The Plot Against GrayZone & Suspicions About Consortium News

The GrayZone has revealed leaked emails that show the British government’s involvement with private actors plotting to take down GrayZone and asking who is behind Consortium News, writes Joe Lauria.

Nina Jankowicz, Then-Head of Disinformation Governance Board, Called CN ‘Useful Idiots’

Nina Jankowicz on Cyber Security at the U.S. Embassy Vienna in 2019. (U.S. Embassy, Vienna)

By Joe Lauria
in London
Special to Consortium News

The Establishment’s war against independent media took an even darker turn with revelations by The GrayZone on Thursday that the British government and private disinformation “experts” discussed how to damage The GrayZone’s credibility and funding, while raising suspicions about Consortium News.

The Gray Zone is the main target discussed in leaked emails between Paul Mason, a British journalist now running for Parliament, and Amil Khan, a former Reuters Middle East correspondent who now runs a counter-disinformation firm called Valent Projects.

The emails were leaked anonymously to The GrayZone and were authenticated through their metadata, GrayZone reporter Kit Klarenberg, who co-authored the piece with GrayZone editor Max Blumenthal, told Consortium News. 

Target: GrayZone

The emails show Mason and Khan intent on hurting The GrayZone because they believe it spreads disinformation and because they themselves had been exposed by The GrayZone’s reporting.

The two men were organizing a meeting of establishment figures “because, like us, you have also been targeted by a network of pro-Russian trolls…This network revolves around the outlet known as Grayzone and includes a dozen or so individuals who use online intimidation, bullying and harassment to promote pro-Kremlin talking points,” Khan wrote.

“In one leaked email,” The GrayZone reported, “Mason thundered for the ‘relentless deplatforming’ of The Grayzone and the creation of ‘a kind of permanent rebuttal operation’ to discredit it.” In another email, Khan calls for “full nuclear legal to squeeze them financially.”

Effort to Involve Government The emails provide important insight into efforts to involve the British government and appears to settle the question about the relationship between “citizen journalism” outfit Bellingcat and British intelligence. Mason, in one email,  said Bellingcat had been receiving “a steady stream of intel from Western agencies.”

Though Bellingcat has issued denials in the past they have long been suspected to have intelligence ties. I first heard of them in 2014 from the British ambassador to the U.N. who at background briefings to the press that I attended mentioned Bellingcat approvingly almost every week. Mason suggested inviting Bellingcat to the GrayZone meeting to provide “intel service input by proxy.”

Mason has openly called for government to be involved in fighting what he calls disinformation. And the emails reveal his efforts to do so, with apparent relunctance on the part of the government.

Mason writes in another email that he invited someone from the National Security Council’s Communications Directorate, a Whitehall unit “tasked with hybrid threats,” to attend the anti-GrayZone meeting but he declined so as not to “jeopardise outcomes later.”

In another email, Mason writes that he asked “two people on the official side” does “the state monitor and counter left disinfo” and “they said no.” It was an answer Mason seems to have taken at face value. “But this is exactly why someone needs to do it,” Mason writes.

In fact, the British state has gotten in the business of countering what it sees as disinformation when it made Russian state media illegal in the U.K. after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it apparently has not gone far enough for Mason and Khan in countering sites like The GrayZone. Mason and Khan’s discussions reveal a proposal from a government official to make a formal complaint about The GrayZone to OFCOM, the government’s media regulator.

Mason, in one email, shows awareness of what is really the crux of the matter. He asks Khan whether he knows the researcher Emma Briant, whom Mason calls a “specialist in this.” Mason then adds that he agrees with Briant’s concern about “the British state’s inability to do this stuff without repressing geniune left critical voices.”

‘Who Is Behind Consortium News?’

Image of leaked email from Khan to Mason on CN. (The GrayZone)

According to The GrayZone, Mason wrote to a British government official on April 8 objecting to an article I wrote four days earlier in which I raised questions about the Bucha massacre; said it was still unclear who was responsible; called for an independent probe and warned against rushing to judgement.  I did not exonerate Russia, saying its soldiers may have well been behind the killings. Consortium News is contacting this official to confirm that it was he who engaged in this email exchange with Mason.  

My sin, apparently, was to even dare question the narrative that was immediately being enforced before any evidence had even been gathered. That set this Mason off, according to the email, questioning this apparent official about “who is behind” Consortium News.

The official responded that he had contacted Nina Jankowicz, who at the time was heading the Biden administration’s new Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland Security. (She has since resigned and the board has been mothballed after a fierce backlash). The official said Jankowicz had told him that she would “ask around” about Consortium News.

It is not clear who she asked, whether in or out of government. But Jankowicz told the official she thinks CN was not being funded, presumably by a foreign power such as Russia, but instead were just being “useful idiots.”

It is the same, tired formula that was used to brand anti-Vietnam war protestors as tools of Beijing, Moscow and Hanoi. Criticism of one’s own government’s murderous policies just won’t be tolerated.

Consortium News has been around for nearly 27 years and established itself by breaking with corporate media before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2016-to-present Russiagate story. In both cases, CN was proven right, and the corporate media wrong.

CN supports no side in the Ukraine war but has examined the causes of the conflict within its historical context that is being whitewashed from mainstream Western media, which seems to signal people like Mason, and Jankowicz that CN is not legitimate journalism.

Like the British state, as Briant pointed out, they appear unable to distinguish between independent editorial judgement that counters the mainstream, and being either “useful idiots” or funded by a foreign government. CN is funded by no government, corporation or advertisers and is producing an outside audit to prove it.

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What is lost in this is the focus on whether information is true or not, and not only what its source is.

What marks independent journalism is that it examines information from various sources and uses its own agency of editorial judgement to decide what can be determined to be true or false based on the evidence, not the source.

For disinformation warriors the source appears to be everything. If it comes from Russian or Chinese media it has to be false and if it comes from Western media regarding foreign affairs it has to be true.

They are operating on the shallow assumption that Western governments really are motivated by humanitarian concerns and spreading democracy rather than pursuing economic and geopolitical interests often in the most brutal manner.  They have turned reality on its head: support for Western goals is information and exposing its actual goals is disinformation.

True Believers?

Paul Mason speaking at the ResPublica Tomorrow’s Democracy day conference at The Riverfront, Newport, 2018. (Rwendland/Wikimedia Commons)

What surprisingly emerges then from these leaked emails, in which we see the unvarnished, private discussions among these “experts” and officials is that they really do seem to believe in what they are doing. The language of the emails does not appear to be that of operatives cynically defending the interests of powerful people, even though that is what they are doing. 

It is possible they are too clever to write down, even in emails to themselves, that independent media, such as Consortium News — however limited its influence — needs to be stopped because it is a threat to those interests.

This British official undermines such an assessment of cleverness, however, when he tells Mason that he’s not sure he agrees with Jancowicz that CN isn’t being foreign funded. He points to what he says is a “gap” in Consortium News‘ publishing history between 2005 and 2011.

There was no gap in publishing. CN published throughout those years as can be easily seen on the Wayback Machine. CN began publishing on WordPress in 2011, and its founder, Bob Parry, transferred only some of the most important articles between 2003 and 2011 to WordPress.

This assessment betrays a knee-jerk reaction and an impulse to find suspicion when one is looking for it, even when it doesn’t exist. It is typical of an ideologue on a mission, not a careful researcher.

Khan did not respond to repeated requests for interviews from CN left on his voicemail and sent to him via Signal and Telegram before this article was written. CN went to his address in London and knocked on his door, only to learn that he had moved four months earlier. Mason issued a non-denial, denial on Medium. 

The knowledge that someone as influential at the time as Jankowicz had inquired into Consortium News follows PayPal permanently banning CN and NewsGuard’s review. All of these moves came as Consortium News‘ readership increased with its coverage of Ukraine.

Though these disinformation “experts” operate in the same milieu and many know each other, and though Mason mentions in one email that The GrayZone should be de-platformed — “as with PayPal/compendium (sic) and mintpress,” there is as yet no evidence that these moves against CN were coordinated.

As these actors are motivated by the same objective to suppress criticism of the Establishment’s agenda, especially in Ukraine, they could have well acted on their own initiatives at around the same time.

The most disturbing element of the GrayZone revelations is the confirmation that these supposedly private actors are in close contact with parts of the British government, and in the case of Bellingcat at least, are recipients of government intelligence.

While NewsGuard has partnerships with the Pentagon and the State Department as well as powerful former government officials on its advisory board, there is no evidence at the moment of U.S. government involvement, for instance, with PayPal.

Mason’s Mirror 

In his May 4 column in The New Statesman, Mason makes no apologies calling for direct state involvement. “We need state action to challenge the hate speech, lies and threats generated by the far right and the pro-Kremlin left,” read the subhead. He calls the U.S. Constitution “dysfunctional” because it protects what he calls “disinformation.”

Mason wrote:

“Disinformation is often defined as false information purposefully spread. But the most effective disinformation comes from spreaders who don’t know it’s false: who ardently believe it … People who share this kind of material do so because they want to believe it. The websites, Twitter accounts and YouTube channels spreading such disinformation target an audience that has drunk so much Kremlin Kool-Aid, from RT, Sputnik and George Galloway, that they cannot drink anything else.”

If Paul Mason looked in a mirror, might he see himself spreading false information purposefully because he does not know it is false and ardently wants to believe it? Might he also notice his lips tinged by the Kool-Aid dispensed from Washington and Whitehall?

Indeed, who are the useful idiots?

* * *

CORRECTIONS: The GrayZone initially incorrectly identified the sender of the email regarding Jancowicz as Amil Khan, which CN repeated. Khan did not send the email. The GrayZone also reported and CN repeated that Khan was embedded with terrorists in Syria. Khan denies this and it has been removed.  

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe  

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48 comments for “The Plot Against GrayZone & Suspicions About Consortium News

  1. vinnieoh
    June 11, 2022 at 18:39

    Any site that gains viewers and is also counter the narrative is to be taken out of commission. This is not new, but with so few being able to remain independent and unafraid, having any more silenced would be detrimental to sane policy and behavior. It’s a sorry time when our elected leaders ask us to sing along with them to “Let’s Go Crazy.”

    I’m of the opinion the types above emit no unguarded correspondence: they know exactly whom they serve and how critical that there should be no breaks in the reality narrative they construct for all our lives. You (we) have not seen their real face and they don’t speak honestly in public. All narrative, all the time.

  2. Vera Gottlieb
    June 11, 2022 at 11:16

    US/UK – asses of evil.

  3. Sadeeq
    June 11, 2022 at 05:07

    How cute when (well paid?) pseudo-journalists call decent journalists “useful idiots”.

  4. Malcolm Powell
    June 11, 2022 at 02:10

    If the Establishment in the USA succeeds with its January 6 Star Chamber show trials and gets to send key figures to jail they will have a massive boost in their belief they can eliminate all opposition and have the one party state they so obviously desire. They will follow that success with arrests of journalists and others who speak up. Th3 USA has had Guantanamo Bay chock full of “enemies of the state” for years without fair trial. That was stage one. Stage two will see Assange and many other journalists join the mob in Cuba. The USA has become The Evil Empire and there will be no way i5 can turn back.

  5. LeoSun
    June 10, 2022 at 17:00

    Not for nothing; but, the mask, has been ripped the flock off these “yah-who’s who” by the opposition, Truth. However, Evil, lives.

    Consequently, anyone & everyone is living w/the growing threat of our Civil Liberties, “freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion, and the rights of the accused,” being quashed. (We are all Julian Assange).

    The fever pitch MADness, (Mutually Assured Destruction) aka the gloom & doom, “we” presume the UK’s Home Office is gonna lower the boom, that will set the precedent to “legally” blind-side/execute The Messenger NOT the Message.

    “We” the People, will power through the phuckery. It is imperative “We” protect & defend, an “of, by & for the people” FREE Press (the right of newspapers, magazines, etc., to report news without being controlled by the government).

    For, The Executioners’ hammer to nail investigative journalists & their sources, “We the People,” say HANDS-OFF!!!

    “The dishonesty of words illustrates the dishonesty of America’s wars.” (Bruce Fein)

  6. Daniel
    June 10, 2022 at 13:27

    Great reporting as usual, CN. I’m loving the push back you’re giving these deep-state swamp monsters lately. In their infinite wisdom, they seem to either have no idea they are precisely the reason we need CN and the GrayZone, or are hiding the fact that their motives and actions are antithetical to free societies. There are only two choices.

    Come at the reporting, not the reporter, I say. But we all know these cult members have no leg to stand on with either CN Or the GZ, hence the “take-down” schemes. Disgraceful.

  7. Robert Emmett
    June 10, 2022 at 12:36

    If you read the article about this at The Grayzone, it’s clear that what Mason & Kahn are about is fomenting their own disinfo op, complete with cut outs to intelligence services, by targeting Grayzone as their patsy (evidence-free, of course). If successful, they then presumably could move on to other targets (like CN?) to close down discourse.

    I think of them as low level actors, with a kind of minor imprimatur among a few, select government operatives who are auditioning for a bigger role in cracking the censorship whip. That a somewhat noted media person who is running for political office is at the center of this also smacks of self-promotion.

    If their ability to confabulate happens to show promise to higher ups, then their scheme could be used when the timing’s right. Thus do they make of themselves tools, fools, finks or idiots, useful or useless, witting or witless in the miasma of the present moment.

    They may be sorry (if they already aren’t) that they messed with Grayzone given that outlet’s ability to dig out & expose the rottenness decaying in the dank underbelly of state apparatus in cahoots with their “private sector” stooges.

  8. maxine
    June 10, 2022 at 11:05

    I am practically brought to tears….Exactly, what are we to do when the crazies do manage to get rid of Consortium News and similar sites?….Will there be any place left to get real news?

    • Tobysgirl
      June 10, 2022 at 14:44

      Well, you can watch mainstream news and then turn everything you’ve heard upside-down and you’ll be somewhere near the actual truth.

  9. June 10, 2022 at 07:52

    It really is difficult to believe that these people think they are being truthful and that GZ and CN are being useful idiots. The reason I say this is because everyone who has paid even the slightest attention knows, for example, that NATO and the US have been pushing Russia hard for decades now. The idea that Mason and these other people would not know any of the actual history of the US backed coup in Kiev, or any of the other historical facts that led to Russia invading seems absurd. Something is very fishy here. I suppose they could all be a bunch of idiotic drunks who live in a self-sedated state and don’t know what is going on, but that just seems very unlikely. Maybe it’s that they start to believe their own lies after repeating them so many times. But something is amiss here. It does not make sense. Any psychiatrists in the audience here that can help out?

    • subversive
      June 10, 2022 at 11:27

      Humans are a mass of contradictions.
      “It is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it”. Upton Sinclair
      “News is what somebody, somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising”. Lord Northcliffe
      Speaking of contradictions, does anyone spout more nonsense about “freedom” than right-wing Americans? No.
      “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life”. Eric Hoffer

      • Em Sos
        June 11, 2022 at 17:29

        The Upton Sinclair quote is really, really, on the money!
        A muckraker extraordinaire, way, way ahead of his times.
        And your lead-in is no understatement of this truth.
        “To be consciously more aware, first and foremost, of man’s inherent fickle nature”… one need only take any of today’s American politicians as examples.
        Start with the President!
        Thanks

    • Afdal
      June 10, 2022 at 12:28

      I think the psychology of pathological liars is absolutely not something to be underestimated here. You can even see the thought process in Mason’s official response to these leaks:
      hxxp://nitter.eu/paulmasonnews/status/1534451268541992962

      In the span of only five sentences he jumps from “-highly likely- that a Russian state or state-backed unit carried out the attack” to “assisting state backed hack-and-leak disinformation campaign”. At first it’s speculation, and then, as if his hypothesis was confirmed on a span of a few sentences, it’s no, actually, this is confirmed now! This is the thought process of a pathological liar, when someone is so accustomed to lying that they pile on ever-escalating lies in the midst of their own writing and don’t think to go back and read it.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      June 10, 2022 at 12:53

      It all makes perfect sense when you realize that the imperialists want the public only to hear and read government propaganda. It is extremely naive to think that mainstream media is not controlled by government and exists only to spew propaganda into the brains of the public. This is why we need independent news outlets. There must be journalists with integrity to counter the lies, whitewashing, and other spurious “information” coming from the warmongers and imperialists. Of course they know the history. They don’t want anyone else to know the history. That is why we must fight against these maintream puppets with all of our energy, all of the time.

    • stephen kelley
      June 11, 2022 at 22:15

      i agree that it is very disheartening to hear these people bandy the word”disinformation”. after all, these are well educated individuals(albeit, vulgarly opportunistic) who must know better. no, i am sure they realize what they are arguing is just bs. perhaps they are well aware of modern technology(e.g. e mail intercepts) and so they are careful to fake sincerity. but i do agree that it all comes down to the accuracy of the message and not who the messenger is.

    • Margaret O'Brien
      June 12, 2022 at 06:25

      You have said precisely what I’m thinking. They can’t possibly not know the history and context here. I’m British and am aware of Paul Mason. He supposedly used to be a socialist or communist but has drifted farther to the right over the years and is now apparently a parliamentary candidate in Starmer’s Labour Party, so he’ll fit right in there! I’ve watched him this week on YouTube being challenged over his claims and he came across as unhinged frankly, but as I said, even he knows what the US/NATO have done over Russia/Ukraine. I think maybe he sees it as a good career move to cosy up to the establishment warmongers, as Starmer has done.

  10. TP Graf
    June 10, 2022 at 06:26

    Joe Lauria: “What surprisingly emerges then from these leaked emails, in which we see the unvarnished, private discussions among these “experts,” is that they really do seem to believe in what they are doing.’

    Paul Mason: “Disinformation is often defined as false information purposefully spread. But the most effective disinformation comes from spreaders who don’t know it’s false: who ardently believe it.”

    Mark Twain: “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

    Once again, as Mr. Lauria points out, Mason’s own words condemn him—just as accusations from Blinken, Biden, Pelosi, Schiff, et al. do day in and day out.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      June 10, 2022 at 12:54

      Hear, hear.

    • Tobysgirl
      June 10, 2022 at 14:45

      Another superb quote from Mark Twain!

  11. JonT
    June 10, 2022 at 06:08

    When they start to come for you, and that they have noticed you, you know you are doing something right. Which is some kind of consolation I suppose!

  12. Donald Duck
    June 10, 2022 at 05:58

    CN Readers might be interested to know that Mr Paul Mason, now working for various right wing think-tanks (and also including the propoganda arm of the British state, the BBC) who was in his younger days involved with a far left group styling itself ‘Workers Power’. He is arguably the most egregious example of the transition of a broad swathe of the pseudo-left milieu directly into the camp of imperialist reaction.

    Mason still portrays himself as a man of the left, but he has travelled very far to the right since he was a member in the 1980s of Workers’ Power—a split from the Socialist Workers Party fulfilling the standard function of Britain’s pseudo-left as apologists for the Right Wing Labour (Party) and the trade unions. You can smell these creeps a mile off.

    Alas this transmutation is common enough, a passage from far left to far right. But it is hardly new. Take the case of American Trotskyists, e.g., James Burnham, Sidney Hook et al who also floated with consummate ease from Trotskyism to Neo-conservatism.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      June 10, 2022 at 12:55

      Thank you. The pseudo-left are the most dangerous and unreliable turncoats there are.

  13. StandingOnYourHeadWhereElse
    June 10, 2022 at 05:26

    “‘Useful Idiots’

    The amateurs often are of limited facility including perspective, and hence tend to limit perceived derogatory designations including “useful idiots” to others, thereby rendering themselves useful idiots, encouraging leaks by others and the contingent efforts of imagined “protections” against leaks and useful idiots, whilst “The United States of America” branch upon which they sit, are facilitated by useful idiots, which they seek to encourage through “perception management”.

  14. WillD
    June 10, 2022 at 03:04

    I always come back to the point of view that if these ‘actors’, like Paul Mason and others, were confident that they really did tell the truth then they would not have to resort to such underhand and devious tactics to attack their critics. They would be happy to discuss and debate.

    To me, this is a sign of weakness and fear of discovery. They know they cannot argue their case, simply because it collapses under scrutiny – every time, just like all lies and information distortion. Their attempts to limit publication, discussion, investigation and analysis of news reveals the weakness of their positions.

    It always amazes, and dismays me, me that this isn’t more obvious to the majority of people.

    • Consortiumnews.com
      June 10, 2022 at 04:29

      Excellent points.

      • ray Peterson
        June 10, 2022 at 10:19

        And fascist’s do like dialogue or any intelligent discussion;
        was it Nazi leader Goebble’s? Who said, “When I hear the
        word culture, I take out my gun.”

        • Carolyn L Zaremba
          June 10, 2022 at 13:00

          It was Hans Johst in a play called Schlageter. Johst was a Nazi playwright.

    • David Casso
      June 10, 2022 at 12:18

      “Truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged.”

      • Vera Gottlieb
        June 11, 2022 at 11:15

        Love this quote…By whom?

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      June 10, 2022 at 12:59

      Of course, that is true as well. They are unable to debate because they are knee-jerk followers of imperialist instructions. They do not question what they are told to convey by governments and so do not understand why anyone else would question them. Their supposition that all of us out here are obedient marks for their political con games is a serious weakness, as they will discover before long.

    • Alex Grimsson
      June 10, 2022 at 13:19

      The catch-22 phenomenon of CONFIRMATION BIAS suffuses human psycho-cognitive processes just as ineluctably within epistemological debates about “Journalistic Truth” as it does within mathematical debates about Quantum Mechanics….

      QUITE DEPRESSING, yes, but probably just as useless to complain about as would be the tautology: “All of us humans are All-T00-Human.”

      debates

    • Tobysgirl
      June 10, 2022 at 14:50

      People don’t seem able to think through this simple equation: Okay, who does this benefit? You can use this as a basis for looking at everything from powerful men denying they are serial sexual abusers to governments pushing ideology.

      And you are absolutely spot on about avoiding debate. This has been the modus operandi of the transgender movement, running from any questions or debate, then attacking anyone who questions their ideology. It’s called DARVO, and it’s a very popular activity.

  15. Susan
    June 10, 2022 at 02:24

    Joe, I take heart in the fact that Russia is winning the war in Ukraine (and the economic war instigated by the West). We, in the West, have not been capable of defeating these frothing-at-the-mouth global predators (we could not even take an effective stand to protect Assange). Russia (and China and India) are having to do it for us.

    A number of factors (economic as much as military) have come together to give them success on both fronts. Even Kissinger has advised Ukraine that they only a few weeks left to negotiate, before the whole balance of power in Europe is overturned. With any luck they will ignore this advice. Certainly Zelenskyy’s response to Kissinger (to “fuck off”) plays right into this prophecy.

    I am grateful to Russia for standing up to these monsters (doing what we in the West should have done years ago). I’ve known right from the beginning (Feb 24) that my freedom (social, political and economic) very much hinges on Russia winning this fight. God bless Russia and Mr. Putin.

  16. Jeff Harrison
    June 10, 2022 at 01:09

    Thank you for your last paragraph, Joe. I was thinking of a substantially blunter observation for Mr. Mason when I got to it.

    • Consortiumnews.com
      June 10, 2022 at 01:52

      A new last paragrah has been added to that. It now reads:

      If Paul Mason looked in a mirror, might he see himself spreading false information purposefully because he does not know it is false and ardently wants to believe it? Might he also notice his lips tinged by the Kool-Aid dispensed from Washington and Whitehall?

      Indeed, who are the useful idiots?

      • StandingOnYourHead
        June 12, 2022 at 04:00

        In 1991 some crossed the road to Children’s World to stock up on mirrors.

        “If Paul Mason looked in a mirror, might he see himself”

        The process of looking/seeing in the mirror is a very complex interaction within which, dependent on socialisation, those so engaged largely perceive projections of what they believe to be themselves, hence tend to create their own Potempkin Villages and Government Inspectors, rendering stocking up on mirrors to be the wise strategy.

  17. Scott
    June 9, 2022 at 23:44

    Wankojizc

  18. RootBier
    June 9, 2022 at 23:38

    I’ve already donated but if there is something else I can do to help just say it.

  19. Linda Edwards
    June 9, 2022 at 23:01

    I read just about everything you publish.

    I also contribute what I can as I appreciate your truthful and excellent reporting.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      June 10, 2022 at 13:02

      Same here, even though I am unemployed. That’s how important it is.

  20. ray Peterson
    June 9, 2022 at 20:31

    Sounds like 1984 has arrived or does it just get deeper and
    deeper?
    “Ignorance is Strength” and here it is. The Ministry of Truth
    attacking two of the best sites, CN and Gray Zone, for honest intelligent
    perspectives showing how US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine
    is fueled by the military-industrial (Big Brother) complex.
    News Guard, et. al., promoting ignorance about the real intentions of US/NATO,
    keeps the strength of armaments flowing and profits to the
    American war industry. I feel sick in my heart’s mind.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      June 10, 2022 at 13:06

      They’re after Rokfin and Ben Norton, and Richard Medhurst, too.

  21. peter tusinski
    June 9, 2022 at 19:40

    The apologists for the corporate states ie:the UK and US are circling the wagons and fighting like wounded tigers to destroy whats left of independent thought, free speech and journalism. How evil,how vile they are to pretend otherwise.

  22. Rex Williams
    June 9, 2022 at 19:35

    Well, if as stated Consortium News are “useful idiots”, may they continue to be so as without their inputs to the truthful reporting of news designed to counter the disinformation that prevails in the MSM in 2022, we would be ill-informed as to the evils of the Macjiavellian empires as they move from one war zone of their making to the next. After the US proxy war fails, the Pacific, next on the agenda.
    Keep up the good work, Consortium News.

  23. Anonymot
    June 9, 2022 at 19:30

    The right is wrong! However they are strong, because the bulk of the Western world is sinking into a morass of anti- democratic governments and media. In the finest neo-fascist methods and the well-honed tools of those regimes we will go down. I had hopes the Europe would save us since they still have that metallic taste of WW II in their memory. In fact France may not be as devoted to this American war as it appears to be and that’s true of some of the less powerful EU countries.

    • Carolyn L Zaremba
      June 10, 2022 at 13:09

      Having any faith in Europe is a fool’s errand. They are merely servants of U.S. imperialism. Some of their leaders are starting to break away from the U.S., but only to save their own imperialist interests, not to care about the working class. It will be interesting to see what develops, depending on the outcome of the Ukraine war. All of the European countries, particularly Germany, have been rearming for years.

    • Richard Coleman
      June 10, 2022 at 14:10

      Don’t confuse the governments of these countries with their people. For the most part, the people don’t enter into the rulers calculations, including the U.S.. But I predict they will, and soon. When the full impact of the war policies and sanctions hit this winter the people will be heard from. I predict major social disturbances (riots) in Germany, England and much of Europe. (France is always a perpetual powder keg.) With Germany supplying high-powered weapons to the Ukrainian nazis, I’m sure the German people will be getting increasingly nervous – Russia and Germany have a bit of history you know!

      Speaking of which, just my 2 cents: This war didn’t start in 2014. It started in 1941.

  24. Lois Gagnon
    June 9, 2022 at 19:09

    What’s sad is the people pointing the finger at independent press as disinformation are unable to distinguish between reality and imperial narrative. It’s kind of understandable that being ensconced in the DC/London atmosphere, they lose all sense of what people outside that insanity experience. They truly have lost their minds which makes them highly dangerous to all of us and our right to a free press.

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