After this, a US fighter jet that was attacking what the US government called 'terrorists' in Texas was shot down by the Syrian forces. Would the action be called 'self-defense'?

 And if the US- and its allies- then said they would treat Syrian jets bombing the US as potential targets- would they be cast as the aggressors? I think not. But if we reverse the two countries around this is exactly what the US has been doing in Syria. They’re illegally bombing a sovereign state-but then say they’re acting in ’self-defense’ when that country’s military takes action  over its own territory.  The imperial arrogance is off the scale, but we’re meant not to notice.

Don’t mention who’s arming the war! (if the ‘good guys’ are responsible) 

Just imagine… if ‘the world’s worst cholera outbreak’ had broken out in a country which a close Russian ally had been bombing back to the Stone Age for over two years? And that the close Russian ally had been armed, trained and given logistical support by Russia. Don’t you think the Kremlin involvement would have been mentioned in this report here?

If you rely on @BBCNews for #Yemen coverage, you will never learn of the West's role in that country's nightmare. https://t.co/BFSw7G1tWEpic.twitter.com/50JXypUjtX

— Media Lens (@medialens) June 25, 2017

But Yemen has, since 2015, been under assault from a Saudi-led coalition, which has been been given every kind of assistance by the UK and US.

And because ‘we’ in the west are always ‘the good guys’ our responsibility for the human catastrophe in Yemen can’t be mentioned, in the same way as the UK/US role in transforming Libya into a terrorist-ridden failed state is also taboo. 

Strange silence of the anti-censorship brigade

Just imagine… if Russia, or Iran, gave the tiny country of Qatar a 10-day ultimatum to agree to 13 demands, which included taking the international broadcaster Al Jazeera off air and Qatar changing its foreign policy. That’s after Russia or Iran had imposed and got others to agree to a diplomatic and trading embargo on Qatar.

Popular Media pretty quiet as the west's best friend demands closure of @AlJazeera. Imagine the outrage if Russia pulled a similar stunt? https://t.co/BLZTlDOuhg

— Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) June 23, 2017

We can be sure that this obnoxious, bullying behavior would have made headlines around the world, and led to widespread condemnation as well as calls for military action against Moscow or Tehran.

But it's that very close Western ally Saudi Arabia giving the ultimatum to Qatar, so there's silence. Let's keep shtum about the ’threats to media freedom,’ and carry on tweeting our attacks on RT, shall we? 

Follow Neil Clark on Twitter @NeilClark66

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/394023-us-russia-baghdadi-terrorism/

russia, russia, russia...

Russia, Russia, Russia is a fixation for all the networks, with a new study by the Media Research Center showing 55 percent of Trump coverage on nightly broadcasts was related to the Russia investigation.

That adds up to 353 minutes of airtime since May 17, compared to 47 minutes on Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate pact, 29 minutes on the fight against terrorism and 17 minutes on the efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare, according to the Daily Caller’s summary of the study. It said tax reform got a mere 47 seconds of coverage.

Too much coverage is far from the only problem with Russia reporting. Writing for The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald shows how reckless CNN, the Washington Post and others have been, and makes two key points.

First, that mistakes are “always in the direction of exaggerating the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between” Russia and Trump. Second, that all the false stories “involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous sources that these media outlets uncritically treated as fact.”

He’s right, and I would add another dimension: For all the focus on Russia, the media totally missed a key point. To wit, that the Obama administration did nothing about Vladimir Putin’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election even though the White House knew about it for months.

read more:

http://nypost.com/2017/06/27/the-media-will-do-anything-to-bash-trump-an...

 

Russia, Russia, Russia and Trump is also the centrepiece of comics, funny men an women who compete for the most disgusting jokes ever made about a President... 

flushing the sewer with radiowaves...

Attention senators, representatives and any fun-loving radio listeners in Washington, DC: Radio Sputnik is now available at 105.5 FM 24/7 and you don’t want to miss a second of its broadcast.

Sputnik News spoke to several members of its radio team to get their perspectives on the new radio station and what it means for the political conversation in DC. Eugene Puryear, whose show By Any Means Necessary draws from a Malcolm X quote about how to achieve black liberation, said that his show is one "that I think really tries to capture a lot of the energy for the movement for black lives, or the climate justice movement, that are moving young progressive people but are also trying to tie that framework into how we look at current events."

Puryear said that he relished the chance to give less amplified voices a platform to be heard. "Really, that is one of the things I'm most excited about is to be able to tell the stories that everyone is talking about, but from the point of view of people that you rarely hear… and also to follow up on stuff. You hear about a police shooting – what's going on six months later, who's doing what, how are different things happening?"

Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan host Fault Lines, so named because of the sharply different political views of its two hosts. "I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to be a part of the political conversation in DC," said Nixon, a veteran progressive media presence and ACLU board member, about his show. "The dynamics of our show, a populist conservative and a populist progressive in conversation and debate, creates a cross-partisan conversation that is sorely needed. 

"Fault Lines with Nixon and Stranahan is a funny, raucous and occasionally heated adventure and I have no doubt it will give our DC drivetime listeners a fun ride."

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201707011055133777-radio-sputnik-fm-station-b...