Friday 29th of March 2024

schultz sees the light...

Ed SchultzEd Schultz

Ed Schultz used to be the bombastic lefty host of a syndicated radio show and daily MSNBC program. He befriended Hillary Clinton, called Donald Trump “a racist” for his birther views, and once beseeched God to take Dick Cheney “to the promised land.” 

In 2014, he ripped Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s “nasty” human rights record. He also torched American conservatives for siding with the Russian president as a counter to President Obama. “Putie is their new hero,” sneered Schultz.

But the times have changed. And so has Ed Schultz.

In mid-2015, MSNBC handed Schultz his last paycheck. After six years on the air, the ratings of his daily program, “The Ed Show,” were soft and MSNBC was going for more news in Schultz’s time slot, not opinion. His daily radio show had ended the previous year.

So Schultz went back to his lakefront home in Detroit Lakes, Minn., and took stock. At 61, after a lifetime in broadcasting, he concluded he wasn’t done. In early 2016, he returned to television, albeit in an unlikely place and role for a guy who once styled himself as a “prairie populist.” He became the lead news anchor for RT America, the domestic network of what was once known as Russia Today, a globe-spanning multimedia organization funded by the Russian government. 

 

Schultz, in other words, went to work for “Putie.”

read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-ed-schultz-transforme...

 

Much of the liberal media (MMMM) in the Western world had turned to propaganda on behalf of the US Empire. Their dismay at the rejection of Hillary Clinton only encouraged them to turn up the volume on disinformation and straight out lies about Russia. The Empire and its hawks have become desperate. They had the perfect candidate in Clinton: an "apparently peaceful" woman who would enforce their next wars on something (mostly Russia as announced by Clinton supporters), with a tough hypocritical resolve and some "patriotic" tears about the necessity of the deed. The Russians had to respond in kind on the media front, but instead of lies, all they had to do was tell the "truth" as verbatum as possible, which pulled the pants of the Western media down. The RT Internet and RT-TV provide alternative views which the Western world wants to get rid off as these do not go along with the Empire's narrative.

The Washington Post and The New York Times have lost their sense of critical insight a long time ago.

rebel propaganda staged from the UK...

A $3 million British government propaganda campaign for Syria’s rebels

RFS Media is just one of several different propaganda outlets financed by the U.K. Foreign Office. A recent investigation by the Guardian revealed that the British Foreign Office Conflict and Stability Fund has secretly pumped at least £2.4 million (over $3 million U.S.) into pro-rebel propaganda outfits based out of Istanbul.

The money began flowing after the British parliament voted against bombing the Syrian government in late 2013. (RFS Media launched in December 2013 in both English and Arabic.) The vote against war was attributed in large part to public pressure, as citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, reluctant to overthrow yet another Middle Eastern government after the disasters in Iraq and Libya, mobilized against another campaign for Western regime change in Syria.

After the political defeat, the U.K. Foreign Office embarked on a clandestine propaganda campaign to suppress the public’s anti-war sensibility, hiring private contractors to “produce videos, photos, military reports, radio broadcasts, print products and social media posts branded with the logos of fighting groups, and effectively run a press office for opposition fighters,” according to the Guardian.

The purpose of the propaganda, euphemistically referred to as “strategic communications” by the Foreign Office, is to clandestinely “influence the course of the war by shaping perceptions of opposition fighters” and provide “strategic communications and media operations support to the Syrian moderate armed opposition.”

read more:

http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/british-government-funded-outle...

stop fueling the frenzy...

Urgent to Progressives: Stop Fueling the Anti-Russia Frenzy

 


by , December 21, 2016

 

This week began with a mass email from the head of the Democratic National Committee, who declared: “By now, Americans know beyond any reasonable doubt that the Russian government orchestrated a series of cyberattacks on political campaigns and organizations over the past two years and used stolen information to influence the presidential campaign and congressional races.” DNC chair Donna Brazile went on: “The integrity of our elections is too important for Congress to refuse to take these attacks seriously.”

The importance of election integrity had eluded Brazile when she was a regular on CNN, posing as neutral in the Clinton-Sanders battle. “Brazile is not apologizing for leaking CNN debate questions and topics to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the Democratic primary,” the Washington Post reported last month. “Her only regret, it seems, is that she got caught.”

Many big factors affect any presidential race, and the Russian government may have tried to be one of them for the 2016 election – though it’s hardly the slam dunk that agencies like the CIA and U.S. mass media are now claiming. But in any event, this month it has become routine for a lot of progressive organizations and individuals to descend into a dangerous mode of partisan flackery.

Less than two weeks ago – as soon as unnamed CIA sources told journalists that the Kremlin was behind hacks of DNC and Clinton campaign emails – a wide range of progressive online groups, activists and commentators reflexively embraced the dominant media spin. High profile among them was MoveOn, which used its big digital footprint to spur the frenzy.

MoveOn matter-of-factly decried the “chilling news” of “Russia’s election tampering.” And, without a hint of media literacy, the group also informed its readers that “news broke that the Russian president himself was involved in the efforts to influence our November election – in favor of Donald Trump.”

Such eagerness to share undocumented spin as absolute fact has led many progressive groups to go with knee-jerk reactions. Bent on gaining a propaganda advantage over Trump, those reactions are helping to stampede this country toward a modern form of McCarthyism – as well as brinkmanship with Russia that could lead to a cataclysmic military conflict.

Zeal to blame Russia for a bad election outcome has spread like contagion among countless self-described progressives, understandably appalled by the imminent Trump presidency. But those who think they’re riding a helpful tiger could find themselves devoured later on.

If civil liberties instead of repression and diplomacy instead of war are progressive values, then all too many progressives – eager to tar Trump as a Kremlin product – have been undermining those values.

Already, from witch-hunt legislation in Congress to pernicious media blacklisting, the anti-Russia hysteria – being fueled by the high octane election-intervention storyline – has gained enormous momentum.

Days ago, assessing the momentum of that hysteria, Russian studies scholar Stephen F. Cohen cited some of the key motives propelling it (the first of which touted extremely farfetched hopes):

  • “One is to reverse the Electoral College vote.”
  • “Another is to exonerate the Clinton campaign from its electoral defeat by blaming that instead on Putin and thereby maintaining the Clinton wing’s grip on the Democratic Party.”

Thus, countless Bernie supporters have been unwittingly strengthening the Clinton wing of the party while beating on the anti-Putin drum.

  • “Yet another is to delegitimate Trump even before he is inaugurated. And certainly no less important, to prevent the détente with Russia that Trump seems to seek.”

Of all the good reasons to “delegitimate” Trump, alleged Kremlin intervention in the election should rank quite low. Trump’s evils are huge, with a very incomplete list including vast greed, pathological lying, contempt for facts, enthusiasm for oligarchy, bigotry, environmental destruction, racism, misogyny, economic injustice, voter suppression and rampant conflicts of interest.

While echoing the anti-Russia themes belted out by Democratic Party officials and loyalists, the chorus on the left may think it’s merely grabbing the low-hanging political fruit of this historical moment. But the fruit is already turning rancid, and apt to become poisonous. It won’t be the first time in recent decades when liberals and others thought they were being clever and politically adroit as they aided and abetted the suppression of principles found in the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, while helping to gear up the machinery of war.

This month, by following the line of the Democratic Party leadership, groups like MoveOn actually have helped to set the stage for pressurizing Trump to deter him from pursuing policies that may be (along with opposition to trade deals such as the TPP) the only ways in which he might be appreciably better than Hillary Clinton would have been as president.

Let’s face it: Some of the fierceness of media attacks on Trump, such as from de facto neoconservative liberal-tinged entities like the Washington Post, is propelled by rage that his stance toward Russia lacks the neocon qualities that a Hillary Clinton presidency offered.

To be crystal clear: The election of Donald Trump as president is a horrific disaster, and his regime must be resisted on a vast array of issues with eternal vigilance. And, meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is a repressive ruler.

At the same time, it’s a rather glaring omission in the current outraged discourse that the US government, from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Central Asian nations and beyond, continues to avidly support regimes far worse than Russia’s. As for intervening in foreign elections, the CIA has excelled at that anti-democratic game for many decades – and mainline US media outlets have been inclined to nod or even cheer when the American government and allied US operatives succeed in working their will on electorates overseas.

Oh, and must we forget that US efforts to determine the government leaders of other countries have sometimes gone far beyond techniques like hacking and disseminating emails? As Janine Jackson of the media watchdog group FAIR wrote, “in back of it all, what makes the umbrage of elite media so hard to stomach is the hypocrisy. This is, after all, the same elite media that supports outsider-induced ‘regime change’ anywhere and everywhere they see an official enemy, from Iraq to Honduras to Libyato Syria… You can make ‘one law for me, another for thee’ your credo, but you can’t be too surprised when others are unimpressed.”

And Jackson added: “Whatever story there is to be told about Russia and the 2016 election, corporate media have squandered the credibility it would take to tell it.”

Now, a crucial choice is right in front of the progressive groups and commentators who’ve been echoing the anti-Russia barrage from US mass media. Staying on course will help to undermine civil liberties at home and will help to escalate conflicts with Russia that could end with nuclear war. Doesn’t sound “progressive” to me.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

cold democratic twitter-fire...

Democratic presidential frontrunner Bernie Sanders has found himself between a rock and a hard place being lambasted by Twitter users on Wednesday over his wife's interview with RT America. However, the angry netizens seemingly failed to notice that the dialogue took place in 2016, the same year when Bernie appeared on RT America himself.

On Wednesday, Twitter exploded with resentment over an interview Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' wife, Jane, had given to RT America's Ed Schultz.

"Bernie Sanders' wife went on Russian TV to explain why open primaries — like the SC Democratic primary on Saturday — are more "democratic" because they allow Republicans to vote for who the Democratic nominee should be. Sorry, Jane – this is just wrong!" tweeted Jon Cooper, the chair of the Democratic Coalition.

However, it is not the topic of the discussion that prompted the ire of some American users, but the very fact that Jane Sanders had talked to the broadcaster.

"I'm sorry, but no Democratic candidate nor any of their surrogates or family members should be anywhere close to Russian TV", a user named Santiago Mayer writes.

The Twitter storm came on the heels of the 21 February reports alleging Russia's interference in the US 2020 presidential race with the supposed aim of boosting Bernie Sanders' election campaign. Sanders, who has emerged as the Democratic frontrunner rushed to condemn the rumoured "interference". Back in 2016, the Vermont senator also subjected Russia to criticism for its alleged meddling in the American election cycle, something that Moscow has vehemently denied.

Despite the denunciation of the non-confirmed Russian effort, Sanders has come into the crosshairs of Twitter users: "Bernie's wife went on Russian TV even as Bernie knew he was receiving Russian help, and even as he denied that he was receiving Russian help", a social media platform user named Rev Magdalen tweeted.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/202002261078411639-how-dare-you-bernie-chasti...

 

Read from top.

 

MEANWHILE:

 

Sanders, who has been securing the leading position in the last rounds of the Democratic primaries, has been a staunch supporter of Palestinians' rights while criticising Donald Trump's decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem and recognising it as the capital of the Jewish state.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz lashed out at Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders for making a "horrifying comment" on the possible reversal of the US Embassy's relocation to Jerusalem and calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "reactionary racist" during the latest round of primary debates. Katz went as far as to call on American voters to drop their support for Sanders, while at the same time, covering his bases to avoid possible accusations of foreign election meddling.

"We don't intervene in the internal American electoral process, which is splendid […] Naturally, people who support Israel will not support someone who goes against these things", Katz said while referring to Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and Sander's intentions to reverse it if he wins the presidential race in 2020.

The Israeli official stressed that there was no Jew in the world which "hadn't dreamed of Jerusalem", explaining his criticism of Sanders. 

The Vermont senator, who has already secured victories in several rounds of Democratic primaries and who is of Jewish descent himself, has long been known as a supporter of Palestinian rights. He has criticised Israel and those who support its current policies, namely the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Sanders has harshly condemned Trump's embassy move in the past, and argued that it would be detrimental to the US status as a broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

READ MORE:

https://sputniknews.com/us/202002261078411454-israeli-fm-slams-bernie-sa...