Exclusive: Arriving behind the anti-Trump “resistance” and the Russia-gate “scandal” is a troubling readiness to silence dissent in the U.S., shutting down information that challenges Official Narratives, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
A stark difference between today’s Washington and when I was here as a young Associated Press correspondent in the late 1970s and the early 1980s is that then – even as the old Cold War was heating up around the election of Ronald Reagan – there were prominent mainstream journalists who looked askance at the excessive demonization of the Soviet Union and doubted wild claims about the dire threats to U.S. national security from Nicaragua and Grenada.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside the Kremlin wall, Dec. 6, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)
Perhaps the Vietnam War was still fresh enough in people’s minds that senior editors and national reporters understood the dangers of mindless groupthink inside Official Washington, as well as the importance of healthy skepticism toward official pronouncements from the U.S. intelligence community.
Today, however, I cannot think of a single prominent figure in the mainstream news media who questions any claim – no matter how unlikely or absurd – that vilifies Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country. It is all Russia-bashing all the time.
And, behind this disturbing anti-Russian uniformity are increasing assaults against independent and dissident journalists and news outlets outside the mainstream. We’re not just entering a New Cold War and a New McCarthyism; we’re also getting a heavy dose of old-style Orwellianism.
Sometimes you see this in individual acts like HuffingtonPost taking down a well-reported story by journalist Joe Lauria because he dared to point out that Democratic money financed the two initial elements of what’s now known as Russia-gate: the forensic examination of computers at the Democratic National Committee and the opposition research on Donald Trump conducted by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
HuffingtonPost never contacted Lauria before or after its decision to retract the story, despite a request from him for the reasons why. HuffPost editors told a BuzzFeed reporter that they were responding to reader complaints that the article was filled with factual errors but none have ever been spelled out, leaving little doubt that Lauria’s real “error” was in defying the Russia-gate groupthink of the anti-Trump Resistance. [A version of Lauria’s story appeared at Consortiumnews.com before Lauria posted it at HuffPost. If you want to sign a petition calling on HuffPost to restore Lauria’s article, click here.]
Muzzling RT
Other times, the expanding American censorship is driven by U.S. government agencies, such as the Justice Department’s demand that the Russian news outlet, RT, register under the restrictive Foreign Agent Registration Act, which requires such prompt, frequent and detailed disclosures of supposed “propaganda” that it could make it impossible for RT to continue to function in the United States.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)
This attack on RT was rationalized by the Jan. 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” that was, in reality, prepared by a handful of “hand-picked” analysts from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency. Their report included a seven-page addendum from 2012 accusing RT of spreading Russian propaganda – and apparently this Jan. 6 report must now be accepted as gospel truth, no questions permitted.
However, if any real journalist actually read the Jan. 6 report, he or she would have discovered that RT’s sinister assault on American democracy included such offenses as holding a debate among third-party candidates who were excluded from the Republican-Democratic debates in 2012. Yes, allowing Libertarians and Greens to express their points of view is a grave danger to American democracy.
Other RT “propaganda” included reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protests and examining the environmental dangers from “fracking,” issues that also have been widely covered by the domestic American media. Apparently, whenever RT covers a newsworthy event – even if others have too – that constitutes “propaganda,” which must be throttled to protect the American people from the danger of seeing it.
If you bother to study the Jan. 6 report’s addendum, it is hard not to conclude that these “hand-picked” analysts were either stark-raving mad or madly anti-Russian. Yet, this “Intelligence Community Assessment” is now beyond questioning unless you want to be labeled a “Kremlin stooge” or “Putin’s useful idiot.” [An earlier State Department attack on RT was equally ridiculous or demonstrably false.]
And, by the way, it was President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who testified under oath that the analysts from the three agencies were “hand-picked.” That means that they were analysts personally selected by Obama’s intelligence chiefs from three agencies – not “all 17” as the American public was told over and over again – and thus were not even a full representation of analysts from those three agencies. Yet, this subset of a subset is routinely described as “the U.S. intelligence community,” even after major news outlets finally had to retract their “all 17” canard.
So, the myth of the intelligence community’s consensus lives on. For instance, in an upbeat article on Tuesday about the U.S. government’s coercing RT into registering as a foreign agent, Washington Post reporters Devlin Barrett and David Filipov wrote, “U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the network and website push relentlessly anti-American propaganda at the behest of the Russian government.”
In the old days, even during the old Cold War and President Reagan’s ranting about “the Evil Empire,” some of us would have actually examined the Jan. 6 report’s case against RT and noted the absurdity of these claims about “relentlessly anti-American propaganda.” Whether you want to hear the views of the Greens and Libertarians or not – or whether you like “fracking” and hate Occupy Wall Street – the opportunity to hear this information doesn’t constitute “relentlessly anti-American propaganda.”
The U.S. government’s real beef with RT seems to be that it allows on air some Americans who have been blacklisted from the mainstream media – including highly credentialed former U.S. intelligence analysts and well-informed American journalists – because they have challenged various Official Narratives.
In other words, Americans are not supposed to hear the other side of the story on important international conflicts, such as the proxy war in Syria or the civil war in Ukraine or Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Only the State Department’s versions of those events are permitted even when those versions are themselves propagandistic if not outright false.
For example, you’re not supposed to hear about the huge holes in the Syria-sarin cases, nor about Ukraine’s post-coup regime arming neo-Nazis to kill ethnic-Russian Ukrainians, nor about Israel’s evolution into an apartheid state. All right-thinking Americans are to get only a steady diet of how righteous the U.S. government and its allies always are. Anything else is “propaganda.”
Also off limits is any thoughtful critique of that Jan. 6 report – or apparently even Clapper’s characterization of it as a product of “hand-picked” analysts from only three agencies. You’re not supposed to ask why other U.S. intelligence agencies with deep knowledge about Russia were excluded and why even other analysts from the three involved agencies were shut out.
No, you must always think of the Jan. 6 report as the “consensus” assessment from the entire “U.S. intelligence community.” And you must accept it as flat fact – as it now is treated by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other mainstream news outlets. You shouldn’t even notice that the Jan. 6 report itself doesn’t claim that Russian election meddling was a fact. The report explains, that “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”
But even quoting from the Jan. 6 report might make an American reporter some kind of traitorous “Russian mole” whose journalism must be purged from “responsible” media and who should be forced to wear the journalistic equivalent of a yellow star.
The Anti-Trump/Russia Hysteria
Of course, much of this anti-Russian hysteria comes from the year-long fury about the shocking election of Donald Trump. From the first moments of stunned disbelief over Hillary Clinton’s defeat, the narrative was put in motion to blame Trump’s victory not on Clinton and her wretched campaign but on Russia. That also was viewed as a possible way of reversing the election’s outcome and removing Trump from office.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
The major U.S. news media quite openly moved to the forefront of the Resistance. The Washington Post adopted the melodramatic and hypocritical slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” as it unleashed its journalists to trumpet the narrative of some disloyal Americans spreading Russian propaganda. Darkness presumably was a fine place to stick people who questioned the Resistance’s Russia-gate narrative.
An early shot in this war against dissenting information was fired last Thanksgiving Day when the Post published a front-page article citing an anonymous group called PropOrNot smearing 200 Internet news sites for allegedly disseminating Russian propaganda. The list included some of the most important sources of independent journalism, including Consortiumnews.com, apparently for the crime of questioning some of the State Department’s narratives on international conflicts, particularly Syria and Ukraine.
Then, with the anti-Russia hysteria building and the censorship ball rolling, Congress last December approved $160 million for think tanks and other non-governmental organizations to combat Russian propaganda. Soon, reports and studies were flying off the shelves detecting a Russian behind every article, tweet and posting that didn’t toe the State Department’s line.
The New York Times and other leading news organizations have even cheered plans for Google, Facebook and other technology companies to deploy algorithms that can hunt down, marginalize or eliminate information that establishment media deems “fake” or “propaganda.” Already Google has put together a First Draft coalition, consisting of mainstream media and establishment-approved Web sites to decide what information makes the cut and what doesn’t.
Among these arbiters of truth is the fact-check organization PolitiFact, which judged the falsehood about “all 17 intelligence agencies” signing off on the Russian “hacking” claim to be “true.” Even though the claim was never true and is now clearly established as false, PolitiFact continues to assert that this lie is the truth, apparently filled with the hubris that comes with its power over determining what is true and what is false.
But what is perhaps most troubling to me about these developments is the silence of many civil liberties advocates, liberal politicians and defenders of press freedom who might have been counted on in earlier days to object to this censorship and blackballing.
It appears that the ends of taking down Donald Trump and demonizing Vladimir Putin justify whatever means, no matter the existential danger of nuclear war with Russia or the McCarthyistic (even Orwellian) threats to freedom of speech, press and thought.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Interestingly the American Embassy forced our local cable and satellite providers to ban RT News last year, quietly, not even a reason by the operators was given, we were told it was a order from the Government on behalf of the US.
One Russian News channel was bothering them so much compared with 160+ American and British Entertainment and News Channels, they had to censor it.
How insecure do you have to feel for that?
Russians are the new Jews.
This has gotten so ridiculous, not only that you can’t even dare question any American foreign or domestic policy without being labeled a Kremlin Troll, but even Entertainment news is now off limits. Question the logic of a new Female Ocean 11 reboot? you’re a “Putin stooge”, say its sad how may stars turned out to be molesters? you’re a “Russian Bot”. I’m not even Russian.
Even my account on Twitter was banned, barley even used, no doubt because it dared used Cyrillic text, which seem to be a criminal alphabet now, probably now its on their list of “Russian Troll Accounts” that will justify further bans and censorship.
One of the most depressing things to think about re: the obvious comparisons between now and the Iraq BS is the almost entire lack of any comeuppance from that debacle, and so likely also zero even if in a decade this current insanity is seen as equally poor reporting and mass hysteria.
No comeuppance for any of the MSM reporters who were just megaphones for the Bush admin. For literal torturers. For destroyers of evidence. For war crimes. For all of the politicians.
At least McCarthy was in the end censured and otherwise a bit punished (and perhaps did experience shame, at long last). John Bolton? Colin Powell? Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, on and on and on…Judith Miller, NBC, CNN, etc. Tony Blair…Obama too for looking forward not back and of course his own war crimes. And Hillary, Nuland, etc. but I’m straying from the even more obviously-now-seen-as-past-BS yet no consequence.
Nope, not much repercussions. Meanwhile Sy Hersh can’t get published in any major US paper about this, nor Mr. Parry, nor Scott Ritter, etc. Instead GW gets venerated ffs****.
I usually can’t tell what Parry’s emotions are by his writing because it’s very factual and professionally sober, but here he seems kind of super-pissed off. With damned good reason.
In 20 years maybe contemporary reporters will lament the lack of integrity and ethical journalism from that Russiagate debacle. They probably won’t remember names. Probably not even of their own colleagues who were part and parcel. Or of politicians, same. And of course if the repeat is especially apt, the same journos will be devoting 90% of their time to pimping for whatever BS claims the US wants to bandy. Sorry for my own bad writing but yeah, drinking and there are like two dozen completely obvious complicit politicians of the past 16 years who should be walking dead on the green mile or waiting to meet Mr. Sparky etc. Instead nope, let’s just look forward not backward except for a whistleblower from backward which we’ll keep in torturous conditions and sentence to decades. Let’s look forward ignoring bankers but backward on enforcing loans.
Blah. Thanks ConsortiumNews. Depressed. No comeuppance. Just a damned travesty. A land of oligarchs and military-sports events, and how much is Obama’s library costing? $500 billion? And like near Chicago where his corrupt buddy Rahm Emanuel and other shits are basically trying to murder the homeless via law…
Why not just build that library out of the hundreds of thousands of skulls of innocent Syrians, Yemenis, Sudanese, Ukrainians, and Libyan Obama helped blow into red chunks. A staircase made of spines. Something like the French catacombs, or proper and horrific Cambodian skull historical shrines (at least…well hopefully proper, can’t recall).
****and this changes so quickly. One month Brazile is a terrible choice to replace DWS, some note, but others say NO, shut up! Brazile is great! Then book published criticizing Clinton and “Brazile is the worst!”
Clapper: Clapper flat out commits perjury to Congress (well, tbh can’t tell clapper from Brennan, whatev.) about mass surveillance. Horrors! Clapper closed up the HRC email case! Great job clapper, utmost objective honest-one in all the lands. Clapper opens up the investigation two days before the election, that demon! I always suspected he was untrustworthy! Clapper tells all about how Trump sucks, a few months later. Let’s all trust him! Wait didn’t he tap Pelosi’s computers that time? No…let’s wait for the next thing he does. Maybe it will help our tribe!
And to be again drunk and honest, I can’t actually tell the difference between Brennan, Clapper, and Comey. And that other one, Ashcroft. And Mueller, and everyone. Jowly lying intel heads who will never be prosecuted for anything, what more to know is needed?
On 11 November 2017, distinguished scholar, political economist, media analyst/critic, peace champion Ed Herman passed away at age 92.
Herman was professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, and a media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy. He also taught at Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Herman is probably best known for developing the propaganda model of media criticism (co-authored with Noam Chomsky) in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988).
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Herman and Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in mass media. The model explains how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies is “manufactured” in the public mind due to this propaganda.
According to the propaganda model, the way in which news is structured (e.g. through advertising, concentration of media ownership, government sourcing) creates an inherent conflict of interest that acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces.
The propaganda model postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are: Ownership of the medium, Medium’s funding sources, Sourcing, Flak, and Fear Ideology.
The Flak filter is conspicuous in the recent Washington Post / PropOrNot imbroglio and Russia-gate hysteria. The term “flak” describes efforts to discredit organizations or individuals who disagree with or cast doubt on prevailing assumptions that are favorable to established power. Flak is characterized by concerted efforts to manage public information in support of the political and economic Establishment, culminating in outright censorship.
The propaganda model views private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public.
In The Politics of Genocide (co-authored with David Peterson, foreword from Noam Chomsky, 2010), Herman has argued that some genocides have been heavily publicized in the West to advance a specific economic agenda, often leading to a minority controlled governments of pro-Western and pro-business factions, while other genocides, such as in East Timor, have been largely ignored for the same reason.
Of particular note is Herman and Peterson’s The Iran “Threat” in a Kafkaesque World (2012), The article examines yet another conspicuous example of “extreme application of the double standard” by the United States:
http://therealnews.com/t2/images/blogs/eherman1218.pdf
“U.S. ally and client Israel had from the start received active assistance developing its nuclear capability, and with the help of the United States, France, and Germany, it has built up a substantial arsenal since. This includes some 150-250 nuclear warheads (the exact number is unknown) plus delivery systems by land, sea, air, and ballistic missile. And throughout more than forty years of such unparalleled help, Israel refused to sign the NPT and subject itself to IAEA inspections and was never pressed to do so. A secret agreement was even struck between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969 under which the United States agreed to accept – and remain silent about – Israel’s nuclear weapons program. This agreement, often referred to as the “U.S.-Israeli nuclear understanding,” was reaffirmed by U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 2009. Netanyahu boasted about it in September that same year after the UN General Assembly (UNGA) summit, telling Israel’s Channel 2 television station that at his meeting with Obama in May, he ‘asked to receive from him an itemized list of the strategic understandings that have existed for many years between Israel and the United States on that issue.’ Obama had obliged. In effect, ‘The president gave Israel an NPT treaty get out of jail free card,’ one Senate staffer told the Washington Times.
“So thoroughly built-in is this double standard that when the IAEA’s General Conference in Vienna in September 2009 voted forty-nine to forty-five to adopt a binding resolution that ‘calls upon Israel to accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards’ – in other words, that Israel’s nuclear weapons program was to be treated the same as Iran’s civilian nuclear program – the English-language media observed near total silence about the event. The only major newspaper that reported it was the next-day’s Irish Times, and nothing showed up in any major U.S. print media.
Similarly unmentioned is the fact that the United States is itself in violation of the NPT (as is every member of the Founding Five states – the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China – that tested a nuclear weapon prior to 1 January 1967). Article VI of the NPT requires that all parties to the treaty ‘pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.’ But the Founding Five have not done this. The United States has openly striven to upgrade its nuclear weapons to make their use more practicable in conventional warfare settings, and both the United States and NATO have publicly declared the importance that the Alliance attaches to a ‘credible’ nuclear posture ‘to preserve peace and prevent coercion and any kind of war.’ Nevertheless, in a Kafkaesque moment, UNSC Resolution 1887, adopted with much fanfare during the opening week of the UNGA’s 2009 session in September, called upon the ‘Parties to the NPT’ to live up to the treaty’s ‘nuclear arms reduction and disarmament’ demands. Indicative of the depth of the institutionalized reality-denial was the fact that the rampant violations and double standards in no way tempered the indignation of the United States and its allies concerning Iran’s alleged NPT violations.”
“I feel like Paul Revere. I’m trying to sound the alarm about this.”
– Crooked Hillary on Russia
“It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of ‘fake news.’ These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.
“An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred news into question. […]
“The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy’s ‘Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,’ February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper’s regular columnists accept as a given the CIA’s assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and ‘non-partisan’ investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this ‘fake news’ threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery.
“The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post‘s piece by Craig Timberg, ‘Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,’ which featured a report by a group of anonymous “experts” entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were ‘routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.’ While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the ‘experts’ refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being ‘targeted by legions of skilled hackers.’ As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, ‘You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won’t put your name to your claims? Take a hike.’ But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.)
“On December 23, 2016, President Obama signed the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which will supposedly allow the United States to more effectively combat foreign (namely Russian and Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. It will encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts, and provide funding to non-government entities to help in this enterprise. It is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and shares the spirit of the listing of two hundred tools of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. (Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to enlarge its list.) Liberals have been quiet on this new threat to freedom of speech, undoubtedly influenced by their fears of Russian-based fake news and propaganda. But they may yet take notice, even if belatedly, when Trump or one of his successors puts it to work on their own notions of fake news and propaganda.
“The success of the war party’s campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration’s speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad’s guilt beyond their government’s claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well.
“But the mainstream media never ask cui bono? in cases like this. In 2013, a similar charge against Assad, which brought the United States to the brink of a full-scale bombing war in Syria, turned out to be a false flag operation, and some authorities believe the current case is equally problematic. Nevertheless, Trump moved quickly (and illegally), dealing a blow to any further rapprochement between the United States and Russia. The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party had won an important skirmish in the struggle over permanent war.”
Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017
By Edward S. Herman
https://monthlyreview.org/2017/07/01/fake-news-on-russia-and-other-official-enemies/
Some friends begged me to join a local Indivisible group, and I did. A couple of months later I was told I was no longer welcome, largely because I didn’t go along with the endless Russiagate hype. My belief in truth outweighs my loyalty to the Democratic Party,
First I’ve heard of that group, but I’m not a bit surprised. I’d imagine they’re organizing as a religion with the theme “Saint Hillary was Martyred“. Trump as Satan and Russia playing the role of Serpent would naturally follow. I’d add that every religion I’ve ever encountered is totally inflexible. You either conform, or you’re (at best) driven away.
I’m sure Mr. Parry is much better informed than myself regarding the Russia-Gate BS, but here is a headline and story he should see if he somehow missed it.
How to Instantly Prove (Or Disprove) Russian Hacking of U.S. Election
IMO that’s all it would take, and the issue would be settled one way or another. Looks to me as if they’d rather keep the entire matter “fuzzy” than to have a definite and authoritative termination of the story.
h**p://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/11/70011.html
What a pernicious poison that awful woman, Sore Loser and Queen of You Owe Me, and her Dementedcrat posse of enablers and alibiers have pumped into this already borderline insane country’s political bloodstream!!
Criminals always try to deflect away from themselves.
The fake news, lies and propaganda is coming from Democrat AND most Republican elites, aided and abetted by mainstream media and intelligence agencies.
These elites must be losing the narrative, and they know it, otherwise they would not be targeting RT or Consortium.
I think there is a lot of criminality that they are trying to cover up and deflect away from: Uranium One, and the resulting $145 million that flowed into the Clinton Foundation, Mueller’s involvement in this, along with Comey, Holder, Lynch, Rosenstein.
Add to this the payment for the fraudulent Steele dossier, the 30,000 subpoenaed emails that were erased, the hard drives that were destroyed, the rigging of the primary re Bernie Sanders, the continual insistence on “17” intelligence agencies, etc.
The SWAMP has taken over the Justice Department, the State Department, Congress, Senate. It’s written all over Jeff Sessions’ face.
Time to drain the SWAMP.
Yes, also the judiciary and House and mass media etc.
Last week RT had an article headlined ” John Kerry condemns Israel, hails ‘extraordinary’ restraint of Palestinians”. Of course I read it, and I realized that there had been nothing about it in our MSM that I had seen. I think we all know why – praise Palestinians for restraint against Israel’s brutal apartheid? Heavens to Betsy we can’t have a prominent politician and statesman say that! So of course it was not mentioned here in the good old USA.
I forwarded the article to friends and relatives saying this in my email: “This is why I read RT. You get news about what is going on in the world our own MSM won’t tell you……
“The MSM has collectively barred any liberal ideas from TV or from major news papers. Have you noticed how some of the people you used to see being interviewed on TV news are no longer invited? If there is no discussion or exchange of ideas or even mention of certain events, how is the public supposed to know what is happening or why? If you have no idea it is happening, you can’t react or protest either. Our MSM has become a detriment to democracy, and it’s time we took notice!”
A second article on RT by a British economist satirically pointed out how he “sold out” to Putin-Soros – Murdoch” He lists a number of well known people who are no longer seen in the media. and I wrote my friends this: ” Think about the people you used to see interviewed on TV news that you no longer or rarely see on MSM Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Yanis Varoufakis former economic head of Greece, Katrina Vanden Huevel editor of the classy Nation magazine, Robert Kennedy Jr., Dr. Jill Stein, Ray McGovern retired CIA, and all the other members of VIPS and dozens of others I don’t have time to list. It’s a long list and a frightening one. We need those voices to help us see what is being left out of our doctored, homogenized news. We really don’t know half of what is actually happening – UNLESS we look for it at independent news sights!
Thank you Robert Parry for being one of he very best!!
Thanks you, Robert for a clear presentation as usual of a very important issue which seems incredible when viewed dispassionately. Hillary Clinton throughout her Sec. State time was vicious, rude, offensive in every way to Pres.Putin, who behaved courteously all the time and “expected her to win as POTUS and was willing to work with whoever the US people chose.” These are his words- I wonder how many of the “intelligence community” and public actually see his interviews, read his words, try to observe without prejudice? Most world leaders seem able to interact without rancour with Pres. Putin, and his success with “deals” and agreements is remarkable. The strange idea that all Americans should believe “their own intelligence agencies” when we have known liars Clapper, Comey and Brennan as the representatives of complete truth makes me astonished. I am an Australian now living in France-both very pro-American nations but I hope not duped by Exceptionalism.
I have watched RT on cable tv for several years, and can attest that it is NOT a propaganda outlet. It’s reporting is fairhanded and the guests are diverse and well-informed, usually experts on the subjects they are interviewed about. The election coverage that I saw was non-biased, and I was especially glad that RT presented the WikiLeaks emails as news and not as some fearmongering screeching like we heard from the MSM – when it was mentioned at all. I already knew I was NOT voting for either Trump or Clinton, so all this did was reinforce my prior belief that Clinton was what we all know she is – unfit to be President or to hold any other office in a functioning government. Losing RT will be a major blow to unbiased reporting, and I will be very sad if it is forced off the air and off so-called “social media.” I, too, am horrified that so-called “watchdogs” are not speaking out. We are on a slippery slope to Big Brotherland. Down the Memory Hole!
Today I saw a wonderful article in The Guardian, this is probably the all time low for The Guardian’s journalism: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/15/russian-hackers-targeted-uk-media-and-telecoms-firms-confirms-spy-chief.
The first chapter:
Russian hackers attacked British media, telecoms and energy companies over the last year, the head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has confirmed for the first time.
Ciaran Martin, the founding chief executive of the NCSC, declined to provide any further details of the attacks.
“I can confirm that Russian interference, seen by the National Cyber Security Centre over the past year, has included attacks on the UK media, telecommunication and energy sectors,” Martin said.
The NCSC, which is a branch of GCHQ charged with oversight of Britain’s cybersecurity, was “actively engaging with international partners, industry and civil society” to counter the threat, he said.
No details can be given!!!! Russian hackers! I am certain among the many global hackers there will be Russians and some of them may, among others, target UK sites. But so do nationals of many other countries. Moreover, what if the hackers are using Tor-networks? Then the IP address is distorted to such a degree that you really don’t know where the hacker is actually located. There is absolutely no evidence given for anything, thus this article is nothing more then a russophobic rant. The article is attempting to stigmatize “The Russians” as potential criminals, if you would exchange the word “Russian” with “Jew” the article would really sound like something from Julius Streicher’s notorious “Der Sturmer”. Western mainstream journalism is heading a way which becomes increasingly scary. It is clearly designed to path the way to block Russian websites in general, quieten any dissent and making a mockery of the “Western Value” of freedom of speech and information.
From my small Country, down here in New Zealand, it seems like America has gone totally insane & is like a snake devouring its own tail? Or like something out of a dystopian future from the movie “V for Vendatta”? Even we can see that the whole Russophobia thing is a crock of bull by a bunch of sore losers in the Democratic Party who are unable to admit defeat & are blaming Putin & Russia for this rather than themselves? This hysterical fake MSM Russia nonsense is so laughable that you’d have to be a idiot to believe it, it’s so absurd? Simply put, Clinton was a terrible, phoney, corrupt candidate but the deep state can’t admit defeat so they are trying to conduct a soft coup by getting Trump removed or emasculated? The long suffering, American people are being constantly lied too by corrupt, paid off politicians in league with greedy bankers & a elite, deep state, oligarchy class whose entire goal is to make huge profits from illegal activities & endless war profiteering at the expense of the ordinary American citizen? If they were to cut the bailouts to corrupt bankers & stop the endless wars & military spending, Americans could have free Healthcare, free education & money to spend on infrastructure etc like every other civilised nation? The RT channel & Consortium news shines a light on this corruption & speaks the truth & the truth is a dangerous thing to devious, evil people with vested interests in maintaining the status quo & keeping the American people in the dark? But this Fara attempt to silence RT will backfire on them big time because once something gets banned, it sparks greater interest from people wanting to know the reasons behind the ban? So much for the Land of the free, home of the Brave, it’s becoming the exact opposite?
Hi KiwiAntz, great to hear that folks as far away as you are taking notice of what going on. Of course, the internet shrinks everything
these days, even so, keep posting way down there in the Pacific!
Hi John, thanks for your comment. Believe me, we people in NZ care about the American people, it’s your Govt that is the biggest problem & threat to World peace, not Putin or Russia? American’s are decent folks who want what everybody else in the World wants & that is for a peaceful world, free from war. I despair at how the US Govt treats its American citizens, it’s shameful? What happens in America has a ripple effect on every other nation & affects everyone in the World, even NZers from down under? The hysterical Russophobia nonsense is a dangerous precedent that could lead us to nuclear war & that affects everyone, regardless of where you live in the World? Trump’s election win was a protest vote for a fed up American public, sick to death with both main parties but is now proving to be as ineffective & immoral as the previous President? If only we had a President like JFK? President Kennedy sought a World peace, free from a PAX Americana one, enforced by American weapons of war? At that time, JFK’s speech had Russians in mind but this could apply to all Nations & people? He said our abiding common link is that we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s futures & that we are all mortal! We must all resist & fight against this death cult mentality, wherever we live in the World,to stop this “out of control” deep state, elite obligarchy infecting America & the World? A informed & educated people is the beginning of this resistance to fight against tyranny & Consortium News, RT & Sputnik as well as other truth seekers are leading the way to inform honest hearted people, from around the World!
This “Russia Gate” nonsense is an effort to rid ourselves of Trump. An understood, but dangerous, effort. Trump will drive himself from Washington we don’t need McCarthyism to do the job.
Do you have a replacement?We trust Trump more anything you had to there to replace him but Putin.Citizenship rules.
“…relentlessly anti-American propaganda…”
aka “the truth”.
Over here in the UK we are lucky enough to have RT as a normal TV channel which airs on a free to view basis along side the BBC/ITV etc. RT has a huge following among the British population and is still growing. However, as in America, our own version of the deep state are not happy. That halfwit and fool of a man, foreign secretary, Boris Johnson recently made comments of derision about RT in a parliamentary exchange and our inept prime minster, desperately trying to draw attention away from her ow gross failings, made a speech a couple of days ago castigating Russia for just about everything. No evidence of course, just pure drivel from beginning to end. Broadcast outlets in the UK have to have a licence to operate which can be revoked if the terms of the licence are seen to be being flouted. The criminals in the UK government and deep state are probably working on some devious scheme to deprive RT of their licence at this very moment.
I’ve boycotted MSM for decades now, as THEY are the spearhead of the attack upon our democracy, and the threat to World Peace. I will not give them any oxygen to breathe. My boycot is total. I have left behind some alternate websites too, as I see they have jumped on the Resist propaganda bandwagon. They are going down, along with their masters in the Deep State and its criminal Empire, built up since the late forties. Daylight will again return to American shores, thank the gods (our elder brethren).
Well in England this Russia did it hysteria is also in full flow. On Monday evening, Teresa May, mired in her own omnishambles incompetence and surrounded by venal pro and anti EU buccaneers, chose a major occasion to launch a speech blamed Russian interference in all things west. Right on cue the following day, the main stream media all parroted a claim that an anti-muslim tweet related to the Westminster Bridge drive by killings, orginally labelled from US, had ‘in fact’ been created by a Russian or Putin ‘troll’ in St Petersburg, obviously with strings pulled by the evil Putin. Remarkably, none of these msm stories mentioned the Wikileaks revelation months ago that the CIA has software that can put any address on an electronic message. Too cool for school, obviously.
Speaking of the 70’s…..
In 1975, 30 MILLION people tuned in each night to watch Walter Cronkite on CBS. Those were the days when the American Public had 3 1/2 choices for information via T.V.: ABC, CBS, NBC and the “half” being PBS. There were 115 million people between the ages of 20-69.
THAT was power.
Today, there are approximately 215 million people in that much vaunted age demographic. Ratings? The “Big Three”, ABC, NBC, & CBS, pull in a 6 million share each night. Cable news? Hannity and Maddow are popping champagne corks and claiming a ratings bonanza if they can ensnare 3 million partisan bobbleheads into their echo chamber for one hour. 3 million. Add it all up, and the entire corporate media monstrosity pulls in MAYBE 30 million people. On a good night.
I know this is purely anecdotal evidence, but I have three sons 31, 27, and almost 18. My 18 year old hasn’t watch T.V., cable or network, since he grew out of Thomas the Train at 5. All of his friends are the same. My 27 year old is much the same except he does stream T.V. shows. All of his friends are the same. Where do they get the bulk of their news? Reddit. I had to google it. I had no idea what it was. My 31 year old is married with 2 kids. He and his wife are too busy raising kids and trying to keep their financial heads above water while paying off massive student loans. They don’t have the energy to care.
Independent News, in all of its incarnations, and the intrepid, ethical journalists who fill its ranks just need to keep doing what they are doing. The Beast known as the MSM and 24/7 Cable News is dying by a thousand cuts. Soon, someone will just need to have the courage to pull the sheets over their heads.
Christene – same thing with my young son – Reddit – and virtually no TV.
Mr. Parry, really? I grew up in Germany/Austria in the !970s through 1989. Yes, there was /is a such thing as espionage. I There was Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany, there was a bomb set off there in the spring of 1981. Three people died. I know because I was there. Do not give me this crap that Russia is holier than thou. As I told my dad today, 79 year old USA vet, served in Germany Army 1959 -1963., I really do not care about republicans, or democrats, I care about oligarchs taking this earth. I have no beef with Russians, nor with USA Military, I do have a beef where all this is going.
I made a word search of this page and your post was the first instance of the word “espionage”.
As I understand his many essays on this topic, Mr. Parry is concerned about the fantasy election attack on poor little Hillary by the evil Russians.
Regarding the Munich attack, I’d never heard of it, but a 2000 RFE article attributes it to some terrorists active at the time.
h**ps://www.rferl.org/a/1093108.html
The guy has a wiki, too.
The Russians may have been hip deep in all that, but it isn’t at all obvious from what I read at the two sites.
Back in the old Cold War years, which I would loosely say. 1949 through 1992, all this kind of stuff happened. I had relatives in the former GDR, they could never visit, but their mom could visit them once a year. Deals were made , for instance, my aunt could send them a washing machine, or a something of value, but they in turn had to keep quiet. As it turned out, my aunt’s son was a Stasi, therefore his family fared better. After 1989, when the wall fell, my uncle was not so fortunate. Ultimately, he killed himself in the late 1990’s. See how that works? I used the word “espionage”, I guess in English that means “the craft of spies” . There is no English translation, such as Schadenfreude, Weltschmerz, or Rauchemfangskerrermeister, . That last word is Austrian, it means the boss of chimney sweeps.
Have you not studied Gladio and the stay-behind network set up after WW II? All of the ‘attacks’ in Europe (Italy especially – Red Brigades, anyone??) (oh! and the Baider Meinhof gang – haha) were Gladio operations. It’s called the strategy of Tension. And it is now being done INSIDE the US. This is nato/cia crap….
Let me guess, they haven’t spent the whole $160Million yet. Probably ask for more in order to get to the bottom of this.
Whoever controls the media
Controls the dialogue.
Whoever controls the dialogue
controls the agenda.
Theodore A. Postol, a professor of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an expert in ballistic missile defense technologies and a prominent critic of U.S. government statements about missile defense.
Prior to coming to MIT, Postol worked as an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment and as a science and policy adviser to the chief of naval operations. In 2001, he received the Norbert Wiener Prize from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for uncovering numerous false claims about missile defenses.
In 1991, Postol debunked claims by the U.S. Army that its Patriot missiles were successfully shooting down Iraqi Scud missiles during the first Gulf War.
Postol has been a contributor to MIT Technology Review since 2002, and has been frequently consulted by other authors on a range of scientific and technical issues. In July 2014, MIT Technology Review published Postol’s analysis of Israel’s U.S.-funded Iron Dome rocket-defense interceptors. An MIT expert on national security technology, Postol presented data explaining evidence of weaknesses in the Iron Dome defense system. He argued that Iron Dome’s interceptors had not been succeeding at their crucial warhead-detonation job.
In a February 2017 interview, Postol discussed the high-altitude missile defenses being deployed by the United States. On the subject of the NATO theater system, viewed by the Russians consider a potential first strike threat, Postol observed:
“The political problem with the Aegis-based missile defense is that the number of interceptors that could potentially to be deployed by the United States will grow very large by 2030 to 2040. It could in theory reach beyond the center of the continental United States and make intercepts of incoming warheads that have been tracked by U.S. early warning radars.
“This creates the appearance that the United States could potentially defend the continental United States against many hundreds of Chinese or Russian warheads. It is a basic barrier to future arms reductions because the Russians are unwilling to reduce the size of their forces to levels where they might at some point be susceptible to vast numbers of U.S. antimissile interceptors.
“The reality is that the defense system will have little or no capability. The early warning radars have no ability to discriminate between warheads and decoys (these particular radars are a very low resolution) and the SM-3 interceptors would not be able to know which of many targets it might encounter is the warhead. Nevertheless, the appearance that the United States is striving to have the ability to defend itself with hundreds of interceptors will raise profound and highly problematic barriers to future attempts at arms reductions.
“The United States has a substantial capability to destroy large parts of Russian forces in a first strike. Although such an action would almost certainly be suicide, military planners on both sides (Russian and American) have taken this possibility quite seriously throughout the decades of the Cold War. It is very clear from statements made by Vladimir Putin that he does not reject the possibility that the United States would try to disarm Russia in nuclear strikes. Hence, even though neither side has any realistic chance of escaping an existential catastrophe if weapons are used in this way, the possibility is taken seriously and influences political behavior. […]
“The United States is in the process of building a vast nuclear arsenal that appears to be aimed at having the ability to fight and win nuclear wars. The fact that the concept of fighting and winning a nuclear war is completely divorced from the realities of nuclear weapons effects has not deterred the United States from moving forward as if such an objective is possible.
“Given this behavior, it is to be expected that the Russians would be scared to death, and that the Chinese would also be close behind them. I believe the situation is extremely dangerous and in fact getting more so.”
https://undark.org/article/five-questions-ted-postol-missile-defense/
Postol was co-author of an article In the March 2017 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an academic journal that covers global security and public policy issues related to the dangers posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, emerging technologies, and other issues.
Postol and fellow science experts Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie addressed the US nuclear forces modernization program.
According to Postol, Kristensen and McKinzie, the US program “has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing—boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three—and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.”
Postol and colleagues specifically address the highly destabilizing impact of new US “superfuze” technology to vastly increase the effectiveness of US nuclear weapons against hardened targets such as Russian ICBM silos:
“Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability—a capability that would require Russia to undertake countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear forces. Tense nuclear postures based on worst-case planning assumptions already pose the possibility of a nuclear response to false warning of attack. The new kill capability created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used in response to early warning of an attack—even when an attack has not occurred.”
Postol and his colleagues also discussed implications of the new US “superfuze” technology in the March 2017 edition of Science magazine, the journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Lew Rockwell has an article today on the US State Dept program, apparently in collusion with George Soros, to take on Hungarian media in order to try to bring down Viktor Orban. Hungary has been on the front line of resisting the chaotic influx of refugees ever since Obama-Clinton’s regime change in Libya.
US hypocrisy knows no bounds and won’t have any bounds unless we come up with some effective way to stop them. Surely we don’t have to wait for the Yellowstone supervolcano to explode to put a stop to this madness?! Thanks again to Robert Parry for focusing on this ploy of Big Brother to control the sheeple.
I believe it is all a diversion (aided and abetted by the media) to cover up the treachery of the war criminals in our midst. Propaganda personified. See link below:
—————————————————————————–
March 3, 2017
“Is Blaming Russia a Diversion, Designed to Hide the Treachery of Western War Criminals?”
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/03/is-blaming-russia-diversion-designed-to.html
Surely Bob Parry has told this story, in serial segments, several times before and no portion of it has been credibly challenged. His most cutting current observation that I recognize as lamentably true is that no prominent media main stream professional has challenged the Mantra that Putin did it and the 17 Intelligence agencies swear to that.
I watch Morning Joe for entertainment, and for its occasionally informative guests…and i find its cast of regulars mostly appealing. That said I wince when I hear Willie Geist’s periodic references such as who was responsible for 9/11. There’s instant embarrassment that there’s network wide censorship. I’ve never seen the inimitable Ray McGovern on Morning Joe, and authors of leading hit pieces from Information Clearing House and Global Research, CounterPunch, Common Dreams, Truthout and so on, have never, that I recall, been on Morning Joe.
Imagine John Pilger, Bob Parry, Craig Murray….have never, that I recall, been called on to share their falsification of the standard cliche’d lame stream propaganda about Wikileaks, Julian Assange or the Russians heist of Podesta email!
I’d never heard of the guy, so I googled his name along with “9/11”. I found virtually nothing except for him narrating a show about somebody surviving inside one of the buildings.
If you think that the rich and powerful are not steeped in Evil, then you are the perfect victim for their schemes. The only way out of this maze of lies is to realize that you are being intentionally deluded by rich and powerful persons pretending to be your honest leaders. Once you really wake up to this obvious truth, it becomes clear why our world is in such a sorry state.
Mike, the top echelon of Americans have always gotten ahead and accrued wealth and power through conflict. They are always looking for new enemies to conquer and fleece. If they can’t find them they create them from whomever is at hand. If they can’t find them externally–in the form of native Americans, Mexicans, Hondurans, the Japs and the Germans or now the Russians, Koreans and Persians–they will find or create them from within their own ranks–the target for destruction has been Trump ever since the establishment failed to bring him down in the general election after plumping him up in the primaries for later slaughter. The palooka was just supposed to serve as a straw man for Hillary, but the voters weren’t let in on the ruse and the fixers weren’t conscientious in fixing the results. If they knew it would be close they would have hacked the voting machines, as they’d done efficiently many times before. So now the need for the elaborate witch hunt and take down of this “enemy of the people,” so proclaimed by everyone in the establishment and most importantly the media.
The whole thing is reminiscent of the movie “The Cabin in the Woods,” in which a yearly dramatic production to placate a tribe of all powerful underground gods goes terribly wrong when one of the unwitting characters in the drama discovers his real role and intended fate but refuses to play along, majorly ticking off the gods with dire consequences for all human beings. The power structure seems to think we are all doomed unless Trump is extricated from the White House one way or another, and they are willing to make it so to prove their point.
One of the most important and effective tools the Dark Side or Deep State use against the people is lying. This and the threat of violence are their most potent weapons. The truth and peace are their worst enemies, and they will go to any length to silence or destroy those daring to advocate those life positive values. The Evil among us are the enemies of the Good. And they will go to great pains to hide this obvious fact from those they seek to destroy and enslave. They love it when their victims innocently believe that Evil really doesn’t exist. Waking up is about becoming aware that those who pretend to be our benefactors are actually deceiving us as part of their operation to rob us and oppress us.
“It appears that the ends of taking down Donald Trump and demonizing Vladimir Putin justify whatever means, no matter the existential danger of nuclear war with Russia or the McCarthyistic (even Orwellian) threats to freedom of speech, press and thought.”
Another brilliant post by Parry, but I would revise Parry’s concluding paragraph to read as follows: “It appears that the ends of starting a war with Russia and destroying US democracy justify any means.” Period. And leave it at that. The neocon faction sees Russia as a threat to global domination, ergo Russia must be destroyed. By any means necessary. Ditto for freedom of speech, press, and thought in the US.
Paul Craig Roberts has been sounding the alarm about the growing conviction in Russian circles of power that “Washington is preparing a nuclear first strike on Russia.” I was skeptical about the idea at first, but now I’m starting to wonder whether the neocons are above it. If they continue to stoke the flames of anti-Russian hysteria, many Americans will start to see a US nuclear first strike not as distilled insanity but our only option.
And what is to prevent the Russians, seeing the US in the grip of collective insanity, from concluding that US leaders are planning a nuclear first strike, and deciding that a Russian first strike is their only option?
I suggest you maintain your skepticism, for Paul Craig Roberts has recently shown himself to be a senile old fool.
Perhaps US planners really are suicidal, for surely they understand they will not survive a nuclear war. In that event we’re all out of luck – religious fanatics and mentally deranged types ought not have access to nukes.
General “Buck” Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
—President Merkin Muffley: You’re talking about mass murder, General, not war!
—General “Buck” Turgidson: Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
–from the movie Dr. Strangelove
I always maintain my skepticism about everything, especially neocon hoaxes such as Iraqi WMDs and Russiagate. Calling Roberts a “senile old fool” discredits only you, not the comments he makes.
We know the neocons possess too much political power coupled with insufficient (if any) scruples, an explosive mix. And we know that a nuclear first strike would not necessarily be suicidal for them, because if they decided to try it they’d be in the best bunkers money could buy. Look at it from the perspective of the Russians: exactly what is the purpose of all the lies and hysteria against Russia, if not to prepare Americans for war? And if the neocons are dead-set on war with Russia, maybe they would decide to order a “pre-emptive first strike” against those damn Rooskies from all the nuclear missile bases our government has been busily installing on Russia’s borders, in the face of dire warnings from the Russians that doing so would upend the so-called mutually assured destruction (MAD) deterrent. Sure, maybe the neocons are stirring up all this mindless insanity just to boost the value of their defense-contractor stock holdings, but there’s certainly the danger that Russian leaders might decide that Americans are all mad dogs who need to be put down.
PCR quote: “What is disturbing to me is that I do not know if Sandy Hook is a real event or a hoax. In place of evidence such as bodies, body bags, death certificates, we have what appear to be faked photographs. Why?”
The senile old fool is also on record that the Las Vegas shooting was a staged event – with actors.
Check out the FBI clean up video from Las Vegas and try to find the bullet holes in buildings, the concert venue and windows. There are none. Over 2,000 rounds supposedly fired and no bullet holes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7AbiYhC6IU&t=126s
Let me guess: the moon landing was faked. The twin towers were brought down by thousands of secretly installed demolition explosives. The parents at Sandy Hook school are lying about having dead kids.
I’m surprised the senile old fool Paul Craig Roberts has such a cheering section.
Chase:
I think the funeral directors saw some bullet holes. The doctors who kept alive the newly quadriplegic victim I read about probably saw a bullet hole.
I know, the fool even believes there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and it is not possible that the bullet that killed Kennedy traveled in a Z shaped pattern.
He probably does not even believe that America bombs countries and sprays villagers with Napalm to save them.
He is daft!
Here’s a friendly bit of wisdom for you to ponder, Zachary.
“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool,
than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
– Maurice Switzer, Mrs. Goose, Her Book (1906)
Any damn fool can take a statement out of context and make it appear foolish.
Regarding Sandy Hook, Roberts made the cogent point that “Raising questions is not a conspiracy theory.” He further stated:
“If you look at the recent shootings and terror events, one cannot avoid the impression that scripted stories are instantly set in stone in the media prior to any investigation. The explanation comes first and takes the place of investigation.
“Perhaps the evidence exists and we are not shown it because the government is training us to accept that truth is what the government says, so evidence is not necessary to support the story. In other words, government might be eliminating the belief that truth exists independently of government’s statements and can be in conflict with them.”
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/03/01/sandy-hook-puzzles/
I’m not here to defend Roberts’ questions or views on Sandy Hook, other “mass casualty” events, or any other topic.
That said, Roberts is simply stating a point of fact that there is “growing conviction in Russian circles” that the U.S. is prepared to launch a nuclear first strike on Russia.
Concern about the madness of U.S. “preemptive” nuclear war planning is quite sane.
A definite “preemptive doctrine” now governs the U.S. nuclear force posture.
With the end of the Cold War almost twenty years ago, followed by the de-nuclearization of all the Former Soviet Union (FSU) successor states save Russia, and Russia’s own unilateral and bilateral nuclear force reductions, the formal U.S. requirements for hitting nuclear targets on the former Soviet landmass decreased, while the United States increased the role and reach of
nuclear weapons against China and elsewhere.
Under the Clinton and Bush administrations, the United States asserted that nuclear weapons can legitimately be used against “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD), even chemical weapons, anywhere in the world, even against non-nuclear nations.
The inclusion of all forms of “weapons of mass destruction” as potential targets for U.S. nuclear war planners significantly broadened the geographical reach and number of potential scenarios for U.S. nuclear strike options.
By expanding the targets to include “WMD” very broadly defined and by including “regional powers” Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya in addition to Russia and China, the geographical reach, potential scenarios, and potential targets for U.S. nuclear war planners has actually significantly increased since the early-1990s.
U.S. nuclear war planning went beyond retaliation and included preemptive strikes.
Embarrassed by the exposure of draft nuclear doctrine documents and existing Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations documents, the Joint Staff claimed that the documents would not be published, revised or classified, and that the publicly visible documents merely presented nuclear policy “pseudo doctrine”.
There is no doubt that a nuclear exchange would be unimaginably catastrophic, indeed suicidal.
But the U.S. appears to have unilaterally abandoned the notion of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
And as the WMD arsenal of Israel makes evident, religious fanatics and mentally deranged types do indeed have access to nukes.
We are far out of luck.
So please try contributing something useful to the discussion, Zachary. Or do be silent.
I’ll admit to being quite surprised by this statement, and limit my reaction to that.
Regarding Paul Craig Roberts, here is something he published in one of his columns about Las Vegas. I believe it’s from one of his readers.
h**ps://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/10/09/military-surgeon-says-videos-las-vegas-gunshot-victims-fake/
Next is a youtube message from PCR which contains a lot of his views about the 9/11 attack on the US.
h**ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv298Ont_LE
Stuff about nano-thermite. Remarks about how Americans can’t distinguish between a building collapse and a building exploding.
Bat! Shit! Crazy!
Oh, I may be totally wrong, and he may be entirely right. In that extremely unlikely event I’ll make a groveling apology.
If the senile old fool is correct about the US making a nuclear first strike on Russia, I won’t be able to make that apology, for I’ll be dead, and for that matter so will Paul Craig Roberts. I’d predict most of the human population on Planet Earth will die in such an event, and that’s a best-case situation.
It’s difficult to imagine a motive for the US movers-and-shakers to do a nuclear attack on the nation best equipped to strike back. Maybe Mr. PCR will be so kind as to write a column where he spells out how he supposes that’ll be anything more than the greatest murder-suicide of all time.
The United States has refused to adopt a no-first-use policy, saying that it “reserves the right to use” nuclear weapons first in the case of conflict.
Russian concerns about a possible US nuclear first strike are valid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo
In June 2016, during the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin urged journalists to report genuinely on the impending danger of a nuclear arms race.
It is shocking to me that people who look closely at these things, don’t KNOW that the US has been pulling false flag events for a LONG TIME. While we’ve been alive, that would be JFK’s murder by the cia (as well as MLK and RFK); Gulf of Tonkin staged excuse to justify the war on Viet Nam; WMD in Iraq; BS stories about Central America justifying vast imports of cocaine to our cities; ditto on heroin in Viet Nam and now Afghanistan (this is how the cia funds their black ops); MK Ultra which never ended; the demolition of 3 skyscrapers into their own footprint.. and on it goes. WAKE THE F UP. If you can’t SEE this yet, YOU are the fool. PCR may be hysterical at seeing the country disintegrate but he knows lies when he smells them. Learn this talent….
According to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nuclear Notebook, the total number of nuclear weapons worldwide is estimated at 9,920 in 2017.
For decades, several nations of the world have been armed and ready to perpetrate the greatest murder-suicide of all time.
Five nations are considered to be “nuclear-weapon states” (NWS) under the terms of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
In order of acquisition of nuclear weapons these are: the United States, the Russian Federation (the successor state to the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France, and China.
Since the NPT entered into force in 1970, three states that were not parties to the Treaty have conducted nuclear tests, namely India, Pakistan, and North Korea. North Korea had been a party to the NPT but withdrew in 2003.
South Africa developed nuclear weapons but then disassembled its arsenal before joining the NPT.
Israel is widely known to have nuclear weapons.
Jonathan Cook, a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism, notes:
“More than a decade ago, two leading American academics wrote a study of the Israel lobby’s role in the United States, Israel’s chief patron for half a century. It was a sign of the lobby’s influence that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt could not find a publisher at home. They had to turn to a British journal instead.
“The Israel lobby’s strength in western capitals has depended precisely on its ability to remain out of view. Simply to talk about the lobby risks being accused of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish cabals.
“But Mearsheimer and Walt described a type of pressure group familiar in the US – and increasingly in European capitals. Everyone from Cuba to health insurers and arms manufacturers operate aggressive lobbyists in Washington to secure their interests.
“What is special about the Israel lobby in the US – an amalgam of hawkish Jewish leadership organisations and messianic Christian evangelicals – is the fear it exploits to silence critics. No one wants to be labelled an anti-Semite.
“Rarely identified or held to account, the lobby has entrenched its power.
“That is what Britain’s heir to the throne, Prince Charles, was talking about three decades ago – even if he misidentified it as a ‘Jewish’ rather Israel lobby – in a forgotten letter found in the public archives and publicised at the weekend.
“‘Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in the US? I must be naive, I suppose!’ he wrote to a family friend in 1986.
“Today, as recent events illustrate, the lobby is struggling to stay in the shadows. Social media and Palestinians with camera phones have exposed a global audience to systematic abuses by the Israeli army the western media largely ignored. For the first time, Israel supporters sound evasive and dissembling.
“Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s strident efforts in the US Congress through 2014 and 2015 to prevent a nuclear accord with Iran dragged the lobby even farther into the light. […]
“There is growing hysteria about foreign interference in US and European politics. Is it not time for western states to show as much concern about the malign influence of Israel’s lobbyists as they do about Russian hackers?”
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2017-11-12/priti-patel-uk-israel-lobby/
a n o n y m o u s
I just found a fourth word which triggers the “moderation” filter. It was part of a sentence I quoted from the essay, and I’m forced to admit this one makes no sense at all to me.
Yes, for many who do not know, and you seem to be able to express and explain it better than I, there are moderating words, words that cannot be used on some sites.
For example: fascism. You cannot use this on any web site, save a finger count, except on fascist news sites or anti fascist news sites. It’s Ált-right’ a media generated word with no substance. No history. And this is the point. As the commodified culture proceeds at breathtaking speeds, words are gutted or created to have no meaning or any meaning which is no shared or commonly understood meaning. This is how the mind is colonized and language is appropriated or created for the elites.
Even the word ‘left’ has no meaning anymore so the word ‘progressive’ was created which is as vacuous as the former.
In a world where the only meaning is profit, then the cognitive abilities of people become colonized and they actually, like a ventriloquist’s puppet, gaggle back words they have no idea of what is meant.
Thinking now is not just subversive, it is borrowed from the authors of language. They rent our language out to us.
Robert, you write:
” ….. that senior editors and national reporters understood the dangers of mindless groupthink inside Official Washington, as well as the importance of healthy skepticism toward official pronouncements from the U.S. intelligence community.”
It is really class think, Robert. The group just supports the class. But yes, the fallacy of class think, or group think as you state among ruling elite dominance, removes any possibility of dissent. And of course that is the point.
And this leads to the issue of dissent in media. As the ruling class is consolidating its coveted political power, in tandem with the Powell Amendment’s prescriptions, such as the takeover of all institutions,no dissent is allowed.
Yes, it is a matter of careerism but more so, it is a matter of hierarchical, elite control of public life.
The dialectic, or irony is that the current stage of capitalism is failing and cannot be repaired or saved by some FDR and a New Deal.
We have the Old/New Deal now: corporate control of everything as well as a public state and a deep state. The public State, of course, is just a charade, Kabuki theater. The deep state is in control.
Operation Garden Plot, Rex 84 and the decree of Continuity of Governance will soon happen. It has to. The strategy of tension must turn into the strategy of de-tension.
I lived in Nicaragua all of 1985 during the Contra war, which you reported so finely about. I remember Reagan saying the Nicaraguans will come over the border, the Sandinista’s, and invade America. And I remember the corporate media in America doing what it is now doing with Russia.
Many Americans believed it. Now, once again, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.
For all those with Slavic souls (regardless of ethnic history), here is a link to one of the most glorious
of all Russian choral works, Pavel Chesnikov’s “Salvation is Created”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqQc8YHB2og
This short piece states an important foundation of the Eastern Orthodox Church, that (unlike Western
Christianity, where God and/or Jesus ‘saves’ sinful man/woman) salvation is Co-Created between God
and Humanity. The Old Church Slavonic words roughly translate as “Salvation is Created in the Midst
of the Earth, O God. Alleluia.”
Many American and other Western ensembles know this piece (this particular recording is by the Yale
Professional Chorus). Imagine a Very Large Flash Mob (it’s not a difficult piece to learn, although it’s
very important to have the requisite contrabass singers) performing this someplace like Times Square
and having the video of it going viral . . .
Irina, thank you for that reference. I strongly believe that this difference in understanding, IS the split between eastern and western cultures. I first recognized this when I heard an interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn as he was departing the US and returning to Russia. He said something to the effect that the east and west will never understand each other until they understand the difference between the Catholic and Orthadox Church, and I couldn’t understand what he was referring to. It is precisely this split in spirituality, and culture that he was talking about. And, one of his last accomplishments, was writing “Two Hunderd Years Together”, a book that one still cannot buy in America in English translation.
Our cultures have much to share and learn from one another but first truly open dialogue is necessary. Dialogue like we’re having now, which is why I always thank Robert Parry…
Thanks for the link Irina, very beautiful.
This is not group think this is group fear and indoctrination. I would suggest that most of the junior or middle journalists read sites like this one and listen to RT. They are not complete zombies and they will see through the whole crooked scam of the deep states control over the media, but they are AFRAID to speak out or even hint that they might not be on message with the edict passed down from “up stairs”. RT and a few other news outlets have completely ignored the criminals from “up stairs” so that’s why they have had to be silenced. The whole of the internet will soon be silenced as far as alternative opinion goes. We’re all ‘Winston Smith’ of Orwell’s book, 1984 now.
Perhaps we need to create an official government – “Ministry of Truth” – to insure that no actual “truth” makes it into MSM’s nightly “Russia, Russia, Russia, Putin, Putin, PooooKeeeMoN” nonsense they refer to as “news!”
I just heard a reporter on CBC Radio Canada (public radio) news cite the discredited ’17 intel agency consensus’ as flat fact as recently as November 11 2017.
CBC news Radio Canada is fun to listen to. You can first hear the headlines and guess what the ‘report’ will be, almost by using a checklist, including what is going to be omitted. Then you can see how correct your guesses are. It is even easier than a level 1 crossword puzzle.
It really is here folks.
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
God help us when we learn to love “Big Brother”.
We need Huxley to learn to love him. We are almost ther
The smack epidemic is the equivalent of Huxley’s “soma”.
Cars kill more people each year same with Dr’s, are these ‘epidemics’ as well? Smack isn’t even close to Huxley’s Soma.
The ‘opioids epidemic’ is/was/and will continue to be an engineered for profit enterprise.
It has been said that the CIA is behind heroin coming to the USA from Afghanistan, just as they brought in the cocaine from the Contras. There are lots of ways for people to die, but the heroin epidemic is about keeping them docile. They also used it in an attempt to quell the civil rights movement by flooding black communities in the inner cities in the ’60’s.
I wish Mr. Parry hadn’t mentioned that, for I’d sort of forgotten about it, and now find myself quite angry once again.
As a practical matter there isn’t much I can do. I haven’t bookmarked Huffington Post for years, and that’s also true for the neocon NYT and the Bezos WP. Recently I was forced to use a headline from the dreadful NYT, but I sure as hell didn’t provide any kind of link.
All my searches now are duckduckgo unless it’s a highly specialized one requiring “limiters” to the search terms. If the topic is a sensitive one, I don’t use Google at all, for they record every single search I’ve ever made.
That loss of privacy grates on me. Recently I had an issue with a small storable grocery item – it was grossly defective. Upon receipt of my Store Card, the friendly person on the other end of the telephone line dug out the purchase, even though it had been made many weeks earlier. That’s true for all the store cards. Every purchase I’ve ever made with them is stored on somebody’s computer database. Drugstores. Grocery stores. Even the hardware store now has one. We live in a fishbowl, and anybody can “look” when we use either a store card or a credit card.
That hit list put out by the Post is reason alone to see whose names it list and then requires further investigation as time permits. I found most of my favorite go-to sites made the infamous list.
Politifact is of course owned by the Tampa Bay Times, the majority owners of which are high-rolling Clinton donors and is biased as hell.
I never went to RT’s website before, but now I’m curious. They have some very interesting stories that you don’t find other places, such as a story about all the times that Lenin’s body has been attacked.
Good. And your comment leads to the point that the more they curb dissent, the greater will be the growth of dissent. One would hope. The point is, your curiosity was tempted due to prohibitions.
Danny kind of like when the American media went bonkers over the porn movie ‘Deep Throat’. No, I never saw it, but many did, and I swear what made the X-Rated film do well, was because of all the publicity the movie got from concerned citizen civic groups, and religious organizations telling everyone how ‘Deep Throat’ the movie had no redeeming values what so ever. The result was a Porn Movie Bonanza if ever, and all because people were told not to see it.
I enjoy reading RT, because not only does it report on diverse topics at times, but the articles are actually written in a middle of the road style, and not so slanted as their American counterparts. So Gregory welcome to club, you made a good choice. Joe
Here is interesting item where a Hillary bullymaster got called out, and was made to apologize….
https://www.sott.net/article/367776-Clinton-attack-dog-caught-out-for-making-McCarthyite-smears-and-lies-about-Glenn-Greenwald-and-made-to-apologize
sott.net is a very fine news aggregator. they also cover the topic of PSYCHOPATHY which is something everyone needs to study. This is the system ruling us.. rule of psychopaths.. a PATHOCRACY.
I stopped reading HuffPost during the Obama administration. I no longer considered them a source of information that was being honest and forthright about his policies, so it doesn’t surprise me they would take down an article that questions the Russia-gate story. They were also very pro Clinton. It really isn’t what I would call a left wing site. It’s for half-asssed liberals that rant and rave about Trump, and believe Russia put him in office, and are not very sophisticated in how America does business. Since Trump has fallen into line with the establishment their only reason to continue to scapegoat him is that he has become a useful diversionary tactic, as it draws people’s attention away from a militaristic, corporate America that can continue to do business as usual, which means screwing the American people, and escalate the cold war at the same time.
Annie
I stopped reading it as well . It is just a schell of it´s forer self. We used to get some serious journalism from some really good writers. Now? it is nothing but a mouthpiece for the State Dept, and entertainment bubble gum for the brain.
If I want a serious look at what is happening in the world I read R T News, Russia Insider, Consortium News and Counterpunch.
You may also like globalresearch.ca. Very informative articles.
I find that Common Dreams sees past the pro corporate-militaristic nonsense spewed daily on “liberal” publications such as the Washington Post or NY Times. Look for independently funded, by readership donations, as is CN’s here and go from there. At least one skips the agendas forced by the corporate sponsors.
Thank you. A GREAT site. Everyone there is good, honest and very very smart.
I read some articles in their LGBT section and Entertainment section. Even there, a lot of them are so obviously Clintonista propaganda I don’t bother checking them out.
My bookmark goes straight to the LGBT section so I don’t have to even see their front page headlines.
You are so right. I stopped reading HuffPost when it was bought by AOL. It was clear they were going mainstream corporatist propaganda at that point.
And I can definitely relate about the half-assed liberals being unsophisticated. I feel like they are everywhere, forming Resistance groups thinking they are real activists. They are nothing more than state sanctioned controlled opposition. But don’t try to clue them in. The claws will come out. It’s obvious they have been asleep for decades. but now they are “woke” and going to change the world by electing Democrats.
You can’t make this shit up.
Your phrasing made me laugh. Thanks!
laugh at this maybe – even before AOL bought it, I started referring to it as Puff Ho
I quit reading HuffPo around the same time Annie. I noticed among the many changes, that the links section was removed, as was the comment sections to each article became obsolete as well. The other thing HuffPo stopped being objective the moment it prompted Hillary’s presidential campaign over Bernie’s. I do click on Briebart, Drudge, and HuffPo, as I read the headlines, which is my way of checking the room temperature of the country’s MSM propaganda themes, but other than that HuffPo is a Corporate Rag and a waste of a Broadband. Joe
Annie, The Atlantic has just been caught with an article “editing” emails between Wikileaks and Don Trump, Jr. to wholly reverse what Wikileaks said. MSM media cannot be trusted; and I probably will not get this quote quite right, but Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool someone than to convince him that he has been fooled.”
Facts certainly don’t seem to matter to the general public if they continue to trust outright debunked propaganda outlets like PolitoFact. Until the people start rejecting the obvious lies, the truth won’t matter.
When I read Nicholas Carr’s great work, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, I could only affirm what Neil Postman spoke and wrote about: Americans as entertained to death.
However, the Internet, still in its infancy is having profound affects on the human brain, and thus the mind.
Attention spans, cell phones, machines are all outpacing human cognitive growth. Soon, somnambulism, if it is not already here, may be the borm.
This is just an aside, Danny, but you’re so right. My husband and I took pity on a new resident in our community who was desperate to talk with someone, he said. So we sat down with him for 1.5 hours for tea. And boy, did he mean that! He talked, and showed us picture after picture, even a couple of short videos, on his cell phone. When we offered a couple of short sentences about ourselves which anyone would have followed up on, it was obvious that while we were talking he was already thinking about the next picture he would show us. No follow up questions! This is an extreme example, but the lesson is, you can’t have a meaningful conversation or friendship if you are forever checking your phone or looking up something on it to offer to the conversation. Does anyone remember how nice it was not to have to know everything right that moment, to actually have to try to remember something rather than have the person you’re with refer to his “most treasured pet” — his cell phone — and give you the answer? They have their uses, but is there nothing about community that should be safe guarded?
I read Mr. Postman and while I agreed on some of the basics, I found his conclusion simplistic. Yes, it’s much too easy to be hypnotized by the constant bombardment of carefully selected “information” we receive daily, but one can’t apply that without reference to the decline in the quality of learning in public education thanks to thirty years or more of “reform” that has replaced teaching children how to learn and question with teaching them how to score highest on tests that measure nothing useful. It’s a deadly combination.
It isn’t just that people can’t apply critical thinking skills to what they see and hear. It’s also that they have become so utterly passive about receiving that information they demand anyone who challenges the narrative provide all the information to support that challenge. The idea of doing the research themselves just isn’t acceptable.
This, I fear, is why the current “fake news” campaign may end up being entirely too successful.
This whole story looks incredible from Italy, where I live. It has been said that there are similarities between Trump and Berlusconi, which would put the USA behind Italy, and even just this sounds incredible. And the word Resistance is (as far as I know) taken from the Italian anti fascist movement which started in 1943, a rather small and not very effective movement whose merits have been enormously exagerated by national propaganda after WW2. And of course it was used again to fight Berlusconi, when our President famously said that we should resist resist resist against the then Prime Minester Berlusconi. Not many, except for the usual media chattering elite, took much notice about his words, so I was enormously surprised when I learned that Bret Easton Ellis was wondering about the mental health of the american left after having read Resist, resist resist on some poster wherever he lives. The American left is taking inspiration from Oscar Luigi Scalfaro? This is beyond incredible
That is why I say that from back here it looks like Americans have lost their minds. Do you have any idea what the outcome of the epic fight against Berlusconi was? Do you know that as many as 24 years after having entered politics, Berlusconi is making a great comeback? Do you want to reelect Trump in 2040?
And the fantastic number of suspicions and trials Berlusconi has been involved in, has had the effect of instilling a widespread distrust for our leagl system and the judiciary.
Of course Italy is a tiny country and few care much for our politics, but America is different. At this stage, if the you don’t come up with a smoking gun linking Trump to Putin, the whole world will laugh at MSM and the american establishment. And if you do find the smoking gun, only very few will believe it was a fake proof made up by some of your famous 17 intelligence agencies.
Ah, as a resident o Ecuador and also one who has lived throughout Central America and Mexico, you are truly correct.
Seen through a prism from abroad America now resembles a cheesy, little cut rate carny. If it was not so dangerous, due to its military, it would die. For the military keeps the dollar afloat.
Yes, of course Berlusconi would come back. Actually, he was prescient, he saw that weak people need strong leaders and this, coupled with the elites I know from Italy fawning for his return to restore order and socially cleanse, he will be back.
World history is shifting now rather dramatically. Fascism is on the rise in Hungary, the Ukraine, Austria, France, Spain, Germany, England and of course the USA.
Unless we organize and fight, we will get Circus without the Bread.
Paolo & Danny, I’m so glad you two gave your opinion of your view from where you both are. I’ve been telling people to how silly we Americans must look in the eyes of the rest of the world, and by each of your comment postings you are proving me right.
I see the image of the U.S. as an empire in decline. A rapid decline at that. I also sense that there are many through out this world who are placing their bets on the fact, that it is only a matter of time until the mighty PAX Americana Empire is all but gone by the wayside.
My hope is, that once America outgrows it’s growing pains, that America will strive to live up to all of it’s mystical claims that it has made about it’s greatness, and seriously become that Shining City Upon the Hill. Joe
Joe, as long as America continues to believe in all those mystical claims, it will stay on that downhill slide. A country that believes it is the greatest in the world & basically holds the rest of the world in disdain, bar perhaps the Ziofascist entity, then it will always be losing out. And believe has nothing to do with growing pains, but with hubris that has been nurturing itself.
America MAY outgrow its present pains as long as Americans stop trusting their mainstream presstitute and start thinking on their own. What did Trump promise in his campaign speech? To put an end to mendacious media, to bring jobs back to America, making it great again. Which of those promises has he fulfilled or at least shown some intentions of so doing? None! Instead, he is bullying North Korea, Russia and China, racheting up military expenditures and continuing to disseminate seeds of destruction.
Only after the American electorate starts calling the bluff of their politicians will America become the Shining City upon the Hill.
Very true, and the US public cannot call the bluffs of the politicians because money controls elections and mass media. They cannot correct that problem peacefully because those tools of democracy would be needed to do so. They do not have the courage to correct the problem by force, and will not attempt that until they are starving, when they will be guided into civil war instead of political reform. The US is ruined. If anything ever improves, it will be either by revolution in 40-80 years, after US isolation and embargo by other powers, or after the US is totally irrelevant and economically insignificant, probably after a ruinous nuclear war.
I’m very curious and quite anxious to discuss what the muzzling of RT means beyond the obvious. As this has never happened before, what does this overt censorship foretell? I can put together that it means nothing good, and I clearly remember Al Jazeera English going dark to no reportage other than ‘business decisions.’ Niemoller’s poem comes vividly to mind. Facts don’t seem to mean anything anymore. Three or four corporations own the news “truths.” In searching for precedents, I find nothing to add context and perspective. RT recently surpassed 2b views. Is this just capitalism at work under cover of ‘national security?’ What gives?
In my opinion, the attacks on RT Sputnick, and Al Jazeera are about sheltering the public from the truth about what our military is doing in the Middle East. Government propaganda about foreign relations wants the whole stage, and they have it with our current mainstream media.
Another big reason to silence Russian broadcasting is to forbid the American public from learning about any alternative to capitalism. Communism and socialism have been demonized in the US for decades. Anything other than capitalism is said to be undemocratic and unpatriotic.
The truth is that we need to blend the best of several systems of economy to create something that works for the common good in the US. Openness would conform with a true democracy, as opposed to a class and monetary based society.
The people who have done well with capitalism do not want to lose their beneficial arrangement where the get richer and everyone else gets poorer.
Our system should be analyzed, balanced and regulated to work properly. Why can’t we talk about communism instead of hearing how terrible it is. Some things about communism may be terrible, but we need fact based analyses to compare the differences. Communism and socialism are not fully explained or discussed in schools and universities. Wealthy people often decide the agenda of schools they donate to and who the schools hire or fire. That is wrong.
The whole “red scare” mime is just a game to fool the public into not questioning capitalism. Let’s compare the costs, benefits, detriments and morality of different economic systems. We Americans deserve to have the full information and a say in the way our government operates.
WHAT ABOUT “RADIO FREE EUROPE”…??
And all the many so-called “pro-democracy” groups the US
sponsors in the world for its own good. Or so we are
told. Evidently these groups and organizations
are “propagandistic” and should be discontinued
and completely unfunded immediately.(Sarcasm!)
A poor segue but thanks to Robert Parry for this excellent
article. (And corrollary appreciation to commenters who
have offered addition views and links….)
—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
Chris Jonsson –
“Communism and socialism are not fully explained or discussed in schools and universities. Wealthy people often decide the agenda of schools they donate to and who the schools hire or fire. That is wrong.”
That is asking for too much in supposedly “The Free West”. Here was Theresa May the other day speaking at the banquet of Lord Mayor in London blaming Russia for misleading the simple minds of the British people with their Fake News on RT and Sputnik International. Most of her speech was devoted to this topic.
Those of us who grew up where every news source was British and from “The West”, it is hard to believe that the political establishment, Media, and the Academia in so called fountains of Democracy and Free Speech have come to this ignoble end miserable end. If you still visit these former colonies of Britain, all you find is Western propaganda with their TV news channels, magazines, and other such materials. And of course the English language is all prevalent in most of the World. One does not find one thing Russian there except their literature books in the libraries which a very few read in today’s World.
I have come to believe that these countries – so called The Free West – never had this real democracy and free speech. In those days of their glory when the West was at the Zenith of their power, they had this smug tolerance for people to express different ideas and views – only tolerated within safe limits. It is becoming all too clear now, when their power is slipping away – to some extent only. It is equally hard to believe that the people in The West have to go to Russian media – RT and Sputnik International News – to get some true picture of what is going on in the World. We are witnessing this very shameful spectacle in the West. Just four or five decades ago it would have been unimaginable that the Body Politic in The West will come to this sordid state.
Dave P, I agree with you when you say, “I have come to believe that these countries – so called The Free West – never had this real democracy and free speech.” The Deep State (try to find Dr Sebastian Gorka’s disclosing what that is) just throws out enough bones as needed to keep Americans believing they have enviable freedoms and a voice in government when we don’t actually. The DS obviously doesn’t want rt around nor any alternative news sources. Many of us have been speculating how we might continue to communicate when the DS clamps down on ConsortiumNews, already listed as problematic.
That was before the cia took over the media…. the cia was formed from 1500 SS officers ratlined out of Germany by the OSS. This is who we ARE. We are the ‘new nazis’.
The corporate state will seek to economically strangle the company.
Chris Hedges also has a terrific piece today on Washington’s recent harassment of RT and Sputnik.
“The venom of the state toward its critics was displayed in a report by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,’ issued Jan. 6. In the report, seven pages were specifically directed at RT America, much of the language focused on the journalist Abby Martin. Martin became one of the best-known critics of the corporate state during the Occupy movement. Her show on RT, ‘Breaking the Set,’ which had been off the air for nearly two years when the report was published—a glaring error for an intelligence community awash in budgets of tens of billions of dollars—was denounced as a disseminator of ‘radical discontent.’ The report complained that RT gave airtime to third-party candidate debates. The document attacked RT hosts for asserting that the two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a sham. It excoriated the network for covering Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and fracking.”
RT America Torched in Witch Hunt ’17
By Chris Hedges
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/rt-america-torched-witch-hunt-17/
While I like Hedges’ articles, I think Truthdig sucks. Why? The moderators delete posts at their whim even if you are polite, reasoned and constructive. I don’t think Truthdig is on the level. If you take the time to post quality content, don’t be surprised if its quckly deleted by the thought police moderators.
Chris Hedges interviewed an expert on the topic of propaganda: Professor Stuart Ewen, Chair of the Film & Media Department at Hunter College.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_0vrFwaT2Y
Ewen’s latest book, “Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture,” explores how propaganda subtly infiltrates our everyday lives.
“The minute you start defining human identity away from the idea of engagement and citizenship, and more in terms of consumption, then everything becomes a product to be sold,” Ewen tells Hedges. “In many ways, what Trump represents is a product that speaks to what is missing from peoples’ lives. And although I’m not sure he has a clear, theoretical understanding of the role he is playing, he’s somebody who is evoking the pictures that people carry around in their head.”
American journalist Abby Martin at The Empire Files, an investigative news program on teleSUR, discussed War, Propaganda & the Enemy Within with Chris Hedges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veFMuYNRr8A
As a journalist who worked across the Middle East, Hedges particularly scrutinizes the role of the media in justifying U.S. imperial wars abroad through narratives of “bringing democracy and fighting barbarism.”
Hedges provides an explanation on what sustains U.S. empire from its rise in WWI until today, outlining its web of power from enforcing surveillance laws and technologies at home as a means to criminalize dissent to putting in place dictators for corporate and national interests.
Chris Hedges’ programs are informative and thought provoking. If the general populace would take the time to listen to them, even 2 or 3 times if necessary to understand their content, that alone would begin to change thinking and to steer peoples in positive directions. You can find his weekly shows on rt.com.