"Propaganda, Facts and Fake News" - Page 7 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14909127
BBC bosses still trying to cover tracks over Savile in 2012, says Andy Kershaw

“I thought [it was] appalling that the Savile investigation by Newsnight was scrapped,” he said. “It had a whiff of senior management still trying to cover their tracks over Savile as late as 2012.”

Kershaw pointed to a claim made by Helen Boaden, the former director of BBC News, that she had made ex-director general Mark Thompson aware of Newsnight’s allegations against Savile.

Thompson denies this is the case; the BBC went on to screen two tributes to Savile following his death in 2011 but buried the Newsnight exposé.

“It has emerged that a conversation was had between the head of news at the time and Mark Thompson,” said Kershaw. “Instead of scrapping those two [tribute] programmes they scrapped the Newsnight programme and hung the editor out to dry.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/ ... dy-kershaw
Last edited by Sivad on 25 Apr 2018 04:20, edited 1 time in total.
#14909128
The vetting files: How the BBC kept out ‘subversives’
For decades the BBC denied that job applicants were subject to political vetting by MI5. But in fact vetting began in the early days of the BBC and continued until the 1990s. Paul Reynolds, the first journalist to see all the BBC's vetting files, tells the story of the long relationship between the corporation and the Security Service.

"Policy: keep head down and stonewall all questions." So wrote a senior BBC official in early 1985, not long before the Observer exposed so many details of the work done in Room 105 Broadcasting House that there was no point continuing to hide it.

By that stage, a policy of flatly denying the existence of political vetting - not just stonewalling, but if necessary lying - had been in place for five decades.

As early as 1933 a BBC executive, Col Alan Dawnay, had begun holding meetings to exchange information with the head of MI5, Sir Vernon Kell, at Dawnay's flat in Eaton Terrace, Chelsea. It was an era of political radicalism and both sides deemed the BBC in need of "assistance in regard to communist activities".

These informal arrangements became formal two years later, with an agreement between the two organisations that all new staff should be vetted except "personnel such as charwomen". The fear was that "evilly disposed" engineers might sabotage the network at a critical time, or that conspirators might discredit the BBC so that "the way could be made clear for a left-wing government".

And so routine vetting began. From the start, the BBC undertook not to reveal the role of the Security Service (MI5), or the fact of vetting itself. On one level this made sense, bearing in mind that the very existence of the Secret Service remained a secret until the 1989 Security Service Act.
http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43754737
#14909130
Helen Boaden, the former director of BBC News, had made ex-director general Mark Thompson aware of Newsnight’s allegations against Savile.

Mark John Thompson[1] (born 31 July 1957)[2] is the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The New York Times Company.

:lol:
#14909147
skinster wrote:Thompson sucked. If I remember correctly, it was he who made the BBC very zionist.


You gotta be a ZOG guy to run NYT, and if he's cool with covering up for pedo rapers he's probably not gonna have any ethical hangups about anything else going on under the sun.
#14911844
John Pilger wrote: I've never known journalism to be so distorted in order to serve this propaganda. The attack on Douma was based on, well I call it a lie.

When you look at the available evidence, the real evidence, the evidence that barely sees the light of day, then there's no justification for it whatsoever. There's no real evidence of a chemical attack.

So what we're seeing is is the most intense campaign of propaganda at least since the build-up to the Iraq war in 2003.

I've been a journalist for a long time. I've covered many wars. I've covered the first cold war. I've covered it from the Soviet Union. I've covered it from the United States. I've worked all over the world. I'm a reporter I would say there is a pseudo journalism now, the kind of journalism you described I wouldn't describe as journalism, to simply write down and swallow what governments tell you is the very antithesis of what real journalism is.


#14912005
His reasoning makes little sense. His view also coincides with a government’s propaganda. To simply call another country’s propaganda a lie is to validate the propaganda of another.
There is no way he has the knowledge to determine what happened. He is just another biased person who believes his bias is truth.
He understands we should be aware of propaganda but he is actually promoting propaganda because he can not know. He picked a side and accepted their propaganda.
#14912037
skinster wrote:Your reasoning makes no sense, is regularly contradictory, vague and boring as all fuck that you feel a need to stick your obviously ignorant oar into every discussion.


I am just never going to get your vote for prom king I guess.
Do you have an actual point to make about my post instead of me? If the reasoning makes no sense, then destroy it instead of whining.
#14912162
Syria – A Case Study in Propaganda
Dear diary, many of my colleagues are unhappy about the recent events in Syria. They are unhappy that Assad is still in power. However, I see the metaphorical glass as being half full. In a recent poll, 58% of Americans support the bombing of Syria and 19% have “no opinion.” This is wonderful news, since it shows how the vast majority of people are easily manipulated and are simply apathetic. In a democracy, the most important but least understood tool is propaganda. Let me share with you the fundamentals of a successful propaganda campaign.

Here are the five rules of public relations a.k.a propaganda:

Keep the message simple
Make it emotional
Don’t allow nuances or debates
Demonize the opposition
Keep repeating the message

Rule #1: The principle message has to be simple so that even a 5-year-old can understand. In this case, it was, “Assad used chemical weapons to kill innocent Syrians.” The secondary message was we should do something about it. Everyone who watched TV or read the mainstream/social media got this message loud and clear.

Rule #2: Make it emotional. Propaganda is just marketing. (In fact, the phrase Public Relations was coined to replace Propaganda when the latter became a dirty word after World War I). Every good commercial has an emotional aspect to it. Emotions stop you from thinking and analyzing. Thus, while selling Pepsi, marketers use sexy women, selling a war requires evoking fear and/or anger.

About 120 years ago, when the U.S. wanted to steal Cuba from Spain, it relied upon the exact playbook. “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war,” said the newspaper oligarch William Randolph Hearst to his cartoonist. The pictures portrayed dying children and brutal Spanish authorities. (Although Spain is white, the picture on the right used a monstrous person with African American features, since a warmonger could also be racist in those days).
(click link at bottom to see pictures)

Today, the US government tells the White Helmets, “You furnish the videos, we’ll furnish the war.” It’s the same technique used over and over. Remember during Iraq War 1, when a girl testified before the Congress that Iraqi soldiers were killing newborn babies in incubators? Of course, it turned out to be fake news; and the girl turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador.

The Syrian war is also a great study in use of emotional language: “worst chemical attack in Syria in years” (a lie from NY Times that forgot its own article about 52+ chemical attacks by ISIS); “international outrage,” “shocked the world,” “horrific/deadly/ghastly/heinous chemical attack,” etc. Also, the Syrian government is always referred to as “regime” and Assad is always a “dictator” or a “butcher” who “kills his own people.” Every word and phrase is designed to have an emotional impact.

Rule #3: No debate allowed. The media and the pundits left absolutely no doubt who the culprit was. Within minutes after the release of pictures/videos, everyone was blaming Assad. So it didn’t matter if you listened to ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, or read the NY Times, WaPo or HuffPo … everyone was singing the same tune. Tucker Carlson was the only mainstream person who went off the script, but we are taking care of him.

This kind of consistency is really important in a successful propaganda campaign. No one should be allowed to consider other alternatives – could the attack be staged, could it be a false flag, could it be fake, how do we know when/where the videos were taken, why is it that Assad’s chemical weapons kill only children and civilians and never the jihadists, why do the attacks happen only when Assad is winning, etc.?

There was also no discussion of evidence or proof. We see pictures and videos, and that’s enough. We have a doctor on site who says it’s Sarin or chlorine gas … end of story. Nobody discusses options such as should we send an international team of doctors and experts to the site, should we wait for an autopsy, should we get Assad to answer these charges (gasp!) and so on.

The US Establishment is the jury, judge and the prosecutor. The witness is Al Qaeda who supplies the pictures and the videos, but the average person doesn’t know that either.

The secondary message was also never debated. Even if you assume that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, why should the US do something about it? Is it a moral obligation that only falls on the US? Is it a legal obligation? Does the US intervene every time and anytime some country uses chemical weapons? How about non-chemical weapons? No such discussions are permitted.

Even the bombing was so ridiculous, but the average person doesn’t notice anything suspicious. For example, we bombed the Barzeh research facility that has been inspected and cleared by the OPCW many times, including once in Nov 2017. The fact is that it’s a civilian research and educational center:

Furthermore, the OPCW team had just arrived in Syria on April 13 when the trio of US/UK/France bombed the sites. Wouldn’t it make sense to send the OPCW team to inspect the buildings before bombing them? Also, if the buildings really had chemical weapons, wouldn’t bombing them disperse the chemicals and kill thousands of civilians nearby? The real proof for the civilian nature of these buildings is that within a couple of hours after the bombing, there were Syrian journalists and soldiers walking through the rubble of these lethal “chemical weapons factories.”

Thinking only complicates matters and ruins everything. That’s why propaganda has to keep everything simple.

Rule #4: You have to viciously attack anyone who questions the official narrative. We did a great job of attacking independent journalists and bloggers. Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett and Twitter influencers such as @PartisanGirl and @Ian56789 were all maligned as “Russian bots.” Ian even got banned from Twitter for a few days. Sites such as 21st Century Wire and Russia Insider were brought down by our hackers during the strikes on Syria.

Rule #5: Repetition is key in any successful campaign – selling a product, a politician or a war. Thus the media saturated the airwaves and the Internet with shocking language and pictures and videos. The West really has only one media outlet, but it comes in hundreds and thousands of different names in order to give the illusion of choice and diversity. Thus when the same message is repeated so many times by so many people, it comes becomes the truth.

So, you see, it doesn’t matter if Assad is still in power. The most important thing is that people are gullible and malleable, since that allows us to keep the war going and eventually achieve our goals. I assure you, we will get Syria and then we will get Iran. Yes, it will be a humanitarian disaster of epic proportion, but rest assured that the people of the West will feel good about it. That’s the power of propaganda!
https://www.activistpost.com/2018/04/sy ... ganda.html
#14912452
Democracy Now’s “Alt Media” Platform for Humanitarian Imperialism in Syria
The “war and peace report,” as progressive as it may often sound, has long ceased to be a purely listener-supported project, and this lack of economic independence has spilled into its politics.

The dust had barely settled after last weekend’s U.S.-led bombing of Syria before a split in the political class developed. While some Beltway figures, media personalities and former officials hailed the bombings, others decried the “limited” nature of the airstrikes. At the grassroots level, a somewhat different debate gripped the left and the right — those who opposed the bombings were accused of buying into the propaganda of the Syria-Russia-Iran alliance, while would-be defenders of human rights called for increased military measures to degrade the killing capacity of the “Assad regime.”

Democracy Now!, the daily hour-long news show hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, has long been the flagship institution for U.S. progressives. With its jaunty 90s opening theme, timely coverage of world events, liberal (maybe radical-liberal) take on global affairs, and impressive range of top-tier guests including authors, government officials, policy experts and activists, the syndicated program is seen as an exemplary display of independent journalism.

No doubt, the New York-based show is in a class of its own when compared to the vapidity and sensationalism of shock-jock right-wing radio or smug, Beltway liberalism of Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann or Cenk Uygur. Like a gust of oxygen in the choking smog of AC360-Maddow infotainment, Amy Goodman resembles an enlightened aunt at a Fourth of July party — a female version of Ira Glass who brings a kale, cauliflower, almond cheese and cumin-spiced casserole to the potluck while discussing difficult topics in an unshakeably calm, Zen-like manner.

Despite its reputation as a standard-bearer for left-of-center “alternative media,” Democracy Now isn’t immune to the pressures of U.S. politics: sometimes the Battle of Seattle veterans canvas their suburbs for Barack Obama; sometimes Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky get out the vote for Hillary.

In a similar manner, Democracy Now frequently accommodates narratives that would seem at home on CNN or the state-run Voice of America. With alarming regularity, the “war and peace report” has showcased passionate voices advocating Pentagon or State Department solutions to dire human-rights crises across the globe, including “regime change.”

Case-in-point: Syria. Since the country plunged into the depths of withering all-sided conflict and proxy war pitting the government of Bashar al-Assad against a range of opposition groups – from Gulf Arab-funded jihadists to Western-funded secular armies, with few independent players in between – the program regularly features interviews with activists who feel that Washington can play a progressive role for the people of the region through the deployment of the U.S. Armed Forces, covert aid to factions on the ground, and the routine violation of international legal norms such as the United Nations Charter.

Democracy Now generally isn’t a Pentagon mouthpiece; a large portion of its coverage does consist of decent progressive journalism. Yet interspersed throughout programming covering genuine popular movements, we find narratives covering the left flank of U.S. imperialism, normalizing the use of U.S. military force for ostensibly “humanitarian” purposes.

Interventionist voices for peace
In the course of the last week — since Syria came under cruise missile attack by the trilateral U.S.-U.K.-France alliance — Democracy Now has featured two interviews with activists who unabashedly call for the Pentagon to use military measures against the Syrian government for the sake of easing the Syrian people’s pain. Their arguments resemble the line of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who questioned whether the bombings were the result of a White House “choreographed Kabuki show” with their Russian counterparts rather than the Cuban Missile Crisis-style showdown which seemed apparent prior to the strikes.

On Tuesday, Goodman interviewed Ramah Kudaimi of the Syrian Solidarity Collective. Described as a “grassroots activist” and member of the anti-war movement, Kudaimi argued – as she has for several years now – that the bombings didn’t manage to go far enough in displacing “the regime.” Noting that the U.S., since Obama, has offered verbal support to the “Syrian people’s revolution” while acting in a manner that “strengthened the regime,” Kudaimi accused the Trump administration of continuing to not go far enough in ensuring regime change. Meanwhile, she accused the antiwar left of offering uncritical support to the Bush-style “War on Terror” being waged by what she depicts as the virtually united forces of Syria, Iran, Russia, and the U.S.-led coalition of Western powers and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Mocking the very real possibility of the tripartite alliance clashing with the Russian military mission backing Syria’s government, Kudaimi said:

… it was kind of infuriating to see this being presented as breaking news, this being presented as an apocalypse, that we’re about to embark on World War III, especially as has been made clear again and again by the U.S. actions is — and words — is that this was something very limited, just to kind of send a message to Bashar al-Assad that you can go on and kill people with barrel bombs, with anything, but don’t — limit your use of chemical weapons.”

This was followed by an interview on Thursday with Moazzam Begg, a British Pakistani survivor of illegal detention and torture at the U.S. prisons in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, who now heads the human-rights group CAGE. In his interview, Begg stressed the need for a No-Fly Zone over the last remaining rebel stronghold of Idlib to prevent an “unprecedented massacre.”

Maintaining that he is “completely against Western intervention” on account of his own first-hand experience, Begg complained that the U.S.-led intervention in the country continues to target the Syrian opposition rather than the government, dourly noting that the U.S. hasn’t limited itself to fighting ISIS alone but also those groups that fought alongside it or alongside other groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, the rebranded al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Instead, he implied, the U.S. should attack the root of the conflict: the Syrian air force. Begg said:

At least we know that in the Kurdish regions, for example, during the Iraq War, there were no-fly zones. Indeed, in Bosnia … it was bad enough, but a no-fly zone at least stopped those who had air forces to carry out even further killing with mass casualties.

Neither guest mentioned the significant proportion of “regime supporters” who reside in Syria, or the need for a resumption of negotiations between beleaguered opposition forces, the government and the various powers who are militarily involved in the conflict.

These are far from the first occasions that Democracy Now’s guests, like the New York City-based Democratic socialists of Jacobin magazine, have propagated a line favoring humanitarian intervention in Syria. Past interviewees and headline readouts enthusiastically supported the NATO-backed uprising in Libya against the government of Muammar Gaddafi as well, regularly citing the inflated figures of government-caused deaths published by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Black Agenda Report head editor Bruce Dixon noted at the time:

Something is really wrong with this picture. We have to wonder … at least as far as the war in Libya goes, whether Democracy Now is simply feeding us the line of corporate media, the Pentagon and the State Department rather than fulfilling the role of unembedded, independent journalists.”


Humanitarian crises and the pro-imperialist illusions “of idiots”
A denunciation of war crimes and indiscriminate bombings by the Syrian Arab Army or Russian Aerospace Forces — be it through hypersonic missile, artillery shell, barrel bomb, chemical warfare, etc. — is hardly our point of dispute. Nor is earnest solidarity with any people suffering at the hands of a state that disregards or does damage to their life-or-death interests.

Yet the position that any resistance to a reassertion of U.S. or European hegemony in Syria is a product of “fake news” indoctrination or a “pro-fascist anti-imperialism of idiots” — as Leila Al Shami argued in a widely-shared blog post — woefully misses the mark and cynically equates principled opponents of imperialist war with reactionary misanthropes on the far right.

To assert that Washington, London or Paris can act as guarantors of human rights or allies of the Syrian people is not only criminally naive, it provides ammunition to ideological fusillades aiming far higher than the low-hanging fruit of the Ba’athist regime alone.

For Washington and its European allies, as well as its junior partners in the region, Damascus is simply a pit-stop on the road to Tehran (and possibly Moscow) — a means by which so-called “Iranian imperialism” and the aims of rival powers can be thwarted, allowing hegemonic powers led by the U.S. to continue a policy of global conquest stretching from the Caribbean through the Mediterranean to the Sea of China.

The assertion that the war-stricken Assad regime is uniquely fascistic — unlike the region’s dynastic/sectarian, Zionist, militarist, or neo-Ottoman regimes — illustrates a selective indignation which dangerously feeds illusions that unlawful wars waged by top-tier Western powers to effect regime change will improve the lives of the most oppressed groups in the region and meet their need for a just peace. In what country, on what planet, do such precedents exist?

Let’s provide a reminder of these actors’ regional deeds in the past century: two world wars, Sykes-Picot, the partition plan, the War on Terror, police-state fascism, Wahhabist despotism, the shredding of the Middle East’s social fabric, and so forth. Doesn’t this offer at least a bit of proof that imperialism, neocolonialism, the military-industrial complex and the finance oligarchy at its helm aren’t in the least bit concerned about advancing human rights, democracy, peace and social justice in the region?

Endless warfare — endless disorientation?
Throughout the late 20th century but especially since the end of the Cold War, the United States arrogated to itself the right of aggressive military intervention across the globe on various pretenses. From Yugoslavia to Afghanistan, across Africa and the Middle East — Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Yemen — the U.S. cited a combination of national security concerns like terrorism and human-rights crimes to justify a total disregard for international law and consensus, not to mention the subsequent war crimes its military carried out in the course of “humanitarian” warfare.

While the U.K.’s successive governments have eagerly played the “poodle” role in support of Washington’s military adventures, the British people still maintain a vibrant anti-war movement. Anti-war and even anti-imperialist voices are frequently heard in the media, while Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing faction of the Labour Party has waged a stiff opposition to Tory Prime Minister Theresa May’s eagerness to participate in attacks on Syria. As a result, only 28 percent of the British public supported May’s “commitment to combat” Syria while 36 percent opposed it, according to a poll by The Independent.

In the United States, Pew Research Center data from last year showed that over twice that ratio of Americans – 58 percent – supported such missile strikes.

The U.S. anti-war movement stagnated prior to the dusk of the George W. Bush administration and the onset of 2008’s election season, due in no small part to inroads by the Democratic Party and sectarian infighting by dominant leftist groups. In anticipation of the election of Barack Obama, the movement and its peace parades simply ground to a halt.

Following the jubilation of Obama’s electoral success and his post-inauguration resumption of Bush-era policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine-Israel, and Guantanamo, the grassroots opposition never reactivated. Mocking the movement’s co-option by the Democratic Party, activist Cindy Sheehan noted at the time that she began referring to the “anti-war left” as the “’anti-Republican War’ movement.”

In a study of the movement’s failure titled “Partisan Dynamics of Contention,” University of Michigan researcher Michael Heaney wrote:

As president, Obama maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan. The anti-war movement should have been furious at Obama’s “betrayal” and reinvigorated its protest activity. Instead, attendance at anti-war rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement dissipated … the election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the anti-war movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions.”


This grim state of affairs — ideological confusion, misplaced hopes, demoralization, disintegration — gives us ample cause to criticize the humanitarian window-of a center-left that’s now been housebroken, domesticated and rendered oblivious to the main enemy at home: U.S. imperialism.

Who pays the piper calls the tune
The rise and fall of popular left-wing currents — anti-war movements, militant workers’ struggles, and Black, Native American, Puerto Rican and Latin American immigrant liberation struggles — has followed predictable trends: there is the violent counter-insurgency conducted by a reinvigorated repressive state apparatus, white nationalist vigilantes, and other far-right groupings; and then there’s the low-intensity counterinsurgency conducted through the ideological state apparatus of media and academia; the formation of new electoral alliances and installation of minority “faces in the right places” of power; as well as the key factor, which is the co-option of movement figures by non-profit foundations backed by major capitalist philanthropic figures.

While open repression – the iron fist – tends to radicalize movements and galvanize popular support for them, the persuasive approach of the “velvet glove” forms a much more effective, less explosive and more demilitarized way of neutralizing mass opposition — transforming the revolutionary into the reformist, the radical into the tame, and the left to the centrist.

Much has been made of the role of figures like Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, whose proclaimed mission is to protect dissent and “build vibrant and tolerant democracies” through philanthropic grants that ostensibly serve oppressed or marginalized communities. Much of the critique can veer toward the conspiratorial, or exaggerates his role as some all-powerful impresario of the global left. Yet Soros is a major activist financier both abroad and at home, one of many players invested in what’s been called the “Non-Profit Industrial Complex” or NPIC, which comprises a complex web of relations between local and federal governments, the capitalist class, philanthropic foundations, NGO/non-profit social-service and social-justice organizations.

A look at who sponsors Democracy Now! shows just how dependent it is on NPIC. It’s worth quoting last year’s analysis of DN’s funding structure by Danny Haiphong at length:

Democracy Now runs interference for imperialism because it is beholden to funding sources, as are all non-profits and non-governmental organizations … An analysis conducted in Critical Sociology found that the Pacifica Foundation received upwards of 148,000 USD between the years of 1996-1998 from the Ford, Carnegie, and other foundations to launch Democracy Now.

The Lannan Foundation gave Democracy Now an additional 375,000 USD packaged in a number of grants, according to the foundation’s IRS 990 forms since 2008. Patrick Lannan, the capitalist mogul who founded the organization, sat on the board of ITT corporation in the late 70s and early 80s. The ITT corporation was instrumental in the CIA-backed fascist coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende in 1973.

… Foundations wield a form of “soft power” on behalf of U.S. imperialism. Their main purpose is to provide a “civil society” infrastructure in targeted nations capable of fomenting conditions of regime change.


“Fake news” and critical consumption
The compromised nature of Democracy Now doesn’t render it entirely useless for genuine anti-imperialists and listeners opposed to war, be they “humanitarian” or not. Strong critical voices are often heard on Democracy Now – as may be the case on CBS, NBC, BBC, Al Jazeera, RT, MintPress News, PressTV, even maybe once in a blue moon on Fox News or CNBC.

When looking at any of these organizations we need to remain critical of the banalities they may spew such as a liberal-versus-conservative paradigm that upholds systems of power like global monopoly capitalism (imperialism), despite distracting debates over the finer points of how the system is upheld – is it for a more “humanitarian” world order, a more “secure” one?

All of us have a duty – as media producers and media consumers – to look beyond the rhetoric of social justice deployed by center-left establishment figures, and instead see the structures and principles they both depend on and uphold. “Fake News” in terms of bias, propaganda and lie by omission is unavoidable, but the key question remains “cui bono?” – who benefits from the propagation of this narrative?

In the case of Democracy Now!, we have incorporated non-profit 501(c)3s and big Wall Street money underwriting the ostensibly “independent” and alternative media. As usual, we should remain on guard.

The “war and peace report,” as progressive as it may often sound, has long ceased to be a purely listener-supported project, and this lack of economic independence has spilled into its politics. The clearest sign of that is an implicit support, especially in the Arab Spring era, of imperialist wars on “authoritarian” regimes who find themselves in the crosshairs of the U.S. government.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/democracy ... sm/240800/
#14912456
Syrian proponents (yes, you know who you are) seem to think they can talk the west to death. Ya know?



Zam 8)
#14912459
skinster wrote:"To assert that Washington, London or Paris can act as guarantors of human rights or allies of the Syrian people is not only criminally naive, it provides ammunition to ideological fusillades aiming far higher than the low-hanging fruit of the Ba’athist regime alone."



That's it in a nutshell. I'd be pro-war if the goal was establishing freedom and democracy and I thought it was feasible. Anyone who claims to believe that's the objective is either brain-dead or lying out their ass.
#14912839
How To Silence RT Forever
Loyalists of the western empire have been growing increasingly honest about their desire to use censorship and propaganda in order to win an “information war” against Russia.

The other day we saw a Guardian article arguing for the necessity of a coordinated campaign by western governments to “combat Russian disinformation” due to Russia’s disinterest in “cooperating to reach a common understanding of the truth”, i.e. agree with unproven western accusations and capitulate to the longstanding western agendas those accusations are meant to advance.

Before that, we saw a Defense One article authored by an Atlantic Council official arguing in favor of the creation of a “NATO for Infowar” to propagandize westerners against Russian interests for their own good. The author of this article went so far as to suggest that the Kremlin-backed television channel RT ought to be forbidden to air in western nations.

It always comes back to RT. Because of the network’s relatively high profile in comparison to other Russian media, it has been made into an ideal Emmanuel Goldstein for the empire’s daily Two Minutes Hate. RT is now so completely reviled by establishment loyalists that citing it in an online debate will be taken as an instant debunk of not just the point you were trying to make but of your entire position (and often your humanity itself by getting you labeled a “Russian bot”), even if your citation is comprised entirely of independently verifiable facts.



Luckily for the screaming hysterical Big Brother devotees, there is a very easy and 100 percent guaranteed way to get RT removed from western airwaves forever. Are you ready? Here it is:

Allow leftist and antiwar perspectives to be voiced on western mainstream media.

That’s it. That’s the whole entire recipe for RT’s destruction. If western media simply ceased deliberately excluding leftist and antiwar voices from mainstream discourse, there would no longer be any demand for RT’s output, since the only reason anyone outside of Russia watches RT is to get perspectives they can’t get anywhere else.

A few leftist, antiwar and activism-oriented programs on stations like BBC and MSNBC is all it would take to kill any interest in RT’s programming and steal their entire audience. They wouldn’t ever have to have a single Russian on their programs; there is an abundance of home-grown talent with clear antiwar, anti-capitalism, pro-environment perspectives to keep reliably churning out fresh content on a daily basis, and there is simply no way RT’s feeble budget would be able to keep up.

And of course they wouldn’t just be stealing RT’s audience, they’d be stealing their talent as well. Redacted Tonight‘s Lee Camp has gone on record saying the only reason he’s on RT is because his leftist antiwar perspective got doors slammed in his face everywhere else. He went to RT, and they make no attempts to influence him to say or not say anything other than what he wants. Talent wouldn’t have to rely on RT if it could share the same ideas with bigger audiences for better pay.

That’s actually RT America’s entire schtick: people like Chris Hedges and Jesse Ventura get de-platformed by western mass media due to their anti-establishment views, so they go to RT where they are given a platform. There are Americans who are drawn to those perspectives, so their eyeballs go to RT programming. If CNN had some programming that allowed for such perspectives this would steal all the demand for RT, but they don’t. The closest they ever get is having Jill Stein on once in a blue moon so Chris Cuomo can admonish her for not participating correctly in the information war against Russia



This is a surefire way to get rid of RT without violating the US Constitution, committing unprecedented acts of government censorship, or having anything whatsoever to do with the Kremlin. But of course, we all know that it will never happen.

It will never happen because RT is not the real enemy. Leftists and antiwar activists are the real enemy.

Indeed, the fact that RT America gives a platform to Americans who oppose war, ecocide and plutocracy is the US establishment’s primary grievance against it. In January of last year the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published its hotly anticipated report on Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election. The disappointing report provided no proof whatsoever of those allegations, and instead spent much of its space accusing RT of covering stories which are inconvenient to US plutocrats. According to the report, RT America’s offenses included the following:

*Airing two new shows that were critical of the US government.
*Running reports on the vulnerabilities of US election machines.
*Broadcasting, hosting and advertising debates between third-party candidates.
*Covering the Occupy Wall Street movement.
*Criticizing the US surveillance state and alleging widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use.
*Criticizing “the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt” and comparing the United States to Imperial Rome.
*Running anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health.
*Opposing Western intervention in the Syrian conflict and blaming the West for waging “information wars” against the Syrian Government.
*Trying to expand RT America in the US.

Which, of course, are all reflective of the interests and concerns of millions of rank-and-file Americans. They are also subjects which are rarely if ever covered my mainstream western media.

The fact that there is a very easy way to eliminate RT, and yet establishment loyalists continue fearmongering about it instead of solving the problem they claim to have, should be taken as a tacit admission that they have no real problem with RT. The only people the plutocrat-owned media corporations have ever had a problem with are those who oppose plutocratic interests, be they oligarchy or war profiteering or ecocidal fossil fuel agendas.

So remember that the next time you hear some empire loyalist whining about RT. They have no problem with RT. They have a problem with you.
http://www.mcscnetwork.com/2018/05/07/h ... t-forever/
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