Tag Archives: MSM

US Seeks to Become World Political Schemers

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By Valery Kulikov

Source: New Eastern Outlook

On an practically daily basis, representatives of the present political élite of Washington and US media voice accusations of Russia, China and some other countries which allegedly try “to interfere” with the internal affairs of the US. At the same time, Washington does not mention that the budget-financed US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been officially operating for 35 years already, as well as other organisations of the kind, whose objective is to influence the policy of other countries. One of the NED founders, Allen Weinstein, said: “Much of what we are doing today used to be done in secret by the CIA 25 years ago.”

Over the recent decades, against the backdrop of the comprehensive propaganda campaign conducted by Washington within the country and abroad about the alleged “advantages of the American democracy,” the American élites adopted the idea of a certain special role of the US, a sort of American Messianism, of its right to interfere in any matters and countries worldwide with impunity.

According to the research of the American Carnegie Mellon University, from the end of World War II to 2000, the US interfered with elections in 45 countries of the world at least 80 times, which does not include the organisation of military coups and color revolutions.

The American website AlterNet, found at least 80 cases of local and regional conflicts (since 1953) in which Washington participated. AlterNet also notes that, historically, about a half of all revolutions organized with the US failed, and success was never a sure-fire thing.

In the modern history, the majority of instances of US intervention in the politics of other states fell on the Cold War period. Back then, Washington actively sought to strengthen its geopolitical positions on the international scene, regularly trying to secure a pro-American government in this or that country. Since, in the wake of World War II, the list of European players was generally finalized, the states of Asia, Africa and South America became the usual arena of the US activities.

At the same time, the political activities of the US Administration often closely intertwined with the US economic interests, a desire to receive control over transport corridors, natural minerals, first of all oil and gas. Washington always sought to disguise its true purposes by the propaganda trends relevant at the time, like prevention of “a spread of communist ideas in Asia and Latin America,” or “Islamic radicalization of the Middle Eastern states.”

The containment mechanisms of the UN or international condemnation did not always prove an effective barrier to the attempts of the White House to change the political map of the world. And a considerable number of the countries, in pursuit of “the American benefits” in the form of military, economic or other aid, very quickly oriented their political course following the US lead, becoming de facto silent puppets in the expansionist world game of the US.

The actions of Washington are not only tolerated by certain European countries, but also the European Union as a whole, whose political leadership lost independence from the actions of Washington a long time ago. “The agreements and doctrines which are the cornerstone of the EU and the NATO, oblige Europeans to participate in all military enterprises of the US,” the Austrian Contra Magazin reports.

Showing utter defiance to the independent policy of other states, representatives of the current US political élite of the USA actively seek to interfere with the internal affairs of many countries of the world.

In response to Donald Trump’s tweets about the anti-government protests in France in December 2018, the French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian was forced to officially urge the US President not to interfere with the domestic policy of France.

It is known that the former president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko resorted to the help of the US lobbyist organisations more than once, trying to get the favor of Washington. Now it turned out that his successor Volodymyr Zelensky used this experience as well. It became known after the US lobbyist company Signal Group Consulting LLC published a report on the work in favor of the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, which was revealed by the Ukrainian office of Voice of America, referring to a number of documents.

On a practically regular basis, international media publishes statements about the instances of open intervention, which is unseemly for US Ambassadors, in the affairs of other sovereign states.

Thus, in November 2018, Poland saw a political demarche of the US Ambassador in Warsaw Georgette Mosbacher for her criticism of the freedom of media after she sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki in which she explained what is and what is not appropriate for the ministers of the Polish government to say to the Polish TV channel TVN.

In February, the US Ambassador to Moldova Dereck J. Hogan actively participated in the internal political process in the country, which clearly showed attempts to interfere with the pre-election situation in this country.

In June, the representative of the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC), archpriest David Isakadze accused the acting US Ambassador to Georgia Elizabeth Rood of attempts to aggravate the situation in Georgia.

Everybody knows about the scandalous activities of the US Ambassador in Berlin Richard Grenell who, as of January this year, began to send threats to the representatives of the German business community because of their actions in cooperation with Russia. In March, he criticized the policy of the German Ministry of Finance. And, on August 1, in his speech, he dared criticize the government of the Chancellor Angela Merkel for their unwillingness to join the naval mission in the Strait of Hormuz. Such behavior, inadmissible for a diplomatic representative and concerning the state institutions and the policy of Germany as though it were not the leading European state, but a vassal territory of the US, was met with indignation in the German political business community. It also forced the Vice Chairman of the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) Wolfgang Kubicki to urge the Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to banish the US Ambassador R. Grenell from the country.

The former US Ambassador in Moscow Michael McFaul admitted in the memoirs that the US had wanted a change of the power in Moscow and tried to depose Vladimir Putin. According to Der Spiegel, Americans trained activists of the liberal opposition and paid millions to the civil organisations which, in McFaul’s own words, could not be politically neutral.

Today, Washington continues to use the same methods seeking to influence the domestic policy of Russia by publishing on the Twitter webpage of the US Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs on August 2 detailed information on the places, meeting time and route of an unauthorized rally in Moscow. The head of the Russian MFA Department for Information Issues Ilya Timokhov directly specified the other day that such call relaying was the most relevant and scandalous example of the US Department of State’s intervention in the internal affairs of Russia: “… it is nothing other than propaganda of the rally organizers since it keeps the Russian language text with an appeal to rally.”

Here, only a small number of examples of outright intervention of the US authorities and institutions in the internal affairs of Russia and other states were given. Certainly, one could give a great many examples of the sort, as well as the informal tools used by Washington in order to influence other states in a way that would be favorable for the US by imposing American style democracy on other countries. In particular, such tools include not only the US intelligence agencies, which are aimed specifically at these objectives, but also numerous western non-profit organisations and religious sects. You will learn more about those in the future materials of the NEO.

The Incredible Belief That Corporate Ownership Does Not Influence Media Content

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By Alison Rose Levy

Source: FAIR.org

As Sen. Bernie Sanders (CJR, 8/26/19) has recently noted, corporate ownership of media interferes with the core societal function of the press: reporting and investigating key issues at the intersection of public need and governance. And nowhere is that more critical than when it comes to climate. Due to their corporate conflicts of interest, trusted news authorities have diverted us from our primary responsibility—assuring a viable habitat for our children and grandchildren.

As a journalist who has worked both inside and outside of establishment media, I see influence as embedded in a corporate media culture rather than in isolated cases of CEO dictates. It happens in little ways, such as how an interviewer frames a question, and in big ways, like the decision to exclude a topic, a person or a group of people from the airwaves.

Like most US companies, news organizations are hierarchies, which people who have worked in corporate offices can readily understand. Given that “90% of the United States’ media is controlled by five media conglomerates,” the top executive at many news outfits is likely the CEO of a multinational corporation. The word comes down from the business execs to the company’s division chiefs, as seen in countless movies (like the 1976 classic Network). This was how it was when I worked on primetime national news at CBS in the 1990s.

On the inside, it wasn’t easy to see organizational bias, when job security and team work required overlooking it. The response to the heavily promoted primetime news pairing of two well-known anchors exemplified how news personnel learn to toe the line. The two anchors had zero chemistry, but no one mentioned it, as if an unwritten code had been instantly internalized. This dragged on for two years, pulling down the network’s ratings.

Higher-ups would never offer editorial staff direct input on content. That’s what the executive and middle management were for. Would these managers confide to their staff that the big guns gave them a certain direction? No. Whatever it was, they would present it as their own, and it would be adopted.

Within this culture, controlling the content goes on in whispers, frowns, headshakes and decisions made behind closed doors. If anyone strays into a verboten zone, as I did when I proposed a feature about Native Americans, those in the know privately communicate the ethos that is expected and allowed. “We never put American Indians on air because they talk too slow,” a producer explained.

Despite such experiences, when I left CBS, I respected the many producers with whom I’d worked, many of whom are still employed at the various networks. That work experience honed editorial judgment in ways impossible to measure, for which I am infinitely grateful. It also showed me that organizational agendas and values can trump claims to objectivity.

Reporting from Independent Media

Yet over a decade later, working in progressive online media, I was still astonished that several major stories I covered, were anywhere from underplayed to entirely absent from establishment news.

When I began to cover fracking in New York state in 2009, at first both 60 Minutes (11/14/10) and the New York Times (11/27/09, 10/29/11) covered it as a Hatfield/McCoy feud between upstate rural neighbors, rather than as an invasive industrial activity with a host of health and environmental repercussions.

During the critical years of the major fracking buildout from 2005 to 2016, the  New York Times gave a prominent environmental platform to self-declared “climate champion” Andrew Revkin, whose reporting FAIR (Extra!, 2/10) called “a source of some comfort—and crowing—for the climate change denial crowd.” His pro-industry stance on fracking and naysaying on methane impacts condoned an industrial expansion that has produced far-reaching environmental damage.

The Times’ Ian Urbina (6/25/11)  did invaluable reporting on fracking’s faulty economic model. But in 2013, the paper of record closed its environmental desk, even as   Inside Climate News (1/11/13) was reporting that “worldwide coverage of climate change continued a three-year slide.”

MSNBC show hosts like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes rarely covered fracking, instead letting gas and oil industry ads reassert claims of safety. Nonprofit environmental groups, leading activists, along with a growing body of independent journalists filled the media void, including my own reporting at Huffington Post, AlterNet and EcoWatch.

The TTP

In 2014, I began to report on the Transpacific Partnership (TTP) and other concurrent global trade agreements, which are often characterized as core to President Barack Obama’s “legacy” (e.g., New York Times, 6/14/15; Washington Post, 6/24/15). The agreement’s full provisions were never revealed to the public prior to the June 2015 vote granting absolute trade authority to Obama—authority that would have passed to Trump if the agreement had been ratified in late 2016, as Obama hoped.

In conducting multiple interviews with trade analysts, as well as following the protests in Europe and the resulting leaks of the contents, I learned from  trade analyst William Waren (Connect the Dots,  1/28/15) that even prior to the TPP’s  passage and ratification, plans were underway for the buildout of  fracking, gas and oil, and coal trade and global export freed by its anticipated passage.

Nothing within the unenforceable Paris Agreement would have prevented it. In fact, the Paris Agreement provisions were nonbinding, while the trade agreements that were being secretly negotiated concurrently, including the Trade in Services Agreement(TiSA), were designed to be binding, to “effectively trump whatever commitment is made in Paris,” Waren revealed on Connect the Dots (12/9/15).

Further, the TPP’s planned instatement of an international corporate tribunal with international legal authority over all nations would have mortally injured global democracies. In 2016, Mark Ruffalo summed up what was at stake in the fight: Expanding the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in NAFTA via TPP

would block worldwide environmental and social progress while empowering corporations to undermine existing climate and environmental policies.

As we witness the Trump administration’s deconstruction of US environmental regulatory infrastructure—appointment by appointment, policy by policy—let’s appreciate that in defeating TPP and associated trade deals (thanks to the work of grassroots organizers and independent media), Americans dodged a bullet.

If the US had passed the TPP as planned during the 2016 lame duck session of Congress, both the US and all co-signers (a total of 12 countries) would have been contractually bound to a wholesale takedown of environmental regulations and economic barriers to fossil fuel development—as well as the loss of any right to challenge corporate rule or prevent health and environmental impacts. The climate impacts of the intended gas and oil buildout would likely have been devastating and decisive.

Nevertheless, the forward drive to pass the TPP occurred in a near void of corporate coverage. What had been negotiated behind closed doors with multinational corporations remained their business secrets. Prior to its authorization in June 2015, no mainstream outlet thoroughly investigated and disclosed the TPP’s provisions. Obama’s most memorable pro-TPP television appearance was singing about it with Jimmy Fallon.  FAIR (6/11/16) called the enthused Vox coverage (6/10/16) of Obama’s performance

a borderline parody of everything wrong with corporate-owned “new media”: What we have here is a Comcast-funded website plugging a Comcast-owned TV show to promote a trade deal aggressively lobbied for by Comcast.

Both the New York Times and its liberal economist columnist, Paul Krugman, covered the TPP infrequently. Krugman (10/6/15) professed he was a “lukewarm opponent” of it, and minimized its importance. “We’re not talking about a world-shaking deal here,” he wrote (3/11/15) three months before the Senate granted Obama the authority to sign the final agreement without further consultation or deliberation.

Prior to the vote, a college friend of the MSNBC host Chris Hayes assured me that Hayes, a former environmental reporter for The Nation, would be deeply concerned about these trade deals. I was dubious, but she was insistent. With the contact she provided, I sent all of my TPP research and sources on to Hayes. I received no response.

Rather than cover the TPP, MSNBC went on to fire Ed Schultz, the sole show host who covered trade agreements. (Sadly, the 64-year-old Schultz died in 2018.) In surveying TPP coverage, Media Matters(2/4/15) found that Schultz was the exception in a near-total blackout by all three major networks. Week after week, Hayes and other MSNBC hosts devoted airtime to meticulously dissecting far more minor concerns.

As in any large organization, the firing and hiring of staff speaks volumes to surviving staff members about the owners’ priorities. The unseen casualties among reporters of integrity, and the disservice to journalism, cannot be overestimated. Those working in corporate media get the message without anyone having to tell them, and highly paid show hosts have the most to lose.

The press’ mission is to inform the citizenry and flag abuses to power, not promote special interests. When citizens blind themselves to a news organization’s corporate entanglements, and trust the outlet to be truthful anyway, it is, to put it mildly, extraordinarily naïve.

It’s not about whether or not the public has access to a private conversation or confidential memo sent to editorial with a corporate dictate. The evidence is what’s given airtime and what isn’t over many years.

Was it just happenstance that MSNBC, for example, failed to cover the TPP after firing Ed Schultz? Comcast, the owner of MSNBC, sat at the table behind closed doors during the five-year long negotiations of the TPP’s specific trade provisions.

Have MSNBC or any of its competitors uncovered Comcast’s agenda for the trade agreements? What if concerns over intellectual property rights, for example, made it a corporate mission to pass a deal that also happened to radically hasten the climate tipping point? Should any company have that much power?

No business, no matter how sizeable, should have the right to subvert the actions and political choices necessary to address climate, as well as the activated movement capable of assuring that at long last we do what needs to be done. The only sane response is to support the movement, and the independent media outlets that provide a platform for ideas, facts, studies, polls, policy initiatives and disclosures outside the corporate media frame—and to overhaul the media to address this unfair use of public airwaves for gain and compromise as the world burns.

If the Facts Come Out, it Could Spell the End for Joe Biden

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By Ray McGovern

Source: Consortium News

The Joe Biden-friendly Establishment media has mounted a full-court press to “prove” that Biden is, well, not a crook.

The stakes are extremely high, Biden is vulnerable, and media players are using to a faretheewell the old adage about the best defense being a good offense.  The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are desperately trying to steal the ball and get ahead in the publicity game.  But time is about to run out, and pre-emptive propaganda is unlikely to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat. IF the facts do come out and IF they are reported, Biden’s presidential hopes may suffer a mortal blow.

When the corruption in which the former Vice President and his son Hunter were involved in Ukraine becomes more widely known, the press wants to be in position to “show” that it’s all the fault of President Donald Trump and his lawyers for trying to derail Biden’s candidacy by exposing him.  If past is precedent, the media will largely succeed.  The question is whether enough people will, nevertheless, be able to see through this all-too-familiar charade.

In an interview with The National Interest, Joe Lauria put this episode in context:

“’It was in February [2014] when Yanukovych was overthrown, and just a few months later (in May), Joe Biden’s son and a close friend of John Kerry’s stepson, they both join the board of this Ukrainian gas company. And the name of that was Burisma Holdings,’” said Joe Lauria, editor of Consortium News and a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. “’So just after an American-backed coup, you have Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and this John Kerry family friend joining the board of probably the largest private gas producer in Ukraine. They installed the new government, and as the bounty of this coup, Joe Biden’s son personally profited. He would not have gotten that job if Yanukovych was still in power,’” Lauria told The National Interest.”

Will U.S. voters have any way of putting these dots together, and also in discerning, for example, how much truth there may be in charges that Vice President Biden pressed hard for the ouster of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, who was canned after investigating corruption at Burisma Holdings Ukrainian gas company of which Hunter Biden was a board member?

In this video Biden admits on the record to essentially using a billion dollar line of credit as a bribe to get the prosecutor fired.

If the truth does come out, no one will have to rely on remarks from the likes of Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s lawyers, who has called the episode “an astounding scandal of major proportions.”  That may be hyperbole but, still, the damage to Biden could be fatal.

And so, damage control is in full swing today at the Times, the Post, the Journal and other “usual suspects,” with the  Times winning the laurels with its Editorial Board, no less, weighing in with “What did Trump tell Ukraine’s president?” There have also been op-eds by Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Anne Applebaum, Greg Sargent and (my favorite), George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal at the Post, whose headline is: “Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top.”

That title is correct.

Biden’s Brain Is Swiss Cheese And It’s Creepy That We’re Not Talking About It

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

I didn’t watch the last Democratic presidential primary debates because I figured that without Tulsi Gabbard in there shaking things up it would be a boring, vapid parade of insubstantial verbal foam, and I love myself too much to go through such a horrible ordeal. By all accounts my prediction was correct, but I did miss one thing that’s been making the rounds in video clips for the last couple of days which I find absolutely bizarre.

Most of you have probably heard about Biden’s infamous “record player” comment by now, but for those of you who missed it, Biden was asked by debate moderator Linsey Davis to defend some comments he made about America’s problems with racism in the 1970s, and he responded by essentially saying that Black people don’t know how to raise their kids so they need to be taught how by social workers. Biden has been receiving mainstream criticism for his racist and paternalistic position, along with plenty of mockery for saying that parents need to be told to “make sure you have the record player on at night” so that kids hear enough words in early childhood.

It is pretty clear that Biden was trying to communicate an idea that is premised on a deeply racist and condescending worldview, so it’s to be expected that people would want to talk about that. It’s also to be expected that people would be making jokes about how the cute old man said “record player” like a grandpa. But what isn’t being discussed nearly enough is the fact that what Biden said was also a barely coherent, garbled word salad stumbling out of a brain that is clearly being eaten alive by a very serious neurological disease.

I’ve typed out a transcript of what Biden actually said, verbatim. There are no typos. I’ve also noted where Biden closes his eyes, probably to concentrate, which he does whenever he seems to be struggling especially hard to string words together. Try to read through it slowly, word-for-word, resisting the instinct to mentally re-frame it into something more coherent:

“Well they have to deal with the– Look, there is institutional segregation in this country. And from the time I got involved I started dealing with that. Redlining. Banks. Making sure that we’re in a position where– Look, talk about education. I propose that what we take is those very poor schools, the Title 1 schools, triple the amount of money we spend from 15 to 45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise that equal [closes eyes] raise to getting out– the sixty-thousand dollar level. 

“Number two: make sure that we bring into the help the–[closes eyes] the student, the, the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home. We need–We have one school psychologist for every fifteen hundred kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are reca–Now, I’m married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. [Closes eyes briefly] We have make sure that every single child does in fact have three, four, and five year-olds go to school–school, not daycare. School. We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t wanna help, they don’t want–they don’t know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television, [closes eyes tightly] the– ‘scuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the-the-the-the phone, make sure the kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school, [closes eyes] a very poor background, will hear four million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.”

Notice how it gets more garbled the longer he speaks. The response I transcribed was about eighty seconds in length. That was just one small part of a debate in which the former vice president performed no better and forgot three of his fellow candidates’ names.

Compare this befuddled, incoherent mess with footage of a younger Biden, like his famous quip about how Rudy Giuliani only ever mentions “a noun and a verb and 9/11” in a sentence, or this clip where he said if Israel didn’t exist America would have to invent it to protect its interests in the Middle East. Biden has always been notoriously gaffe-prone, but he was also sharp, alert, and articulate enough to deliver a punchline. As journalist Michael Tracey has been pointing out, what we’re consistently seeing over and over again from the former vice president now are not “gaffes”, but clear signs of cognitive decline. Contrast the difference between Biden’s younger footage and what was seen at the last debate with footage of Bernie Sanders throughout the decades, who has remained virtually identical save for appearance and hoarseness. Age does not account for this difference. Biden’s brain is dying.

It is certainly understandable that people are concerned about the presidential frontrunner having a racist worldview. But what’s really weird and creepy is how few people are discussing the obvious fact that the presidential forerunner is also clearly suffering from the early stages of some kind of dementia. The brain that spouted the gibberish transcribed above would probably score poorly on a basic test for the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, yet discussion of his inability to complete a coherent sentence is relegated to the margins of political discourse. This is someone who is campaigning to have access to the nuclear codes, yet we’re only talking about how he’s kind of racist and not about the fact that his brain is turning into Swiss cheese right before our eyes. It’s freaky.

It’s freaky, but it kind of makes sense. One common difficulty in getting early treatment for people with Alzheimer’s disease is that those suffering from it often go to great lengths to hide their impairments, and another difficulty is that their families are often deeply in denial about their loved one’s mental decline. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Some people hide their symptoms, or family members cover for them. That’s easy to understand, because Alzheimer’s dementia is associated with loss, such as loss of independence, loss of a driving privileges and loss of self.”

I think we’re seeing precisely this happening, both with Biden, and with his supporters. Biden himself is clearly doing everything he can to feign mental competency, and as a powerful politician aiming to accomplish a lifelong ambition to become the US president he’d certainly have a lot egoically invested in doing so. His supporters seem to be doing all kinds of denial mental gymnastics around his cognitive decline as well; just check out the responses to this Washington Post tweet for its article about Biden’s “record player” response.

Here are a few examples:

“Don’t pretend you didn’t understand what he was saying.”

“Actually, I recently saw a turntable for sale at Best Buys & vinyl records are back on the market. Try to keep up, WaPo.”

“My 22 year old son and all his friends play records on record players these days. If you’re insinuating that Joe is out of touch, you’re out of touch.”

“Actually currently, there are some people playing record players because they find the vinyl record has better sound quality. I think you are just picking and choosing who to go after.”

“He was saying they not hearing enough words. We did. We were read to. We listened to children’s albums. We had conversations. He was trying to get at the importance of those things. He didn’t do a great job on communicating it but he was right.”

“Twitter snark aside, there are studies to back up that claim.”

“He got 80% of the way through the debate without an embarrassing gaffe that highlights his age. Of course, Trump couldn’t get halfway through a debate without threatening his opponent with imprisonment.”

“Honestly…so what. I got the sentiment.”

“Not sure why people are being so condescending. Vinyl outsold CD last year, so, you know, record players are everywhere these days. You could say he’s stuck in the past or you could say he’s trending. Be kind.”

We saw this same impulse to protect and compensate for Biden’s mental decline from audience members during the debate, who gasped out loud when Julian Castro suggested that Biden had forgotten what he’d said two minutes ago. Many rank-and-file Democrats are so desperate for an end to an administration that is making them increasingly anxious and neurotic that they find it cognitively easier to compartmentalize away from the obvious fact that Biden is in a state of mental decline than to turn and face that reality. So they make excuses and pretend that his demented word salads are perfectly rational, hip references to the resurging popularity of vinyl records.

The only people who are absolutely acutely aware of Biden’s cognitive decline and yet still want him to become president are his handlers. There is no way his consistent pattern of verbal unintelligibility has gone unnoticed by those who are responsible for facilitating his election, and indeed The Hill reports that his “allies” have been floating the idea of scaling back his campaign appearances and scheduling them for earlier in the day when he’s not tired to help minimize his “verbal flubs”. These people are aware that Biden is losing his mind, but they are pushing him toward the White House anyway.

If Biden supporters were really intellectually honest with themselves about what’s going on, they’d see that they don’t actually want Joe Biden to be president, they want his unelected, unaccountable handlers to be president. From a position of intellectual honesty they’d be taking the position of arch neocon Bill Kristol, who once said he’d “prefer the deep state to the Trump state.”

And of course that wouldn’t be a first among US presidents even in recent history. Ronald Reagan had early signs of Alzheimer’s disease during his presidency according to his own son, and George W Bush was infamously just a puppet of his handlers like Dick Cheney. Indeed it would be possible to have an actual, literal Jim Henson puppet as president of the United States without America’s unelected power establishment skipping a single beat.

But that’s exactly the point: having a real human being in there with even a semi-functional mind can put some inertia on the most sociopathic impulses of America’s unelected permanent government. Both Trump and Obama are of course horrible presidents who have continued and expanded the Bush administration’s most evil agendas, but Obama slowed down the push to arm Ukraine against Russia and slammed the brakes on a full-scale bombing campaign on Syria, while Trump was unable to get along with John Bolton and is losing interest in Venezuela while resisting the push to start new wars. Despite all their flaws, they’ve resisted the permanent government’s worst impulses in some key ways. If it’s just Biden’s handlers and the unelected power establishment, there’s no humanity anywhere near the brake pedal.

https://twitter.com/BetaODork/status/1164553547960246272

So this makes sense to talk about no matter how you look at it. But we’re not. In mainstream discourse we’re speaking as though this is just a charmingly gaffe-prone old man who makes a few controversial statements from time to time but would still make a fine president, when really he shouldn’t even be allowed a driver’s license.

And I just find that really creepy and uncomfortable. As someone who’s never been able to leave elephants in rooms alone, the fact that the leading presidential contender is neurologically incapable of speaking coherently for eighty seconds sticks out like dog’s balls and it’s absolutely freakish that this isn’t front and center of our political discourse right now. Biden’s dementia should be the very first thing we discuss whenever his name comes up, not the last.

 

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Freedom Rider: Protest and the Corporate Media

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By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

The corporate media are steadfast partners with the United States government and faithfully follow the party line on foreign policy issues.

“The networks and the newspapers can seldom be believed.”

Corporate media always let us know who is in with the in-crowd and who is on the outs with the United States government. They don’t do so with any transparency, but by promoting some stories and disappearing others. They give great attention to events that they believe are advancing U.S. interests. The invisibility treatment goes to those who tell inconvenient truths and defy American dictates.

Protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese government and in Moscow against the Russian government are covered extensively. But only those who know where to look are aware that the #NoMoreTrump campaign in Venezuela drew thousands of people into the streets of Caracas. Likewise only the most discerning are aware that Haitians are part of the Venezuela story. Their corrupt leadership stole millions of dollars that the pre-sanctions Venezuela government set aside for the benefit of the Haitian people. Thousands of Haitians expressed their anger in the only way they can, with sustained mass demonstrations.

“Only those who know where to look are aware that the #NoMoreTrump campaign in Venezuela drew thousands of people into the streets of Caracas.”

The bias isn’t confined to the global south. The yellow vest protests continue throughout France after nearly one year with no sign of letting up, but media coverage has diminished. Of course, even in this instance there is a pecking order. The yellow vests get some attention but African immigrants protesting their plight in France receive hardly any.

The corporate media are steadfast partners with the United States government and faithfully follow the party line on foreign policy issues. They may provide hours of coverage to protests in Hong Kong but won’t mention that the organizers meet with State Department officials. They don’t bother to tell the history of Hong Kong and how it was stolen by the British during the Opium Wars. Hong Kong is part of China and it is up to that government to make decisions about its future. It is indeed suspicious when “pro democracy” demonstrators wave the American flag and the Union Jack.

“The yellow vest protests continue throughout France after nearly one year with no sign of letting up.”

The story of the Moscow protests is similar. Alexei Navalny is once again the leader. He is supported by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch now living in exile after Vladimir Putin imprisoned him for 10 years. Khodorkovsky uses his remaining wealth to further many anti-government actions. This easily verified fact is seldom mentioned when American media tell the story.

The reporting about these manipulated protests is blatant in its disregard for the truth. Yellow vest protesters have been shot in the eyes by police bullets and hundreds have been injured. The Moscow police release most arrested protesters within a day, and unlike in France no one has lost an eye.

The yellow vests put Emanuel Macron on the ropes and he is unlikely to be re-elected. The depth of anger directed at the neo-liberal schemes which tear at the French safety net is clear and his political viability is in doubt. But the Moscow protests orchestrated by a media savvy movement are of far less significance. There is no indication that they have moved beyond a core group of Vladimir Putin opponents or that they reflect the ideology of the nation at large.

“It is indeed suspicious when “pro democracy” demonstrators wave the American flag and the Union Jack.”

Russians were very angry when Putin proposed raising the retirement age, a quite logical response to neo-liberal mischief. But there is no indication that the inability of his opponents to get on the ballot for Moscow municipal elections is a cause for concern among the masses of people.

In Hong Kong the hand of the United States government and its NGOs is obvious. Following the money shows who is leading the less than spontaneous demonstrations. In Moscow the new neo-liberals want to replace the old ones and do so at the urging of people who would attack Russian sovereignty vis a vis the United States.

China and Russia are full of contradictions that cause confusion among the uninformed. Neither country is democratic in the way that Americans understand but, then again, their country isn’t either. The important point is that they are viewed as enemies by a nation which isn’t satisfied unless all others are allies, lap dogs or utterly destroyed.

Every act condoned by the U.S. is a sign of desperation, including threats to physically blockade Venezuela, or goading subservient allies like the U.K. to seize Iranian oil tankers, and now to making it appear that those labeled adversaries are endangered by street protests. The tanker has now sailed on after Iran proved that it wouldn’t be intimidated and can play the same game. Nicolas Maduro is still the president of Venezuela and all the attempts of the U.S. and the cheer leading of friends in media won’t change that fact.

“The task is to oppose U.S. interventions and to defend the rights of all people to practice self-determination.”

Trump administration “maximum pressure” has led to China buying Venezuela’s oil and Iran leaving the nuclear power agreement that allies wanted to preserve. American foreign policy victories exist only as propaganda. The ship, like the seized Iranian oil tanker, has sailed and they are left with lies spread by a compliant media. As always, beware when the designation of friends and foes come from the networks and the newspapers. They can seldom be believed.

One need not like or dislike targeted foreign leaders in order to understand what is happening. The hegemon is in trouble and has picked a foolish trade fight with China which has been no more successful than any other policy decision. The task is to oppose U.S. interventions and to defend the rights of all people to practice self-determination. Supporting faux democracy movements will not lead to justice. Every effort to disrupt the world order just leads to more defeats for the U.S. and that is the best outcome of all.

 

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com . Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Humans Are Creating Their Own Narratives

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By Michael Krieger

Source: Liberty Blitzkrieg

Somewhere between the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein and his extremely suspicious death in a Department of Justice operated prison, the public learned that an FBI intelligence bulletin published by the bureau’s Phoenix field office mentioned for the first time that conspiracy theories pose a domestic terrorism threat. This was followed up last week by a Bloomberg article discussing a new project by the U.S. military (DARPA) to identify fake news and disinformation.

We learned:

Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,” as the top Republican in Congress blocks efforts to protect the integrity of elections.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, videos and audio clips. If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society.

Recall that after the 2016 election, focus was on social media companies and we saw tremendous pressure placed on these platforms by national security state politicians and distressed Democrats to “do something” about the supposed fake news epidemic. Fast forward three years and it’s now apparently the U.S. military’s job to police human content on the internet. This is the sort of natural regression a society will witness so long as it puts up with incremental censorship and the demonization of any thought which goes against the official narrative.

Before we dissect what’s really going on, allow me to point out the glaringly obvious, which is that politicians, pundits, mass media and the U.S. military don’t actually care about the societal harm of fake news or conspiracy theories. We know this based on how the media sold government lies in order to advocate for the Iraq war, and how many of the biggest proponents of that blatant war crime have gone on to spectacularly lucrative careers in subsequent years. There were zero consequences, proving the point that this has nothing to do with the dangers of fake news or conspiracy theories, and everything to do with protecting the establishment grip on narrative creation and propagation.

The above tweet summarizes what’s really going on. It’s a provable fact that the harm caused by some crazy person reacting to viral “fake news” on social media doesn’t compare with the destruction and criminality perpetrated by oligarchs like Jeffrey Epstein, or governments which destroy entire countries and murder millions without flinching. It’s the extremely wealthy and powerful, as a consequence of their societal status and influence, who are in a position to do the most harm. This isn’t debatable, yet the U.S. military and media don’t seem particularly bothered by this sort of thing. What really keeps them up at night is a realization that the powerless masses of humanity are suddenly talking to one another across borders and coming to their own conclusions about how the world works. You’re supposed to be told what to think, not to think for yourself.

This is what the power structure’s really worried about. It’s terrified that billions of people are now in direct, instantaneous communication with one another and thinking independently about world events. The mass media’s freakout over the election of Donald Trump was never rooted in concerns about the man and his specific policies. What really bothered them was his election proved they no longer matter. Enough people simply ignored the media’s instructions to suck it up and go vote for Hillary Clinton. This repudiation and loss of control was devastating and terrifying for U.S. media personalities and their bosses.

At this point, it’s important to note that what’s happening is exactly what you’d expect after half the people on earth come online and start talking to one another in the midst of an oligarch-fueled epidemic of gangsterism masquerading as democratic government. The advent of the internet created the conditions for cross-border, near instantaneous, peer-to-peer human communication for the first time in history.

We’re still in the very early stages of discovering what it means to live in such a world, but what you’d expect to emerge is precisely what we’ve seen. We see countless streams of diverse narratives emerging to explain what’s happening around us and how power really operates. Humans are no longer accepting the narratives force-fed to them via mass media channels, and are instead talking directly to one another and creating their own narratives. This is exactly how it should be.

Meanwhile, into this increasingly disruptive environment comes the Epstein affair, which I consider another major inflection point in the public’s increased and justified cynicism about the establishment. While the mass media swallows the increasingly clownish official story hook, line and sinker, the public simply isn’t buying it according to recent polls. The most recent one from Emerson College showed that more people think he was murdered than think he committed suicide.

Alternative narratives are openly, and often successfully, competing with the spoon-fed narratives of mass media. Increased numbers are coming to understand that those who craft official narratives (government, mass media, billionaires) have their own interests, and those interests are typically not aligned with the interests of most people. There’s no reason to trust anything mass media or government says, because both groups are dominated by proven liars and war mongers. This obviously doesn’t mean you should believe everything you read online, but we must maintain perspective. Fake news from powerless citizens doesn’t compete with fake news from the government when it comes to disastrous consequences, yet the focus is always centered on the former and never the latter.

There’s a reason the U.S. military is suddenly talking about fighting fake news and disinformation, and the reason is the power structure is terrified of humans talking to each other and coming to their own conclusions. Moreover, this isn’t limited to an interpretation of world events. The emergence and success of Bitcoin represents a global movement of humans propagating an alternative narrative about money, how it could and how it should work. The longer human beings are allowed to freely talk to one another, the more likely they are to reject official narratives and shape society in a more sane manner. This represents an existential threat to the power structure. And they know it.

It’s also why CNN anchor Chris Cuomo instructed his viewers to not pay attention to those who were closest to Jeffrey Epstein.

Now the good news. I think the cat’s already out of the bag. People aren’t going back to simply swallowing official narratives regurgitated by some television mannequin with makeup and an expensive suit who’s being paid by a billionaire. This doesn’t mean there won’t be a fight; in fact, we’re already in it.

Going forward, I suspect the narrative managers will more aggressively label anyone who doesn’t toe the official line as somehow linked to or sympathetic with foreign governments. They won’t offer any proof, but they’ll claim it authoritatively. This will become an increasingly potent weapon as governments begin to more intensely scapegoat foreign nations as the root of all our problems. We’ve already seen this since the 2016 election, but I expect it to increase in frequency and force.

As such, it’s going to be increasingly important for all of us to retain control of our minds and emotions as much as possible. We must never forget the importance of critical thinking, and must adamantly defend the right of humans to talk to one another freely and come to our own conclusions. We must never forget how preposterous it is to assume media giants owned by billionaires have any interest in telling us the truth about anything.

So keep writing, keep talking, keep thinking and never lose sight of the big picture. We have the power to create our own narratives, and with it, a much better future for generations to come.

NYT Propaganda War on Syria

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephenLendman.com

On major issues mattering most, especially geopolitical ones, the NYT is a lying machine, a propaganda machine, an anti-truth telling operation, a virtual state-sponsored ministry of deception, masquerading as real news, information and opinion.

Whenever the US wages preemptive wars of aggression on nonbelligerent states threatening no one, or in their run-up, the Times cheerleads high crimes of war and against humanity instead of denouncing them.

It consistently and repeatedly blames victims of US aggression for high crimes committed against them — Syria one of numerous examples of its abandonment of journalism the way it should be for disinformation, Big Lies and fake news.

The Times falsely accused Syrian forces of attacking hospitals numerous times, a Pentagon terror-bombing specialty it ignores.

An earlier report turned truth on its head, claiming Syrian President “Assad attacks medical facilities to break the will of the people — and to destroy evidence of his war crimes” — a bald-faced Big Lie.

The Times calls US aggression on Syria “civil war.” There’s nothing remotely “civil” about it. US-supported cutthroat killer jihadists are referred to as “rebels.”

Most of their fighters are imported from scores of foreign countries, including Western ones — armed, funded and directed by the US and its imperial partners.

In its latest edition, the Times reported on what it called “a journey through shattered Syria” — ignoring mass slaughter, vast destruction, and widespread human misery caused by US-led aggression, along with using ISIS and other terrorists as proxy foot soldiers.

What’s vital to report, the Times consistently suppresses, substituting managed new misinformation and disinformation instead.

Why Assad’s government granted permission to the Times lying machine to visit the war-torn country was unexplained.

In the Damascus countryside, “there were few young men,” it reported.

Most youths are likely involved in defending their country against US-led aggression and jihadists it supports — what the self-styled newspaper of record suppresses.

Instead it claimed they “died in the war, (were) thrown in prison or scattered far beyond Syria’s borders.”

Many indeed died at the hands of US-supported jihadists or Pentagon terror-bombing. Claiming they were thrown in prison is a bald-faced Big Lie, a Times specialty about the war and all others the US wages.

Three Times propagandists visited Syria to see the devastation firsthand. Saying “infrastructure needs rebuilding” failed to explain its destruction by Pentagon-led terror-bombing and attacks by US-supported jihadists.

The Times lied claiming Assad “presided over the destruction.” It complained about not getting permission “to roam freely,” expressed angst as well that most Syrians met and spoken to expressed support for Assad.

In June 2014, he was overwhelmingly reelected president with an 89% majority — independent international monitors calling the process open, free and fair.

The Times and other Western media falsely claimed otherwise. Syrians want no one else leading them. They’re clearly hostile to the US, other Western, and Israeli interests.

The Jewish state is responsible for terror-bombing the country hundreds of times by its own admission — on the phony pretext of combatting an Iranian threat that doesn’t exist.

Syria and its people are struggling for the country’s soul, victimized by US-led aggression.

War in its 9th year continues with no end of it in prospect because both extremist right wings of the US war party oppose restoration of peace and stability to the country.

Instead of reporting accurately on what’s gone on and continues endlessly, including illegal US occupation of northern and southern Syrian territory — the Times falsely blames Assad for US high crimes committed against the country and its people.

Protecting Information Space from Facebook’s Tyranny

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By Gunnar Olson

Source: Land Destroyer

The recent attack aimed at New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and several of its authors once again exposes the infinite hypocrisy of US and European interests including across their media and among their supposed human rights advocates.

It also exposes the severe threat that exists to the national security of nations around the globe who lack control over platforms including social media used by their citizens to exchange information.

This lack of control over a nation’s information space is quickly becoming as dangerous as being unable to control and protect a nation’s physical space/territory.

Facebook’s Tyranny  

NEO and at least one of its contributors had their Facebook and Twitter accounts deleted and were accused of “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” according to Facebook’s “newsroom.”

Their statement reads:

In the past week, we removed multiple Pages, Groups and accounts that were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.

It also reads:

We removed 12 Facebook accounts and 10 Facebook Pages for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Thailand and focused primarily on Thailand and the US. The people behind this small network used fake accounts to create fictitious personas and run Pages, increase engagement, disseminate content, and also to drive people to off-platform blogs posing as news outlets. They also frequently shared divisive narratives and comments on topics including Thai politics, geopolitical issues like US-China relations, protests in Hong Kong, and criticism of democracy activists in Thailand. Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our review found that some of this activity was linked to an individual based in Thailand associated with New Eastern Outlook, a Russian government-funded journal based in Moscow.

In this single statement, Facebook reveals about itself that it, and it alone, decides what is and isn’t a “news outlet.”

Apparently the blogs the deleted Facebook pages linked to were “not” news outlets, though no criteria was provided by Facebook nor any evidence presented that these links did not meet whatever criteria Facebook used.

While Facebook claims that it did not delete the accounts based on their content, they contradicted themselves by clearly referring to the content in their statement as “divisive narratives and comments” which clearly challenged narratives and comments established by Western media organizations.

The statement first accuses the pages of “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” but then admits they were only able to link the pages to a single individual in Thailand. How does a single person “coordinate” with themselves? Again, Facebook doesn’t explain.

Finally, Facebook reveals that any association at all with Russia is apparently grounds for deletion despite nothing of the sort being included in their terms of service nor any specific explanation of this apparent policy made in their statement. New Eastern Outlook is indeed a Russian journal.

Other governments, especially the United States, fund journals and media platforms not only in the United States, but around the globe. Facebook and Twitter, for example, have not deleted the accounts of the virtual army of such journals and platforms funded by the US government funded and directed via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

NED-funded operations often operate well outside of the United States, while NEO is based in Russia’s capital, Moscow. NED-funded operations often don’t disclose their funding or affiliations.

Ironically, the accounts Facebook deleted in Thailand were proficient at exposing this funding to the public.

The bottom line here is that Facebook is a massive social media platform. It is also clearly very abusive, maintaining strict but arbitrary control over content on its networks, detached even from their own stated terms of service. It is a form of control that ultimately and clearly works in favor of special interests in Washington and against anyone Washington declares a villain.

Facebook would be bad enough as just a massive US social media platform, but the real problem arises considering its global reach.

Looking at Information Space as we do Physical Space 

A nation’s information space is a lot like its physical space (or territory). The people of a nation operate in it, conduct commerce, exchange information, report news, and carry out a growing number of other economically, socially and politically important activities there. It is not entirely unlike a nation’s physical space where people conduct these same sort of activities.

A nation’s physical space would never be surrendered to a foreign government or corporation to control and decide who can and cannot use it and how it is used. But this is precisely what many nations around the globe have done regarding their information space.

Facebook is essentially that; a foreign corporation controlling a nation’s information space rather than its physical space. Facebook does this in many nations around the globe, deciding who can and cannot use that information space and how that information space is used.

A US corporation just decided that a Thailand-based writer associated with a political journal in Moscow is not allowed to operate in Thailand’s information space. It made that decision for Thailand. It admits in its statement that it worked, not with the Thai government or Thai law enforcement, but with “local civil society organizations,” almost certainly referring to US NED and corporate foundation-funded organizations like Human Rights Watch. Again, this is a clear violation of Thailand’s sovereignty, however minor this particular case may have been.

If it is not a legal violation of Thai sovereignty and an intrusion into their internal affairs impacting people living within their borders, it was certainly a violation and intrusion in principle.

Protecting Information Space

Nations like China and Russia understand the importance of information space.

Both nations also understand the critical importance of protecting it. Both nations have created and ensured the monopoly of their own versions of Facebook as well as other social media platforms. They also have their own versions of “Google” as well as platforms hosting blogs, videos, e-commerce and other essential services that make up a nation’s modern information space.

There is room for debate regarding how this control over Chinese and Russian information space is managed by their respective governments, but it is a debate the people of China and Russia are able to have, however restrictive it may or may not be, with people, organizations, corporations and governments within their own country, not with an untouchable Silicon Valley CEO thousands of miles away.

China and Russia created these alternatives and exercises control over their information space almost as vigorously as they defend their physical territory, understanding that their sovereignty depends as much on keeping foreign influence from dominating that space as it does keeping invading forces from crossing their border.

Smaller nations like Thailand, the subject of Facebook’s most recent “removal” campaign would benefit greatly from creating their own alternatives to Facebook, alternatives created, administered, and serving their interests rather than Silicon Valley’s or Washington’s.

Thais, for instance, cannot have any meaningful debate regarding Facebook’s policies, terms of service or their apparently arbitrary decision made independently of both since ultimately Facebook is a foreign corporation that does not answer to either the Thai people or the Thai government.

For China and Russia, both nations adept at exporting arms to smaller nations affording them the ability to defend their physical territory, an opportunity exists to export the means for these smaller nations to likewise defend their information space.

By aiding these nations in pushing out abusive monopolies like Facebook, Beijing and Moscow will also benefit by watering down US control over global information space and the news and points of view US tech corporations “allow,” and providing more space for the sort criticism and scrutiny NEO and its authors were engaged in right before Facebook removed them.