The British analytical HJS center that published a report on third-party propaganda has refused to give any comments to RT which it accused of spreading lies. The situation is especially awkward given the fact that representatives of both companies share the same office building in London and see each other every day on their way to work.

 

In October 2016, British Conservative Analytical Center Henry Jackson Society (HJS) published a report on the third-party propaganda, in which they labeled all politicians and experts interviewed by Russia's state-financed media outlets as Putin's "useful idiots."

The report's author, Andrew Foxall, believes that people who contact such media as Sputnik or RT are adherents of the Russian President. His basic idea is that all their performances are paid for by the Kremlin. Foxall argues that a similar practice existed during the Cold War and thus all experts and politicians contacting Russian state media should be "pointed out" and their credibility should be "challenged via political debates." According to British MP and member of the Scottish National Party Paul Monaghan, the report is an attempt to prevent people from expressing an alternative opinion, a move that does not correspond to EU's democratic principles. Monaghan said that he discussed his appearance at RT with his colleagues and didn't receive any negative feedback. The politician also noted he had never been paid by RT or any other media outlets for the participation in interviews.

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/europe/201611221047728218-report-sputnik-rt-propaganda/

In the world of spooks and spies, almost nothing is ever on the record.

So, the reforming of the feared Soviet security service — the KGB — is being hotly denied by sources close to Russia's President and former KGB operative Vladimir Putin.

But security specialists strongly suspect the much-feared and all-powerful security bureau is making a comeback. 

Ever since an authoritative report appeared in Kommersant newspaper in late September, quoting multiple — but unnamed — sources, pieces have fallen into place. 

It has revived terrible memories in people who suffered at the hands of the ruthless Committee for State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) known globally as KGB. 

For unlike Western spy outfits, whose duty is to protect a country and its citizens, the KGB's primary purpose was to protect the Kremlin regime. 

"Inmates had no rights — they were non-persons like in Orwell's 1984," Viktor Davidoff, a political prisoner tortured in some of the USSR's most horrific institutions in the early 1980s after being targeted by the KGB, said.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-23/kgb-comeback-stirs-fear-dread-in-r...

 

Excellent fake news on the ABC, unconfirmed but feared... everything will do to stop the peace...

including:

On Wednesday, the European Parliament will consider a draft resolution equating counteracting Sputnik news agency and RT TV channel with resistence to Daesh propaganda. The resolution proposed by EU lawmaker from Poland Anna Elzbieta Fotyga on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against the bloc by third parties, which says that Russia is allegedly engaged in propaganda against the European Union.

Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law Konstantin Dolgov told RT that "it is a discrimination of rights of Russian media." According to Dolgov, Russia will continue to raise the issue concerning the attempts to prohibit Russian media in different countries because it is "a discrimination and a clear violation of international norms."

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/politics/201611231047743948-eu-russia-media/

 

As well there is trend in the Western media and political circles to compare/associate Russia with ISIL. Idiots! What a lot of poop. But then the Western world is scared Russia is... Russia... Another item in the news is that the Russian have had to move better weapons into position to counter NATOs increasing sabre-rattling ahed of Tump move towards detente... Who knows, Obama might declare war before Trump's inaugration, leaving Donald with some crap to deal with...

 

For decades the EU has been lecturing Russia and touting freedom of speech as one of its core principles, but hypocritically dismissed it as an unnecessary luxury once their narrative was challenged, RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said.
“We of course are extremely disappointed, this is really outrageous,” Simonyan said on the subject of the EU’s so-called anti-Russia propaganda resolution. “We are disappointed at how easily the European establishment gives away its own principles. The principles that we’ve been hearing for ages. The principles about which Russia has been lectured for years, for decades. And now we see that this whole principle of freedom of speech is not really needed and looks scary to Europeans themselves.”
“I do not understand whom it would affect more: Us, or the European establishment, which ... so easily for the sake of some odd, irrelevant, irrational fears, betrays its own principles,” Simonyan added. She said freedom of speech apparently became an “unnecessary luxury” in the European Union once alternative voices such as RT and Sputnik gained popularity.
https://www.rt.com/news/367984-eu-double-standards-sputnik-rt/

Why is RT and Sputnik gaining popularity? For years the Western media has sought to extinguish opposition to its neo-liberal neo-con propaganda. This has led to the demise of balancing view points, including socialist newspapers in the 1960s. The amazing factor here is that Sputnik and RT are far more accurate in reporting than the Western media. It's pissing off the American-led by the nose European politicians who get paid for their slanted views of sabre rattling and arms deal.

If an EU resolution against the Russian media is implemented, Moscow will take retaliatory measures, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has stated.

“We hope that the resolution will not entail practical steps on curbing the work of the Russian media,” the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Maria Zakharova told journalists at a briefing.

“There is hope that such steps will not follow, because the adoption of such a document caused massive uproar, for one, in the EU itself.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/368045-european-resolution-media-response/

 

Russian media has become a platform for political dissidents, who for various reasons do not receive mainstream western media coverage, US Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein told RT. She said that putting them in line with Islamic State is ridiculous.

“I can speak to my experience here in the US, where so many political dissidents like myself who are basically are locked out of our corporate media coverage. We looked at RT for access to the American public,” Stein said.

 

“Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of options for being able to speak to the American public. Charging Russian TV with being a dangerous ISIS-type threat – I don’t really get that.”

Read  more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368001-rt-western-dissidents-corporations/

 

Meanwhile:

A campaign to crowdfund a US election recount in three battleground states has hit its $US2.5 million target.

The campaign, headed by the Green Party's presidential candidate Jill Stein, aimed to raise enough money for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Only two days after it began, the campaign hit its $2.5 million target, which will cover the fees for a recount in all three states.

Ms Stein's campaign website laid out the filing fee amounts and deadlines for each state:

• Wisconsin: $1.1 million by Nov 25
• Pennsylvania: $500,000 by Nov 28
• Michigan: $600,000 by Nov 30

The campaign also noted that in addition to filing fees, there were attorney's fees and costs of conducting a statewide recount in all three states that would put the estimated cost at a total of $US6–7 million.

Read more:http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-25/jill-stein-reaches-target-to-recount-in-us-election-swing-states/8056140

The MMMMM is abuzz with the prospect that fake news has skewed the result of the Presidential elections in the US. I have got news for you. Fake news has been with us since the invention of writing way back before the biblical drivel. But today, we've got PIZZAGATE:

 

The chief executive of online bulletin board Reddit has admitted to changing posts by supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump on the website.

 

Steve "Spez" Huffman, also the site's founder, said in a post he redirected abusive posts targeted at him by users of Mr Trump fan community "The_Donald" to its moderators instead.

He said he "messed with" the posts for about an hour, and members of the community soon noticed their content had been changed without their consent.

"Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again."

Mr Huffman said the abuse had been directed at him after Reddit moved to shut down subreddit community "Pizzagate", which was based on "fake news" allegations Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was kidnapping, molesting and trafficking children in the back room of a Washington pizza restaurant.

The restaurant's owner and employees told The New York Times they received death threats and abusive messages as the accusations spread online.

The subreddit was banned and was replaced by a warning: "We don't want witch-hunts on our site."

Community members responded to Mr Huffman's post, with some calling for his resignation.

Another user wrote: "Surely editing others' comments is a bigger violation of Reddit TOS (terms of service) than whatever pizzagate is accused of doing."

Last year, Mr Huffman replaced interim chief executive Ellen Pao, who resigned after she provoked anger with the unexplained firing of an employee.

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/reddit-ceo-admits-modifying-donald-t...

Hedge fund legend George Soros lost a lot of money following the election of Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

According to the Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman and Juliet Chung, citing people familiar with Soros’ trading, the billionaire became bearish directly after the victory of Trump and those bets seem to have come back to bite him.

However, Soros larger fund — Soros Fund Management — gained 5% over the whole year according to the Journal.

Soros was a supporter of Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton, contributing millions to super PACs backing her campaign, so it may come as no surprise that he was sceptical of the market following Trump’s upset victory.

Additionally, most Wall Street analysts believed that a Trump win would sow uncertainty and cause a sell-off.

Since Trump’s victory, Soros has continued to criticise him, calling him a “would-be dictator”and warning about what his win means for the long-term health of democracy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up nearly 10% since election day and all three major US stock indexes have set all-time highs after Trump’s win.

Stanley Druckenmiller, one of Soros’ protegees that worked at his firm until 2000, was much more prescient. Druckenmiller bet that the market would rally on a Trump victory and the bet appears to have paid off, with his firm gaining 10% in 2016 according to the Journal.

read more:

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/george-soros-lost-1-billion-after-trum...

 

Here one has to know of the massive subterranean battle between Soros and Murdoch. Murdoch supports Trump while Soros hates Trump and Murdoch. We, the bystanding consumers of daily crap news, are caught in between this war of disinformation which also permeates public broadcasting... 

And by the way, the Wall Street Journal is owned by you guess who — Uncle Rupe of course.

Soros has also been influential in the installation of the new Ukrainian government and for world wide anti-Russia propaganda...

 

See toon at top, of course...

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.

More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa.

 

The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm. Trump was elected less than two weeks later.

read more:

http://circa.com/politics/barack-obamas-team-secretly-disclosed-years-of...

In the Summer of 2007 I traveled to China to speak at a conference concerning security preparations for the Olympic Games, which were to be held in Beijing the following year. While transiting Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport I noticed something odd. The internet sites that I checked every day would not open, to include The American Conservative and Antiwar.com. When I finally reached China, the same sites continued to be inaccessible and I also noted that writing emails had become problematic either at the airports in Hong Kong or Beijing or at the Sheraton Hotel in Shenyang. Some words would not type at all while other words that were clearly considered to be offensive would be altered without any input from me. Words like “damn” and “hell” appeared as “d**n” and “h**l” and the same alterations took place with more obviously scatological and reproductive expressions.

When I returned to the United States, I learned that there was commercially available software that enabled internet service providers to selectively censor online content. That was apparently what was being used by the French in the airport and more so in China. Since 2007, I have learned that many governments and their agencies employ such software to limit access to what they hold to be objectionable content and to control certain aspects of messaging going out of the country.

The internet was originally promoted as a completely free and uncensored mechanism for people everywhere to exchange views and communicate, but that is not really true anymore. Both governments and the service providers have developed a taste for controlling the product, with President Barack Obama once considering a “kill switch” that would turn the internet off completely in the event of a “national emergency.” President Trump has also had a lot to say about fake news and is reported to be supporting limiting protections relating to the internet.

Social networking sites have voluntarily employed technical fixes that restrict some content and have also hired “reviewers” who look for objectionable material and remove it. European legislation, meanwhile, might require internet search engines to eliminate access to many old posts. YouTube has already been engaged in deleting existing old material, and is working with by no means impartial “partners” like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to set up guidelines to restrict future content. Users of Facebook will have already undoubtedly noted that some contacts have been blocked temporarily (or even permanently) and denied access to the site.

Google now automatically disables or limits searches for material that it deems to be undesirable. If Google does not approve of something it will not appear in search results. And what does come up will likely favor content that derives from those who pay Google to promote their products or services. Information that originates with competitors will either be very low in the search results or even blocked. Google is hardly an unbiased source of information.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-i-believe-facebook-w...

 

...

If this keeps up, Trump’s (and Steve Bannon’s and Kellyanne Conway’s) dream could soon come true: The news landscape will be dominated by cheap, shallow fluff and propaganda of the sort that turns reality-show celebs into presidents. Independent, critical journalism will end up FAILING, not because it’s not doing its job, but because no one will pay to do that job.

If that happens, we journalists will not be blameless. I’ll start with myself: I was trained to ignore not only what the business side was up to (that separation of church and state is healthy and important), but to not think much about the audience either. Once you worried about who was reading or watching, the reasoning went, you would automatically start pandering: Puff pieces, sensationalism, cat videos, blah blah.

It took me a long time to realize how insulting it was to assume that the people you’re trying to reach will inevitably choose crap over substance. But it was an assumption that permeated the industry: You, readers and viewers, were considered by much of our industry to be unwitting dupes needing to be conned into consuming content.

Thus, headlines that promised what stories couldn’t deliver or manipulated your emotions to get you to click “Like.” Webpages slathered with intrusive advertising, or simply ads masquerading as stories. All this was done, in some ways, with good intentions; it’s really hard to make enough money to pay for journalism. But in the end, publishers inched ever closer to squandering the one thing they could not replace: The audience’s trust.

But then Donald Trump came along and did the one thing that could reverse this spiral: He redrew the battle lines. He brutally humiliated reporters (especially women) who covered the campaign. He cheered his surrogates as they insisted on “alternative facts” and cast the press as “the enemy of the people.” He joked with Vladimir Putin, under whose government journalists keep mysteriously dying, about journalists being spies. Like authoritarian figures the world over, the only kind of coverage he tolerated was Hannity-style fawning.

When Trump lashed out at “fake news,” when Steve Bannon called reporters “the enemy of the people,” when a Congressional candidate body-slammed a reporter, they asked Americans to take sides—with them, or with a free, fact-oriented press. And, remarkably, a majority is coming down on the side of journalism.

That’s an extraordinary show of support, given our history of not endearing ourselves to audiences. But now it’s on us to prove that we deserve it. To show that we are not here to manipulate or “monetize” you, but to stand with you, fight with you, for the values of democracy and vigorous debate and pluralism that we all felt down to our core on Election Day. It’s time to earn your trust, not rent it out to the highest bidder. 

read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/11/journalism-is-imploding-just...

 

Journalism is in trouble. This started way back in... Well, since the invention of moveable type I guess, and someone saw value in publishing a daily sheet. This value soon turned into selling propaganda of sorts. Anti-government pamphlets, governments glories, financial gazettes, episodic novels to keep the readers as buyers, gossip, titillating pictures, gory pictures... The height of truthful news came about during the Vietnam War. The horror of daily war became exposed and that lambasted involved governments.

Soon these governments that had been stung and had to "capitulate" — that is "loose the war", decided to stop this kind of raw exposure by courageous dedicated journalists and cameramen (mostly men) who plodded through rice fields and muddy forests with the valiant troops that had lost the purpose of the fight  — except sheer survival for them and their mates. 

Soon the Pentagon and the CIA, wrote "history before it happened". That is to say the government propaganda machine worked overtime to paint "enemies" the blackest black possible. This technique is not new though, but it was perfected then. This was evident in the depiction of Saddam Hussein once he had passed "his used-by date". Saddam had decided not to fight Iran anymore. Instead he would try to reunify Greater Iraq by incorporating Kuwait, and to sell Iraq's oil in Euros and Roubles. The WMDs was a hoax that the media in the Five-Eyes countries bought hook, line and sinker. No questions asked, especially of the medicine embargo on this country — an embargo that cost an estimated 500,000 children's lives. 

Journalism and newspaper proprietors had lost their mojo. They got "imbedded" with the troops...

The same thing is happening in relation to Yemen. While most journalists have found a "Trump/Putin" connection that does not exist but is fabricated by the various US "intelligence" agencies, they forget the horror of this war fought by the Saudis on behalf of ugly Uncle Sam.

Whether the new platforms of "news" are diluting the revenue streams of news outlets or not, here is irrelevant. What is important is that say the Murdoch organisation and other big news outlets have muddled the truth. In order to get scoops, the truth is not checked, double-checked, triple checked, because of urgency of being "first". 

Alternative news outlets like RT and Sputnik often present a more sober reality, though they are propagandists and good at it, while truly presenting the excesses of "Western news". We have been at it for a while too on this site: Read only the NUZ (posted 12 years ago), for example...  and many other postings on this site on the excesses of the merde-och press. 

Trump is not the problem. Various new news platforms and low revenue is not the problem. The problem has been in the inability — and possibly the fear plus the laziness — of journalists to expose the clever drivel pumped out by News Corp, the slanted propaganda pumped out by the Soros media and the clever "intelligence agencies" manipulations — all designed to maintain the Ponzi scheme that is Capitalism.

 

Read from top

 

Read also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/11276

 

and : http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/1686

 

 

Would you be brave enough to try out this nipple trend?

Accessorizing used to mean wearing an eye-catching necklace or carrying a statement handbag — but now, it seems, our nips are the area to adorn.

At the Lollapalooza Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, revelers were seen with bold nipple stickers on full display under sheer T-shirts.

And this isn’t the only time ladies have dared to dazzle on their chests.

Glitter nipples began gaining momentum after US model Binx Walton stormed down the Saint Laurent runway at Paris Fashion Week SS17 — with her left breast adorned with silver studs.

And fearless girls on Instagram have shared photographs showing how they style the eye-popping look.

 

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/03/26/nipple-stickers-are-the-new-glitter-boobs/

 

Read from top (note toon)...

Hungarian-born American billionaire George Soros has repeatedly flouted US charity laws, Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik, explaining why the magnate has dramatically stepped up his lobbying activities under Donald Trump's presidency.

"The vast network of 'false-front' George Soros-backed 'charities' that actually seem to be political action organizations deserves coordinated scrutiny by nations including the US and Russia, among others, that likely have been severely damaged over many years," Wall Street analyst, investor and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik.

On August 19, Judicial Watch, a government watchdog, tweeted that it "uncovered bombshell info showing that the Obama administration sent US taxpayer funds overseas to an organization supported by billionaire George Soros — which used the money to fund leftwing political activities benefiting the socialist government of Albania," referring to its April report and apparently signaling that it continues to keep an eye on the magnate.

Earlier, the watchdog revealed that under Barack Obama, the US government used taxpayer dollars to fund the billionaire's controversial political activities in Guatemala, Macedonia and sued the US State Department and USAID for records about the funding and operations of George Soros's Open Society Foundations in Romania and Colombia.

READ MORE: Analyst Explains Why Times is Running Out for Soros

According to Ortel, George Soros has flouted US charity laws in several ways, for decades through his network of Open Society organizations and others.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201808211067344637-soros-us-charity-laws/

 

 

Read from top.

 

WATCH: Kevin Barrett on the creeping censorship that threatens all of us

 

Dr. Kevin Barrett, who was pilloried in the media back in 2006 for daring to question the official 9/11 narrative, here talks about the new wave of highly alarming censorship that is seeing alternative news sites closed down and independent media removed from the airwaves. Please share this. You can follow Kevin at @truthjihad.

 

watch at:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/23/watch-kevin-barrett-on-the-creeping-...

 

 

Read from top. As axisofoil reminds us:

 

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

― Edward Bernays, Propaganda

 

 

Gus:

Here, we must reintroduce the power of ADVERTISING which is the counterpoint (part of the song) of propaganda. The mainstream media only survives by being paid by the advertisers who often are the same geezers who demand obedience through propaganda and lobbyism of governments. While propaganda plays on our fears and our prejudices, advertising plays on our COMFORTS. This was the work and discussion by E T Gundlach whose work was poopooed by "academia". Academia (American Journal of Sociology—Volume 37, Number 5— Mar. 1932) did not understand then that Gundlach was talking from the advertiser "propagandist" point of view, not to manipulate the social moiré, which the government was doing via its slanted historical records and public speeches, but by SELLING manufactured comforts to the individuals, on a grand social scale. Gundlach mastery was actually in the manipulation (education) of the sellers, not of the buyers. See: 

on the art of trumpeting...

 

Here we need to point out that it's a matter of proportion. In order to control the "sphere" one needs to control 66.66667 per cent of it. In Australia, the Murdoch media is said to influence 70 per cent of all media. But the alternative sources of information such as the internet are fracturing this general docile media and this is why "they" (the government and the media that are in bed together) are working hard at censoring anything that deviates from their main narrative or even asks questions about it.