In late 2016, about 200 websites – including Consortiumnews.com – were identified as “Russian propaganda outlets” by the dubious website PropOrNot, hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. Now, journalist George Eliason peels back some of that anonymity in this article originally posted at Washington’s Blog.
Editor’s note: In November 2016, Consortiumnews.com was listed with about 200 other websites at the shadowy “PropOrNot” website, which was claiming to serve as a watchdog against undue “Russian influence” in the United States. The PropOrNot blacklist was elevated by the Washington Post as a credible source, despite the fact that the neo-McCarthyites who compiled the list hid behind a cloak of anonymity. As an article at Consortiumnews explained at the time, the Post granted PropOrNot anonymity “to smear journalists who don’t march in lockstep with official pronouncements from the State Department or some other impeccable fount of never-to-be-questioned truth.”
The PropOrNot logo
Now, George Eliason, an American journalist living in Ukraine, has published an article at Washington’s Blog – one of the other 200 blacklisted websites – examining the cast of characters who may be behind the PropOrNot endeavor. As explained in a disclaimer at the original article at Washington’s Blog: “A leading cybersecurity expert has publicly said that Mr. Eliason’s research as presented in this article does not violate the law. Washington’s Blog does not express an opinion about whether or not the claims set forth in this article are accurate or not. Make up your own mind.”
By George Eliason
A little over a year ago, the deep state graced the world with PropOrNot. Thanks to them, 2017 became the year of fake news. Every news website and opinion column now had the potential to be linked to the Steele dossier and Trump collusion with Russia. Every journalist was either “with us or against us.” Anyone who challenged the Russiagate narrative became Russia’s trolls.
Fortunately for the free world, the anonymous group known as PropOrNot that tried to “out” every website as a potential Russian colluder, in the end only implicated themselves. Turnabout is fair play and that’s always the fun part, isn’t it? With that in mind, I know the dogs are going to howl this evening over this one.
The damage PropOrNot did to scores of news and opinions websites in late 2016-2017 provides the basis of a massive civil suit. I mean huge, as in the potential is there for a tobacco company-sized class-action sized lawsuit. I can say that because I know a lot about a number of entities that are involved and the enormous amount of money behind them.
How serious is this? In 2016, a $10,000 reward was put out for the identities of PropOrNot players. No one has claimed it yet, and now, I guess no one will. There are times in your life that taking a stand has a cost. To make sure the story gets out and is taken seriously, this is one of those times.
In this article, you’ll meet some of the people staffing PropOrNot. You’ll meet the people and publications that provide their expenses and cover the logistics. You’ll meet a few of the deep state players. We’ll deal with them very soon. They need to see this as the warning shot over the bow and start playing nice with regular people. After that, you’ll meet the NGOs that are funding and orchestrating all of it. How am I doing so far?
The image above is the clincher or game winner that supplies the necessary proof up front and the direct path to PropOrNot. This was a passive scan of Propornot.com showing the administrative dashboard belongs to the InterpreterMag.com as shown on the left of the image. On the right, it shows that uploads to Propornot.com come from InterpreterMag.com and is a product of that publication.
Now we have the first layer of PropOrNot and our first four contestants. We have a slew of new media organizations that are influenced by, or feeding PropOrNot. Remember, fake news got off the ground and got its wings because of the attention this website received from the Washington Post in Dec. 2016.
At the Interpreter Mag level, here are the people:
- Michael Weiss is the Editor-in-Chief at the InterpreterMag.com. According to his Linkd profile, he is also a National Security Analyst for CNN since July 2017 as well as an Investigative Reporter for International Affairs for CNN since April 2017. He has been a contributor there since 2015. He has been a Senior Editor at The Daily Beast since June 2015.
- Catherine A. Fitzpatrick is a Russian translator and analyst for the Interpreter. She has worked as an editor for EurasiaNet.org and the former Cold War project funded by the CIA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
- Pierre Vaux is an analyst and translator for the Interpreter. He’s also an intern. He is a contributor to the Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, RFE/RL and Left Foot Forward and works at Dataminr Inc.
- James Miller’s bio at the InterpreterMag.com includes Managing Editor of The Interpreter where he reports on Russia, Ukraine, and Syria. James runs the “Under The Black Flag” column at RFE/RL which provides news, opinion, and analysis about the impact of the Islamic State extremist group in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He is a contributor at Reuters, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, and other publications. He is an expert on verifying citizen journalism and has been covering developments in the Middle East, specifically Syria and Iran, since 2009. Miller also works for the U.S. Embassy in Kiev “diplo-page” the Kiev Post.
The Interpreter is a product of the Atlantic Council. The Digital Forensics Research Lab has been carrying the weight in Ukrainian-Russian affairs for the Atlantic Council. Fellows working with the Atlantic Council in this area include:
- Bellingcat – Aric Toler and Eliot Higgins- This linked article shows how an underwear salesman became one of the most important faces of the deep state. Don’t laugh, the image is really appropriate. Higgins’ insecurity runs so deep because of his failures that Higgins tries to get publications censured that question his author-i-tie.
- Anne Applebaum – who has argued that Facebook should take responsibility for spreading fake news and help “undo the terrible damage done by Facebook and other forms of social media to democratic debate and civilized discussion all over the world.”
- StopFake – Irena Chalupa – Chalupa is the sister to the same Alexandra Chalupa that brought the term Russian hacking to worldwide attention. Irena Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is also a senior correspondent at RFE/RL, where she has worked for more than twenty years. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine’s propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian Diaspora leader. The Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org, and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra.
- Dimitry Alperovich – CEO of Crowdstrike and the person who consulted a Ouija board and guessed Russia may have hacked something, somewhere, sometime.
The strand that ties this crew together is they all work for Ukrainian Intelligence. If you hit the links, the ties are documented very clearly. We’ll get to that point again shortly, but let’s go further:
PropOrNot -> Atlantic Council -> Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
Who are the BBG? The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is an independent agency of the United States government. According to its website, its mission is to “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” Its projects include Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio y Television Marti, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcast Networks.
The BBG’s bipartisan board was eliminated and replaced with a single appointed chief executive officer as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which was passed in December 2016.
On January 1, 2016, the Interpreter became a special project of RFE/RL and under the oversight of the BBG. The Secretary of State had a seat on the board of the BBG until December 2016. Why the change?
During the 2016 election, the BBG developed a major conflict of interest. At least two BBG board members worked actively for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. These government officials were working against the president-elect after the election. It looks like it didn’t go unnoticed. In the following linked article, it shows that they should be investigated for their part in an attempted coup.
From a Nov 7, 2016, article– “Karen Kornbluh is helping refine and to get Hillary Clinton’s message out.” All of them are names to watch if Clinton wins — and key jobs at the FCC and other federal agencies are up for grabs.”
According to her bio: Karen founded the New America Foundation’s Work and Family Program and is a senior fellow for Digital Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Karen has written extensively about technology policy, women, and family policy for The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Washington Post. New York Times columnist David Brooks cited her Democracy article “Families Valued,” focused on “juggler families” as one of the best magazine articles of 2006.
Michael Kempner is the founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of MWW Group, a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, and may get a greater role if she is elected. Kempner is a member of the Public Relations Hall of Fame. Michael Kempner hired Anthony Weiner after the sexting scandal broke in 2011.
Jeff Shell, chairman of the BBG and Universal Filmed Entertainment is supporting a secondary role by being an honor roll donor to the Atlantic Council. While the BBG is supposed to be neutral it has continuously helped increase tensions in Eastern Europe. While giving to the Atlantic Council may not be illegal while in his position, currently, the Atlantic Council’s main effort is to ignite a war with Russia. This may set up a major conflict of interest.
As journalist Robert Parry wrote in October 2016, the propaganda campaign in favor of military confrontation with Russia was driven by “a consensus among the major think tanks of Official Washington, where there is near universal support for Hillary Clinton, not because they all particularly like her, but because she has signaled a return to neocon/liberal-hawk strategies.”
The people who were lining up to take senior positions in a Clinton White House believed that President Obama had been too timid in stressing the dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East, and it was time for a more hawkish approach, as embodied by Clinton.
Parry goes on to say that at the forefront of this propaganda campaign was the Atlantic Council, a think tank associated with NATO. Their main goal was “a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia,” Parry warned.
So, to make sense of all this, most of the people listed would have held cabinet positions in a Hillary Clinton presidency. If the Interpreter is a project of RFE/RL then the decision to go ahead with PropOrNot would have to go across their desk. That would include, possibly, then Secretary of State, John Kerry.
The unasked question of why would a U.S. Government Agency do this needs to be addressed. All the people listed above were actively working for Clinton to get her elected and throw Donald Trump’s campaign off the rails.
After the election, they were going to take care of Clinton’s “deplorables” by dissecting alternative media. I wrote about this before the election and I warned several major new sites what they could expect. I was right on the money. After she lost, it was already in motion. The deplorable media didn’t fall into a particular political pattern other than they did not promote Hillary Clinton.
The purpose of PropOrNot has been to trick people into demanding that freedom of speech be rolled back. This was/is to be done by destroying fact-based media. If you read further, the entire plan is laid out starting from 2015 when it started coming together.
These people want reality shaped on what the perceived majority (louder) group believes to be true, regardless of what the facts are. Perception based reality is only a Facebook like away from killing one person or elevating another to hero status regardless of what they have done.
That little statement about the free speech rally says it all. It’s something that would hardly be noticed unless you were looking for it because it is part of the metadata.
Now you can say it’s only a sentence and who cares? Nobody communicates through metadata do they? Wasn’t that what PropOrNot was all about? Yes, they do communicate through metadata. That’s why I look at it.
Do you see it? No? Look again. There in the metadata, at the bottom of the image is an ad for a job. Go for it and remember to mention the header. It could just as easily be hacking instructions, or a do not disturb sign. That’s why it pays to really research carefully.
The Boston ‘Free Speech’ Rally was billed by the social networks and MSM as a fascist rally. It was actually a Free Speech Rally. What they learned is that with just a little nudge, they can make you demand nationalist repression. Nice going Boston!
Hey, is this starting to sound a little conspiratorial? If it is, we need Russkie hackers with Guy Fawkes masks to make this work. They have to admit to changing international politics through hacking in 2016, belong to a foreign country, code in Russian, and use spear phishing techniques to lure people in. Let’s not forget that they also have to work for some form of Intelligence.
Most importantly, they have to work with and influence all of the people above. They will definitely impact U.S. foreign policy toward Russia. Let’s raise the stakes even more. The hackers have to answer to whoever is funding a lot of the illegal and immoral activities.
They are not even savvy enough to stay clear of outing each other. This is the Pravy Sektor hacker RUH8. The common thread for these hackers is clear if you read the linked material on the profiles that make up these organizations. They work for Bellingcat, Informnapalm, the Atlantic Council, Ukrainian Intel, and the Diaspora.
In a follow-up article, I have reason to ask if they were given access to United States Government Top-Secret Secure Servers. I’m not kidding.
In a Euromaidan Press article dated Nov. 2, 2016, the hackers state enthusiastically “Ukrainian hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA… I don’t know, why would we need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don’t think that the USA or any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics.”
And we have a winner. In 2016 the sharp movement in international politics was caused by…survey says….hacking!!!!
According to Donna Brazille, the Democratic Party servers were hacked multiple times and the hacking didn’t stop until December 2016. At this juncture, we should be able to agree that Seth Rich leaked the information to Wikileaks. But, now we are talking about other hacks. In the above-linked article, these hacker specifically say their favorite route is spear phishing email accounts.
In the article, you’ll also see they work directly for Ukrainian Intel. Bellingcat works directly for Ukrainian Intel and works with them and the Atlantic Council. Stopfake.org is a product of Irena Chalupa who works for RFE/RL, the Atlantic Council and the Ukrainian government. Stopfake.org works directly with them and is a product of the Ukrainian government. Crowdstrike has an ongoing relationship with Ukrainian Intel and these particular hackers. Is it possible that Crowdstrike conjured up Fancy Bear, the “hacker(s)” responsible for divulging internal Democratic Party emails that supposedly tipped the 2016 election in Trump’s favor? (“Fancy Bear,” by the way, is technically a set of tools, not a person.)
If so, this would mean that approval was given at the highest levels – presumably former Secretary of State John Kerry – for Ukrainian intelligence hackers to have access to servers inside a U.S. Government Agency because of PropOrNot and the Atlantic Council’s reliance on the hackers.
How are the Ukrainian hackers tied into PropOrNot at any level? James Miller isn’t shy about using their work. PropOrNot relies on the work of the Atlantic Council, Aric Toler, Aaron Weisburd, Clint Watts, and Joel Harding. The Ukrainian hackers work directly with InformNapalm and are the go-to resource for most of the people involved and all of the people just named.
As James Miller wrote at the Interpreter, “Below we have assessed the details of the reports from InformNapalm, and have expanded on their investigation.”
Who does the Atlantic Council work for? It’s the same people who staff RFE/RL and works closely with the Ukrainian World Congress, as explained here:
“On 29 January 2016 in Washington, U.S.A., Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) President Eugene Czolij and Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe officially signed a Memorandum of Agreement to renew the cooperation between the UWC and the Atlantic Council, which began in September 2014.
“In accordance with this Memorandum, the UWC will continue its cooperation with the Atlantic Council on implementing the “Ukraine in Europe Initiative”, which aims to galvanize international support for an independent, sovereign and territorially integral Ukraine, including Crimea. This initiative is also intended to support reforms in Ukraine and its EuroAtlantic integration, and to counter Russian disinformation.”
The Ukrainian World Congress is represented in the U.S. Congress by the Ukrainian Caucus headed up by ISIS supporter and Nazi cheerleader Marcy Kaptur. Her Ukrainian Caucus represents people with political positions that scared Adolf Hitler in WWII.
The obvious takeaway is that a lawsuit is a bare minimum that needs to happen. People need to be investigated for crimes against the state. When we take a closer look at who had potential access to top-secret servers, which will become painfully clear.
Through their efforts to quash free speech and paint anyone who questions government propaganda as Kremlin stooges, these people are trying to tear the fabric of society into pieces. At the very least, they have earned a good tarring and feathering. When you look at the financial end of this a lawsuit in the billions would barely touch it.
Just one company the Ukrainian Diaspora started for this is valued over 100 million dollars. This will need to be a class action suit with a cease and desist to the BBG.
In early 2015, almost two years before most people took the idea of censorship seriously, I documented its inception. As often happens with many of the biggest stories of our times, I stumbled onto it by accident.
In early March 2015, Ukrainian Information Policy designer Joel Harding laid out what to expect going forward in the following statements: “In military IIO [Inform and Influence Operations] center on the ability to influence foreign audiences, US, and global audiences, and adversely affect enemy decision making through an integrated approach. Even current event news is released in this fashion. Each portal is given messages that follow the same themes because it is an across the board mainstream effort that fills the information space entirely when it is working correctly.”
The purpose of “Inform and Influence Operations” is not to provide a perspective, opinion, or lay out a policy. It is defined as the ability to make audiences “think and act” in a manner favorable to the mission objectives. This is done through applying perception management techniques which target the audience’s emotions, motives, and reasoning.
These techniques are not geared for debate. It is to overwhelm and change the target psyche.
Using these techniques information sources can be manipulated and those that write, speak, or think counter to the objective are relegated as propaganda, ill-informed, or irrelevant.
While the above sounds gloriously overoptimistic, Harding, along with his little band of Kremlin Troll hunters personally started developing the idea of organizations capable of blackballing journalists and publications in a way that could not be construed as censorship.
From another March 2015 article – A “Disinformation Charter” for Media and Bloggers: “Top-down censorship should be avoided. But rival media, from Al-Jazeera to the BBC, Fox and beyond, need to get together to create a charter of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Vigorous debate and disagreement are, of course, to be encouraged – but media organizations that practice conscious deception should be excluded from the community. A similar code can be accepted by bloggers and other online influencers.”
This “Disinformation Charter” for responsible behavior (Ministry of Truth?) he describes is to fight “conscious deception” can only be weighed against how he describes Propaganda. “The word is frequently used to describe any news emerging one’s opponent,” according to Harding.
Journalists who need to be excluded are those “our side” label as propagandists or active measure agents.”
Harding’s connections in media are huge. Through his friend Matthew Armstrong, Harding had access to and the ear of the board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, staffed by a who’s who of network and radio broadcast, print media and shortwave CEOs and heavy hitters. They are the ones behind RFE/RL.
On the other end of this in 2015, Joel Harding was assembling a group of miscreants to attack the social networks of different journalist and publications. The crude logic behind a direct assault was that by developing, training, and overseeing vast troll networks they could speak over their opposition (people that their employers wanted to be silenced) and subdue dissident online conversation and control the information.
Where this wasn’t feasible, they set up hack and harass attacks at various publications to get them to stop publishing hard-hitting journalists. This still hasn’t been entirely effective because it caused publishers to dig in and harden their internet properties instead.
The softer more indirect approach Harding pushed in March 2015 quickly developed into the unified media strategy he wanted for the U.S. and Europe. Control the information and don’t allow contradicting information or news into the media stream. When it does get in, call it propaganda.
Enter PropOrNot.
Great work, thanks and respect
Bravo! Thank you for filling in the blanks, George Eliason.
As of most of last year I was only able to cite that P.O.N. was the product of Ukrainians with a shadowy Ukie oligarch the prime likely financing source.
Your excellent work represented here fills in many blanks and brings us back to the Usual Suspects; the Kagans and Victoria Nuland are mos def lurking in the shadows, of that I have little doubt. Can Michele Flournoy be far away? I think not.
This cabal is well-ensconced and thoroughly incestuous in its ‘Establishment’ / ‘Deep State’ machinations of high finance and international skulduggery for profit, and shows again and again a sole focussed motivation of this ‘Enterprise of Empire’ called the United States of America to be a juggernaut of purely commercial concerns. Period.
Hey, I can’t find my Peace Dividend that was given out at the end of the Cold War!
But one does not have to look far to find it squandered in such projects as PropOrNot.
This article proves Consortium News will remain a most-trusted source of mine, do keep ‘Bringin’ It!
Many thanks!
Thank you, George Eliason!
Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council’s Bellingcat group contributed to a chapter in a new booklet titled “Journalism in Times of War” published by Qatari owned Aljazeera media. Chapter 7, titled “Digital Sherlocks: Open Source Investigation and News Verification During Wartime”, was authored by Bellingcat collaborators posing as “journalists”.
http://institute.aljazeera.net/mritems/Documents/2018/1/28/af67c0680a4041ffb902ec4f830b93fc_100.pdf
Bellingcat’s Hadi Al-Khatib also is the founder and director of “Syrian Archive”, a large database of Al Qaeda and White Helmets videos allegedly “verified” as “documenting” purported “human rights violations” in Syria.
Higgins and Bellingcat fingerprints are all over numerous fake “independent reports” and bogus “government assessments” about Syria.
Higgins and Bellingcat “open source” scams are propagated by mainstream media and NGOs. Another example is the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on the April 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical incident in Syria.
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/syria0517_web.pdf
The HRW report on Khan Shaykhun debuted at a 1 May 2017 press conference at the United Nations. Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of HRW, repeatedly referred to the new report as “our own investigation”. Responding to questions, Roth stated, “Yeah, I mean, um, we’ve used open source material, we’ve checked this with experts, we’re… we’re quite confident”.
According to the report, HRW “obtained photos and videos of remnants of the munitions used in the attacks. Specialists in weapons identification and chemical weapons inside and outside the organization analyzed the remnants” (page 10).
However, it is clear from the report that HRW activities were limited to laundering a list of names supplied by “opposition” forces in Al-Qaeda controlled Idlib, and conducting telephone interviews with the “opposition” vetted alleged “witnesses”.
In fact, HRW performed no independent verification of any of the “opposition” claims presented in its report. What’s clear is that HRW relied most heavily on information supplied by “opposition” forces and laundered by Bellingcat collaborators. Higgins’ pal Dan Kaszeta was HRW “specialist” on “chemical weapons” (pages 29-30), and Hadi Al-Khatib was the HRW “specialist” on “weapons identification” (page 41).
The Atlantic Council is the lineal descendent of the Rhodes-Milner Round Table it seems. How Soros got himself in this milieu is what I can’t sort out. And why are they determined to make Europe black and Muslim? How does that agenda serve perpetual Anglo American Empire?
‘Eliot Higgins and fake “chemical weapons expert” Dan Kaszeta of Bellingcat are key deception operatives driving Western conspiracy theories about “chemical attacks” in Syria.’
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon. Check him out:
http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:British_involvement_in_Syria#Hamish_de_Bretton-Gordon.27s_role_in_collecting_samples_for_MI6
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a pro-NATO propagandist who’s been lying about responsibility for “chemical attacks” and campaigning for “humanitarian zones” in Syria for years.
A former British Army officer of the UK Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment and NATO’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, his 23 years of operational deployment included the 1st Gulf War, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he runs a “security company” based in the UK.
Masquerading as an “independent specialist”, Bretton-Gordon contributed to Eliot Higgins’ “Brown Moses” disinformation blog. Like Higgins, he was a darling of British mainstream propaganda media like the UK Guardian.
In 2016, Bretton-Gordon declared without evidence in 2016 that hospitals were “bombed by the regime and by the Russians almost continuously”.
Recently Bretton-Gordon offered a li’l wink to Bellingcat, once again declaring without evidence that “I don’t think there is a cat in hell’s chance that rebels or ISIS were responsible for the Ghouta attack”.
And Higgins is still massively lying about responsibility for “chemical attacks” with no evidence necessary
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/01/23/despite-trumps-threats-chemical-attacks-continue-syria/
That’s the guy. Without having the time to look for the source: Whereas Higgins and Kaszeta are laptop warriors, Bretton-Gordon actually went to Syria in order to prepare the opposition for chemical attacks and later to retrieve samples after they allegedly occurred. He also had an office in Porton Down when he was no longer officially employed by the British government (I seem to remember that this is made clear by a comment he made on the Bellingcat site).
Bretton-Gordon is director of a Western-backed NGO operating in Syria, “very much like the White Helmets. In fact, their websites are almost completely identical”
https://off-guardian.org/2017/04/07/bbc-redacts-article-on-idlib-to-hide-unwelcome-facts/
Counterpunch editor Joshua Frank parroted Western mainstream media propaganda narrative after the April 2017 Khan Shaykhun incident.
Frank quoted Bretton-Gordon in the same paragraph where he cited fake ‘chemical weapons expert’ Dan Kaszeta “over at Bellingcat”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/06/on-that-gas-attack-we-dont-need-conspiracies-to-oppose-us-war-in-syria/
That said, we need not speculate that Frank leveraged this ‘progressive’ lack of journalistic skepticism in order to get Counterpunch removed from PropOrNot’s “List”.
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/957729892354936834
Think of this, in a country where news would be fair and balanced this story here would be front page, and the pundit talk of a long news cycle. Thank you consortiumnews. Joe
Read how Oliver Stone defends Robert Parry from insults by PropOrNot.
https://www.rt.com/usa/417383-oliver-stone-tributes-parry/
PropOrNot show themselves as vile and debased. I am angry & sickened by such callousness.
One element that would help enormously find connection between propornot and Ukraine is to realize what Ukraine is and how and when she was created and her relations with Russia in historic terms, and most of all role of Ukrainian Nazis in history and today’s geopolitics. Here it is:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/ukraine-no-country-for-no-man/
Many thanks to George Eliason. Whether or not a lawsuit could succeed, it should be attempted as well as hosts of other challenges from every direction possible. It has taken over a year for this rot to get ready to go splat, and everyone of us can do our part to challenge the lies of the deep state, regardless. In the end, hewing to principle is what matters. I believe people are rising to take action and spring will be coming. I don’t feel so pessimistic, mike. Cindy Sheehan and others are planning action against war and the MIC.
Let the lawsuits commence.
The magicians and their tricks exposed! But nobody’s listening – the American audience loves to be fooled……….
Sad ain’t it? We go to all this trouble to bring out the truth, and nobody is listening, nobody cares……… Maybe not caring is our core problem?
Thank you for being a real journalist and getting these important facts out.
I suspect Zenz might be an Atlantic Council member worth keeping an eye out for (because of connections to dissident hackers in Russia), It would not surprise me at all if the stories about Russian officials being identified as behind the hacking came through her.
Can’t help but notice similarities between PropOrNot and the General Marshall Fund’s “Alliance for Security Democracy”. – Several Foreign Policy contributors, several HRC allies and, of course, ties to Ukraine and the enabling of US support for the Ukraine coup.
Another question that people should ask is why the CIA is involved in this, and why they should be favoring H. Clinton over Trump.
A simplified view of our Deep State is that they favor the rich over the rest of us, and the Republicans traditionally have been hooked into the Deep State while the Dems flounder trying to do the right thing.
I think that a better understanding would be an understanding of the US intelligence’s long-standing connections with the OUN-B fascists (who murdered an estimated million Jews and uncounted other ethnic Russians, Poles, etc. in support of Adolf Hitler. On one hand the CIA imported thousands of Nazis and fascists after WWII in order to push ethnic communities in the US and Canada. They also supported fascist within Ukraine. OUN-B residua maintained a guerrilla war against the Soviet government in Ukraine after WWII into the early fifties.
Vice President Nixon oversaw the CIA’s “Crusade For Freedom” which was one of the CIA programs to import fascists into the US. The public spokesman for CFF was none other than Ronald Reagan. Some may remember the scandal in GHW Bush’s presidential run involving the Republican ethnic heritage program.
But that changed in 1992. Bill Clinton, who was governor in Arkansas when Mena was happening, promptly got behind CIA Cold War strategists’ rollback position on breaking up Yugoslavia into its various ethnic groups.
Looking at Hillary Clinton’s curious past from Goldwater Girl to supporter of Eugene McCarthy’s anti-war candidacy to becoming a Republican aide and writing speeches for Melvin Laird, I suspect that in 1968, like many college students during the height of COINTELPRO, Hillary found a way to earn money and aid her political career through government employment. And what agency employed her?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opinion/campaign-stops/i-ran-the-cia-now-im-endorsing-hillary-clinton.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0
The post-WWII connections of the CIA to ex-Nazis so as to counter the USSR are not likely very active nowadays. In the 1980s-1990s the secret agencies served an anti-socialist agenda in Latin America, with secret wars to suit loony Repubs fearful of socialism in the US. Since the 1990s the secret agencies have been primarily serving zionism. Likely factions serve the wealthiest or just the zionist wealthiest.
First, what constitutes an “ex-Nazi”? Second, the coup in Ukraine put fascists in power whose symbols look a lot like Nazis. Third, they use Nazi chants like in the good ol’ days of 1942 when they were killing Jews, Poles and ethnic Russians with glee. Fourth, after WWII the military, then CIA, imported tens of thousands of Ukrainian (and other ethnic) fascists into the US. That’s why in the seventies and eighties old retired guys in Ohio were discovered to have been prison guards in Nazi death camps. And lest we forget, Bill Clinton’s two biggest allies in the fracturing of Yugoslavia were Tudjman and Izetbegovic, the two Nazis who worked for Hitler in the dismantlement of Yugoslavia in 1942.
The original Nazis are almost all dead, but their children live on.
We’re on the same trail. From April 2016:
https://caucus99percent.com/content/okeydoke-americans-were-supposed-get
Whoops. April 2017.
PropOrNot “Related Projects” all banded together to produce a fake news documentary about “fake news”
The March 2017 propaganda film was aptly named “Nothing But Lies”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqXcVNwO6vo
[documentary begins at minute 19:20]
Funded by the British Embassy in Ukraine, “Nothing But Lies” was produced to celebrate the third anniversary of StopFake, a Kiev-based group that uses the same fake “fact-check” disinformation strategy that Eliot Higgins employs.
StopFake was registered on March 2, 2014 by Mohyla Academy, one of the all-too-eager recipients of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) cash that poured into Ukraine in March 2014 after the Maidan coup d’etat.
“Nothing But Lies” features a roll call of leading pro-NATO propagandist “experts” including
– Eliot Higgins of Atlantic Council’s Bellingcat
– Ben Nimmo of Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab
– Simon Ostrovsky of VICE News
– Alastair Reid of Google-funded “First Draft” coalition
– Edward Lucas of Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)
– lga Yurkova, Ruslan Deynuchenko & Yevhen Fedchenko of StopFake
CEPA donors include the U.S. government and numerous aerospace and defense concerns including the National Endowment for Democracy, U.S. Mission to NATO, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of State, FireEye, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon Company, European Defense Agency/ Systems Consultants Services Limited, Chevron Corporation, Bell Helicopter, Textron Systems, Cheniere, and BAE Systems.
The “Nothing But Lies” documentary video above is presented by Hromadske, an fake “independent” internet television station funded in 2013 by the U.S. and Dutch Embassies in Ukraine and by George Soros “International Renaissance” Foundation.
Hromadske started operating on 22 November 2013, the day “Fatherland” faction leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk called for protests (dubbed as #Euromaidan on Twitter) and approximately 2,000 people converged in Kiev’s Independence Square to protest the decision of the Ukrainian government to suspend the EU association agreement. The following days saw Ukraine’s biggest protests since the 2004 “Orange Revolution”, culminating in the violent coup d’etat of February 2014.
Nataliya Gumenyuk, co-founder and head of Hromadske, is a Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute in London and a speaker for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington, D.C.
On 29 September 2016, the Atlantic Council, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia, and Bellingcat partnered for a media event in London.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Yn3ckduQY
The panel featured Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat, Higgins’ Atlantic Council BFF Maks Czuperski, Nataliya Gumenyuk of Hromadske, aviation attorney Jerry Skinner, and Simon Ostrovsky of Vice News.
The are no gaps in the coordination of propaganda efforts by “regime change” organizations like the Atlantic Council and Open Russia, and fake “journalists” like Higgins of Bellingcat, Ostrovsky of Vice News, and Gumenyuk of Hromadske.
The “Nothing But Lies” video features Simon Ostrovsky of VICE News, who claimed that he had “done the verification myself” and had “traced the social media posts of a Russian soldier” in Ukraine
In fact, Ostrovsky merely performed a “stand-upper” for Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council “regime change” think tank.
Ostrovsky pimped Higgins’ “online investigations” shenanigans in a blatant VICE News info-mercial for the Atlantic Council’s bogus “report” on Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zssIFN2mso [see minutes 2:45 – 4:25]
Like Michael Usher, the fake “correspondent” for the Australian “60 Minutes” program on MH-17, Ostrovsky is one of many media shills for fake “citizen journalist” Higgins.
In 2014, I was the only journalist that went across the warzone in Ukraine and did invasive passport and weapons checks. There were foreigners but I literally found bigger groupings of Spanish than I did Russians, anywhere. More than 95% of the soldiers grew up there. These were civilians that had little military experience.
“PropOrNot’s […] Tweet on November 7 indicates that the research of Peter Pomerantsev, a Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute in London, who has also been cooperating on research with the Information Warfare Project of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington, D.C, inspired its efforts. […]
“CEPA’s website indicates that on May 10 it hosted Senators Chris Murphy and Rob Portman to discuss ‘Russia’s sophisticated disinformation campaign.’ CEPA’s President, A. Wess Mitchell is quoted as saying: ‘What’s missing is a significant effort on the part of the U.S. government. Not nearly enough has been done.’
“Six days after Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg ran his first PropOrNot story, he published another article indicating that ‘Congressional negotiators on Wednesday approved an initiative to track and combat foreign propaganda amid growing concerns that Russian efforts to spread ‘fake news’ and disinformation threaten U.S. national security.’ Quoted in the story was none other than the very Senator who had met with CEPA in May on that very topic, Senator Rob Portman.
“Portman is quoted as follows: ‘This propaganda and disinformation threat is real, it’s growing, and right now the U.S. government is asleep at the wheel.’ Among Portman’s top three donors to his 2016 Senate race were Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, two Wall Street behemoths that would very much like to pivot the national debate to anything other than Wall Street power and corruption.”
Who’s Behind PropOrNot’s Blacklist of News Websites
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/12/whos-behind-propornots-blacklist-of-news-websites/
Thanks. Watching this psyop unfold has been one of the most disturbing trends I can remember in my 65 year lifetime. Self proclaimed progressives have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. And don’t dare tell them they might be mislead. They’d take your head off physically if they could. Strange days indeed.
The official ‘war on Propaganda’ should really be titled ‘the Propaganda War on the Truth’.
This certainly explains why the CIA connected WAPO was the outlet for the PropOrNot PSYOP. Directly from the bowels of deep state connected entities emerges, surprise, surprise, another putrid steaming mound of lies and disinformation. Who would have guessed?!
Well done. Keep pushing.
The Interpretor is also movie by Sidney Lumet, which is an anti-Zimbabwe propaganda piece starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. The first ever movie to be shot inside the Rockefeller funded United Nations building.
The interpretor was supposed to propagandize the people of the world about the immediate threat posted by the landlocked nation of Zimbabwe, population 15mn. They do however own some of the biggest diamond mines in the world – Chiadzwa and Marange – and diamonds are a strategic asset. (Finished diamonds are the biggest export of praetorian state and Suez Canal protector Israel.)
Just wondering if The Interpreter was also a product of the Atlantic Council.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interpreter
Interesting. Thanks.
Rest in Peace Mr. Parry, There are so many of us who recognize your great, courage and commitment to America.
Russiagate Isn’t About Trump, And It Isn’t Even Ultimately About Russia-Greanville Post.
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/01/27/russiagate-isnt-about-trump-and-it-isnt-even-ultimately-about-russia/
Annie that link you left here should be read by every breathing American you could imagine.The article also gives credence to the many on this comment board who have seen through this Russia-Gate travesty for what it really is. Although, we often belabor over Putin and Russia when talking about Russia-Gate or Fake News, there have been comments made to the effect that China is the real country America must overcome. The linked article you provided wrote it very specifically, and left nothing to the imagination to who the U.S. is most fearful of.
In the future, as America wakes up to it’s not being an empire any longer, many things and people will be blamed. I will say this now, that what is sinking the U.S., is it’s conceded exceptionalism and it’s never ending drive towards continual wars. The sad part is, is that China will beat the U.S. with it’s ‘One Border, One Road’ infrastructure multi-nation program, even though this Chinese initiative is modeled on America’s Marshall Plan. America will not have fallen from it’s majestic throne for it not being creative or resourceful enough, no it fail under the weight of it’s own military prowess. Joe
The author of that article Caitlin Johnstone is one hell of a writer. Here is her tribute to Robert Parry.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/this-deeply-held-commitment-a-meditation-on-the-death-of-robert-parry-4cfe6d3701f3
That was a wonderful tribute to Mr. Parry, and thank you Lois for that link. I feel so sad. Joe, I just never expected this, not at all.
Lois & Annie, yeah but I’ll have to get back to ya… Joe
Thank you Lois Gagnon for that link, I’ve read Caitlin Johnstone many times and admire her but I was impressed by her comments about Robert Parry, a personal hero to me. I’ve signed up for her site and hope that others who regularly comment here will meet there…
Great! Me too.
Ditto what Joe said. That’s a new angle for me on the China-Russia relationship, athough Trump does make me a bit nervous at times[1]. The propaganda video attached to the article was charming, too. The free press[2] is enjoying a resurgence against yellow journalism[2]. I expect the verified facts will be teased out in time. The only time I ran across the Atlantic Council is when I was looking into the 2% GDP target for US/NATO funding[4].
[1] What Austria’s Emperor Franz Joseph Can Teach Trump About War With North Korea | The Diplomat
[2] The Free Press | Hilaire Belloc | Librivox
[3] Yellow Journalism – PBS
[4] Is NATO’s 2% of GDP a relevant target? |James Hasik | Atlantic Council | 2014
The deeper layer of deception underlying the Washington Post / ProporNot debacle was that PropOrNot functioned as a conspicuous straw man.
Repudiation of PropOrNot as an “amateur” operation was leveraged to project the appearance that fake “citizen investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins and the Bellingcat disinformation site, InterpreterMag, and all the other ProporNot “Related Projects”, were somehow “professional” organizations of true “independent researchers” by comparison.
This disinformation strategy is reinforced by the fact that Bellingcat is directly allied with the Washington Post and New York Times, the two principal mainstream media organs for “regime change” propaganda in the United States, via the Google-founded “First Draft” network.
On 26 November 2016, during the Washington Post / PropOrNot debacle, Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept apparently dispensed with journalistic standards when he and Ben Norton gave major props to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat:
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/
Greenwald and Norton noted:
“PropOrNot listed numerous organizations on its website as ‘allied’ with it, yet many of these claimed ‘allies’ told The Intercept, and complained on social media, they have nothing to do with the group and had never even heard of it before the Post published its story.”
Greenwald saw fit to publish verbatim the Twitter remarks from Eliot Higgins and James Miller, not bothering to conduct even the most basic investigation of PropOrNot’s purported “Allies” Bellingcat and InterpreterMag.
Greenwald ignored the reality that Bellingcat is directly allied with the Washington Post via the “First Draft” coalition, whose media “partners” include several organizations listed as “Allies” by PropOrNot, including Interpreter Mag, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, and Kiev’s StopFake.
In addition, self-acclaimed “expert on verifying citizen journalism” Miller has frequently promoted self-acclaimed “citizen investigative journalist” Higgins. The Intercept allows Miller to do what he does best: simply chime in to “confirm” Higgins’ claims.
Greenwald and the Intercept provided a media platform for Bellingcat and InterpreterMag by posting direct links to the Twitter remarks of Higgins and Miller. Greenwald simply accepted the alibis of Higgins and Miller at face value.
YES – “citizen investigative journalist” was the biggest hoax of 2017. The phony fakers of fictitious news.
No, Larco Marco, your comment as stated is not accurate.
Here’s the reality with reference to specifics:
Real citizen reporters and independent researchers indeed have played a notable role in journalism.
However, in recent years, the valuable efforts of actual citizen reporters, independent researchers, and non-partisan media organizations have been co-opted by their association with outright propaganda peddlers like fake “citizen investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins and the disinformation team at Bellingcat.
Higgins’ “online investigation” hoax started back in 2012, when Higgins began laundering Al Qaeda videos from Syria.
Long before the Google-funded “First Draft” coalition was spawned with Bellingcat as a founding member, the fake news generated by Higgins was eagerly broadcast by the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, UK Guardian, and other mainstream media propaganda “partners” of Higgins.
So the problem isn’t citizen reporting and real independent investigative journalism.
The big hoax is that Higgins and Bellingcat are anything other than “regime change” propaganda purveyors.
Journalists like Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept, sites like Counterpunch, and various nonprofit organizations that promote journalism have all demonstrated an astonishing loss of journalistic skepticism and a complete lack of basic investigative due diligence in their uncritical embrace of Higgins and his Bellingcat work product.
Abe while reading this exposing article by George Eliason I kept thinking of you, and your comment postings revealing all these mentioned creeps, such as Bellingcat. So, once again I must thank you for what you bring to this sites comment board. Joe
I wouldn’t assume Greenwald accepted the alibis from Higgins and Miller at face value. By including them in the article, he has created a public record of their responses. Perhaps Greenwald has enough pieces of the puzzle to get an idea of what’s happening behind the scenes, but doesn’t have the goods to uncover it all. He may revisit this if/when there’s enough to go on.
Greenwald has had plenty to go on since the end of November 2016.
I immediately posted the details in the comments at the Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/?comments=1#comments
If Greenwald and Norton had used the opportunity to visit the Bellingcat site, it would have become instantly apparent that Higgins’ group of ostensible “independent researchers” is precisely described by Greenwald’s assesment of ProporNot:
Bellingcat “far more resembles amateur peddlers of primitive, shallow propagandistic clichés than serious, substantive analysis and expertise; that it has a blatant, demonstrable bias in promoting NATO’s narrative about the world; and that it is engaging in extremely dubious McCarthyite tactics about a wide range of critics and dissenters”.
If Greenwald and Norton had conducted an actual investigation of PropOrNot “Related Project” Bellingcat, they would have to acknowledge the frequency with which Higgins engages in “McCarthyite tactics” against critics, including veteran journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Parry.
Parry’s exposure of Higgins’ erroneous claims about the 2013 chemical attacks in Ghouta, Syria and Bellingcat’s numerous deceptive “investigation reports” about the 2014 crash of Malaysian Air flight MH-17 in eastern Ukraine have triggered numerous Twitter attacks from Higgins.
If Greenwald had done a real investigation of PropOrNot’s list of purported “Allies”, he would have verified that self-acclaimed “expert on verifying citizen journalism” Miller has frequently promoted self-acclaimed “citizen investigative journalist” Higgins.
Miller is the managing editor of The Interpreter Mag, a self-published project of The Institute of Modern Russia (IMR). The president of IMR is Pavel Khodorkovsky, the son of Russian former multi-billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky (who was released from prison in December 2013).
Bellingcat is allied with the Atlantic Council and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia organization. Media darling Higgins has repeatedly claimed to be under attack by the Kremlin, and froths about “Kremlin trolls” at the drop of a hat.
Greenwald was informed by me that Robert Parry and other contributors at Consortium News had been investigating the propaganda efforts of Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat.
Agree completely with your assessment , Abe. I’m hoping that current investigations confirm my suspicions that another Atlantic Council connection , CrowdStrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch , was deeply involved in the manufactured conspiracy called “Russia-gate”. With any luck , Higgins will be appropriately tainted too , if only by association.
It would still qualify as a conspiracy , of course , but one flipped 180 degrees from what’s been peddled to us by the MSM. Even the name ‘Russia-gate’ would finally make some sense – Alperovitch was born in Moscow.
Crowdstrike is the main “source” of the “Russians hacked the DNC” story.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council “regime change” think tank.
Alperovitz said that Crowdstrike has “high confidence” it was “Russian hackers”.
“But we don’t have hard evidence,” Alperovitch admitted in a June 16, 2016 Washington Post interview.
Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against “threats” have the ability to manufacture “threats”.
The US and UK possess elite cyber capabilities for both cyberspace espionage and offensive operations.
Both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are intelligence agencies with a long history of supporting military operations. US military cyber operations are the responsibility of US Cyber Command, whose commander is also the head of the NSA.
US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China.
The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth.
Recent US domestic cyber operations have been used for coercive effect, creating uncertainty and concern within the American government and population.
The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect.
In the world of US “hybrid warfare” against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, best exemplified by the “online investigation” antics of the Atlantic Council’s Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site.
Google founded the “First Draft” coalition with Bellingcat as a founding “partner”. Google also supplied funding for Eliot Higgins and Aric Toler.
In addition. Google has a cozy $100 million “shared kindred spirit” with “best in class” Crowdstrike.
In this video, Google Capital’s Gene Frantz and Dmitri Alperovitch’s buddy George Kurtz discuss what led to Google’s decision to back Alperovitch and the Keystone Cops at Crowdstrike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRMPZp70WVI
CrowdStrike received funding of $156 million from Google Capital, Accel Partners, and private equity firm Warburg Pincus. According to the company, CrowdStrike customers include three of the 10 largest global companies by revenue, five of the 10 largest financial institutions, three of the top 10 health care providers, and three of the top 10 energy companies. CrowdStrike also keeps “Partners” like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform out of the clutches of invisible bears.
CrowdStrike still “stands fully by its analysis and findings” (aka evidence-free allegations) of “Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network” in 2016.
Crowdstrike and Bellingcat benefactor Google, the company that runs the most visited website in the world, the company that owns YouTube, is very snugly in bed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex.
In fact, Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish “partnerships” with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.
Eliot Higgins and fake “chemical weapons expert” Dan Kaszeta of Bellingcat are key deception operatives driving Western conspiracy theories about “chemical attacks” in Syria.
After the April 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical incident, Kaszeta was cited as a go-to “expert” by Higgins’ “partners” at the BBC, UK Guardian, CNN, and other “First Draft” coalition outlets.
Kaszeta and the Bellingcat fanboys hurled a desperate barrage of Twitter Tomahawks, predictably agreeing with themselves that Syria and Russia were somehow responsible for the incident, while Higgins amplified his “the Russians are lying” froth.
Joshua Frank, managing editor of Counterpunch, joined the fray. In a 6 April 2017 piece titled “On That Gas Attack: We Don’t Need Conspiracies to Oppose US War in Syria”, Frank cited leading conspiracy theorist “Dan Kaszeta over at Bellingcat”.
Frank demonstrated the serious lack of discernment among of “progressive” journalism outlets. “So let’s quit peddling baseless theories” exclaimed Frank, having just given props to a prime purveyor of baseless theories used to justify US military intervention in Syria.
Four months earlier, after the Washington Post / PropOrNot imbroglio hit the media, Frank was successful in arranging the removal of CounterPunch from PropOrNot’s infamous “List” of alleged “Russian propaganda outlets”.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/02/counterpunch-as-russian-propagandists-the-washington-posts-shallow-smear/
However, there was no follow up investigation of any sort. Frank did not venture beyond merely dismissing PropOrNot as “juvenile”, “amateurs” and a “shady little group”.
In fact, Frank had precisely played PropOrNot’s game. In his initial email to the group, Frank “provided them with evidence” – a link to an article he wrote which was critical of Russian involvement in Syria – to demonstrate that “CounterPunch was not in the pocket of Russians”.
PropOrNot thanked Frank for “reaching out”, and after an exchange of emails with the group, Frank saw fit to report that “PropOrNot assures me they are not funded by the Pentagon or associated with the Hillary Clinton campaign or anyone else.”
Frank declared that “PropOrNot’s blacklist is not just frivolous, it’s potentially dangerous as it directly discourages dissenting points of view”.
But the PropOrNot propaganda operation, including the mainstream media circus that surrounded it, represent more than a discouragement of “dissenting” viewpoints. In reality, the “fake news” brouhaha is a direct assault on fact-based independent investigative journalism, aimed at marginalizing or eliminating resistance to the West’s hybrid war efforts.
Thank you – Thank you – Thank you
Maybe this nightmare will be over sooner rather than later.
Robert Parry would have been proud
I know that I am.
Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Robert Parry would be proud.
Maybe this long nightmare will be over sooner rather than later.
Michael Fish, Longueuil, Canada
Once you start turning over some rocks, it’s amazing the quantities of ugly, vicious vermin that will be uncovered. They are like the termites of New Orleans, which undermine the continued existence of the whole city. Our society is rotten at the core. The revolution required to save all our skins, would need to eliminate every power addicted criminal, small and large in America – and they are legion! Only a deeply moral-ethical-spiritual revolution could do the thorough job of cleansing needed. If you have ever had experience with bedbugs, you know how powerful and comprehensive your exterminating methods need to be. Will we be up to the job? I worry about that………….
I spoke with a pest control specialist about those bedbugs. It turns out you can kill them if you get your entire house or apartment up to 140F. This will rid you of these pests.
So what is my point? Once we get the mean Summer temperatures in Washington DC up to 140F (Thanks Global Warming!) we will be rid of them. Does anyone have a giant magnifying glass? Since the environment does not recognize borders it will be effective all over the planet. Problem solved! The bad part is the environment will not pick winners and losers. We are all going to die.
Trump is truly draining the swamp. We just never understood he means to use Global Warming to cleanse the planet of human life using the heat treatment method of extinction. We never saw it coming. We are the bedbugs in Trump’s eyes infesting his hotel. What else would explain his 30% tariff on imported solar panels. (they are all imported). I believe he must have been behind the Solyndra debacle. Trump probably got tons of cash from Russian Oligarchs to short sell the company stock and precipitated their collapse. Either that or he used the money to build golf resorts on Mars. Not sure which story is true. We do know Obama wanted to hire NASA to build a giant lasso to drag an asteroid into a lunar orbit for the purposes of mining it. Trump was behind this too. His plan which was formally endorsed by Obama was to seek out an asteroid made of coal and then by building a giant conveyor belt extending into space to convey all the coal from the asteroid back to Earth where it could be used to stoke the fires and raise the temperature up to the amount necessary to “neutralize” his enemies.
You have got to hand it to Trump. His initial plans were flawless. He even hired Steve Bannon (who turns out was a racist) not for his hatred of minorities and illegal immigrants but for his expertise in building bio-domes where Trump and his loyal followers could ride out the next 10,000 years in a bubble. Bannon is still on the hook for that hence his profuse apologies for what he said in Fire and Fury which was coded language for bringing about the sterilization of the Earth thereby draining the swamp. In fact Trump and Bannon have plans to light the dried up swamps on fire once the former swamps are tinder dry and hasten the planet’s doom in this way. Once the oceans are steaming hot there will be another opportunity to harness them for geothermal energy to power the air conditioners in the bio-domes. Boiling oceans take thousands of years to cool so this should become a nearly inexhaustible source of energy which will be needed since venturing outside the dome to get more coal will at some point become a risky proposition.
Anyway, the POTUS is doing exactly what he said he would do. Like it or not.
Bravo CitizenOne! There is not much to laugh about in our perilous situation, but your dark humor really cracked me up. Thanks for the much needed comic relief. (Am I imagining it, or is it getting warmer in here? My fellow bedbugs are becoming abnormally restless. That damn Trump!)
A provocative article, to say the least. It must also be acknowledged that some of its attraction plays to the reader’s need for ‘confirmation bias’ since nobody with their head screwed on wants to accept PropOrNot as somehow actually legitimate. Two items struck me as needing further explanation. The first is the repeated allegation that outside agencies (Ukrainian intelligence?) had access to “United States Government Top-Secret Secure Servers”. But, unless I missed it, those servers and their official government agency aren’t named (possibly will be in a follow-up article?). As far as I’m aware, the only servers under question are HRC’s private server and that/those of the DNC; neither, as I understand it are ‘USG Top-Secret Secure Servers’. So, what do those references refer to? My second – ”wait, what?’ moment was the “…we should be able to agree that Seth Rich leaked the information to Wikileaks” statement. While this is ‘received wisdom’ on right-wing & alt-right venues, I’m not at all convinced it’s actually the case although there’s smoke issuing from the gun barrel. My point with these two examples is that they tend to lower the believably of what seems, otherwise, a pretty tightly-knit argument. Hopefully the follow-up Eliason hints at will clarify these issues.
There is no smoking gun pointed at Seth Rich – – – only fog emanating from the conjecture of slipshod “citizen journalists” who promote their youtube channels with click-bait unsupported allegations. [[“DWS, via the Awans, enlisted MS-13 to smoke Rich, etc.”]] Their assertions of “fact” meet no legal or forensic standards.
I also had that Seth Rich moment… In hindsight, this makes me reconsider Eliason’s entire article… I have not been staying current with the Seth Rich topic, but last I checked, all they had was speculation… Just the fact that the guy was involved with the DNC while all of this went down and was murdered is smoky, but is that all? Could be totally unrelated, and without solid evidence, only an irresponsible journalist would take it on faith as fact… Granted, I may not be aware of new information pointing at Rich, but skepticism is always a necessary ingredient in any kind of analysis…
You have a keen eye for picking nits.
I think the strongest evidence I’ve heard for Seth Rich being the DNC leaker was the Sy Hersh tape. He apparently has a source inside the FBI. I agree that the case is a long way from solid. I do find it interesting that Seth Rich and the Awan brothers have been flushed down the memory hole.
All I can say is WOW! Thanks George Eliason. It is amazing to me that this hard hitting article followed the Ben-Meir piece, which could have appeared in the NYT, the WaPo, or any of the other MSM propaganda organs. It would be wonderful if the targeted publications could actually sue the actors behind PropOrNot, but I doubt they could gain any traction in the entirely corrupted US justice system. Would a venue like the ICC touch anything like this? Could something like this be defined as a crime against humanity, or an information war crime?
Hey Skip, read the link I left above about meta-data reader Cliff High. Skip you ponder over the MSM getting sued for reporting fraud while Cliff High sees someone figuring out how to do it, in the coming future. Don’t ask me, I’m working on the next half hour, but somehow Cliff High by reading data gets these visions.
This much I’ll tell you, to if there is a person out there who has the smarts enough, and the painstakingly wherewithal to pursue bringing down the large corporate owned and manipulated MSM with a law suit, then hooray for the good guys & gals. Finally!
At 68 it makes me want to go get a law degree.
Take care Skip. Joe
Hi Joe-
I just got done with Cliff High video. Interesting sooth-saying, but I don’t get the nuts and bolts of his analyzing “data sets”. It will be interesting to see how much of it comes to pass in the coming months. He’s got me scared about my retirement savings, that’s for sure. But I was really already feeling insecure anyway. Maybe time to buy some bit-coins and some silver. If I weren’t stuck away from home, I’d be doing a solar powered well, a passive solar greenhouse, and a garden. Food and water is real security.
As for the MSM getting sued for consumer fraud, I can’t imagine where you would make that happen. Our courts are utterly corrupted by the same forces that are spewing the MSM propaganda. Cliff seems to think there is some major house-cleaning coming (a true draining of the swamp). I hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Thanks for link.
Here’s hoping that Nat takes up the mantle here at CN and does as good of a job as his old man did. May Bob Parry rest in peace.
As you note, a law suit cannot succeed because the US judicial branch is “utterly corrupted by the same forces that are spewing the MSM propaganda” and the ICC can do little because the US refuses to sign the Treaty of Rome submitting to its jurisdiction. The US is no more than a gang operation now, not a civilization.
Legal activism does educate some via the alternative media. I have long been suing the US for gross corruption in the federal judiciary, with the predicted results, a very large task resulting only in more evidence of their corruption, which no one ever sees. One has only to resort to the US judiciary to become another victim of their corruption: it is the best justice system money can buy, nothing more than an instrument of oligarchy tyranny.
When I got to this, I suddenly had some doubts about the essay. How was it possible for an American living in Ukraine to have the freedom to write this sort of thing? More to the point, why was he still alive?
A quick search cleared up the matter. Mr. Eliason lives in eastern Ukraine, and specifically in the rebel area of Donbass. IMO that’s an adequate explanation for his remaining among the living.
The essay itself made my eyes glaze. It describes an incredibly complicated set of people and events working towards “elevating” Hilary Clinton to the White House. I’m not going to try to make sense of the details, but it is the sheer size of the effort which is more interesting to me. It took an awful lot of money and effort to put together these schemes. That suggests a large organization with unlimited funds. Something like Big US Intelligence and/or the Mossad of the Hemorrhoid State of Israel. That Jeff Bezos’ Blog – AKA the Washington Post – climbed on board is another indicator. That neocon paper exists to p.i.m.p for Holy Israel, and little else.
Many elements of The Powers That Be have cooperated in all aspects of the PropOrNot scheming, and there are indications they did this out of fear for what would happen if they didn’t. This next is from the semi-crazy Zero Hedge site:
FBI Mulled Special Counsel For Hillary Email Probe But Feared Her Wrath, New Texts Reveal
The b.i.t.c.h was going to become President – this was universally known and acknowledged. Agencies which didn’t want to become targets of the shrill harpy knew they’d better watch their step. Whether or not the FBI actually gave her kid-glove treatment for that reason is beside the point – but it is certain that organization (and others) had good enough reasons for doing so.
h**ps://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-26/fbi-mulled-special-counsel-hillary-email-probe-feared-her-wrath-new-texts-reveal
In case anybody wants to object to the “b” word for Hillary, here is a current headline demonstrating it is one she uses herself.
‘Activist b***hes supporting b***hes’: Hillary posts bizarre ‘feminist’ video hours after it emerged she refused to fire top campaign aide accused of se*ually harassing a subordinate
h**p://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5318889/Hillary-responds-accusations-wouldnt-fire-Strider.html
Propornot is just a reaction by those who were sure Hillary would be a shoe in. It is no surprise that the threads go back to Ukraine. It makes sense that the underworld thugs the USA routinely courts to sew the seeds for regime change around the planet would lash out at what was apparently some dark magic by some websites and try to get them banned under the cover provided by a gullible main stream press also seeking to make sense of the election.
The scariest thing about a Hillary presidency was always the coming war with Russia as capitalism ceaselessly tried by every measure fair or foul to pry away chunks of the former Soviet Union and bring them into the fold of the EU and the Pax Americana.
It also makes sense why the official propaganda created Russia Gate. Russia Gate was and is a post election plan B to precipitate conflict with Russia given the fact that plan A which was, Hillary goes to war, did not happen.
The MIC are truly a devious bunch who will stop at nothing to make their fortunes stoking endless war. We are bombarded with “The daily two minutes of hate” worse than North Koreans. For us it’s 24/7. Perhaps it is why we are such mortal enemies. Each nation is a propaganda island unto itself lost in its grandiosity and willing to take down the planet.
Hillary was an accomplice to the MIC plan to wage endless war when she was Secretary of State. She believed the funding of forces opposed to foreign governments the USA didn’t like was cool as did Obama. They even funded ISIS and would have signed a contract with Satan if it meant some bombs were going to be falling from the sky somewhere. No doubt Obama’s hard stance on Ukraine leading to Russia’s moves there would have been on the top of Hillary’s agenda filed under “Wars to get started” in the subcategory “other than Syria and Libya”.
We have become grotesquely indifferent to wars thanks to our non-elected free press and the spin they put on things (thinking of “beautiful” cruise missiles here). Americans are by and large completely bamboozled. What is left to do? Why ferret out all sources of information not on the “approved” list of 17 intelligence agencies and a bunch of Nazis and have their websites banned of course.
Since Victoria Nuland couldn’t figure out how to midwife a Planned Coup D’etat in Ukraine, the NY Times had to invent a story about Russia invading Ukraine in the hopes of sucking the US into a Russian conflict.
It must piss off the military contractors when websites like this one call BS on the plans by the MIC to create a nation permanently locked in wars raging all over the planet. No doubt it also pisses off the Nazis hoping to control Eastern Europe. I’m sure it really pisses off ISIS and their plans for taking over Syria. These folks would like nothing more than to have someone send our MSM a big wish list of websites to ban.
If anything this website deserves a medal for being the voice of reason in a hail of propaganda and lies all for the sole purpose of beating the drums of war so the largest defense industry on the planet can grow richer. It is really the NY Times and other establishment fonts of truth and integrity that are the most influential sources of “fake news”. I agree with Trump that it is the enemy of the American People.
The media MSM and MIC seems now to be like some ravenous beast that has been deprived of its meal. It is lashing out. It will not be denied. If it has to it will try to eat anyone or anything in its way. It is no way to run the World let alone run America.
Very well said CitizenOne. Thank You…
Another great comment Citizen One, but what comes to mind when reading this article, is to how proud Allen Dulles would be of his U.S. Government for it’s colluding with Ukraine Nazi’s and Azov thugs. Seeing this criminal news rebuffing organization become so powerful makes me want to make it mandatory that every American read David Talbot’s ‘the Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government’. The knowledge that Talbot relates too, plus the many great articles which appear here at ‘the Consortium’ should be shared with the wider uninformed citizenry, as this would help in a big way to get more citizens more inline to the truth.
In fact, if I were king of the world I would bequeath a special day where my subjects would read the many fine articles Robert Parry gave us in regard to so many subjects, but especially in regard to this Russia-Gate ‘Fake News’ propaganda attack, that my subjects would then suddenly become knowledgeable to what in the hell is really going on.
Our hero Robert Parry may have completed his time here on earth, but his legacy lives on in his spirit, and beyond a doubt through his family. We who enjoy this site so much have been blessed to have been able to read what Mr Parry had to offer us. Our continuing to frequent this site, is now our way of staying in touch with the spirit of truth that ‘Bob’ left us with. Thank you Robert Parry.
Always a pleasure to read your comments Citizen One. Joe
I second the recommendation for Talbot’s work. If a lot more of the bewildered herd could get inside the minds of the endless stream of delusional and sociopathic minds of our “great generation” then, perhaps, the cognitive dissonance that our culture employs to such a suffocating degree could be lessened.
I don’t think we’re bamboozled. At least, not all of us.
What we are is powerless to affect any change.
David I don’t think that was what Citizen One said, he said this…. “Americans are by and large completely bamboozled. What is left to do?”. Then he went on to talk about the MIC, and the rest of the Establishment being upset over media reporting the truth, as is accomplished on this site ‘the Consortium’ as it was called in the nineties. Where you say ‘powerless’ Citizen One says ‘what is left to do?… I think I got this right, and it would appear that both of you are in and about the same place…right?
In reference to what you are saying I too often wonder to what is really going on in the minds of my fellow countrymen. I mean even the uninformed maybe hiding their real feelings about all these wars, and the lying critters in our nation’s capital. In this day and age of MSM corporate news distribution, and polls being what they are, like where’s President Hillary?, and who are these people polled….well need I say more?
So I agree with you David, and I’ll let Citizen One defend his own statement, but I think you and he are on the same page. Joe
No, what we are is bamboozled. Your argument is correct. Not all of us are bamboozled. As PT Barnum said:
You can fool some of the people all of the time;
You can fool all of the people some of the time,
You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
If your objection is that you cant fool all of the people all of the time and therefore what I said that we are all bamboozled then you are correct.
However your objection does not consider the first statement by PT Barnum which is you can fool some of the people all of the time.
The variable in the equation is “some of the people”. That sum of the people who can be fooled all of the time is the sum of the people that decide elections.
What is left out in PT Barnum’s quote is the people who cant be fooled most of the time or the rare people who cant be fooled any of the time.
PT Barnum essentially states that all people are fools to some extent. It excludes the potential population that are never fools.
But this is an equation that can only be solved if we can fit a factor which describes each condition in the population. Fools which can be fooled some most or all of the time and fools which cannot be fooled some most or all of the time.
So there is population of fools on either side of the equation which will balance out based on the relative proportion of each.
I happen to believe that with the massive propaganda in the main stream media every person has to decide what is true or false based upon the information presented by the media.
If most not some of the people believe that what they hear is true then most of the people can be fooled all of the time which is where we are at.
The fact that you are not a member of the population which believes in foolishness most or all of the time does not discount the majority that can be fooled most or all of the time.
While I agree with much of what you wrote we need to remember that Donald Trump hardly represents a movement towards truth and honesty in government, and is certainly not a crusader against the MIC or the 17 intelligence agencies. While it is true that Trump does not have the intimate ties to the Washington based Deep State entities that Clinton had, he merely represents a different set of ruling class factions, largely ones based in New York, Florida, Nevada, and Israel. There is far more continuity than change between the current regime and those that preceded it, Democratic and Republican.
U.S. and much of world opinion is manipulated and controlled by numerous types of propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation operations. The identity of and relative strength of the U.S. ruling class factions changes over time. Trump is the front-man for a coalition that includes the most extreme right-wing factions in the U.S., they think that they can strip the domestic population of all the remaining social benefits and regulatory protections, wallow in their massive tax cuts and public subsidies, and lavish even more money on the MIC than previously. The Israelis, rich American Jewish Zionists, and Christian Zionists are much more tightly aligned with the Republicans and Trump than they were with the Clintons or Obama (who despite their many gifts to Israel, did occasionally take actions to oppose the most extreme Likudnik factions). Netanyahu, who said the 9-11 was “very good for Israel”, is very close with and favorable to Trump, and worked for and rejoiced at Trump’s “election”, in our deeply compromised and corrupted electoral system (that certainly did not need any Russian interference to come to the conclusion desired by shadowy factions).
The MSM outlets are businesses and an integral part of the ruling class. Trump would never have become the nominee without the $2 – $4 billion dollars worth of free airtime Trump got before and during the Republican Primary campaign. Many of the same outlets later became critical of Trump, but only after they collected their advertising revenues in the earlier period. The Republican Party runs numerous voter suppression and election fraud operations to bolster their innate minority position. The Democratic Party’s establishment worked hard to make sure that the most progressive candidate, Bernie Sanders lost his battle against Clinton, and the MSM certainly collaborated in that effort. Factions of the Deep State probably planned to manipulate election results in favor of Clinton, but were outdone by the Republican operation, both in sophistication (e.g., Cambridge Analytica’s operations) and fraud and suppression. In reality, much of what passes for democracy in the U.S. is a sham and a huge Kabuki Theater operation. Real change here has only come as a result of massive grass roots uprisings that overwhelm the many ruling class methods of control, e.g. the mobilization of working people that led to the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Anti-War Movement during the SE Asian Wars.
Hooray, consortiumnews has been on to this lying conspiracy from the very start, kudos to you Mr Parry, and may this writing fine you in good health.
It goes without saying to how most of us here on CN have had this Russia-gate thing right, all along. Although seeing this deception wasn’t that hard to if a reader were to dig into the news a little bit, as opposed to buying what our MSM was, and still is, selling.
Just reading to who all is involved into this horrible attack upon the free press, and nothing else needs said.
Cliff High reads meta-data, and he predicts that somehow, someone, will sue the MSM for fraud. After reading this, that legal play sounds fairly believable.
https://usawatchdog.com/2018-predictions-beyond-almost-all-positive-clif-high/
This seems like a very solid article–hate to say this, but I think it could use a little more editing (not quite like Ezra Pound was for T.S. Eliot, but I did think of those two…), although the article is good just the way it is. Lots of information and it is a very complex subject; I’m not sure I was able to follow along with everything, but I think I got most/plenty… I knew of a link between Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgams and Crowdstrike’s Dmtry Alperovitch–that both were members of the Atlantic Council, that both were extremely influential in American media “stories” and that both were virulent anti-Russians and pro-Nato folk. Have not seen much on the topic of propornot in quite some time, glad to see that research has been going on and that they are not going to be let off he hook. I think one of the big stories of propornot was that it was an anonymous source that the media accepted from anonymous sources–the media was not able to vet their anonymous source the way they usually could. That was the big story I am thinking, which was only a side not, if that, to the mainstream media. Thanks for your work George Eliason!
Lucius, you said” I think one of the big stories of propornot was that it was an anonymous source that the media accepted from anonymous sources”. It is not merely that WaPo ran the story of Propornot despite its shadowy group of anonymous intelligence officials. The long view on this one example of irresponsible behavior by our free press is the persistent way the MSM has propagated disinformation for many years.
BS fake news story “Russia Attacked Ukraine”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/opinion/the-dumbed-down-democracy.html
to which this website responded
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/08/27/the-dumbed-down-new-york-times/
This pattern of printing questionable information by questionable informants has a long history.
Many stories were published by our MSM news about how Osama Bin Laden was shacked up with Saddam Hussein. That was later debunked along with WMD and a whole host of BS foisted on us by our lying fake news “free” press.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations
The British had their own damning report about the false flags Britain rallied behind to justify their inclusion in the coalition of the willing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry
The problem is in a propaganda state, the general public is never marched down history lane and shown all of the obvious falsehoods which got us to where we are and got a lot of people killed. This lack of retrospect is a clue we really are in “The Matrix”. There is no revisiting Iraq War history in the press until it is quietly forgotten. None of the fake news articles published by Judith Miller based on the lies of Ahmed Chalabi were retracted. The NY Times issued only a minor apology.
We went to war in no small part because of an untrustworthy source (Chalabi) the neocons thought would be the “George Washingto”n of Iraq but in the end was only a con man who was unquestioningly quoted by our “free” press and those stories were published to make a case for war. None of those things Chalabi claimed to have personal knowledge of were ever substantiated.
In short. We have a propaganda press. Propornot is not some isolated incident of bad judgement by WaPo running with a story that has not been vetted. They all have not been vetted. Russia Gate is in the same league of lies as the BS about WMD in Iraq.
This recent history is presented here to remind us how badly we were lied to in the past and to question why we would not expect differently now?
Most disturbingly is our NeoCon lineage which continues and seems to have become addicted to war requiring ever larger doses of it.
I agree with your comment.
First, my profound thanks to the author for this extremely important research. I would offer one bit of constructive feedback. Starting with “If it is, we need Russkie hackers with Guy Fawkes masks to make this work”, I did not understand the connections and motives of the players. The article shifted from a straightforward presentation of facts and implications to a more insider-oriented, preaching to the choir style. And I evidently do not have the requisite background info to follow the story. I would suggest anyone explaining these complexities to the general public avoid this “insider” style of writing. To people just learning about these things, it can be confusing and frustrating.
On a related note, I recently made a small purchase from Amazon, and found myself receiving a daily email with Washington Post propaganda headlines. In retrospect, this propaganda outreach is undoubtedly why Amazon acquired the Washington Post.
Regarding all the connections to the Clinton team described in this article, most of Clinton’s big donors were Israeli, AND she strategically kept this fact HIDDEN from her base.
“Clinton to drop Israel from ‘public’ speeches, put it back in ‘with donors’ — email”
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/clinton-israel-speeches/
Regarding the Ukraine’s role in Israel’s plans, Robert Parry discussed this in
“What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis”
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/02/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis
Israel’s role in the hidden financial tentacles of control is sketched in
“War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror”
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
There is only one serious problem, with your thinking. RUSSIA invaded the Ukraine… so there is no perhaps bullshit, war IS needed. These assholes need to be stuffed back into the little hole they have become used to and for all of you to pretend that that isn’t real, is in a word. STUPID… Get a clue…no go get several, it appears you twits are going to need them….
Sure … it does not “read well” – so a lazy reader may give up early on. I think it would do well to repackage it into a more fluid piece – but it serves to provide a ton of information in a very tight space.
Agree with this assessment. Very complex topic and I couldn’t quite follow all of it, but I got the gist. I think the goods are there for those with greater preexisting insight (and cyber-sleuthing skills) than I.thanks, George Eliason. I hope you continue to refine the analysis to highlight the important connections and also implications. When is someone going to demand a thorough investigation of Seth Rich’s death?
It explains why, late in the lame duck Obama administration, the use of propaganda specifically aimed at our domestic U.S. audience was for the first time made explicitly legal, when it was formerly a crime. It was to establish the legality of a government authorized disinformation campaign, so that no one could be held accountable for a policy of knowingly disseminating fake news and lying to other authorities.