Saturday 20th of April 2024
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propaganda...

CNNBBCCNNBBC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We do our best to try and write something of value here. So it is always distressing when we know about the motives of other journalists is confirmed – over and over again.

It’s finally happened – they’ve got footage of a CNN writer in a bar admitting to writing propaganda, aka “fake news”. As if we did not already know. The difference is catching a CNN writer admitting it on camera.

CNN, as in the CNN effect, is not what it represents—and likely never has been.

“But what’s been exposed at the Cable News Network [CNN] is even worse. An undercover reporter from Project Veritas has captured video footage of CNN directors boasting of manipulating the news to change the world.”  

The same is true of most of what we describe as the media, and there is no sign of things improving for the better. One thing that the age of COVID has brought to the forefront is that there are no limits to censorship.

Nonetheless, there are still too many regular mainstream people who will continue to believe propaganda, and pass off warnings as conspiracy theories. You have to catch a writer admitting it before they recognise it as fact instead of theory.

Sooner or later people will wake up; however, by then it will be too late to do anything about it. Many are indeed awake, but unwilling to open their eyes to see in plain sight what is going on.

It is like Mark Twain said, as is so often quoted:

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.”

It takes another country to report reality about another country. I am starting to listen to Fox News, as much as I hate their methods. If you want to know Boris Johnson is up to in the UK, the French press is the best bet – and Johnson is no more interesting to the French than other British Prime Ministers, who you could once read meaningful things about in British newspapers.

This begs the question, “what news source in the US is trustworthy?” I know plenty of Fox News haters. They have reason, but if you can only work out what’s going on by comparing untruths and trying to split the difference, who else would you put into the equation?

They say Sky News is related to Fox, the source of the above mentioned news report about the CNN reporter. Therefore it is a Rupert Murdoch news story.

This is the man who blatantly lied for years to generate Brexit, when he isn’t even British. But for a long time his main opposition was Robert Maxwell, one of the most notorious crooks to ever own a paper. Yet even with those two dictating the news agenda, there was more content integrity than now.

I’m not sure it’s possible for trustworthy news to exist in the US if their programming is dictated by advertisers. Plus, the outlets are usually either biased extremely to the left or right.

So one has few options but to watch all sides, taking the opposite position to them, and trying to form an opinion somewhere between. But this assumes you have options before you. This is increasingly less so, now Youtube and social media, Facebook, etc, are also acting as the modern day BIG Brother, seeking to silence opposing voices, however much they adamantly deny it.

Closing Ranks

It is easy to fall into closing ranks with efforts to censor Alex Jones and his team of Infowars warriors, who are more interested in selling overpriced health pills than getting across the message they claim to be standing up for.

Naturally these victims declare this is media censorship, and what can we say – it is! We must tolerate the extremes, because tomorrow they may be mainstream, and then we won’t be able to avoid adopting them.

In 1983, Hustler magazine ran a liquor advertisement parody suggesting that the outspoken TV preacher Jerry Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. This outraged many, but (at least under the US Constitution) it was legitimate free speech. If we don’t like it, give us the chance to do so before it becomes the only story we hear, and the any opinion anyone will listen to.

However, it is media outlets themselves which are enthusiastically curtailing their own rights. They are slaves to the concept of pretending moral superiority by outlawing views which are no longer politically acceptable to government and the titans of society.

This media flagship recently claimed that “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others shouldn’t liken contemporary events to the Holocaust, speaking about mask mandates and vaccine policy, because such comparisons cheapen the horrific magnitude of the genocide of 6 million Jews”. Naturally CNN buttressed its frontal attacks on free speech with the disclaimer that its view is based on what “historians and advocacy groups’ say.

But it is clear from the language used that this is CNN’s own opinion, it is not merely reporting the views of others.

In 2004 English soccer manager Ron Atkinson was forced to resign as a TV pundit for making a racist remark when he thought his microphone was off. In a comment never intended for public broadcast, he stated that Chelsea player Marcel Desailly, whose mistake had cost his team a goal, was “what is known in some quarters as a fucking lazy thick nigger”.

Atkinson did not say it was HIS opinion, but that some others would say such things, a statement which black activists would undoubtedly agree with. But he wasn’t allowed to hide his remarks behind what others say – even though he held the record for picking the most black players in a starting XI whilst Aston Villa manager, and remains rightly proud of that.

I often make comparisons with the Nazis, to drive home a point, even to compare the methods of the MSM, as represented by CNN as its symbol, to the propaganda of Joseph Goebbels—and how he would be impressed by how they have refined his methods in the very country that fought against them. This explains a great deal of why CNN does not like anyone talking about the Nazis.

There is much we should have taken to heart from the court case of Jerry Farwell vs. Larry Flint, which resulted in a book “The First Amendment on Trial”. Over the top views must be tolerated in order for there to be free speech for the rest of us.

As Alex Jones and team try to defend themselves, Apple, Spotify, Facebook and Google/Youtube have all purged Infowars/Alex Jones, and those with differing views on COVID and efficiency of vaccines. Many would agree however that their crime is not spreading disinformation, even if they are, but sharing views that are not keeping with conventional wisdom, as proffered by government and corporate interests.

Yes, some views and programs are over-the-top. But the greater debate is how far will the providers of information go in protecting us — the “naïve and stupid” unwashed masses consumers of information?

No Limits!

If such flagship media outlets as the NYT and the Washington Post are no longer trusted sources in the eyes of much of society, it does create a vacuum in which the worst and loudest interests, which are usually the same thing, come to the fore. Just as politicians who try and address problems are swept away by those promising easy but impossible solutions, so do media outlets get swept aside by those who give people what they want to hear by creating that demand in the first place.

If you get tired of hearing about the EU doing things you don’t like, and never hear about it doing anything you do like, you want it to go away. If you hear about nothing but bogus asylum seekers, not the same immigration whilst built the US and Australia, you want to end immigration to remove this negative image from your news, whilst running to your foreign doctors and nurses for treatment in your foreign car whilst eating your foreign food.

Unfortunately commercial interests and political agendas dictate too much of what we are proffered as truth these days, and even the deciders of which war is worth fighting. Let us not forget how the media, politicians and military all worked in tandem to give us the wars of the last 20 years, or better said, the régime changes and illegal occupations of faraway lands.

Go back to the MSM over Iraq and Afghanistan, and more recent targets such as Iran and Syria. Much of what they claim is anything but truth, as the Chilcot Enquiry into the Iraq war found. But if you repeat the same thing often enough, ad no other voice is heard, those who disagree think no one will ever listen, and give up without bothering to investigate other questions which concern them.

All this is the work of BIG Brother, rewriting history, and is not to be forgotten. It is most definitely not designed to protect people, only to safeguard special interests. Democracy implies the views of the people are sovereign, so the more you control these views, the more sovereignty you gain for yourself.

Much of what is happening before our eyes is known by most of us, at least those who notice that things are not what they once were, and the world is being divided into two camps. One just needs to look to open sources – people speaking from their experience, other friends’ experience, articles they have read and what other friends have referenced.

The world is reverting to Fahrenheit 451 – and I wonder if people, in not so many years, will naively be asking if Google and other social media were once in the business of openly sharing diverse views, controversial opinions—as were firemen once in the business of putting out fire, not starting them. This question compares to the famous line in Fahrenheit 451, “is it true that a long time ago firemen put out fires and not burned books?” Oh what a strange idea!

But still the censorship continues, and more and more are finding it a “strange idea” to even consider that anything is wrong with that. The First Amendment is going the way of the Bill of Rights and other protective rights guaranteed to Americans.

It is ironic that some of the various media platforms that have reported on censorship: “Internet censorship on the up, report says” are the very ones who are most involved in censoring and manipulating the news. But these reports are selective, and point to what is also happening in China, Russia, or Pakistan, as such things just are not part of the Western experience.

According to Freedom House, China has the world’s largest population of Internet users, yet the authorities operate the most sophisticated system of censorship.

Finally, in the bigger picture of things, laws and self-righteous censorship protect only special interests. As for censorship, the worse censorship of all is self-censorship, when we are fearful to share our opinions or like or dislike the opinions of others.

Enjoy freedom of speech while you still have it, and the access it gives you to alternative views and sources of information, as such unlimited access will not last long. Soon they will be back to burning books, if not people.

 

 

Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

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another media tale exposed...

 

BY GLENN GREENWALD

 

Yet Another Media Tale -- Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters For a Church Photo Op -- CollapsesThat the White House violently cleared Lafayette Park at Trump's behest was treated as unquestioned truth by most corporate media. Today it was revealed as a falsehood.

 

For more than a year, it has been consecrated media fact that former President Donald Trump and his White House, on June 1 of last year, directed the U.S. Park Police to use tear gas against peaceful Lafayette Park protesters, all to enable a Trump photo-op in front of St. John's Church. That this happened was never presented as a possibility or likelihood but as indisputable truth. And it provoked weeks of unmitigated media outrage, presented as one of the most egregious assaults on the democratic order in decades.

This tale was so pervasive in the media landscape that it would be impossible for any one article to compile all the examples. “Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op,” read the NPR headline on June 1. The New York Times ran with: “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church.” CNN devoted multiple segments to venting indignation while the on-screen graphic declared: “Peaceful Protesters Near White House Tear-Gassed, Shot With Rubber Bullets So Trump Can Have Church Photo Op.” 

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos “reported” that “the administration asked police to clear peaceful protesters from the park across the White House so that the President could stage a photo op.” The Intercept published an article stating that “federal police used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear protesters from Lafayette Square in front of the White House,” all to feature a video where the first interviewee said: “to me, the way our military and police have behaved toward the protesters at the instruction of President Trump has almost been Nazi-like.”Nazi-like. This was repeated by virtually every major corporate outlet:

 

(see outlet)

 

At a June 2 Press Conference, then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) proclaimed with anger: “last night I watched as President Trump, having gassed peaceful protesters just so he could do this photo op, then he went on to teargas priests who were helping protesters in Lafayette Park.” Speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exclaimed: “What is this, a banana republic?,” when asked about NBC News’ report that “security forces used tear gas and flash-bangs against a crowd of peaceful demonstrators to clear the area for the president.”

 

There were some denials of this narrative at the time, largely confined to right-wing media. ABC News mocked “hosts on Fox News, one of the president's preferred news media outlets, [who] have spent the days since the controversial photo op shifting defenses to fit the president's narrative.” Meanwhile, The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway — in an article retweeted by Trump as a "must read” — cited sources to assert that the entire media narrative was false because force was to clear the Park not to enable Trump's photo op but rather “because [protesters] had climbed on top of a structure in Lafayette Park that had been burned the prior night” and the Park Police decided to build a barrier to protect it.

But as usual, the self-proclaimed Superior Liberal Truth Squad instantly declared them to be lying. The Washington Post's "fact-checker,” Phillip Bump, mocked denials from Trump supporters and right-wing reporters such as Hemingway, proclaiming that a recent statement from the Park Police “brings the debate to a close,” as it proves “the deployment of security forces using weapons and irritants to clear a peaceful protest so that the president could have a photo op.”

 

All of this came crashing down on their heads on Wednesday afternoon. The independent Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mark Lee Greenblatt, issued his office's findingsafter a long investigation into “the actions of the U.S. Park Police (USPP) to disperse protesters in and around Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020.” Greenblatt has been around Washington for a long time, occupying numerous key positions in the Obama administration, including investigative counsel at the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General and Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at Obama's Commerce Department.

The letter released by Greenblatt's office accompanying the report makes clear how far-reaching the investigation was:

 

"Over the course of this review, our career investigative staff conducted extensive witness interviews, reviewed video footage from numerous vantage points, listened to radio transmissions from multiple law enforcement entities, and examined evidence including emails, text messages, telephone records, procurement documents, and other related materials. This report presents a thorough, independent examination of that evidence to assess the USPP’s decision making and operations, including a detailed timeline of relevant actions and an analysis of whether the USPP’s actions complied with governing policies."

 

The IG's conclusion could not be clearer: the media narrative was false from start to finish. Namely, he said, “the evidence did not support a finding that the [U.S. Park Police] cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.” Instead — exactly as Hemingway's widely-mocked-by-liberal-outlets article reported — “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and May 31.” Crucially, “ the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day."

 

Read more:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/yet-another-media-tale-trump-tear

 

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playing with gunpowder...

 

In its vassal state allegiance to Washington, London has increasingly tried to show a “war grin” to Russia and China in the hope of showing its “remnants of imperial grandeur.”

Nostalgic for Churchill’s unrealized post-World War II Operation Unthinkable, a massive land, air, and naval offensive against the Soviet Union after the Red Army took Berlin, Britain’s current military and political elite have recently been actively working on a similar “crushing blow to Russia” plan. And while London doesn’t reveal the archives on the details of the preparations for Operation Unthinkable, nor on the true purpose of the arrival of Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess in the United Kingdom back in May 1941, London clearly tries to avoid responsibility for the German attack on the USSR and for planning subsequent aggression against Moscow, its current public rhetoric can hardly disguise the true face of Britain.

To cover up and camouflage his openly hostile intentions towards Moscow, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab presented a “list of violations” to NATO allies on June 2, allegedly stating bad behavior in Russia by claiming an increase in Moscow’s military presence in western Russia. Raab is deliberately silent to the fact that this “increase in Russia’s military presence on its Western frontiers” is, first of all, taking place on Russia’s own territory, where it has every right to do whatever it needs to do to protect its security, and certainly without asking for permission from London to do so. And secondly, that it is not Moscow that has directly approached the borders of Western Europe over the last thirty years, but NATO, which is building up and constantly demonstrating an external military threat to Russia, contrary to earlier agreements between NATO and Moscow, reached in the 1990s.

London has not even begun to hide its military threats to Russia from the public for a long time. And this, in particular, is directly declared in the report by Daily Express about directing The Commander Littoral Response Group consisting of more than a thousand sailors, marines, and the HMS Albion amphibious transport dock by the Royal British Navy in the Baltic Sea “to counteract Russia”! Under similar “intimidating to Moscow” headlines The Times also reported on the direction to the Black Sea of the strike group led by Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier.

True, it would be much better for London to refrain from sending British warships to the Black Sea, saving money. If only to raise the wages of British health workers and thereby prevent a wave of voluntary resignations. After all, these are the kinds of payments that NHS executives in Britain are calling for, as the Independent writes, in a wave of exhaustion for most British doctors and nurses by unpaid overwork.

In addition, according to a Daily Express poll, 73% of respondents opposed London’s actions against Russia. Most Britons remember that previous military interventions cost the country many lives and money. As for the readers of the British Daily Mail, they openly laugh at the dispatch of the Royal Navy warship HMS Trent to the Black Sea to “ensure security and stability”: “Let him better protect us from the flow of migrants from France. And guard our herring!“, “And that’s all the Royal Navy found alive?” they write.

There is also no “frightening effect for Moscow” in such a call by British ships in the waters bordering Russia. This might be repeated by the publicly shameful expulsion by Russia’s navy and air force of the British destroyer D35 Dragon from Russian territorial waters near Crimea in October 2020, which was recently announced by Vladimir Kulishov, First Deputy Director of the FSB security service and Director of the Border Service.

And the withdrawal of the present British fleet to the outer waters is perceived in the world today only with a sarcastic smile. Suffice it to say that, in the two years since being commissioned, the newest Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, sank twice in 2020 (after flooding the crew area in May and getting water in the engine room in October), spent only 87 days at sea, as The Daily Telegraph wrote.

Another UK aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, which was about to embark on a 28-week cruise, suddenly returned to her homeport in May “due to expected bad weather conditions,” according to the Press Association. In these circumstances, no one can guarantee today whether this “British strike force” will be able to pass painlessly and without losses at least part of the route of the 26,000 nautical miles planned by London: from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, from the Gulf of Aden to the Arabian Sea and from the Indian Ocean to the Philippine Sea. Besides, the world learned about another fiasco from the message of the UK Defence Journal on June 2 this year about the loss of one of its F-35 fighters on board the British aircraft carrier.

But it is not only the “intimidating grin of the kingdom’s naval forces” being openly laughed at in Britain today. UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace allegedly stated that almost a hundred and fifty upgraded Challenger 3 tanks “will outgun Russian tanks.” However, not all Britons share Ben Wallace’s optimistic attitude and the high-profile statements of the press. Many readers openly doubted that the Challenger 3 tank would succeed and that Britain’s army armed with such tanks would defeat Russia. Besides, on June 2, The Daily Telegraph, citing a government report that came into its possession, reported that the tanks, purchased for the needs of the British Army for £ 3.5 billion ($ 5 billion), could not move faster than 20 miles (32 km) per hour without risking the safety of the crew.

The British public is also critical of another expected “novelty” of the British Army – the testing by the British Marines in cooperation with Gravity Industries of a jetpack, which allegedly can be used to board enemy ships using a flying “miracle.” However, even the author of the article in New Atlas doubts the effectiveness of using means for such purposes.

What external experts do not doubt, however, is the “fighting spirit” of British soldiers on the female front. This, in particular, was confirmed during the latest NATO exercises, when on May 18 in the Estonian town of Tapa, a fight between the British military and local residents over a woman occurred, colorfully reflected in the Estonian media.

Also, no one doubts now that Britain has “close business ties” with the leaders of terrorists in Syria, establishing direct contacts with international terrorist groups operating in Syria, as reported by a diplomatic source in Moscow.

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the British reacted sarcastically to UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s recent statement that Russia “is threat number one” and how London would use its naval power. Thus, the readers of Daily Mail do not believe him for many reasons. Some are ironic. Others are much harsher: “Instead of the rabble that comes from France, I’d rather have the Russians!” And some people about Russia’s “threat number one” say bluntly: I’m more scared of those who run our country!

But it is not only the Britons themselves who openly condemn the attempts of the kingdom’s current military and political elite to show Russia and China a “battle grin.” Two authors close to the European Union, from the European Council on Foreign Policy,  in the American magazine Foreign Affairsrecommend that Boris Johnson, fascinated by the London-Washington alliance, not to follow all of US policy. In particular, they directly ask the British Prime Minister a question: Why would Britain send its Navy to the Taiwan Strait because of the conflict between the US and China? After all, Britain has long had no colonies there, and now is the time to think about patching up the budget and other holes left in the kingdom after Brexit…

 

 Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

Read more:

https://journal-neo.org/2021/06/12/who-is-britain-s-war-grin-aimed-at/

 

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