Over many decades, the U.S. establishment has become practiced at putting out claims that are completely false or that leave out key details to mislead the public, but now come complaints about “fake news,” observes William Blum.
By William Blum
As the Queen in Alice in Wonderland explained, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Or as new Secretary of Defense James Mattis has said, “Since Yalta, we have a long list of times we’ve tried to engage positively with Russia. We have a relatively short list of successes in that regard.”
Retired Marine General James Mattis, the new Secretary of Defense.
If anyone knows where to find this long list, please send me a copy.
This delusion is repeated periodically by American military officials. A year ago, following the release of Russia’s new national security document, naming as threats both the United States and the expansion of the NATO alliance, a Pentagon spokesman declared: “They have no reason to consider us a threat. We are not looking for conflict with Russia.”
Meanwhile, in early January, the United States embarked upon its biggest military buildup in Europe since the end of the Cold War – 3,500 American soldiers landed, unloading three shiploads, with 2,500 tanks, trucks and other combat vehicles. The troops were to be deployed in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and across the Baltics. Lt. Gen. Frederick Hodges, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, said, “Three years after the last American tanks left the continent, we need to get them back.”
The measures, General Hodges declared, were a “response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea. This does not mean that there necessarily has to be a war, none of this is inevitable, but Moscow is preparing for the possibility.” (See previous paragraph.)
This January 2017 buildup, we are told, is in response to a Russian action in Crimea of March 2014. The alert reader will have noticed that critics of Russia in recent years, virtually without exception, condemn Moscow’s Crimean action and typically nothing else. Could that be because they have nothing else to condemn about Russia’s foreign policy?
At the same time they invariably fail to point out what preceded the Russian action – the overthrow, with Washington’s indispensable help, of the democratically-elected, Moscow-friendly Ukrainian government, replacing it with an anti-Russian, neo-fascist (literally) regime, complete with Nazi salutes and swastika-like symbols.
Ukraine and Georgia, both of which border Russia, are all that’s left to complete the U.S./NATO encirclement. And when the U.S. overthrew the government of Ukraine, why shouldn’t Russia have been alarmed as the circle was about to close yet tighter? Even so, the Russian military appeared in Ukraine only in Crimea, where the Russians already had a military base with the approval of the Ukrainian government. No one could have blocked Moscow from taking over all of Ukraine if they wanted to.
Yet, the United States is right. Russia is a threat. A threat to American world dominance. And Americans can’t shake their upbringing. Here’s veteran National Public Radio newscaster Cokie Roberts bemoaning Trump’s stated desire to develop friendly relations with Russia: “This country has had a consistent policy for 70 years towards the Soviet Union and Russia, and Trump is trying to undo that.” Heavens! Nuclear war would be better than that!
Fake News, Fake Issue
The entire emphasis has been on whether a particular news item is factually correct or incorrect. However, that is not the main problem with mainstream media. A news item can be factually correct and still be very biased and misleading because of what’s been left out, such as the relevant information about the Russian “invasion” of Crimea mentioned above.
In May 2016, Russian marchers honoring family members who fought in World War II. (Photo from RT)
But when it comes to real fake news it’s difficult to top the CIA’s record in Latin America as revealed by Philip Agee, the leading whistleblower of all time. Agee spent 12 years (1957-69) as a CIA case officer, most of it in Latin America.
His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1974 revealed how it was a common Agency tactic to write editorials and phony news stories to be knowingly published by Latin American media with no indication of the CIA authorship or CIA payment to the particular media.
The propaganda value of such a “news” item might be multiplied by being picked up by other CIA stations in Latin America who would disseminate it through a CIA-owned news agency or a CIA-owned radio station. Some of these stories made their way back to the United States to be read or heard by unknowing North Americans.
William Blum is an author, historian, and renowned critic of U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, among others. [This article originally appeared at the Anti-Empire Report, http://williamblum.org/ .]
The ongoing hysterical paranoia is scary.
My question is: why some Americans hate any one that is telling them the truth? has we become a country of puppets that follow what the establishment and the “corporate News Media propaganda machinery”, is telling the people.
The truth is, that Republicans and Democrats, must clean their party and vote out all the corrupt pro corporate America that become part of the corrupt Washington establishment. Today in Washington we have a small army of puppets that are controlled by the oligarchs that own corporate America, the financial system and the Federal Reserve Bank; they are part of the IMF and the world Bank. Their agenda is Globalization to control the economics of the world and make the working class of America and the world, economic slaves. Our country is being demise from within by the oligarchs. We are being deceive by the corporate news media, the propaganda machinery of the establishment and they use slogans like the war on terrorism, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, protecting our interest, Democracy, human rights as a front to do the op-posit; we invade countries and overthrow legitimate elected governments and place puppets in power to control their country’s natural resources and exploit their people. Our history of neo-colonization to impose our neo-liberalism ideology is huge, most Latin Americans countries with rich natural resources are target of the American transnational corporations that use our government to commit these criminal acts in the name of the American people. The invasion of the Middle East was for the control of the oil in the Middle East. We can’t continue being in complete denial of the truth; we must expose the Washington establishment and demand that the corporate News Media report the truth; We the people has the right to know the true. Stop the lie and deception.
Something that everybody seems to be overlooking when trying to explain how come so many people believe utter nonsense:
A significant number of US citizens firmly believe the Earth was created 6000 years ago, despite all evidence to the contrary (fossils? the original fake news, from God himself, or is it the Devil?). Not only that, millions more are taught at school that this is a reasonable view to hold, and evolution and a 4 billion year old planet are just alternative opinions (alternative facts?).
If you can believe in Noah’s Ark, talking snakes, the chosen people, and stone inscriptions falling from the sky, it must be easy to believe that Russia/the USSR is Satan Incarnate.
A story I found at the Buzzflash site is titled “How Corporate Media Paved the Way for Trump’s Muslim Ban” It describes how we’ve all been smothered by propaganda from that same Corporate Media to believe the worst about Muslims. Keeping US citizens always on the verge of bedwetting is very much in the interest of Israel, for it serves as a cover for that little craphole of a nation’s ongoing thefts and murders.
There is lots more there, and this one is definitely worth looking up.
“So-called centrist or liberal media cannot spend the better part of the past three years running non-stop Islamo-panic, then turn around and act shocked when Trump exploits the fallout.
“It’s important to document the way the right stokes hatred of Muslims. But it’s also essential to note how that hatred seeps into mainstream and liberal circles as well. The rise of Trump did not happen in a vacuum, nor do the intellectual threads that led to many Americans supporting his arbitrary, hate-motivated Muslim ban.”
How Corporate Media Paved the Way for Trump’s Muslim Ban
By Adam Johnson
http://fair.org/home/how-corporate-media-paved-the-way-for-trumps-muslim-ban/
Johnson is a contributing analyst for the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) and contributing writer for AlterNet.
I agree with your observation, Mr. Thomason; that is not a very big force.
To me Putin is more of a throwback to the czars than to the communists. He is an autocratic, fervent nationalist who has stolen enough money to perhaps put what he believes are his nation’s interests first. I agree with what seems to be the consensus here that his or Russia’s involvement with the hacking of the DNC emails is unlikely, and the harping on same by many in the media and government makes their reasoning and motives suspect.(Though I am sympathetic to their disdain and mistrust of the president, who seems to have less impulse control than some of the 10 year olds I work with.)
So should we try to demonize Putin less, perhaps work with him and his country? Sure. Trust him? No.
“US and European media sources are attempting to portray Ukraine as ‘abandoned’ by the US. while portraying America’s new presidential administration as ‘sympathetic’ to Russia.
“Despite this elementary attempt at misdirection, it should be noted that US-NATO attempts to bolster Ukrainian forces and covert attempts to degrade eastern Ukrainian rebel forces ahead of renewed hostilities has only accelerated under the presidency of Donald Trump, not subsided.
“For geopolitical analysts, understanding the actual interests driving hostilities and confrontation between Washington, London and Brussels vis-a-vis Moscow, unfolding directly and indirectly, helps sift through political rhetoric and identify the actual motivations and special interests behind them moving this war forward regardless of who sits in the White House.
“By all actual metrics, the war in Ukraine appears set only to expand, not in spite of US efforts under President Trump to the contrary, but precisely because US special interests plan to use Trump’s intentionally misleading and empty rhetoric as cover to reignite hostilities more drastically than before the ceasefire was struck.
“Just like the US feigned rapprochement with Iran in an attempt to paint Tehran as unreasonably aggressive and ungrateful for American sympathy ahead of hostilities always meant to expand, Trump’s feigned affinity for Russia and its political leadership will be quickly converted into ‘regret’ as Russia is portrayed as taking advantage of American ‘good-will,’ ‘forcing’ America to become more heavily involved in a Ukrainian crisis it itself ignited between 2013-2014.”
US-NATO War Continues to Creep East
By Ulson Gunnar
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/02/us-nato-war-continues-to-creeps-east.html
Born in 1963. Cuba was going to strike with nukes . 1970’s , dominos are falling, (Vietnam/Asia) because everyone is a communist. 1980’s first Iraq war, 2000’s
second Iraq war, 2017 third ….. Since I have been alive, someone has always had it out for me. Oh , I forgot the crack and cocaine dealers in the city had it in for me too. And those educators, real nihilists.. Everywhere I turn , someone wants me dead. This is what fear looks like. America, are you proud of yourself?
“the United States embarked upon its biggest military buildup in Europe since the end of the Cold War – 3,500 American soldiers landed”
That is one small brigade. It is tiny. It is made smaller by promises that it will deploy in six different countries. Scattered like that, it is a symbol, not a force.
What does it symbolize? Nothing we have not always said, and nothing that is not already symbolized by things already on the ground.
It is show. Not real.
Fake news is a Washington specialty. There are still Americans who believe the 9/11 terrorists entered the US through Canada. Just ask Hillary and that Napolitano woman who used to head Homeland Security — both of whom advertised that fake fact.
On the previous thread, Jake G posted a really good article entitled “This Is How Russia and the United States are Cooperating in Syria” at the Strategic Culture site. If this report is true, if the U.S. is indeed handing Russia the coordinates for ISIS locations, then Trump is actually following through with what he said he’d do: go after ISIS.
If ISIS and Al-Qaeda positions are being bombed, then that might explain Trump’s three-month ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Can you imagine how angry they’d be? They’ve been helping the U.S. to take down Assad, they desperately want Wahhabism spread throughout the Middle East, and now all of a sudden the U.S. are giving up their positions and they’re being bombed.
Here is the link for that Strategic Culture article:
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/02/03/this-how-russia-and-united-states-cooperating-syria.html
William Blum – very good article.
Things are much better with a balance of power. Unfortunately, the West and the NATO countries always want to have the upper hand. They orchestrate coups, overthrow governments, and another chess piece is put on the board, aimed at you. Slowly, but surely, they surround you. When you squirm and protest, they call you paranoid. When you position your weapons in their direction as a defensive move, they call you aggressive. You can’t win. It’s safe to say that if the Russians had set up bases all along the Mexican and Canadian borders, the U.S. would be more than a little paranoid too.
“His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1974 revealed how it was a common Agency tactic to write editorials and phony news stories to be knowingly published by Latin American media with no indication of the CIA authorship or CIA payment to the particular media.”
Several times I’ve wondered if the same thing wasn’t happening here: CIA paying money directly into media coffers, or some other intelligence slush fund finding its way to the media. I mean, it just seems strange that the media would be so one-sided. They are not just being unkind; they’re being vicious and going for the throat on absolutely everything. They’re writing as if they are being paid, as if they are owned. Perhaps they are. How would we ever know any different?
William Blum’s book is long and a real chore to read. It is worth the effort.
In solidarity,
Garrett
I see a search for truth that is widespread and amazing in the numerous sites and discussions we’re having, so I don’t quite agree with a previous commenter’s sweeping generalization that lies are everywhere. A lie is a deliberate act, and you’re not likely to find that here in this forum. I also don’t think, at this point, that all demonstrations are to be discounted as manipulated. I will not associate whatever with the violent thugs wearing masks at Berkeley the other day, supposedly of “the Left.” That should be very clear. My spirit is with non-violence as we used to try to practice it. But, we have to consider the possibility hired actors may behave this way, and that falsities will continue. So the battle is toward information, clean and well-thought through, resisting the usual tendencies to demonize and simplify. It discourages me to hear a poll indicating more than fifty percent of Americans continue to carry the baggage of totalitarian Russia as though it has not changed. Putin is not Stalin nor Yeltsin. Putin is not a demon with glowing red eyes. We must try to counter this falseness on Russia dripping from every seam of the MSM and neocon America. Education on Russia itself is thus valuable and needed. As to visionaries, it is amazing to me besides Orwell to see Huxley and Eugene Zamiatin, a Russian fighting totalitarianism in 1928.
Sorry! Forgot to mention the name of Zamiatin’s classic: WE
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76171.We
I was going to mention the work, but I see you have already added it to your post. Hardly any Americans know of it, having been written by a Russian author. I found it with great difficulty back in the 60’s in an American university bookshop. All the authors you mentioned contributed brilliant works exposing state totalitarianism. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is another good one, as was anything by Franz Kafka or B. Traven. Anything by Ayn Rand is an unwitting marvelous parody of corporatism, which her conservative neoliberal acolytes don’t seem to realise as they, like her, take her delusions to be great truths. They are the cause of America’s demise, but like the neocon warmongers they only want to double down on their destructive policies.
What do these 3 examples have in common: 1)US Covert warfare in Indochina started in the 1950s, and support for French predated that. Vietnamese just wanted independence and did not support corrupt govts. installed by Empires. Yet the media supported U.S. govt. lies about massive wars and their reason for over a decade. Only really questioning after the Ellsberg – a leak that would not be possible today. 2) Overwhelming evidence of mainly US govt. actors in JFK assassination and coverup yet the mainstream still treats that, over 50 years later, as a fringe loony, claim, despite the majority of public opinion often not agreeing, 3) The mainstream media fell in lock-step to loudly trumpet the “evidence” of Russia hacking U.S. elections when there was no real evidence at all, the leaks including evidence of serious wrongdoing, and the leaks were almost surely from insiders. One could list many, many more examples including “WMD”, and “What happened to Building 7?” The two hypotheses are: H1) It’s so much easier, professionally, to go along with U.S. govt. “official” claims that media will always do that while govt. is united (Russian hacking started to slowly fade out after the inauguration) vs. H2) The owners and selected exec editors of the mainstream media see themselves as commercial and ideological partners with the govt. to tell the public stories in the interests of empire building – e.g. they may truly believe that Putin is more of a bad guy than U.S. leaders and believe that all govts. hack so it’s their job to support a specific silly claim rather than focus on DNC corruption or the public’s willingness to choose the un-serious, un-PC, Trump over their preferred establishment pick. IMO, one looks at enough examples, and it becomes clear that the executive control of the mainstream media often decide to throw their full support behind stories they don’t believe are true. And I also believe that the long-term buildup of these practices is culturally corrosive. Most “educated” elite thinkers in media and govt. have lost track of the actual truth gist of the truth and become lost in the official story which gets sustained & reprinted. For instance, the US has been overwhelmingly the major offensive military aggressor on the world stage since WWII yet the public would be told that Russia is more of an aggressor, and expected to agree with that.
You would think that anyone with an ounce of intelligence, a respect for the truth and the resourcefulness to seek it out would arrive at more accurate information than is being dispensed through the American government, its corporate power centers and its media. But there are way too few congress critters with the courage to buck the hive mind that prevails in the Capitol Building. Except for Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul (both now retired) and Tulsi Gabbard, they only spew the lies approved by the agencies that manufacture them from whole cloth. Most of them are astute enough to ask for money in return for their services to work against the interests of the people, so I’m pretty sure most of them are more dishonest than they are stupid. Our cultural forebears in what are now considered Western liberal democracies used to hunt witches, religious apostates, communists, and other non-conformist bogeymen, their intellectual offspring now target peaceniks, secular rationalists and others trying to preserve a civilised existence. Self preservation dictates ganging up on the wise man if defending him means the mob will turn on you too. T’was ever thus. America ain’t no exception.
Jesse Ventura, in his book “American Conspiracies” (with Dick Russell, longtime conspiracy researcher/journalist) makes a point of recounting an episode that occurred shortly after his shock election as a 3rd party indy candidate for MN Gov. – he was called down to the basement of the State Capitol on a day it was not in session and found himself being interviewed by a dozen or more CIA guys who wanted to know how it had happened that he was elected. His interpretation was that they wanted to make sure some surprise like that would not happen again. I’m sure he is correct about the gist of that. The people who make it to Congress & POTUS are not an independent subset of the US populace. They are mostly people who can be controlled, selected through a complex multi-year process that enhances the political fortunes of those who are easy to control and diminishes the political fortunes of those who are likely to be mavericks. That is the hidden reality of how US politics works.
Yes, perhaps it was you who earlier related how Barack was auditioned before all the right people with the money before being green-lighted as a “serious” candidate to be supported by the powers that work from the shadows. Even Trump used Adelson’s money, did he not? Guys like him keep a stable of pols to run in any race that might take them to Washington. So, whoever wins they will still have control over them.
Realist: “perhaps it was you who earlier related how Barack was auditioned before all the right people with the money before being green-lighted as a “serious” candidate to be supported by the powers that work from the shadows.” – No, that was not me, though I remember the comment. It’s true that $$$ makes a big practical difference in US politics and most anyone who gets to be POTUS, or even a US Senator, will be found to have some big $$$ connections after the fact. What is interesting about Obama is that he was already working for a CIA front company in NYC as an unknown undergraduate, his parents had numerous connections to CIA hangouts (Wayne Madsen wrote a book about this), and his policies shifted radically in a pro-CIA direction after he became POTUS, running on an anti-war, pro-change, pro-human rights platform. So those are odd combinations of coincidences. More generally, though CIA has huge media influence and CIA/dark money can be moved through all sorts of friends and foundations without leaving any traces.
The TOC from William Blum’s 2004 book, “Killing Hope U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”: https://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope#toc Is a good, quick summary all by itself. A different, even more, edgy book, could recount the list of domestic U.S. atrocities that the CIA/FBI were heavily involved in. These stories are not told in the mainstream media. Not because they are complete secrets, but rather because the CIA & allies have made their telling “bad for business”, in a catalog of different ways, which only an organization like the CIA with almost unlimited budget, almost zero morality, and complete effective immunity to legal prosecution can accomplish. It’s important to see & document the reality that the mainstream media are not on the side of truth about U.S. foreign policy when it comes to current events or even historical ones. Stone & Kuznick’s “Untold History of the United States” is a good place – armed with copious references – to start catching up on the reality of U.S. Cold War history and its continuing effect on the present day.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Although Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ speech spoke to America’s struggle over slavery, his speech delivered on June 16, 1858 to launch his campaign for the Senate, which he would lose, still serves as a good description of how controversial issues may separate a nation to it’s utter foundations.
There is nothing new about divide and rule. This politics of division was even talked about by such Greek scholars such as Aristotle. I’m sure that all through out man’s history there has been somekind of equivalent to our modern day MSM. Yet, by my saying this, I’m in no way suggesting we attempt to at least not try, and get to a suitable version of the truth, which we may then be allowed to make a decision on to how to go forward.
As many of you already know getting to a place of satisfactory acceptance of the facts, is a full time job. Between the lies on the right, to the lies on the left, it is certainly an eye straining ordeal. So with this I wish to thank William Blum, and Robert Parry, along with you commenters for providing a place where intelligent and thorough reporting is standard procedure.
Thank you Robert Parry for including William Blum in your web site. I hope to see more. I am currently reading his book “America’s Deadliest Export:Democracy” which, if anyone is interested in understanding how we got where we are today, is an important read.
I am very worried about the lies or “false news” as it’s now called, that all sides are engaging in. The American public is besieged with lies from the government and from every type and flavor of news media. Trump and his cohorts produce a constant stream, but hopefully most sane people can tell what’s untrue.
The media is now so influenced by the neo-con/liberal cabal so firmly entrenched in D.C. for decades, that citizens are being fed a constant stream of lies about Russia and Putin. As Blum pointed out via Cokie’s remark, we’ve been fed propaganda and hatred of Russia for 70 years. The possibility of changing that view is anathema to Democrats and Republicans alike – nuclear war is preferable. Really???? I’m worried that we’re about to find out.
Our 70 year hatred of Russia I believe arose because of Stalin who vastly disappointed Communists around the world and especially in America (where there were a great many in the 30s and 40s). But Russia is not Stalinistic any more and hasn’t been for quite a while, I’m not sure it is even truly communist. But Capitalists have figured out that Russia is a major block to America becoming the ruler of the world and the military/industrial complex that basically runs this country as a full throated capitalistic empire can’t have that. So the propaganda against Russia gets louder and louder. We need someone with a large political voice to help us put a stop to the misinformation. I don’t know who that is, but I hope he/she shows up pretty soon or we’re all going to be cooked – or conversely go insane.
I’ve been trying with family and friends with no success. Mostly because of the Clinton campaign’s assertion that Russia hacked the DNC. Now you can’t cast doubt on that unverified claim or anything else Russia is accused of without being called a Trump supporter. The uninformed left is as clueless as the uninformed right. And they seem to prefer it that way.
I have been pointing out for a while now that there is no win-win in a detente with Russia. The detente would be a direct loss for the Western Military Industrial Security and Propaganda Complex (MISPC), which is like almost everyone of note in US and its satellites, they all lose. Put yourself for a moment into the shoes of the individuums who have been living oh so comfortably for several generations now on this MISPC gravy train, selling you the images of military might and security, together with crooked news about how everybody out there (especially Russia) is about to get you if you do not pay up for protection.
The only outcome which would be a win for these individuums is an unconditional surrender by Russia. Then they would be busy for the next few generations dismembering the Russian corpse full of rich land resources. In other words, there is absolutely nothing which Russia could offer in return for detente that would make either the Republicans or the Democrats, that is those who bribe them and own them, happy.
Therefore, Trump may have a noble wish (or he just pretended like so many before him just to give hope in return for being elected), but under the current model of Western thinking (centered on confrontation) and the current power structure in the West, a detente is simply impossible, full stop. The only question is – will the West crumble first or will it be able to win over the Russians and/or the Chinese, without initiating a global holocaust. The West has been applying exclusively this confrontational model for too long and the risk of unintended consequences (miscalculation) are becoming stratospheric. How many minutes to nuclear doom?
Oh, and after the previous detente, brokered between Regan and the global village idiot Gorby, the US missile sites moved several thousand miles closer to the “aggressive” Moscow. Now they are in Poland and Romania, the countries which used to be the outer protective ring around Russia, tomorrow in Ukraine and Georgia, only about 500 miles or ten minutes from Moscow. You displease the Masters of the Universe and 10 minutes later you are radioactive dust, just such thought is enough to keep you in line. You may have missed or not the news that the US intelligence agencies are now collecting information on how Russia and China would direct a counter-strike when their administrative centres have been obliterated – how effective would they be if their Command, Control and Communications (C3) have been destroyed (obviously) by a First Nuclear Strike. If you have missed it, well the Russians have not – this was all over RT.
If only the West could have another detente like the Regan’s!
The assessment that the US intelligence agencies have been tasked to make is, for example if there was no Russian central command any more to issue orders, how would the Russian SSBM submarine commanders (two or three that must make the launch/no-launch decision) react? Would they launch everything they got till the commanders and their crew are destroyed by US/NATO anti-submarine warfare, or would they give up and surrender to avoid any further loss of life including their own? The same with any mobile ICBM crews, which the First Strike may have missed but are being hunted down in its wake. Would they launch or would they surrender to the “victor”? This is a mixed issue of army command structure, authonomy and personal psychology.
Ultimately, the goal is to estimate how many nuclear missiles would come back to US and NATO, under different scenarios of the level of destruction of the enemy’s C3. It is a detailed level scenario analysis for the First Strike situation. Great for confidence building towards another detente LOL.
It appears that somebody is out to prove that a nuclear war is winnable for US, especially if US strikes first. I wonder who that could be and what is their “projected acceptable loss” on US side, that is how many radioactive US cities for a win?
Well… Duh! That’s not news. It’s what the elite wants more than anything, to kill off as many of the worlds excess humans. First off, they need to make the nuclear bombs as clean as possible, like the fabled Neutron bomb of a few years back. Then very cleverly leak that around the world, and help the opposition forces get hip to the new better bomb tech. so that… Ta da: the incoming will be halfway ”clean” too. Then when the time is right, fire off the best shot possible, maybe they can get a clean kill right off.
The ”Elite” who comprise the pick of the litter of who ever gets a ticket to go down into the many underground bunker cities, long under preparation where the future of the surviving humans will hunker down for a few months in safety while the earth deals with the nuclear destruction and backup final solutions like ”Andromeda Strain” type biologicals, and just Chaos and maybe some Nuclear Winter down stream effects, Probably overrated, but so what, they will have a ”clean slate” when they come up out of their spider holes!
Enels, I’m glad to see you post your comment here once again, because after our last back and forth over my commenting to what Putin should address (Putin should say something positive about the gay community), I have thought long and hard about what you and a couple others had said to me about that comment I made at that time. You and the other people who took offense to my suggestion, like I said made me think, and what I came away with was, of how we Americans should quit with our trying to convince other people’s nations on how to act and think. Everything has a natural evolution, and what comes out of each cultures cycle of life, is what that culture is all about.
Us Americans, people like me, have to consider that most of this world has evolved over a period of thousands of years, whereas we Americans have only been American for some 240 years…we are still infants as far as nations go. Our American hubris is brought about by our thinking how exceptional we are, and how low grade everyone else in the world must be…why, because ‘they’ are not American. Case in point, most Americans think that the U.S. won WWII pretty much all by our self’s, and yet as you well know Russia beat the tar out of Hitler’s Germany and waited a good while for the Americans and their allies to come in from the west, and only then to call it a allied victory. Incidentally, one of my uncles who met up with the Russians at that time, had a very hard time back in the fifties falling in line among the American Commie haters, because my uncle had good memories of the Russians who he had made friends with during those final days of WWII.
I don’t think either of us. or the other couple of people who chastised me that day owe each other any apology, but I just wanted to let you know how by your being upset with me at that time, made me think, and I believe you made me think for the better of what the subject was that day. Again we Americans can’t make Afghanistan a center for women’s lib, we can’t demonize Muslims for reading the Koran, and we surely can’t make Russia join the sexual revolution. What we can do, if we choose to, is allow all people of the world the freedom to run their own nations the best way they see fit.
Oh, and about that nuclear threat of an American first strike, I hope I go on the retaliated response, because there will not be a good place to live after the holocaust, so Heaven will do…hopefully you’ll see me there!
Enels, I’m glad to see you post your comment here once again, because after our last back and forth over my commenting to what Putin should address (Putin should say something positive about the gay community), I have thought long and hard about what you and a couple others had said to me about that comment I made at that time. You and the other people who took offense to my suggestion, like I said made me think, and what I came away with was, of how we Americans should quit with our trying to convince other people’s nations on how to act and think. Everything has a natural evolution, and what comes out of each cultures cycle of life, is what that culture is all about.
Us Americans, people like me, have to consider that most of this world has evolved over a period of thousands of years, whereas we Americans have only been American for some 240 years…we are still infants as far as nations go. Our American hubris is brought about by our thinking how exceptional we are, and how low grade everyone else in the world must be…why, because ‘they’ are not American. Case in point, most Americans think that the U.S. won WWII pretty much all by our self’s, and yet as you well know Russia beat the tar out of Hitler’s Germany and waited a good while for the Americans and their allies to come in from the west, and only then to call it a allied victory. Incidentally, one of my uncles who met up with the Russians at that time, had a very hard time back in the fifties falling in line among the American Commie haters, because my uncle had good memories of the Russians who he had made friends with during those final days of WWII.
I don’t think either of us. or the other couple of people who chastised me that day owe each other any apology, but I just wanted to let you know how by your being upset with me at that time, made me think, and I believe you made me think for the better of what the subject was that day. Again we Americans can’t make Afghanistan a center for women’s lib, we can’t demonize Muslims for reading the Koran, and we surely can’t make Russia join the sexual revolution. What we can do, if we choose to, is allow all people of the world the freedom to run their own nations the best way they see fit.
Oh, and about that nuclear threat of an American first strike, I hope I go on the retaliated response, because there will not be a good place to live after the holocaust, so Heaven will do…hopefully you’ll see me there!
Sorry for the double posting, I wasn’t paying attention to the message I received…
Joe since you brought up my previous comment on another post here, Oh forget about any bad feelings, I don’t even have any about that stuff, except repugnance in some ways. Like for example the way certain (I guess) NGO’s operated by certain deeply ”connected” individuals, go to countries that haven’t gone… ”super liberal”… all over the place and make P Riots, do sacriligeous things like to cut down their primitive wooden Crosses, that’s not very sensitive, and flout common decency standards, like the wacked out woman that stuffed a chicken from a supermarket in public her private parts place! for shock.
Leave off what that percentage of any population that wants to express itself differently, I mean, but taking that, or taking a bag of cookies and passing them off to Neonazis in Ukraine, and all that stuff, Just not keen on that being done in our name.
It all boils down to exporting American/western decadent insanity.But I doubt the Russians were ready to jump off in that direction yet, give em time, maybe a cure could be found for insanity in the west, before it spreads to more conservative populations.
The specifics of the forms of aberrations that were talked about aren’t the same as the phenomena of outsiders, like P-riot being intentionally planted in Russia like a virus.
Who benefits? I don’t think the Russians will fall apart as a people, because they easily can see the rottenness of it, so I don’t think the intended results will be achieved, or maybe the real intended results are to besmirch and make America more hated.
There’s always going to be different strokes for different folks,regarding who or how they sleep with others, and I for one, don’t believe it is mentally healthy to obsess about it, like the army said ”Don’t ask and don’t go around pushing it in other people’s faces. sheesh!
PS: About the comment reply to Kiza’s [”It appears that somebody is out to prove that a nuclear war is winnable for US, especially if US strikes first.”]
As to my response on that: I think it is somewhere in between a natural ”Death Instinct” from mythology, and a Death Instinct that’s for real, whether there are real plans to protect the elite get through it, I don’t really doubt, because it makes sense, as in a science fiction novel. And what do I really know about Nucular radiation anyway, maybe it’s all hype and they can live in a wrecked world better than what they put out there as terrifying.
Look at Fukashima for IE: nobody even talks about really fixin’ it, like it don’t matter all that much, well they must know something, like it’s all a bunch of BS! Nucular was all a big BS story, like 911 haha!
I am glad to know there are no hard feelings. I was involved in that debate, and I acknowledge that I can be a bit overly harsh.
So you see my dear Enels, our making peace gave John a good feeling that peaceful debate does exist.
My thoughts regarding America’s obsession with a first nuclear strike, is that these idiots are now throughly duped by their own damn lies. There was a time when such lunacy was confined to putting the certified insane into asylums. Now, the fully insane serve in high positions inside of our very own government…what a promotion of rotten brain matter, and a sorry one at that.
I am now glad we had our exchange of words back on 1/24/16, because after my going to the mountain I have come to realize, just how conceded and vain our American quest is to wreck whole societies and turn them into American dupes. So now maybe I owe you a thanks for that…so, thanks for that.
My own family back in Italy still celebrites their religious holidays by carrying a life size statue of the Madonna through the streets of their small town of 800 or so. Would I go there to change them, never, not even in a million years would I force them to change. Likewise Putin needs to do nothing to appease the angry American mobs of identity politics. Putin only needs to be Putin, and provide to his Russian people what they need most, and most is whatever it is their culture and moral values give way to their common desires.
Glad you responded, and happy to continue conversing with you now and into the future. Take care Enels…Joe
Today I read 50-55% of the American people believe Russia is America’s enemy. Last year we had a second effort to get Russia declared a permanent enemy by the House, but that failed in the Senate for some reason. (HR 5094 the Stand for Ukraine Act). Arguing for this act in the house, various congress persons did not hesitate to avoid the role of the US in overthrowing then President Yats to put in Poroshenko while talking “illegal seizure” of Crimea.
http://kinzinger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=399397
Kinzinger needs some schooling from people with knowledge:
https://ccisf.org/obama-trump-cold-war-averted-now/
https://youtu.be/Op6Qr7uuMy8
Not to be contentious, but the kinzinger link I had read as a report on the state of the US congress regarding HR 5094, which in turn fits in to the public perception as cited as hostile to Russia. Your ccisf link is good common sense on what Trump ought to do to break up the old neocon mindset and I applaud it, while doubting Trump has the savvy to do what is suggested.
Yes, I meant Adam Kinzinger, the congressman.
Interesting article:
“Unfortunately the corporate ‘news sources’ today are in the hands of those that support the war criminals. Truth has been killed in the western world. Instead we have war criminals past and present that were and are in positions of power.”
[read more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/12/the-propaganda-peddlers-war-criminals.html
Below is a link to journalist Phil Butler’s rant, where Butler doesn’t hold back while calling out Michael Weiss of the Daily Beast, for Weiss’s twisted tales told which goes to the heart of what is so terribly wrong with journalism in today’s modern world.
http://journal-neo.org/2017/02/05/news-pooper-scooper-when-fake-news-is-just-dog-doo/
Excellent link, Joe Thank you
This explains much – as the Daily Beast operates under its umbrella. Quite a cast of characters (usual suspects) on its board of directors. One big happy family…
http://iac.com/about/leadership/board-directors/chelsea-clinton
And a follow-up on Khodorkovsky:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article168007.html
God Bless the Republic of Crimea and the rest of the Russian Federation.
The peace movement needs to recruit an oligarch with the billions needed to buy or build a media empire to compete with the Big Six. Otherwise, very few American people will ever read or hear critical information and analysis as contained in this and other pieces posted on Consortium News. Twenty years ago it seemed that Soros, with his billions, might opt to support universal peace as well as liberal causes, but that was before he turned to the dark side and actually helped defile the Democratic Party with ethnic animus and plans of world conquest. Murdoch emerged as the archetype, and the entirety of the American media was swallowed up by MIC acolytes and warmongers. Is there no Armand Hammer in the business community interested in restoring detente?
Your “media empire to compete” is already a’building. The international internet.
I expect it becomes, in ‘replacement’ rather than ‘competition’, the survivor. The difference is gradualness, just as the young tech CEOs, (your Armand Hammers), gradually replace the media moguls living as legends in ‘Murrow’ ‘Cronkite’ maybe ‘Moyers’ ‘Mencken’ ‘Molly’ (I could go on), who actually lived in a world without TV, without ‘wireless,’ when empires could be built in media syndicates. Rash Lamebrain perhaps is the last imperialist ‘media’ engraven. (Sorry, Stern.)
Thiel (whoever that is) scalped & skinned Gawker (whatever that was), I hear told. I figure it’s placative for the low-info class. Willful ignorants choosing, or stickings-in-the-mud, to perpetuate ‘old school’ — adolescence plagues geriatrics — when the ‘media’ for them meant buying from the menu, having only what’s offered, what everyone else is having — “what’s on ( TV tonight)?”
Today, I find, BuzzFeed and Steele are defendants in libel/defamation lawlessness, (Florida and London), brought by the falsely-blamed person in the ‘server hacking’ fake news broadcast out of a “probable” dossier.
Amazon dot com proposes its support in Wash.St. Atty.Gen. lawsuit against unilateral Executive law.
As the singular ‘media’ of events is gradually redefined to its original ‘two-way’ meaning, overtaking (competitively, or overgrowing organically) from last century’s meaning in an Empire state’s ‘one-way,’ (“We switch you now to: Live! From Knew You’re, ‘k?”), which told citizens their fashions, their thoughts, (now the IoT asks them), so in direct proportion the Murdoch magisterials shrink to the Musk -en’neers of magellenic circumnavigation.
We the people get around. We’ve got them surrounded — have you looked up the size mobs protesting outside FOX Tower? — and humankind’s moral level is raising the bar they are sinking beneath, as undeniably, reality-factually, and inexorably, as the ocean of climate chaos is raising its salt water tides over lower manhattan. (Hereafter, ‘hat-in-han’.’)
Once in khaki suits, full of that yankee doodley-dum, I used to install computer monitors in TV stations. And I bet ‘those’ TV guys that someday computers would be bubbled bigger than TV. They stared blankly, clueless, unbetting. They were analog, see.
Gradually our politics, (“don’t start a sentence with an adverb, morally”), goes to value the (digital) count of people’s voices – the popular vote – more. And value less the (analog) ‘shouting loudest’ decibels by ‘ayes’ or ‘nays’; before Cspan can finish a floor vote Twitter has the verdict voted in earthlings’s jury box. Hell, I turn on the evening news today, they read me twitters. The nays are pretty loud. If you weren’t there, in the analog media, (Spindletop? Fireside chats? War of the Worlds? Kennedy-Nixon debates? Moonshot Woodstock? Challenger? OJ? Internet, aka in media as Babylonian pornworld VR?), you don’t get it, figured out digitally.
Maybe people withhold paying taxes until Trump shows his.
Maybe fed.income tax better be split in two fields: a portion for ‘War’ and a portion for ‘Infrastructure’ where taxes go.
These “mobs”–we need new mob studies. I don’t think they’re all hired, tho I’m entertaining that possibility for what happened at Berkeley the other day. My problem is I haven’t grasped the significance, or the effect, of what these protests are about, what they’re trying to accomplish. Is it to keep us awake and stirring and thinking about what to do? I have also wondered about how private individuals could create internets that would be better protected than what we have now. And I should ask what are we trying to accomplish here, safe in our homes with our screens and talking versus being on the street. That’s a good question. I think the answer is becoming educated, which by being in this site will happen, so it might be time better spent, in thinking and articulating, versus holding a sign. I hope not to offend anybody or be too ignorant by saying this.
The world has changed rapidly since the development of the computer. We now have planes that nearly fly themselves, and almost driverless cars. Having worked in hospital laboratories, I have seen numerous technologists in chemistry replaced by a few automated machines and in microbiology machines to grow bacteria, identify them and test antibiotic sensitivity such that the labs now need very few fully trained staff while less trained people run the machines. I see the new generation, many with university educations only finding low paying short term internships in many areas.
Back in history it’s like the industrial revolution when farm equipment became mechanised by engines etc, and people fled the farms to find work in the cities where new industrial machines made work. Now the we are moving in the opposite direction as machines do our work cheaper.
That creates a huge problem for todays workers, and human nature being the way it is, can lead people in all sorts of directions, some being very ugly. People need steady work and good remuneration. If that isn’t there look out. And with the demise of good news papers and their good reporters, pushed onto the internet blogs, some good some wicked, then we have a huge social problem. Those who can’t handle the situation may fall into the realm of ugly disenchantment and what that can bestow.
You’re talking about the platform on which information is presented, and I agree about that. But someone will have to pay for the content–both to gather it through reportage and to organise and present it. Donations may make a small dent, advertisements make a larger annoying dent, but deep pockets on the part of ownership would make the biggest difference. You also will need a budget to advertise so that a critical mass of followers can discover it. Consortium News is already a diamond in the rough of the sort that I’m sure you’d like to see prevail on the internet, but it depends on meager donations from consumers of its content, and, frankly, is not well known. We need a sugar daddy to underwrite a news operation as large and influential as Netflix or Hulu are to entertainment. The American mainstream media newscorps all have websites but they are slanted to the establishment’s chosen narrative, aka propaganda. Most people, in fact, do read their newspapers, like the NYT and WaPo, on-line. To me, those are more the problem than the solution because of who controls them. RT, Sputnik News, Asia Times and other foreign sources may be more independent and factual, but they are demonized simply on the basis of their sponsorship. We need a modern day Ted Turner (who created CNN back when it was honest and factual–before it was sold to Time-Warner) to organise an honest American equivalent of RT or Al Jazeera.
Yes, I’d like to see a consortium news type of internet program but run from a service not polluted with commercialism and surveillance, called something like ZINS standing for “citizens for impersonal news service.” It might have the spirit of “Be sure to check at ZINS!” feeling about it, and used the way we now use search engines. It would be dedicated to objective news and conclusions from honest reporters and researchers, such as presented here on this site. If we laid out a list of current reporters who might work for such a site it would be considerable and powerful, leading to a centralized power source including a massive, interactive audience. It is arguable that from such a power house our system of darkness might be changed? So, then, where is this Sugar Daddy? (Speaking of “believing in impossible things”)
I once had a thought after the ‘200 fake news’ sites became known, how those same 200 so called fake news sites should ban together and form one web page where there would be links to all those oh so bad websites could be found. Possibly each day, each of those 200 sites could post an article of their choice, and each web site could provide a comment section if they wished too. There are a lot of good ideas out there, but like some of the comments above stated, that to do this massive news source oasis it takes deep pockets to make it happen. The irony of the name ‘200 fake news sites’ would be a bit sarcastic, but I would imagine that in this day and age of everything absurd it would work well. Lastly, there could be more than 200 sites, and the only constitution these news reporters would adhere to is their separate independence to how they publish their works.
As CNN has shown, the pigs soon start walking on two feet.
On the contrary, Peace movement was co-opted by billionaire oligarch George Soros. Even the ACLU takes his money. Along with many alternative media sites.
Many a fake revolution has been started by Soros. And the Left gleefully plays along.
The peace movement needs to recruit an oligarch with the billions needed to buy or build a media empire to compete with the Big Six.
The Intercept has Pierre Olmidar (and maybe others) providing financial support.
In the meantime while waiting for another big money supporter it might help if Consortium News and other like-minded websites formed some kind of alliance, sort of a trade group, to coordinate some activities of mutual interest.
Well, for starters, people could watch RTAmerica/International if their provider has it – DISH does in our area, or online. Yes, it’s “state-sponsored” by that “fiend,” Russia, but at least you KNOW that up front and can double-check stories you question with other reliable sources, whereas here we are supposed to believe without question every fake news story spewed out by our MSM 24/7. Note that when the 17 agencies convened their dog-and-pony show, RT was in the center ring for attack.