Murray McDonald, in his Hidden History of the Guardian, explains that The Guardian was launched to undermine working-class leaders of the early 19th century reform movement (whose members were massacred at Peterloo), and during its 150 year history has denounced Ireland’s freedom fighters, Women Suffragettes, Abraham Lincoln’s campaign to end slavery, third world nationalism and pretty much any kind of genuine independence from the system. It supported Tony Blair, even when the worst of his crimes were known and continues to give him uncritical space, it regularly presents official pronouncements as news, regularly disguises adverts for its corporate sponsors as newsand regularly finds time to pour bile on Jeremy Corbyn, Julian Assange, Media Lens and Noam Chomsky, who was so appalled by Emma Brocke’s infamous and outrageous distortions he forced them to print a long retraction.

In short, The Guardian is far to the right — just read a few articles by Nick Cohen, Jonathan Freedland or Michael White (with whom I had some correspondence a few years ago about thought-control in his paper) if you doubt where on the actual political spectrum the UK’s ‘leading left-liberal newspaper’ is situated — although they do employ two journalists who are slightly to the left of the rest, namely Owen Jones and George Monbiot. These two (there was a third, Seamus Milne*) appear in order to pull the actual left into The Guardian’s adverts for tech products and spa treatments and to give the paper the appearance of range that it must have to perform its function. Jones and Monbiot never venture beyond the unspoken limits of acceptable corporate thought, never seriously criticise the media (except to take pot shots at The Mail, Murdoch or CNN) and never support any genuine critics of the system.

read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2017/02/23/a-beginners-guide-to-the-guardian/

In his February op-ed for the Daily Signal Mike Gonzalez, former Bush administration official and senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, assumed that the Soros-led Open Society Foundations together with the US Ambassador to Macedonia were allegedly "trying to shut out the strongly pro-American, pro-capitalist VMRO-DPMNE coalition, which actually won the most votes in the Dec. 11 elections."

 

Gonzalez pointed out that the controversy had prompted members of both the House and Senate to send their letters to US Ambassador in Macedonia Jess Baily, Barack Obama's appointee, on January 17.

According to the scholar, the questions from Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J, Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., Randy Hultgren, R-Ill., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb. from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, from the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee were "very similar."

"This is a critical time in Macedonia as their elected officials negotiate a new government in the aftermath of the parliamentary elections finally concluded this past December. Unfortunately, I have received credible reports that, over the past few years, the US Mission to Macedonia has actively intervened in the party politics of Macedonia, as well as the shaping of its media environment and civil society, often favoring groups of one political persuasion over another," Senator Mike Lee wrote in his letter to Ambassador Baily.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201702221050956170-soros-us-congressmen/

 

read also:

Time to 'Drain the Swamp': Will Soros Find Himself Behind Bars?

 

Meanwhile:

The Telegraph, as a favored mouthpiece for British intelligence service disinformation, is a part of psychological warfare operation against Russia, said independent journalist Martin Summers. Another accusation is being thrown at Russia as a British newspaper published a story about Moscow being allegedly behind a plot to kill Montenegro’s Prime Minister last October… According to the article, Russia wanted to overthrow the country’s government to stop them joining NATO.

....

I don’t want their analyses, anymore. I don’t want their news, their films, their books, and their propaganda materials. Even in the dark solitude of some cave, one could understand the world much better than when reading their disinformation sheets, or when watching their indoctrination channels. All this is just designed to confuse people, to make them passive and submissive. Their announcers as well as their writers are like some sad lobotomized robots: there is no life, nothing new, nothing daring or revolutionary in their words. They function, somehow: they move, they eat, shit, repeat what they are expected to say, but they are not alive.

They only smear, but don’t inspire. If there is any optimism, it is always false, pre-approved, and mass-produced.

If you think about it, it all actually makes sense: A torturer cannot be a visionary, or an idealist.

Compared to China or Iran, the UK is a relatively young culture. But it feels old, tired, spent, and obsolete. Too many crimes and too many lies can exhaust and depress even a young person.

Were England a person, operating in a normal society, it would be either in prison or in a mental institution. The same could be said about the rest of the West.

We have nothing to learn from some murderous maniac, do we? The only concern should be: how to put a straightjacket on such an individual, how to prevent him from killing and harming others, and how to do it as quickly as possible.

I also highly doubt that with such a background and monstrous track record, our dangerous maniac should be allowed to interpret the world publicly, to teach people, and to even participate in the discussions touching the most essential issues facing our planet!

read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2017/02/24/perfidious-albion/

The White House barred several news organizations from an off-camera press briefing on Friday, handpicking a select group of reporters that included a number of conservative outlets friendly toward Donald Trump.

The “gaggle” with Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, took place in lieu of his daily briefing and was originally scheduled as an on-camera event.

...

But the White House press office announced later in the day that the Q&A session would take place off camera before only an “expanded pool” of journalists, and in Spicer’s West Wing office as opposed to the James S Brady press briefing room where it is typically held.

Outlets seeking to gain entry whose requests were denied included the Guardian, the New York Times, Politico, CNN, BuzzFeed and others. Conservative publications such as Breitbart News, the One America News Network and the Washington Times were allowed into the meeting, as well as TV networks CBS, NBC, Fox and ABC. The Associated Press and Time were invited but boycotted the briefing.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/24/media-blocked-white-hous...

For almost three years, the NSA's investigation committee met in the Bundestag, last week, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), being the last witness. By summer the final report will be ready. In all these years, the mass surveillance of the US service and later the uncontrolled spy action by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) were concerned. A question was only a marginal question for the parliamentarians: did the German ministry spy on journalists?

Documents that the SPIEGEL could now see provide a clear answer: Since 1999 the BND has monitored at least 50 telephone and fax numbers or e-mail addresses of journalists or editors around the world with their own so-called services. (Read here the whole story in the new SPIEGEL.)

Among the targets were, for example, more than a dozen connections of the British BBC in Afghanistan and the headquarters in London. In addition, editors of the international program BBC World Service were monitored. A connection of the "New York Times" in Afghanistan was on the list as well as connections of mobile and satellite telephones of the news agency Reuters in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

The BND refused to comment on the allegations.

read more:

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bnd-bespitzelte-offenbar-ausla...

If an informed population is one of the central safeguards of a democracy, then the need for a strong alternative media is essential, writes James O'Neill.

ONE OF the most observable phenomena among the mainstream media is the remarkable degree of uniformity that appears in their editorials and opinion pages.

There are a number of possible reasons for this. The one most commonly seized upon by the defenders of the mainstream is that they speak with only minor variations because they are right.

That is of course logically possible, but highly improbable. One has to look for alternative explanations. The following are some suggestions as to why this is the case. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list.

Ownership

Recent decades have seen a remarkable degree of concentration of ownership in the main media formats. In the United States for example, ownership of 90% of the media was distributed between 50 companies as recently as 1983. By 2016 that same 90% was controlled by six companies.

Comcast for example controls NBC and accounts for 20% of TV viewing time. Newscorp owns Fox, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. The same company controls 70% of the print media in Australia, with most of the rest being controlled by the Fairfax family. Newscorp also has a strong foothold in the UK, owning the biggest selling newspaper, the tabloid Sun, as well as the influential Times.

Disney controls ABC, and Time Warner has CNN among other multiple holdings.

At the time of the US–Australian invasion of Iraq in 2003, there was not one dissenting editorial voice in the more than 1000 newspapers controlled by the Murdoch family.

In his 1956 book The Power Elite, U.S. sociologist C. Wright Mills documented a trinity of power that comprised corporate, military and government elites. What Mills called the “higher circles” of contact has grown steadily more influential in the 60 years since Mills wrote his seminal study.

There are now, for example, only 118 people comprising the directorships of the ten biggest media companies. Four of the top ten media corporations share board directorships with the major “defence” contractors, including Bechtel, Boeing, Carlyle Group, Halliburton and Lockheed Martin.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the editorial position is consistently one that is supportive of American foreign policy. That policy has as a one of its central planks the maintenance of a massive military-industrial-intelligence complex to enforce with hard power (bombings, invasions, occupations, and assassinations) when soft power (colour revolutions, bribery, economic dependence, sanctions) fails to achieve the desired results (usually regime change).

A little known corollary of this structure is infiltration of news organisations. Operation Mockingbird is a CIA project that commenced in the 1960s aimed at ensuring that the CIA’s version of events always received positive and favourable coverage. The Washington Post, notwithstanding its change of ownership, is perhaps the best-known example. It is far from unique. Lisa Pease discloses that the CIA maintained a top secret “Propaganda Assets Inventory” better known as Wisner’s Wurlitzer with over 800 news and information entities prepared to play whatever tune Wisner chose. That network included journalists, columnists, book publishers, editors and entire organisations such as Radio Free Europe.

It is plainly not enough to present only a particular slant on events, although the current relentless and largely fact free demonization of Russia and Iran demonstrates that vilification through reiteration remains a powerful tool in the mainstream armoury.

Suppression of important stories and promotion of conspiracy theories

Of at least equal importance is the role the mainstream media plays in the suppression of important stories, or the emphasizing of one event while downplaying or ignoring an identical event. Compare the mainstream treatment of the Berlin Wall with the Israel Palestine Wall; or the liberation of Aleppo with the ongoing devastation of Mosul to take two random examples.

A full treatment of media manipulation and suppression would fill several books, but I will enlarge on two very briefly because they illustrate a much wider point.

We have recently had the 53rd anniversary (22 November 2016) of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. More than 1000 books have been written on this event, plus countless articles. There have even been two official inquiries subsequent to the Warren Commission, that of the House Select, Committee on Assassinations and the Assassinations Records Review Board.

The first of these concluded that there had been a conspiracy. The latter was responsible for the release of literally millions of documents (with the balance due for release later this year) that literally destroyed the fictional account known as the Warren Commission Report.

Notwithstanding the weight of scholarship from these investigations, the mainstream media persist in attempting to maintain the fiction that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “lone assassin”.

As with the destruction of World Trade Centre Towers 1, 2 and 7 on 11 September 2001 (9/11), one does not have to embark on conjecture, conspiracy theory or esoteric alternatives to establish the truth.

The laws of forensics and ballistics demolishes the Warren Report in the same way that physics demolishes the 9/11 Commission Report.

What is of interest and relevance to this argument, is why after all these years (53 years and 15 years for JFK and 9/11 respectively) does the mainstream media not only continue a discredited narrative, but actually block the publication or broadcasting of serious alternative views. They label those who question the official narrative as “conspiracy theorists” or worse. But they will never actually discuss what the evidence is for those who reject the official version.

One might have thought that history has demonstrated that many arguments derided as conspiracy theories turned out to be true. Some of the better-known ones include the aforementioned Operation Mockingbird, Operation Northwoods, MK Ultra, the Gulf of Tonkin and the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment.

Governments also offer conspiracy theories when it suits their geopolitical purposes. Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iran’s nuclear program and the Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential election have all been advanced by government and vigorously promoted by the mainstream media where there is or was not a shred of reliable evidence to support the allegations.

I suggest that the two quite seemingly quite disparate events of the JFK assassination and 9/11 have at their root a quite remarkable degree of similarity. The assassination of Kennedy was quickly followed by a reversal of what James Douglass in his important book called Kennedy’s turning toward peace.

That reversal of policy has continued to the present day and in many cases has accelerated. A particular impetus was given by the events of 9/11, which gave us the so-called “war on terror”. There have been attacks on Afghanistan (under occupation since 2001), Iraq (under occupation since 2003), Libya (destroyed on the basis of lies) Syria (another illegal war waged since 2011) and Yemen (currently under attack by Saudi Arabia, armed and supported by the UK and USA, with diplomatic cover provided by Australia).

These are all direct and disastrous consequences of the interpretation put on the events of 9/11. Millions have died, millions more displaced, and all without exception are vastly worse off now than before they were attacked.

The mainstream media bears a significant degree of culpability for these ongoing foreign policy disasters. By their promotion of false narratives, and the suppression of serious dissenting opinion and factual material, they have contributed to these outcomes.

Because of their overlapping directorships and ownership and as in the case of the Murdoch linked Genie Energy exploitation of the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, there is an obvious profit motive in their editorial support for what Gore Vidal called perpetual war for perpetual peace.

If an informed population is one of the central safeguards of a democracy then the need for a strong alternative media is essential. We cannot assume that the mainstream will have a Road to Damascus conversion. Various surveys indicate that there is a steady diminution in trust in the mainstream as a reliable source of news and comment. The challenge will be to ensure that the alternative media does not fall into the same traps that have compromised mainstream outlets.

read all at https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/why-does-mainstream-media-sing-from-the-same-songsheet,10055

 

And we have to mention Soros who through his various "semi-media" outlets creates specific narratives and control what people are going to read or see in the "other" "independent" media — in the West and in other nations, such as Ukraine. His main opponent is Murdoch who helped the election of Trump, while Soros supported Clinton.

 

“I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!”

The news came as relations between the Trump administration and the news media, which he has called “the enemy of the American people”, have sunk to new lows. On Friday, leading outlets including the New York Times, CNN and the Guardian were excluded from a briefing by press secretary Sean Spicer while friendlier conservative organisations were admitted.

Editors of excluded organisations expressed anger, although White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) president Jeff Mason, of Reuters, attempted to calm troubled waters. 

In a statement on Saturday, Mason said the WHCA “looks forward to having its annual dinner” and added: “The WHCA takes note of President Donald Trump’s announcement on Twitter that he does not plan to attend the dinner, which has been and will continue to be a celebration of the first amendment and the important role played by an independent news media in a healthy republic.

“We look forward to shining a spotlight at the dinner on some of the best political journalism of the past year and recognizing the promising students who represent the next generation of our profession.”

Trump has recently reacted angrily to a series of reports citing anonymous sources in the White House, law enforcement and intelligence agencies about chaos in his administration, alleged contacts between campaign staff and Russian agents, and White House attempts to rebut such reports.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/25/donald-trump-white-house...

In principle, this shouldn’t come as anything too surprising for what many people assume to be a free society with a free press, but the reality in the US is a lot different than the superficial impression that many people might have about it. While freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment, the situation has morphed over the years to the point where just a handful of companies control the vast majority of American news broadcasting. The advent of the internet has somewhat diluted the influence of legacy outlets relative to their new peers like the edgy Breitbart, but even so, it’s also created an opportunity for Establishment-aligned sites such as the Huffington Post and others to sprout up and promote their agenda in a new domain.

All of this is relevant to consider when discussing the Mainstream Media’s War on Trump in order to understand just how unprecedented the whole campaign has become. Turn on just about any channel, Fox News included at times, and the President is getting ripped to shreds, oftentimes due to incomplete reporting which leaves out the context of certain comments, but even on select occasions because of absolutely fabricated reports. Perhaps the lowest moment in the history of the American press was when they gleefully reported on the totally fake news that the Russian secret services supposedly had a secret sex tape of Trump engaging in very ‘non-traditional activities’ with prostitutes. It’s for this reason why Trump has repeatedly slammed the Mainstream Media, especially CNN, as being fake news. He even held a fiery press conference the other week where his counterattacks took center stage over the policy formulations and other issues which he was supposed to discuss.

Since that day, which was also his first solo press conference since the inauguration, Trump also fired off a very controversial tweet stating that fake news outlets, including a list of Mainstream Media outlets such as CNN and others, are the enemy of the American people. This prompted his fierce rival, John McCain, to hyperbolically suggest that Trump might be on the path to creating a dictatorship, an exaggerated warning which was happily received and echoed by the Mainstream Media, demonstrating that politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows considering just how much this very same media hated the Senator two elections ago when he was running for President.

To discuss the topic in more detail we are joined by Joe Lauria, journalist who has worked nearly three decades in mainstream media for The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and the Sunday Times of London and Marcus Godwyn, political commentator.

see more:

https://sputniknews.com/radio_trendstorm/201702251050943858-the-mainstre...

 

The main problem with the media is that Trump wants a "détente" with Russia and the "liberal" media (under Soros' influences) does not want this to happen AT ANY COST. The only way, the US can appear united is by having a boogey man — Russia. Without Russiaphobia, the US does not have any motivation for its aggressive existence, especially no "reason" for its "exceptionalism". 

Who among us hasn't eaten a few extra pints of Ben & Jerry's since November 8? Apparently, even Sean Spicer has been gaining weight in the wake of the election, and it may cost him his job.

After weeks of rumors about Spicer's role in the White House, anonymous sources told Politico Monday the White House press secretary has begun trying to find a replacement who will conduct briefings with the media. News of the alleged search came hours after a number of journalists, among them CNN's Jim Acosta, criticized Spicer for holding an off-camera, no-audio press gaggle—which Spicer claimed was set up as such because President Donald Trump had already spoken publicly that day.

Related: Sean Spicer is Interviewing Candidates From Fox News and the Daily Mail to Replace Him

But when The Atlantic asked about the motivations behind the increasingly frequent off-camera briefings, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon gave another reason: "Sean got fatter," he wrote in a text message.

read more:

http://www.newsweek.com/sean-got-fatter-bannon-press-briefing-627676?utm...

Louise Mensch, former Tory MP turned “investigative journalist” who claims Donald Trump ran a Russian-backed sex-trafficking ring out of his New York modeling agency, is not exactly revered for her factual reporting.

Earlier this week, fellow conspiracy theorist Claude Taylor, a former staffer in the Bill Clinton administration, tweeted details of a made-up criminal inquiry into Trump’s model agency on sex trafficking charges.

The allegations were endorsed as authentic by Mensch, and she published the story “PIMPOTUS – Trump Models and Russia’s Human Traffickers” on her blog Patriotics. 

That source proved to be false, however. ‘Caitlin,’ claiming to be an official working out of the New York Attorney General’s office, told The Guardian she had made the story up out of frustration over the “dissemination of fake news” by Mensch.

She still claims the story is accurate.

Mensch, a former Tory MP and chick-lit novelist who is married to Metallica manager Peter Mensch, has developed a second career spouting unconfirmed hypotheses about Trump and his links to Russia.

Worryingly, the likes of The New York Times has accepted articles from her, including an op-ed in March offering advice to US officials investigating allegations of Russian collusion. Just a few months ago, The Guardian gushedover her journalism skills. 

From my sources close to the matter. My story on #PIMPOTUS is accurate in every particular. Here@JonSwaine; enjoy. https://t.co/SsWnlHMM24

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 28, 2017

From blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Westminster terrorist attack in London to claiming Trump has not been in power since May, RT UK has put together a list of Mensch’s finest fake news.

Nonsensical 92-word post on Trump indictment

In May, Mensch claimed that a sealed indictment intended by the justice department to “form the basis of Mr Trump’s impeachment” had already been “granted” against the president over his links to Russia. 

EXCLUSIVE: Sealed Indictment granted against Donald Trump – patribotics https://t.co/31abJ97ILi

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 22, 2017

Critics pointed out that criminal indictments are not “granted,” that impeachment is initiated by Congress, not an executive agency; and that Mensch appears to have misunderstood the supremacy clause of the US Constitution, which she incorrectly said meant Trump must be impeached before he could be prosecuted.

Undeterred, Mensch tweeted that the mainstream media “know they are being scooped of the story of the century.”

That was three months ago, and Trump still hasn’t got that “sealed indictment.”

‘Trump hasn’t been US president since May’

Mensch has also claimed Trump’s presidency actually ended on May 9, and was in the process of being replaced by Senator Orrin Hatch in a process kept secret from the American public. 

EXCLUSIVE: "Trump's Presidency Ended May 9th" - Senator Hatch Getting Security Briefings#Trumprussia@LouiseMenschhttps://t.co/AYvTbJbqtA

— Polly Sigh (@dcpoll) May 13, 2017

“Steps are being taken by aspects of the Judicial Branch to preserve the constitutional Separation of Powers and these steps include ensuring a smooth transition of power,” Mensch wrote in a rambling “exclusive” blog post, quoting “several sources familiar with the matter.”

“In order that Senator Hatch, the fourth in line, be ready to assume the duties of the office he will shortly be undertaking, several separate sources with links to the matter, report that the Senator is receiving copies of security briefings he will need upon becoming President.”

Putin ordered the assassination of Andrew Breitbart

Mensch has claimed she has evidence that the founder of Breitbart news, Andrew Breitbart, was murdered by Russian agents to pave the way for Steve Bannon to play a key role in the Trump administration. Breitbart died of heart failure in 2012.

In March, Mensch appeared on the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme to discuss her claims. When asked by Andrew Neil what evidence she had to prove Trump’s team was complicit with the Russians, Mensch appeared to come up short.

I absolutely believe that Andrew Breitbart was murdered by Putin, just as the founder of RT was murdered by Putin.

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) February 24, 2017

When asked what “evidence” she had, she said: “If I say I am reporting you may rest assured I have a basis of fact. A belief is a belief.”

Neil asked if Mensch had become “delusional” after claiming she has become a “temporary super power.”

She said: “No, I was describing a basis of ADHD which I have, as any of your viewers or doctors will know. It provides people with unfortunately a lot of scattered focus, a messy, very absent minded thinking. But when they are interested in something and have ADHD they have a condition called hyper-focus.

“Which means that you concentrate very hard on a given subject and you can see patterns and connections and that’s biological and I don’t resile from it for a moment.”

‘Putin controls my WiFi’

Mensch makes constant unsubstantiated claims on Twitter. She believes Russia is controlling public WiFi networks in her neighborhood, that former US politician Anthony Weiner’s latest sexting scandal was a set-up by a Russian hacker, and that Putin had something to do with the March 22 terrorist attack in London.

Good morning Russia! Not quite as subtle as ReBelBase I'm afraid #middleoutpic.twitter.com/jrz5S6wyyz

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) March 3, 2017

She believes that misspelt hashtags on Twitter are Russian “active measures” and that the Kremlin funded riots in Ferguson. Mensch has said Bernie Sanders is a “Russia [sic] agent of influence.”

My sources say the death penalty, for espionage, being considered for @StevenKBannon. I am pro-life and take no pleasure in reporting this.

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 19, 2017

She also claims that The Guardian’s recent reporting exposing the ‘Caitlin’ hoax means the newspaper is a front for the Russian FSB. 
Mensch has 267,000 followers on Twitter.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/uk/401615-louise-mensch-fake-news/

 

This kind of fake does not help the US liberals, nor the Democrats. They are actually designed to support the neo-cons and the neo-nazis, against Putin who to say the least is trying to be a "liberal" far more than Trump.

That a protest Facebook/twitter account focusing on the mistreatment of black people by American police was actually a fake account run by Russians to make the US look bad and spread division in the West…is one hell of a claim. If you were to make it, you’d probably be expected to supply evidence to back up your accusation. That’s only reasonable. 

Well, CNN don’t feel the need. Two days ago they reported this story verbatim, here. Under the headline:

Exclusive: Fake black activist accounts linked to Russian government

Now, the headline doesn’t say HOW these accounts were linked to Russia, or indeed who linked them. But that’s OK, because neither does the body of the text. There’s not a single link, source or piece of evidence cited at all. The only basis for the claim is:

two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN

That’s it. In total. They never say who these two sources are (leaving the very real possibility they don’t even exist), they never say what their supposed “knowledge of the situation” is. They tell us nothing of any note, and have the gall to put “exclusive” in the headline.

“Some guy said so” is NOT an exclusive.

The Guardian then took this one step further down the path of insanity – they reported that CNN had reported, that 2 guys told them something. Their headline…

Did Russia fake black activism on Facebook to sow division in the US? 

…at least has the decency to use a question-mark, although none of that implied doubt makes into the body of the article. They don’t mention that CNN never provided any evidence of this claim, or CNN’s anonymous sources. Instead they choose to focus on whether or not it sounds plausible. After providing soundbites from professors who study “Russian interference in elections”, and referencing the Soviet Union’s supposed support of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, they decide that it does sound plausible. And since it’s plausible…it’s probably true. Right?

No reference to the keystone questions of journalism – who, when, where, why, how. No reference to evidence or sources, or agendas. Just a vague analysis of the plausibility of a rumor started by CNN on the basis of two anonymous sources with “knowledge of the situation”. This is the modern method of spreading propaganda – through a concerted effort of repetition without evidence, you can turn a lie into a “fact”.

That is the cancerous absurdity of today’s “journalism” in a nutshell.

read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2017/10/01/the-problem-with-modern-journalism-s...

 

 

Back in 1835, Samuel F.B. Morse (who went on to invent the telegraph and the Morse Code), wrote a book about a plot to overthrow the American republic. The conspiracy, Morse wrote, was well-funded, highly secretive, and hatched in Vienna by members of the The St. Leopold Foundation, which had dispatched cells of Jesuit missionaries to the U.S. to forcibly convert the nation to Roman Catholicism. This was no small intrigue: The plot’s leaders, as Morse meticulously catalogued, were Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich, Ferdinand V of Hungary, and (of course) Pope Gregory XVI. “It is high time that we awakened to the apprehension of danger,” Morse wrote.

What is shocking about this nonsense is not that Morse actually believed it, but that millions of other Americans did too. Morse’s book seeded the rise of the nativist“Know-Nothing” party, whose goal was to curb immigration, root out Catholicism, and return America to its protestant ideals. In essence, they were the America-firsters of the nineteenth century. The Know-Nothings swept into office in Chicago, were strong in Massachusetts and, in 1856, nominated a national ticket (Millard Fillmore and Andrew Donelson), for the presidency; they tallied nearly 900,000 votes, one-quarter of those cast. “I know nothing but my country, my whole country and nothing but my country,” they chanted.

Historians have since excavated the Morse plot with relish, if only as a way to better understand a nation that, from time to time, enjoys being scared witless.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fear-inc-russians-commun...

 

This could be a story as real as a saucepan looking for a mate in a broom cupboard. But who knows... Fake news appear in the bible from the beginning and people still use the bible as a reference book for behaviour. So in the long run, what is said is irrelevant to what it means, and possibly correct in being weirdo. Dit dit dat... Read from top.

 

John Kiriakou, renowned Central Intelligence Agency whistleblower and co-host of Sputnik Radio’s Loud & Clear, was invited to address the European Parliament on national security whistleblowing before his appearance was scrapped at the last minute. Loud & Clear spoke with Kiriakou after the snub to find out what happened.

"Disappointingly," co-founder of People for Bernie Sanders Winnie Wong, there to represent the organization, "objected to the fact that I work at Sputnik and said they did not want to appear on a panel with me."

"I can't be on this panel with you," Wong told Kiriakou, by his account. "It's nothing personal. I think you should be proud for what you've done, but you work for Sputnik and so I can't be on the same panel," she said.

​"The Russiagate witch hunt strikes again," Walter Smolarek, producer of Loud & Clear, noted.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201711091058938397-bernie-sanders-boots-k...

 

Bernie Sanders should stop this nonsense straight away that makes him look like one of the "establishment"...

 

A respected journalist and contributor to the liberal news outlet and blog Huffington Post says that the organization deleted his article criticizing the weak basis for allegations that Russian actors interfered in the 2016 US presidential election because it interfered with their “religion” of blaming Russia for the Democrats’ humiliating defeat.

Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan of Sputnik Radio's Fault Lines spoke to Joe Lauria, the journalist who claims to have had his article deleted. Lauria, a veteran journalist currently affiliated with Consortium News, has also worked for major newspapers in four countries, perhaps most notably as the Wall Street Journal's correspondent to the United Nations.

The meat of the deleted essentially explained how "the Clinton campaign and the DNC, now we know they're the same thing, paid for the opposition research done by Christopher Steele, the former MI-6 agent," Lauria explained, referring to the infamous dodgy dossier alleging collusion between Donald Trump and Russian actors, as well as detailing the then-Republican candidate's sexual appetites.

"These two paid for opposition research, projects that are both unverified and largely discredited. [The research was] used as the basis, by the admission of both [former FBI Director] James Comey and [former DNI Director] James Clapper, for the infamous January 6 intelligence assessment by only three agencies and analysts, which claimed that Russia had hacked and influenced their election."

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201711141059070622-huffington-post-remo...

 

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Joe LauriaInternational Affairs Correspondent, Author

Joe Lauria has been a United Nations correspondent for 25 years. This included six and a half years as the Wall Street Journal correspondent based at U.N. Headquarters in New York. Mr. Lauria has covered ever major world crisis that has come before the U.N. over the past quarter century. Among those stories was the fraught diplomacy before the First Gulf War and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq; the 1990s wars that broke up Yugoslavia; the genocide in Rwanda; the destruction of Libya; the coup d'etat in Ukraine and resulting civil war; the devastating conflict in Syria; African coups and the U.N. response to earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters. Mr. Lauria has interviewed numerous presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, and ambassadors and questioned many other leaders in press encounters, including Yassir Arafat, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, Jacques Chirac, Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He reported numerous exclusives and front- page U.N.-related stories for the WSJ. These included a U.S. exclusive on the U.N. General Assembly considering a new probe into Dag Hammarskjöld's death; the U.N. envoy to Yemen saying Saudi bombing derailed a political settlement close to completion; senior U.S. officials asking the U.N. to pull its chemical weapons inspectors from Syria; Rwandan President Paul Kagame saying he would't pull his troops from Somalia after a critical U.N. report; the Indian foreign minister suggesting India favored negotiating with the Taliban; Somalia's prime minister saying he would welcome a bin Laden-style US raid on militants in his country; China revising its anti-separatist stance in South Sudan; and U.N. corruption favoring Price Waterhouse Coopers on a multi-million dollar contract and more. Before the WSJ, Mr. Lauria was the Boston Globe's U.N. correspondent for six years and has also reported from the U.N. for the London Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, The Johannesburg Star, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and Vancouver Sun; and the German Press Agency dpa. Mr. Lauria has been an investigative reporter for The Sunday Times of London, having taken part in investigations that led to the suspension of a British member of parliament for corruption and the unmasking of an FBI/MI5 double agent. At Bloomberg News he led an investigation that brought about the resignation of an Argentine provincial governor after he issued a counterfeit government bond.  Mr. Lauria's work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and other publications. He is the author of two books. The first was with former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel, a history of U.S. foreign policy and the defense industry, published by Seven Stories Press, with a Foreword by Daniel Ellsberg. It was entirely conceived, researched and written by Mr. Lauria. The second was a ghostwritten history of the three major Middle East religions with an emphasis on the history of Islam.  Mr. Lauria has traveled to more than 70 nations. Much of his reporting has focused on the Middle East, having visited the region more than two dozen times in the past four years, including lengthy stays in Egypt and Iraq. With the exception of Yemen and Iran, he's visited every country in the region, many multiple times. Mr. Lauria has won two journalism awards and taught journalism at two U.S. universities. He has lectured on three continents and has appeared numerous times on radio and television, including on CNN (where he was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer), Good Morning America (interviewed by George Stephanopoulos) as well as on the BBC, the PBS News Hour, C- Span, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Sky Arabia, and RT.  He's also been a guest on Leonard Lopate's and Brian Lehrer's radio shows on WNYC in New York

 

the Huff and puff post:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/joelauria-871

Media outlets based in the US and Britain have long enjoyed dominance in the global news market and have abused their position to manipulate audiences, a Kremlin spokesman told RT in an exclusive interview.

Russia is currently being targeted by an unprecedented campaign in the West, aimed at undermining its resurgence, Dmitry Peskov told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze. The media are playing a major part in it, as they are selling an anti-Russian narrative to the people of Western nations. But what those outlets do is a disservice to their audiences, he argued.

“People are naked against these media wars. They are victims of these media wars,” he said. “They are being… driven into a certain way of emotions without even understanding that.”

READ MORE: Pressure from West helped Putin win the election – Kremlin spokesman

Peskov said that for decades “Anglo-Saxon media” enjoyed a virtual global monopoly on delivering news about economy and politics. “They are the most powerful, the most influential, and they have the widest possible reach globally,” he said. “And, of course, this feeling of monopoly brings a will to manipulate this monopoly. You can use this monopoly as a tool of delivering your point of view, whether it’s right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, you can adjust it in accordance with the situation – to simply manipulate the [minds] of people throughout the world.”

Watch the full version of RT’s exclusive interview with Dmitry Peskov

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A year ago Saturday, Trump launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at the airfield that hosted an earlier Assad chem attack. Plainly, the lesson wasn’t learned, or perhaps the dictator figured the president’s recent remarks about leaving Syria once ISIS is toast were a license to slaughter freely again.

 

This is part of a slanted "editorial" at The New York Post — an Uncle Rupe paper for the uneducated fodder. It's laced with encouragement for Trump to bomb something despite having no proof of anything — except allegations from the rebels "White Helmets" (sponsored by the biased Brits), refuted by the Red Crescent medics — to say that Assad used "gas" on his people again... 

With people like Soros and Murdoch, the world media is in bad bloodied hands... 

 

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Next week will see tested one of the enduring fictions of current politics: the myth of Donald Trump, master negotiator. That the myth lives on was demonstrated afresh on Thursday with the leaking of after-dinner remarks by Boris Johnson urging his audience to “imagine Trump doing Brexit”. The foreign secretary fantasised about the US president going in “bloody hard”. Perhaps growing flushed at the prospect, he mused: “Actually, you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.”

Johnson was merely echoing the US president’s perennial boast that he brings to geopolitics the skills of a boardroom maestro. When Trump launched his candidacy in 2015, he declared: “We need a leader that wrote The Art of the Deal.”

On Tuesday, Trump will have the chance to demonstrate this self-vaunted talent when he comes face-to-face with Kim Jong-un of North Korea – just two unpredictable guys with terrifying nuclear arsenals getting to know each other. The first instinct of all those who prefer peace to Armageddon will surely be to wish the two men luck. Even those who are squeamish at the sight of a red carpet rolled out for the hereditary dictator of a slave state with a record of starving and torturing its own people know the lines. Jaw-jaw is better than war-war. You make peace with your enemies, not your friends. Engagement is always better than isolation.

 

Don't bother about the rest:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/08/trump-master-negot...

 

Jonathan Freedland from the Guardian is either being a devil's advocate or a fool... I think the latter. But this diplomacy, between Trump of the USA and Kim Jong-un of North Korea, is not embroidery... It's more like World Wrestling on valium, with toilet break and massages from the advisors/coaches in between the rounds. Most of the tricks have already been pre-planned. I hit you in the gonads, you punch me in the face, but don't forget I have a six-shooter in my back pocket. Good deal, bad deal?... Who cares? As long as a deal is made.

 

When Jonathan is talking of "red carpet rolled out for the hereditary dictator of a slave state with a record of starving and torturing its own people know the lines..." is he talking about Trump or the other guy?