IN THIS SERIES, I have talked, darkly, about the concept of permanent, or "perpetual" war — a prospect first raised by George Orwell in his prophetic post-WW2 novel, Nineteen Eighty-four (1984).

My thesis is that we are now in another age of continuous war — that in fact we are already fighting World War 3, but we don’t know it, quite yet.

The central character in 1984 is Winston Smith, a “journalist” of sorts. Smith relates the story and he cannot remember a time when his alliance, Oceania (roughly NATO today) had not been at war and his country, Airstrip One not under brutal military occupation.

Successes in battles fought in remote locations for from his home in London, are reported each day in the news. But, as Winston knows too well, the news of 1984 is totally fake.

The brutal and continuous war of 1984 is fought in secret, a long way from the imperial heartlands and Winston knows he cannot believe the constant announcement of yet more victories and yet more territory captured.

In fact, so confusing is the torrent of fake news issued about the war that Winston has trouble remembering who the real enemy is. Who has Oceania been at war with for the past 40 years of his life? Is it Eurasia (the Soviet bloc of 1948), or Eastasia (China)?

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-cost-of-t...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X93u3anTco

 

Radio host Rush Limbaugh told his millions of listeners on Wednesday that Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” audience is emblematic of a much larger threat to the republic — an ignorant citizenry prone to emotional manipulation.

“Oh. Wow. Huge, huge Donald Trump fans here tonight,” Mr. Colbert said after his Tuesday crowd roared with approval at President Trump’s decision to fire FBI director James Comey.

The audience quickly did an about-face and booed future comments on the issue.

SEE ALSO: Colbert’s audience cheers Comey firing, changes tune after host’s correction

“There weren’t any Trump fans in there,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “Those were liberal Democrats — robots, mind-numbed. They just can’t keep up with whether they’re supposed to hate Comey or not at this particular point in time. They don’t know who they’re supposed to hate. Can you imagine how confused they are? Their initial gut reaction was to stand up and cheer it, and Colbert was embarrassed.”

The host then offered analysis similar to “The Death of Expertise” author Tom Nicholas, whose recent book warns: “When that trust [in experts] breaks down, public ignorance can be turned by cynical manipulation into a political weapon. Anti-intellectualism is itself a means of short-circuiting democracy, because a stable democracy in any culture relies on the public actually understanding the implications of its own choices.”

Mr. Limbaugh said the event was proof that large swathes of the public do not possess critical thinking skills.

read more:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/10/rush-limbaugh-programmed...

 

 

Three journalists, including the executive editor of a new investigative branch, have left CNN following the recent retraction of a story on an alleged Congress investigation into a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.”

Report author Thomas Frank and two senior CNN Investigations Unit figures resigned over the story. Investigations Unit editor Eric Lichtblau and Lex Haris, CNN Investigations executive editor, who was building a team that includes notorious Russia-hawk Michael Weiss, both resigned.

“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” CNN stated. 

READ MORE: CNN host accused of making racist comment to Indian American Spelling Bee winner

The Russia-related article quoted “a single anonymous source,” and was to be examined by “fact-checkers, journalism standards experts and lawyers” before being presented to the public. Haris, Lichtblau, and Frank failed to follow “some standard editorial processes,” a CNN internal investigation concluded.

“This breakdown in editorial workflow disturbed the CNN executives who learned about it,” CNN correspondent Brian Stelter said.

 

The resignations of the three men, who are experienced journalists, “are likely to come as a surprise to colleagues.”Lichtblau was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and Haris had been working at the company since 2001 and was the executive editor of CNN Money before joining the investigative unit.

“On Friday, CNN retracted a story published by my team. As Executive Editor of that team, I have resigned,” Haris said.

CNN, however, has not concluded that “the facts of the story were necessarily wrong,” saying that “the story wasn’t solid enough to publish as-is,” the correspondent said, citing people involved in the investigation.

Following the journalists’ departures, US President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., called the story “the biggest fake news scandal in the network’s history,” and called on the company’s president, Jeff Zucker, to admit the story was fake.

“Maybe Jeff Zucker should do an on-camera press briefing about CNN’s fake news scandal before the White House does any more of them,” he told Breitbart News. 

Wow, CNN had to retract big story on "Russia," with 3 employees forced to resign. What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017

The story claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee was investigating ties between several figures in the Trump camp and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). The article mentioned a meeting between Trump’s ally and financier, Anthony Scaramucci, and the CEO of the RDIF, Kirill Dmitriev, claiming that the investigators wondered if they had discussed lifting US sanctions against Russia at the World Economic Forum in Davos last year. Both sides denied speaking on the topic, while Scaramucci told CNN that there was “nothing there.” The news company had to apologize to the financier.

Following the scandal, a report emerged on BuzzFeed, saying that all Russia-related articles will be under “new publishing restrictions.” BuzzFeed cited a leaked email which prohibits publishing “any content involving Russia” before showing it to the executive editor of CNN Money, Rich Barbieri, and Vice President of Premium Content Video Jason Farkas.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/394223-journalists-leave-cnn-retracted-story/

 

 

Answer to question in heading: Ratings... Of course the story is fake. Where there an ounce of truth in it, CNN management would have protected it tooth and nail. But because the story was false, there was a strong chance CNN was going to be sued for millions of dollars and still come out with the same shit: the story was a fake. 

 

The Post's Paul Farhi summed it up last year:

The techniques employed by O’Keefe and his associates, they say, fall far outside journalistic norms. Mainstream news organizations discourage the methods that he regularly employs to expose questionable practices, usually by liberals or Democrats.

Among the more problematic is Project Veritas’s associates’ use of aliases and false identities to gain access to the people it stings. The organization acknowledges that its people posed as political donors to trick the two Democratic operatives into speaking with them for the “rigging” videos.

…

An even bigger issue, however, has been the way in which O’Keefe has edited some of his videos.

In 2009, he and an associate posed as a pimp and prostitute to infiltrate ACORN, a community social-services agency. The resulting video showed ACORN members offering the pair advice on how to set up a brothel. It also showed outtakes of O’Keefe and his partner dressed in the flamboyant attire of street hustlers, suggesting they had appeared that way when they spoke to the officials. In fact, the footage of the pair in costume was spliced into the video after the ACORN meetings, a fact the video didn’t mention.

Congress subsequently defunded ACORN, leading to its demise. O’Keefe was later sued by one of his subjects, who claimed his privacy had been invaded by the surreptitious filming; O’Keefe settled the matter for $100,000, admitting no guilt.

O’Keefe’s 2011 sting of NPR executives was fraught with discrepancies between what one of the executives said and how his comments were framed in the video. Then-NPR executive Ron Schiller was quoted in the video as saying that tea party activists were “seriously racist people.” But the raw footage of the encounter showed that Schiller was quoting two Republicans who viewed the activists that way, not that he held such views.

In other words, when you are lecturing journalists on the importance of accuracy and ethics, citing O'Keefe probably isn't a great idea. And really, the juxtaposition of those two things from Huckabee Sanders at Tuesday's briefing says it all.

read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/27/sarah-huckabee...

 

O'Keefe tactics have been used by most investigative journalists including those of the Post and at the Murdoch media... Soros' media outlet often just fabricate stuff without any evidence -- or the evidence is targeted and managed to prove a point: Panama papers for example which was a way for the Western media to intimate that Putin was "corrupt" because his musical friends was making huge amount of money. Like the "Putin interfered in the US Presidential election" matra, there is no proof. There is no proof either that "Assad is preparing for another chemical attack". All this is designed to achieve a moral superiority, not to expose "the truth" -- whatever that beast is.

 

Video of a CNN producer describing the network’s coverage of the alleged Russia scandal as “bullsh*t” peddled for ratings is genuine, an official at Project Veritas told RT, adding that the undercover filmmakers are just getting started.

“We weren’t specifically looking for this angle,” Project Veritas communications director Steven Gordon told RT. “We didn’t know exactly what we’d catch.”

The sting video published Tuesday shows CNN producer John Bonifield admitting the network has no evidence of claims that President Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia to subvert the 2016 presidential election.

“I think the president is probably right to say, like, look, you are witch-hunting me,” Bonifield can be heard saying.

NEWSFLASH: @CNN finally tells the TRUTH.#FakeNews#AmericanPravdapic.twitter.com/VBCDlNZ7Dk

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) June 27, 2017

Bonifield is “certainly qualified to speak to the issue,” Gordon argued, saying that the producer was present at meetings with network president Jeff Zucker where CNN executives were deciding what to air and what not to air.

“His own pieces were dropped so they could carry Russia pieces, so he’s right in the middle of that mixup,” Gordon said.

Asked if the method of obtaining the statements was ethical, Gordon said that undercover journalism had a “rich, long and proud tradition” of uncovering the truth when other means failed.

The video was made public just as CNN announced the resignations of a reporter and two editors who were involved in a story alleging a congressional investigation into a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.” CNN retracted the story on Friday, apologized to a pro-Trump investor named in it, and pledged greater editorial scrutiny of all stories related to Russia.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/394316-veritas-cnn-undercover-video/

 

The cable network’s coverage of Trump transition-team member Anthony Scaramucci came amid federal scrutiny of corporate parent Time Warner’s pending purchase by AT&T — and the widespread belief among media execs that CNN President Jeff Zucker can’t survive a merger.

CNN immediately caved after Scaramucci, a financier and frequent network guest, cried foul and threatened to take legal action, sources said Tuesday.

Scaramucci got an unusual public apology but still hired a top Manhattan lawyer to put further pressure on CNN and “look after [his] interests in this matter,” one source said.

Sources also said the three journalists responsible for the retracted story — reporter Tom Frank, editor Eric Lichtblau and Lex Haris, who headed the CNN Investigates unit — were urged to resign.

read more:

http://nypost.com/2017/06/27/cnn-staffers-didnt-resign-over-retracted-st...

 

 

By Michael McCaffrey, for RT

Stephen Colbert likes telling jokes about Russian interference in the US election. I’ve got a plan to help him vastly expand his comedy repertoire.

Funnyman Colbert, host of the accurately titled Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS, must be desperate for material. On Thursday and Friday of last week, he took a hiatus from his talk show to travel all the way to Russia to shoot some comedy bits he will use in later episodes of his program.

While in Moscow, Colbert appeared on a Russian late-night television show hosted by Ivan Urgant that, like its American counterpart, is also very aptly titled, Evening Urgant.

On Mr. Urgant’s show, Colbert made the following declaration, “Ok. I am here to announce that I am considering a run for president in 2020, and I thought it would be better to cut out the middle man and just tell the Russians myself.”

Colbert traveling to Russia to make a joke about alleged Russian meddling in the US presidential election is most certainly clever if a bit much. I mean, it’s a mildly funny joke, I guess, but it certainly isn’t funny enough to travel about 4,680 miles (7,530 km) from New York to Moscow just for the gag. That is a frighteningly inefficient comedy rate in terms of laughs produced to miles traveled.

 

It begs the question though, is New York so devoid of comedic material that poor Colbert has to fly half way around the world to dig up some Boris and Natasha level cold war comedy on his expedition for giggles?

While I admire Colbert’s commitment in undertaking his Arthurian quest to scour the globe in a crusade for the ever-elusive comedy grail (or is it a fountain of eternal guffaws?), I wonder if there isn’t an easier way to get the chuckles Colbert so desperately desires.

I think I have a better idea, and since Colbert is so interested in all things Russia I assume he must be an avid RT reader. Therefore I am going to share my brilliant scheme with him directly.

Anyway, I have an idea that has the potential to save you precious time and travel expenses in your never-ending pursuit of comedy gold. Here it is.

Instead of traveling to Russia to make a “cut out the middleman” joke about Russian “interference” in the US election, why not stay at home and have potential candidates from all of the countries that have had the US meddle in their elections come visit you in The Big Apple?

For instance, you could have all of the future Ukrainian presidential hopefuls come to your New York studio and declare their intentions to run for office. Former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland could be a guest at the same time, that way you can “cut out the middleman” of the Ukrainian voters and find out from the horse's mouth who the US will select to be the leader of Ukraine. It will be uproariously funny because it’ll be like 2014 when the US supported the anti-government protests, violence and coup which killed over a hundred people, and was followed by thousands more dying in the resulting civil war.

I know what you’re thinking, that this is just a one-trick pony and the comedy will dry up once you do the Ukrainian election show. You couldn’t be more wrong, Mr. Colbert. You could follow up the Ukraine show by “cutting out the middleman” and having some Russians on your program so they can describe how the US shamelessly interfered in their elections of 1996 to keep Boris Yeltsin in power and Russia in their back pocket? The US intrusion into Russian politics in 1996 was so brazen it earned a Time magazine cover with the headline “Yanks to the Rescue: The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win." You would have your fans rolling in the aisles once you showed them that Time cover.

I know what you are thinking, the Ukrainian and Russian shows are masterful ideas, but demographically they are pretty…well…limited. But fear not, we can tap into the crucial Latino audience by having Honduran presidential hopefuls appear on your show too. They can recount how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “cut out the middleman”by supporting and funding a right-wing military coup in 2009 to overthrow  José Manuel Zelaya, the center-left, democratically elected president of Honduras. Maybe you could have Secretary Clinton on as well, it isn’t like she has anything else to do with her time, and she can tell you how she refused to call the brutal takeover a coup to skirt US laws and to continue to send financial and military aid to the usurpers. Now that right there would be some top-notch political “interference” comedy.

Frankly, Mr. Colbert, I think you should do a whole Latin America week, where you host potential candidates from all across Central and South America where the US has consistently undermined democracy. Well, I guess a week wouldn’t be long enough, how about Latin America month? To the delight of your adoring fans you could rehash America’s notorious history of supporting anti-democratic, right-wing military takeovers with their accompanying death squads and disappearances in Brazil and the Dominican Republic in the 1960’s, Argentina and Chile in the 1970’s, El Salvador and Panama in the 1980’s, Haiti in the 1990’s, Venezuela in 2002 and the list goes on and on.

We won’t just focus on Latin American countries either. Do you want to target the Asian audience? No problem. You will start that topic off by doing a Vietnam bit that will kill. Maybe not kill as much as America’s disastrous war in the jewel of Southeast Asia, but that is an extremely high bar to clear.

 

In regards to Vietnam, it is apropos that you do your show in Ed Sullivan’s old theater on Broadway, because Ed himself could have been the first to do this “cut out the middleman” joke back in his day if he had Vietnamese presidential hopeful Ngo Dinh Diem on his show in 1953 when the US hand-picked him to run his country and rigged the election to ensure his victory. Ed could’ve skillfully delivered the gut busting punch line about how in 1963 Diem fell out of favor with his American overlords and was arrested and assassinated as a result of the US-backed coup.

Continuing with the Asian theme, you could absolutely slay if you did shows on Indonesia, Laos and Cambodia and how America’s meddling in those countries eventually resulted in homicide on a catastrophic scale.

I think the showstopper of the “cutting out the middleman” bit will be when you host Iranians who survived the CIA-backed overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and lived under the brutal rule of the American-installed Shah until 1979.

I am also sure there’s a bonanza of humor a comedy genius like yourself can find in the history of US meddling in Iraq too, where we first installed Saddam, then later deposed him, killing hundreds of thousands, if not a million, Iraqis in the process. Your audience will be splitting their sides laughing when Iraqi presidential hopefuls come, hat in hand, to your studio asking America to “elect” them to rule their ancient land.

I know, you’re right, people are sick of Iraq, but you can always focus on Egypt instead, where the US supported dictator Hosni Mubarak for decades, and after he was toppled in 2011 during the Arab Spring and replaced by Mohamed Morsi in the democratic elections of 2012, the US did what it does best and “cut out the middleman” by backing a coup against Morsi in 2013 and replacing him with General el-Sisi, a military strongman just like Mubarak.

And while you’re clowning about US interference in the Middle East, please don’t forget Libya, Lebanon and (American fingers crossed) the current situation in Syria too! The Middle East is a region that is particularly ripe with the delicious comedy fruits of US intervention that you can pluck to hysterical effect.

I mean Mr. Colbert, with your comedic talent and skill you can turn America’s long history of anti-democratic violence and coups into a veritable goldmine of comedy. I am literally crying right now I’m laughing so hard at all of the jokes I imagine you’ll conjure up about how many times the US has “cut out the middleman” in foreign elections. I would be willing to bet that the millions of people across the globe who live in the countries where America has interfered in their politics have tears in their eyes as well…they just aren’t from laughing.

Michael McCaffrey, for RT

Michael McCaffrey is a freelance writer, film critic and cultural commentator. He currently resides in Los Angeles where he runs his acting coaching and media consulting business. mpmacting.com/blog/

 

 

 

 

 

I’m an awards-show geek who usually spends the morning after the Emmys or Oscars nattering about who was unjustly robbed, who was unwisely dressed and whether it’s a felony in Hollywood to consume more than 300 calories a meal, because it sure looks that way.

But that’s not my banter or my mood today, because what I and anyone else who tuned in to Hollywood’s latest self-congratulatory orgy on Sunday saw wasn’t good fun. It was bad news — a ringing, stinging confirmation that fame truly is its own reward and celebrity really does trump everything and redeem everyone.

Object of ridicule or object of reverence: Is there a difference? Not if you’re a household name, not if you’re a proven agent of ratings and not if you’re likely to deliver more of them. Our commander in chief took that crude philosophy to heart and rode it all the way to the White House. Sean Spicer took a page from the president and then a bow on the Emmys stage.

Not exactly a bow, and there are Emmys production folks and television industry figures who are telling themselves that during his fleeting appearance at the ceremony, Spicer was being slyly demeaned, not sanitized.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/opinion/the-shameful-embrace-of-sean-spicer-at-the-emmys.html

spicing it up

read from top...

 

Not funny

The resident idiots at CBS This Morning included a clip with Stephen Colbert that I found particularly irritating. (1) In the clip Colbert is supposed to serve merely as a presenting expedient for a truly stunning gymnastic performance by the terrifically charming Katelyn Ohashi, who seems made of rubber, but it turns out the whole deal is a ruse to allow Colbert to remind  the program’s audience (for the nth time) of Trump’s treason—that’s right, treason—and Russian perfidy, neither of which, by the unhinged liberaloid standards operating at CBS and sister networks, requires any proof.

Before examining Colbert’s participation in these charades more closely, let us recall that this is par for the course at CBS, an abject corporate entity which, along with its  sister networks and the nation’s leading newspapers, from the CIA-owned WaPo to the NYTimes, are fiercely pursuing a campaign to silence alternative media. CBS is in fact documented to be in bed with the sinister NewsGuard initiative, a newly-minted rightwing organisation created expressly to tighten the noose around the neck of dissident websites, thereby terminating effective free speech. (See here, and here and also here). All of this is done, of course, behind the usual barrage of lies and revolting hypocrisy that rule all liberaloid stratagems, the trademark of the current global system.

The underhanded campaign to kill free speech—a requisite for a veritable, airtight regime of fascism à l’américaine—issues and is inseparable from the current Russiagate hysteria, a hoax almost entirely authored and executed by the Democrats, in demonstrable complicity with the FBI, CIA and other sordid agencies of the American security state, with the enthusiastic assist of the mainstream media. None of this filth is democratic in the remotest way, which says something about the state of affairs in this nation, and the integrity —not of our politicians, for whom integrity or personal morality of any sort is a career killer and an alien concept—but of our supposedly more astute cultural tastemakers, among which lavishly paid prime time comedians —sycophantic court jesters is their accurate name—enjoy a place of disproportionate and highly toxic influence.

This is the framework, then, to judge this little monologue by Stephen Colbert. Please watch it in the sidebar below and answer me this question: Is this what you would really call honest comedy?

SIDEBAR

Watch this Late Show clip (on 1.14.19) with Stephen Colbert, the celebrity court jester who once cultivated an iconoclastic anti-establishment image, injecting the Russiagate venom under cover of a bad joke, just accusing Trump, again of, yea, let’s mention this in passing here… high treason, while supposedly celebrating the stunning accomplishment of Katelyn Ohashi. That this is typical Colbert these days confirms his status as a toxic media worm.

OK, so now you may see why we are so piqued this morning.

Perhaps you’ll agree with me at this point that what Colbert and others in his profession are doing is reprehensible in the extreme. For this guy is helping to fan the flames of an obnoxious propaganda conspiracy. (3) And he does it under the guise of innocent jokes, thereby normalising heinous falsehoods while his clueless public is completely unaware that they are actually absorbing a political advertisement, normalised brainwash, for the most dangerous and criminal product around, open ended wars fuelled by neoliberalism in the age of nuclear superpowers. In this, Colbert and his ilk are simply weaponising humour. And that’s not all. As a collateral casualty, as Chris Hedges has noted, Colbert is also destroying satire, historically the ultimate refuge for truly iconoclastic minds:

 

Satire becomes destroyed in essence in the hands of figures like Colbert, Jon Stewart and others. They will attack the foibles of the system, but they are never going to expose the system, because they are all millionaires, they are commercially supported.

 

We have castigated Colbert in our pages before. In fact, do a search of our archives and you’ll find quite a few pieces devoted to this topic, including one by Steve Almond. Long recognised as a mordant social critic, Almond, surely one of  the most lucid voices working in this field, probably filed the definitive piece on the subject: The Joke’s On You. Are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Lulling Americans Into Submission? (2012)

Steve opened his withering attack with this fusillade:

 

Among the hacks who staff our factories of conventional wisdom, evidence abounds that we are living in a golden age of political comedy. The New York Times nominates Jon Stewart, beloved host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, as the “most trusted man in America.” His protégé, Stephen Colbert, enjoys the sort of slavish media coverage reserved for philanthropic rock stars. Bill Maher does double duty as HBO’s resident provocateur and a regular on the cable news circuit. The Onion, once a satirical broadsheet published by starving college students, is now a mini-empire with its own news channel. Stewart and Colbert, in particular, have assumed the role of secular saints whose nightly shtick restores sanity to a world gone mad.

 

If you read the piece, and I do hope you do, you’ll see why Steve deserves all the praise he can get. Still, what Almond says—that Stewart and Colbert have now assumed the role of secular saints— is disturbing because Colbert and his pals,(2) in deviously bolstering the system’s agenda, represent the maximum evil, combining criminal motives with arrogant imbecility, albeit a brand of imbecility satanically seductive, wrapped as it is in what appears to be unusual, “fun” cleverness. I’d say it does not get much worse or insidious than that.

Pushing the system’s agenda is itself a crime

No intelligent or decent person can support the global ruling class agenda, a blueprint chiefly spawned and implemented by the US section, the leading, most hyperactive and arguably reckless subset of this plutocratic pestilence. Why? You know the answer. Because it means death. Fuelled by an insatiable thirst for hegemony, indifferent to the level of sociopathy necessary to implement its designs, and invariably fixated on miserable, short-term objectives that only preoccupy the 0.00001%, of the human race, the neocon agenda is driving the US and the rest of the world to a very real age of de facto fascism, rapid ecocide, and endless wars, including the Big One, which will terminate the trajectory of our sorry species once and for all, leaving the planet a vast radioactive graveyard.

Even Reagan, the hidebound reactionary who had no love for the Russkies or communism, saw the wisdom of preserving some form of peace between the superpowers. This he did in typical American fashion, badly and misleadingly (his Star Wars initiative, a betrayal of detente, was a prime example of Washington’s ineluctable search for nuclear strategic supremacy to secure the path to a disabling first strike), but at least in those days the world, including the prostituted imbeciles populating the media, seemed to have a clear understanding that playing with nuclear matches is beyond stupid, it’s suicidal. All of that is gone, however, including an anti-war movement immolated on the altar of liberaloid charlatanry. Yes, that was a very imperfect and dangerous world, but one which had not yet acquired truly, 100%, Orwellian DNA.

The fact that the liberals who control so much of the major media in the anglophone world and the so-called “West” are unrelenting—nonstop, downright tedious—in their effort to keep afloat the leaden Russiagate psyop, (4) which so far has yet to show a single thread of supportable evidence, is a sign that we are in the hands of a monstrous ruling clique whose minuscule sanity is only matched by its legitimacy.

Of course, it’s been said before, evidence does not matter to these journos, courtiers and politicians: what matters most is to keep the arms race going, the empire encroaching across the globe, as usual, and American exceptionalism triumphant and unchallenged. At any cost.

Summation

Reading the above you may have guessed I find this type of propaganda not simply intrusive, which is bad enough, but nauseating. Colbert, you abominable bastard, damn it, leave Katelyn alone!  Get yourself a different shtick. Something a little bit more honest. Of course, I know I am wasting my time. To clamor for decency from an avatar of a system built on gross indecency is idiotic. So let’s say I’m doing this for the record. For time will come to settle the accounts and people will need to recall who was doing what in humanity’s hour of greatest need.

Am I being singularly hard on Colbert? Perhaps. Perhaps not. As we know, there are plenty of drooling, equally opportunistic would-be replacements. That said, the popularity of low-lifes does not excuse their individual guilt. Many think—like Colbert, no doubt— that skewering Trump for fame, money and glory is not just awfully easy—given the gargantuan target—but virtually irresistible, a great way to sail into the sunset—with a hefty bank account. (5) But for now I single out Colbert because he’s singularly vile, and because I dislike turncoats: not too long ago Colbert strutted around as a man willing to speak truth to power. Now the power of money speaks to him, and the dialog never really started. Also, and this is not inconsequential, he plays to larger audiences than even Bill Maher and John Oliver, two comedians who, behind a veneer of defiant truth-telling, also carry a lot of the same systemic disease. (5)

We know by now that faux rebel satirists like Colbert are really smooth and stealth warmongering disinformers, having perfected the craft of seamlessly injecting imperial messages into their streams of “harmless” jokes. I don’t find that funny at all. Further, strictly on comedic terms, Colbert does not deserve the pantheon because his routine is not based on truth, the essence of which allows comedy to acquire genuine greatness. George Carlin and other observational comics got great laughs by doing the opposite of Colbert and his ilk, that is, by piercing the lies of a supremely mendacious system to get at the ugly but indispensable truths. For while Carlin dug up the truth, Colbert buries it. It’s mendacity elevated to self-preening egotism—very well paid egotism.

Incidentally this same fetid choir is pretty agitated of late because Trump—again—has been making noises about exiting NATO. Trump being Trump, he may be doing this for all the wrong reasons, but, if this came to pass it would be a boon for humanity, removing a huge threat and irritant to peace, not to mention an unconscionable waste of money and energy.  Reflexively, the response from the liberal camp has been, as was the case with the excellent idea of withdrawing the empire’s forces from Syria, a chorus of Jeremiads. Yes, once again these bastards pretend not to see the obvious good in this, preferring instead to shout from the rooftops about a danger which does not exist, and of course yet another reason to bash Trump—illegitimately, from the right.

In view of the preceding, can anyone with half a brain doubt that such a toxic script, an inversion of truth and good sense of alarming proportions, yet so eagerly distributed by media sycophants like Colbert, and countless hacks in the Democrat party, is being directed by the boys in Langley and the Pentagon at the behest of the global plutocracy?

Notes

(1) Click HERE to watch the CBS This Morning clip containing the Stephen Colbert segment.
(2) I exclude Jon Stewart now from this fulmination because although he gave us the treachery of Iago Colbert, he has now wisely retired to a life of good deeds defending some of the most terribly tyrannized animals.
(3) Using Trump as a convenient foil, the alliance of the liberal class with the empire’s agencies of repression is the subject of commentary by Patrick Martin, in The FBI’s police state operation against Trump. Noting the subversive (in a bad way) aspect of this tacit combination, Martin warns that the liberals are, in effect, hatching a coup against the president, hand in glove with the spooks and military (italics mine):

By what constitutional authority can the FBI, based on political positions adopted by one or the other of the two main capitalist parties, open up a secret investigation into treason and conspiracy? Such an operation bespeaks a police state and recalls the methods of the Gestapo.

The agency also investigated four of Trump’s campaign aides over possible ties to Russia, and even made use of the notorious Steele dossier, consisting of anti-Trump gossip collated from Russian sources by a former British intelligence agent on the payroll of the Democratic Party.

After Trump fired Comey, according to the Times, “law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests…(sic)  Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. (sic) Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.”

The operations of the FBI, encouraged, aided and abetted by the Times, recall the paranoid rantings of the John Birch Society, the ultra-right group formed in the 1950s, whose founder, Robert Welch, notoriously claimed that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former World War II commander of Allied forces in Europe, was a “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.”

Claims that once were the province of an extremist group, on the fringes of American politics, are now embraced by the military-intelligence apparatus, appear on the front page of the most influential American daily newspaper, and dominate the network and cable television news.
<>

While there is no evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and Moscow, the Times report itself is evidence of a conspiracy involving the intelligence agencies and the corporate media to overturn the 2016 presidential election—which Trump won, albeit within the undemocratic framework of the Electoral College—and install a government that would differ from Trump’s chiefly in being more committed to military confrontation with Russia in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.

A secret security investigation by a powerful police agency directed against an elected president or prime minister can be described as nothing other than the antechamber to a coup by the military or intelligence services.

 

(4) In other countries, who lack a Trumpenstein figure as a focal point to despise and to pelt around the clock, the local ruling classes have been forced to use plain old Russophobia as their bogeyman, and the charge (without evidence or with fabricated evidence) that Moscow is “meddling in their affairs.”  Britain leads the parade in this regard, at times surpassing the Yanks in sheer inventiveness, hypocrisy, and malice (witness their Skripal hoax, for example, and their crucial participation in the MH17 psyops, among other disinformation campaigns.).

(5) Trump’s unorthodox presidency has been a boon for the satire industry: Many late-night hosts are reaping more jokes and greater cultural authority by continuing the Shakespearean tradition of the jester speaking truth to power. But the rewards haven’t been spread evenly.  Liberal Stephen Colbert, lauded by fans for his skewering of the president, has added viewers, bucking a trend of declining audiences, to push “The Late Show” to No. 1 in late night (3.8 million viewers, up 19% over last year).
(USA Today, Comedy Scorecard)

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/22/media-vermin-never-sleep-cheap-jokes...

 

 

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Host Stephen Colbert was almost universally praised by Donald Trump's critics for an emotional monologue on the 2020 election. However, the heartfelt speech failed to impress many cynics on both sides of the US political divide.

Colbert blasted Trump during ‘The Late Show’ on Thursday for claiming that there were fraudulent votes cast for his opponent Democrat Joe Biden in the ongoing election. “For him to cast a dark shadow on our most sacred right from the briefing room in the White House — our house, not his — that is devastating,” he said after apparently tearing up a bit. 

The segment seemed to utterly wow anti-Trumpers, with many of them marveling online at how “powerful” the monologue was and calling Colbert the “moral compass” of America.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/505869-colbert-trump-russiagate-fraud/

 

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Yep, no mention of Russian interference in our sacred elections... What about the Chinese who did everything they could to get Joe Biden elected?....

 

 

Please note that apparently Colbert is a Catholic... the sins plus confession equals redemption which is a neat form of hypocrisy... In other religions, they chop your head off as contrition, after you confess under duress...

One wonders what the comedians such as Stephen Colbert will do once Trump is carried out of office through his own orifice. 

Oh, yes I know. Colbert will turn his attention to Vlad the Impaler, the nasty Putin who has resisted against US supreme-democacacy since WW2… and Colbert might attack Putin's mate Julian, of course?... Yes Julian helped Putin elect Trump to the presidency, or was it the reverse?… Either way Assange dumped shit on Hillary, but we won’t mention this, because it was all nastily designed to piss on our glorious first woman would-be president — even if it was her own email-shit that fell back upon her — so we can mention Julian’s (or the cat’s?) feaces on the wall of the room at the embassy.

Yes, Assange (Wikileaks) should not have released pictures of president Moreno having a meal of lobsters in bed. Yes it’s better to have lobsters than crabs… Guffaw. I did this very old joke back in 1962 and got hit for six in the mandible by the much bigger fellow than me, to which this sarcastic jab was aimed at. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtWteT9Z-_Y

What does Julian's cat know? Who knows… Like in Men in Black, the cat may hold an entire universe in the little bingle attached to its collar, or have the entire registry of the US spies on its ID chip.

Nothing in Colbert’s ranting ablutions tells us about the reality of Julian Assange. But Colbert isn't for reality. Colbert is a witty spectator of events, an infantile collage-artist of sarcasms, with no understanding of the drama in progress, nor where it came from nor where it’s going to. Trump excepted, but really, making jokes about Trump is easier than piss. Trump's hypocrisy is bigger than Trump's hypocrisy because Trump has no idea.

https://mashable.com/video/colbert-republicans-capitol-mob/

Brilliant! But we shan’t hold chips against Colbert for his comical disdain of Julian… Colbert is a Catholic and he is paid to be an amusing cartooning part-time Judas.

There are several versions of Judas in the bible. But the story of betrayal sticks...

“The most important fact about Judas, apart from his betrayal of Jesus, is his connection with anti-Semitism,” Joan Acocella wrote in The New Yorker in 2006. “Almost since the death of Christ, Judas has been held up by Christians as a symbol of the Jews: their supposed deviousness, their lust for money and other racial vices.” 

 

The historical tendency to identify Judas with anti-Semitic stereotypes led, after the horrors of the Holocaust, to a reconsideration of this key Biblical figure, and something of a rehabilitation of his image. Professor William Klassen, a Canadian biblical scholar, argued in a 1997 biography of Judas that many of the details of his treachery were invented or exaggerated by early Christian church leaders, especially as the church began to move away from Judaism.

https://www.history.com/news/why-judas-betrayed-jesus

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Without Judas, the whole construct of Christianity would be a shamble.  Imagine: No Judas, no crucifixion. No crucifixion, no Christianity! But I am sure the scribes who concocted the stories about Judas, would have found other ways to lead to the crucifixion without having a betrayal.

In Nazi invaded France, the plot would would have been simple: “you there, in the green shirt" pointing to a fellow in a group of peasants plotting something or discussing the hen and the egg conundrum, "come with us. YOU ARE GOING TO BE SHOT as retaliation for throwing tacks under our glorious panzers."

Choosing someone at random would have likely led to Judas, who then was going to be crucified instead of Jesus… Judas looked shifty and dishonest. He's the one... The Roman armies could sense this kind of things. So Judas would have had one way to escape the Roman wrath: “Oh no, it’s not me, it’s him…”

You know the rest.

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