Censorship, fake news, perception management

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Wed Sep 06, 2023 1:55 pm

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Think Tanks Are Information Laundering Ops For War Profiteers

The British billionaire-owned newspaper The Telegraph has an appalling new article out which reads like a paid advertisement for a missile manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

Caitlin Johnstone
September 6, 2023

The British billionaire-owned newspaper The Telegraph has an appalling new article out which reads like a paid advertisement for a missile manufactured by Lockheed Martin. The title even sounds like it was written by a marketing team: “A war-winning swarm missile will knock China out of Taiwan — fast”, subtitled “Rapid Dragon is a military gamechanger that provides the US Air Force with a crucial edge in the Pacific”.

The article is written by a war propagandist named David Axe, whose work I have written about before. His covert advertorial for Lockheed Martin’s JASSM missile revolves around the findings of a study by the military industrial complex-funded think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who you’ll be shocked and astonished and surprised and stunned to learn lists the Lockheed Martin Corporation as one of its top donors.

Needless to say, David Axe makes no mention of this extreme conflict of interest anywhere in his exuberant prose celebrating the wonders of this new piece of technology in what is falsely presented as an objective news article intended to educate and inform.

“When analysts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies ran a series of war games simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan last year, they learned something surprising,” he begins. “The games indicated that the US Air Force, fighting nearly alone after the destruction of much of the US Navy, could almost single-handedly destroy the Chinese invasion force.”

“The key to this simulated aerial victory was a missile: the Lockheed Martin-made Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missile, or JASSM,” Axe continues. “It’s a stealthy and highly accurate cruise missile that can range hundreds of miles from its launching warplane. There are long-range versions of the JASSM and a specialised anti-ship version, too — and the USAF and its sister services are buying thousands of the missiles for billions of dollars.”


“Imagine hundreds or even thousands of stealthy cruise missiles speeding at wavetop height across the western Pacific and zeroing in on Chinese ships, ports and air bases all at the same time,” gushes Axe, adding, “It’s not for no reason the CSIS think-tank called the missile ‘decisive’ in its war games simulating a war over Taiwan.”

Yes, David Axe, I think we can all agree it’s not for no reason that the Lockheed Martin-funded think tank has great things to say about a product that’s making billions of dollars for Lockheed Martin. That’s some great journalism there, bucko.

This weapons system that Axe has been charged with marketing allows for large numbers of cruise missiles to be loaded onto pallets and deployed out the backs of giant cargo planes, and has been the subject of warnings from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Last month the Bulletin’s George M Moore wrote the following:

“The potential to develop Rapid Dragon so it can deliver nuclear weapons does not seem to have received any attention. The AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) is nuclear capable and currently deliverable by the B-52. It appears that nothing would prevent the Rapid Dragon deployment of the ALCM, turning any cargo aircraft capable of using Rapid Dragon into a nuclear delivery aircraft.

“The potential to use Rapid Dragon for nuclear weapons delivery (and eventually this will occur) will create new issues when serious nuclear weapons limitation resume. Unlike some past arms control agreements that required elimination of launch vehicles, there is no way to negotiate a limitation on cargo aircraft with rear ramps.”


So here’s a billionaire-owned news rag marketing a Lockheed Martin product endorsed by a Lockheed Martin-sponsored think tank and disguising it as journalism, while also normalizing the idea of fighting and winning a war against the Chinese military using technology that could lead to nuclear war. Just another day in the world of empire propaganda.

A think tank is usually just an institution in which scholars are paid by the rich and powerful to think up reasons why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid. One of the most depraved things that happens in the world today is the way war profiteering corporations and plutocrats are allowed to fund immensely influential warmongering think tanks, which then go on to influence the thinking of government policymakers in support of war and militarism. Media outlets like The Telegraph routinely cite these war profiteer-funded think tanks as experts on foreign policy and international affairs without ever disclosing this immense conflict of interest to their audiences; a recent study by the Quincy Institute found that 85 percent of the think tanks cited in the mainstream press when reporting on the war in Ukraine were funded by war profiteers like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.

This is journalistic malpractice. It is never, ever in accord with journalistic ethics to cite war profiteer-funded think tanks on matters of war, militarism or foreign relations, but the western press do it constantly, without even disclosing this immense conflict of interest to their audience, because the western press are propaganda firms for the western empire.

Western reporters cite empire-funded think tanks because they generally align with the empire-approved lines that a mass media stenographer knows they can advance their career by pushing, and they do it because it gives them an official-looking “expert” “source” to cite while proclaiming more expensive war machinery needs to be sent to this or that part of the world or what have you. But in reality there’s only one story to be found in such citations: “War Industry Supports More War.”

This “War Industry Supports More War” headline is all stories like the above are really communicating, yet they dress it up as news reporting, because propaganda only works if you don’t know you’re being propagandized. All we ordinary members of the public can do is throw sand in the gears of this information laundering operation at every opportunity by highlighting again and again and again where people are being propagandized and how.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/09 ... rofiteers/
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 07, 2023 2:37 pm

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If Everyone Understood That The US Deliberately Provoked This War

Caitlin Johnstone
September 7, 2023

War is the single worst thing humans do. The most insane. The most cruel. The most destructive. The most traumatic. The least sustainable. Those who knowingly choose to steer humanity into more war when it could be avoided are the worst people in the world, without exception.

And there are mountains of extensively documented evidence that that’s exactly what the drivers of the US-centralized empire did in Ukraine. That’s why so many western analysts and experts spent years warning that the actions of western powers were going to lead Ukraine into disaster, and it’s why US empire managers keep openly boasting about how much their proxy warfare in Ukraine advances US interests. They knowingly steered Ukraine into war to advance their own geostrategic interests while being fully aware that no powerful nation would ever permit the kinds of foreign threats the west was amassing on its borders, and then they intervened in the early days of the war to prevent the outbreak of peace.

If there was widespread awareness of these facts, the US war machine would lose support around the world — not just for its actions in this one war, but for all future wars as well. Which is why so much energy goes into making sure this does not become a widespread understanding.

(Video at link.)

The official mainstream narrative throughout the western world is that Putin invaded Ukraine solely because he is evil and hates freedom. That’s the actual, literal belief about this war that the western political/media class works to instill in the western public. Anyone who counters this self-evidently ridiculous assessment with facts and evidence gets branded a Russian agent and swarmed with pro-US trolls on social media, and loses all hope of securing a major platform in any mass media.

And it’s important to notice that shutting down all mature adult analysis of the events which led to the war in this way does not actually save a single Ukrainian life. It doesn’t make Russia any more likely to stop fighting and withdraw its troops. All it does is prevent people from seeing the US empire for what it really is. It isn’t being done to protect Ukrainians, it’s done to protect the empire.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to the information interests of the US empire would be for a critical mass of people to become aware that all this death and destruction in Ukraine could have been avoided by the US-centralized empire behaving less aggressively on Russia’s doorstep, and that those aggressions were instead increased with the goal of advancing US strategic interests on the world stage. If everyone really, deeply understood that all this suffering, all these mountains of human corpses could simply not have happened if the US hadn’t been feverishly focused on securing planetary domination at all cost, the US would no longer be able to manufacture consent for its agendas. It would no longer be able to whip up international support for its actions against its enemies. It would no longer be able to persuade the world to help prop up the hegemony of the dollar.


But because the US empire has the most advanced soft power apparatus that has ever existed, hardly anyone understands this. Not even the people who understand that the west provoked this war have deeply grappled with exactly what that means on a visceral emotional level, for the most part. It’s more of a superficial intellectual understanding for most, without really grokking into the horror of it all, really letting the enraging nature of what the US empire did wash over them.

The west was deceived into supporting yet another evil American war, this time with the added dimension of nuclear brinkmanship threatening the life of every terrestrial organism. All to suck Moscow into another draining military quagmire so war plans can be safely drawn up against China while advancing US energy interests in Europe and building support for US military alliances. It’s almost too evil to take in. There aren’t really words for it.

And that’s one of the reasons it’s hard to get people to take in exactly what happened with Ukraine: people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that anyone could be that evil, much less the government we’ve been trained by Hollywood to think of as sane and humanitarian.

It’s about as monstrous a thing as you could possibly come up with. Yet here it is, still unfolding in all its blood-spattered glory.

Our task then is to help people see this and understand it, not just intellectually but emotionally. Help people really grasp deep down the horrors the US empire unleashed upon our world with the war in Ukraine; the suffering; the death; the existential danger. We can’t fight the empire on our own, but we can each do what we can to help weaken the consent manufacturing machine it uses to rule and terrorize the world.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/09 ... -this-war/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Mon Sep 11, 2023 11:13 am

The CIA and FBI have complete control over Wikipedia.
September 9, 21:27

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One of the founders of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, said that the CIA and the FBI completely control Wikipedia and shape key narratives, turning it into a propaganda tool.

The CIA and FBI have complete control over Wikipedia.

Sanger claims that the CIA and FBI have been manipulating the site for the past 15 years and that Wikipedia has become a tool of "control" in the hands of the American establishment.
He made these claims in an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Sanger said the site is currently under tight control by the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies.

“We have evidence that... as far back as 2008... CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia ,” Sanger told Greenwald.
“Do you think they’ve stopped doing that?”

Sanger's allegations shed light on alleged intelligence infiltration of Wikipedia.
In recent years, there has been a clear ideological shift toward left-wing politics on the platform.
“How did we get to the point where ‘truth’ became tied to a particular ideology?” asks Sanger.

Sanger noted the "incremental changes" he has seen in Wikipedia's content over the years.
He notes that from 2006 to 2008, articles related to controversial topics in science began to express leftist biases.
Sanger explains that supposedly scientific pages related to topics such as "global warming" and certain drugs have shifted from science to left-wing propaganda.
He said they began to exhibit what he called "excessive bias."

“Then, from about 2010 to 2015, I started to notice that articles about Eastern medicine and holistic medicine... were so obviously biased ,” Sanger continued.
“It really went overboard... between 2013 and 2018 ,” he added.

Greenwald agreed that President Donald Trump's rise in popularity in American politics has had a significant impact.
They note that the "liberal establishment narrative" aimed at opposing President Donald Trump appears to have influenced Wikipedia's content.

Sanger also expressed concern about Wikipedia's abandonment of its "original policy of neutrality."
He warns that“ordinary Wikipedia contributors”—those responsible for the bulk of the site's edits—are now taking their cues from liberal corporate media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times.

Sanger's remarkable revelation was that Wikipedia officially stated that "80% of mainstream right-wing news sources are unreliable."
By the time the Trump administration took office, Wikipedia's bias had increased significantly , Sanger notes.
Sanger stated that "no encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has been as biased as Wikipedia."

In his view, between 2005 and 2015, Wikipedia became a target for weaponization as "the information war... was waged online."
Sanger argues that sites like Wikipedia play a central role in this conflict.
Instead of using Wikipedia, Sanger recommends other online encyclopedias such as Ballotpedia and Conservapedia as potential alternatives.
However, Sanger points out that these more reliable alternatives to Wikipedia are hidden in Google search results.

Greenwald, a longtime Democrat who previously supported the Obama administration, said he is no stranger to the "weaponization" of "new information tools."
The journalist describes the Wikipedia takeover as "the most valuable propaganda tool of all other weapons."

Watch the video: twitter.com/SystemUpdate_/status/1 686385894818041856

Greenwald said he was the target of political attacks and "weaponized" propaganda because of his involvement in the disclosure of US government secrets by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Sanger's revelations coincided with the conclusions of student programmer Virgil Griffith, who in 2007 first published evidence of the activities of the CIA and FBI on Wikipedia.
According to a 2007 Reuters report, Griffith developed a program called Wikiscanner.
The program made it possible to track the location of computers used to edit Wikipedia articles.
In 2008, the Huffington Post reported that the CIA and FBI had edited numerous articles to remove incriminating information.
For example, the CIA used its computers to delete data on the number of casualties of the Iraq War.
The FBI, in turn, removed images of the Guantanamo Bay prison and edited articles on various topics.

Sanger concluded that intelligence agencies either paid powerful individuals to promote their agendas or created their own cadres within the intelligence community to manipulate Wikipedia content to their advantage.

Source: slaynews.com

http://newsstreet.ru/blog/33108.html - zinc

Now all this has simply reached the terminal stage. Therefore, Wikipedia will inevitably be banned on the territory of the Russian Federation as soon as a more or less sane analogue is ready. Today, Wikipedia is a tool of information and psychological warfare, which is actively used by our external enemies.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8623121.html

Google Translator

Mr Sanger seems of the Right himself, which does not negate the issue of manipulation of Wiki. Of course he ignores the gang of right wing eager beavers who 'work' the site too. Rock trivia, fine, political facts, history, look to Marxists and not the phony 'other side' either unless the misdirection of culture war is your game.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 15, 2023 3:07 pm

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The Most Wall Street Journal Op-Ed In The History Of Wall Street Journal Op-Eds

The Wall Street Journal put an article out a few days back titled “In Defense of the Defense Industry” and subtitled “Populists of the right and left attack U.S. companies that make weapons. Who do they think protects us?”

Caitlin Johnstone
September 15, 2023

Democrats supported Trump’s most evil actions and opposed his best ones. They cheered when he bombed Syria and supported his cold war escalations against Russia, and looked the other way as he targeted civilians with sanctions and blockades in Yemen, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba. Meanwhile they screamed bloody murder whenever he talked about pulling troops out of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The two parties do not oppose each other, they egg each other on and push each other to be worse. It’s actually worse than a one-party system: it’s a system in which two parties not only align on all the most depraved agendas, but push each other to be more depraved than they otherwise would be.



The Wall Street Journal put an article out a few days back titled “In Defense of the Defense Industry” and subtitled “Populists of the right and left attack U.S. companies that make weapons. Who do they think protects us?” And it’s exactly what it sounds like: the author defending war profiteers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin from critics of the military industrial complex.

It’s easily the most Wall Street Journal thing that has ever happened. Definitely read it if you get a chance, there’s nothing I can say here that will do it justice.

(more, off topic)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/09 ... al-op-eds/
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 05, 2023 2:24 pm

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American State Propaganda: A Thought Experiment
In a tyrannical dictatorship, the press is operated by employees of the government. In a Free Democracy™️, the press is operated by employees of the oligarchs who operate the government.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 5, 2023

The New York Times has published another CIA press release disguised as news, this time aimed at whipping up paranoia toward anyone who criticizes the US proxy war in Ukraine.

The article is titled “Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say”. Its author, Julian E Barnes, has written so many New York Times articles with headlines ending in the words “Officials Say” that we can safely assume the primary reason for his continued employment in that paper is because empire managers within the US government have designated him someone who can be trusted to print what they want printed. This designation would make him a reliable supplier of “scoops” (read: regurgitations of unevidenced government claims) for The New York Times.

“American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies,” Barnes writes.

Of course the report never gets any more specific than that, and of course the “American officials” Barnes cites promote their unevidenced assertions under cover of complete anonymity.

“The American officials spoke on the condition their names not be reported so they could discuss sensitive intelligence,” Barnes writes.


The only named source cited in the article is a CIA veteran named Beth Sanner, who says that “Russia will not give up on disinformation campaigns,” but adds that “we don’t know what it is going to look like.”

And that’s really the whole article right there. Putin is going to be using his spy agencies to promote political parties and messages which support ending the practice of pouring billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, but nobody knows what that will look like exactly, so we all have to just be sort of generally distrustful toward anyone who doesn’t think it’s a swell idea to perpetuate a horrific war with potentially world-ending consequences, because they might be part of an unspecified Russian influence operation.

We saw a similar report from CNN a few weeks ago, in which the public was warned that Russia’s FSB is working to convert westerners into mouthpieces for Russian propaganda using methods so sneaky and subtle that those westerners wouldn’t even know it’s happening. Again, details were extremely vague and the only obvious response to the information provided is for everyone to just get really paranoid toward anyone saying anything that doesn’t support current US foreign policy toward Russia.

As a thought experiment, imagine what it would look like if the CIA or some other agency wanted to advance US information interests by making the public distrustful of any people or information which go against US strategic objectives. Try to imagine some of the things they might say or do.

Do you imagine it would look much different than what we’re seeing currently? Feeding trusted mainstream news reporters extremely vague stories about the Kremlin trying to deceive people into opposing the longstanding agendas of the US intelligence cartel, using online media and social subversion? Can you think of a more effective way to help shore up trust in your preferred narratives and sow distrust in narratives you do not prefer?

Here’s another one: imagine a state media outlet for a tyrannical dictatorship. Think about how its news stories are made, how it would often take orders from the government on what to report and what not to report, and how all its printing or broadcasting would always align with the information interests of that government.

Now ask yourself: in what material way is that reporting different from these CIA press releases we’re seeing from outlets like The New York Times and CNN? In both scenarios the government is feeding the media information it wants printed, and in both scenarios there will be consequences if the media don’t obey. In our hypothetical dictatorship those consequences might be more severe, but in our real life scenario the consequences are no less real.

If Mr Barnes had refused to work on this story, he would have lost his “scoop” and it would have been given to someone else, perhaps at a competing outlet. If Barnes ceased uncritically reporting unevidenced assertions from anonymous government officials, his prominence in the mainstream media would quickly fizzle, and his career would dry up. If The New York Times ceased functioning as a reliable outlet for the credulous printing of unevidenced government claims, then the government agencies who’ve been elevating the paper to prominence with their artificial “scoops” can take those hot stories to another competing outlet and let them get the subscriptions and the glory.

In both scenarios, the government is able to get its propaganda messaging printed as hard news reporting. In one scenario the reporter reports what the government wants because they work for the government, in the other scenario the reporter reports what the government wants because that’s the only way to have a career in media outlets that are owned and controlled by the plutocrats who benefit from the political status quo the government is premised upon. The only major difference is that in our hypothetical dictatorship, the public probably knows it’s being fed propaganda, and is therefore more likely to take what they’re being told with a grain of salt.

In a tyrannical dictatorship, the press is operated by employees of the government. In a Free Democracy™️, the press is operated by employees of the oligarchs who operate the government. In both cases you’re getting state propaganda, but in one of them the propaganda is disguised as objective news reporting.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10 ... xperiment/
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 06, 2023 1:56 pm

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The Top Ten Dumbest Things Empire Propagandists Ask Us To Believe
Here are the top ten dumbest things the propagandists of the US-centralized empire try to get us to swallow.

Caitlin Johnstone
October 6, 2023

When you live under an empire that’s held together by lies, you’ll be asked to believe a lot of intensely stupid bullshit. Here are the top ten dumbest things the propagandists of the US-centralized empire try to get us to swallow.

1. That the US war machine has been surrounding its top two rivals China and Russia with war machinery as an act of defense, rather than an extremely provocative act of aggression.

2. That the war in Ukraine simultaneously (A) was completely unprovoked, and (B) just coincidentally happens to massively advance US strategic interests and therefore should be funded as much as possible.

3. That, okay, all those other wars were based on lies and resulted in disaster, but that couldn’t possibly be the case for this current war.

4. That your country’s foreign policy is determined by your official elected government, even though the foreign policy remains the same regardless of who is in office.

5. That it is only by pure coincidence that your nation’s population remains in a perpetual 50–50 deadlock which prevents anyone’s votes from changing the status quo, and the status quo just happens to be perpetually frozen along lines that hugely advantage the rich and powerful.

6. That the only reason anyone could possibly be critical of the most dangerous impulses of the world’s most powerful and destructive government is if they are a secret agent working for the enemies of that government.

7. That the western empire which spent the last two decades murdering Muslims in the Middle East suddenly cares very deeply about the Muslims in China.

8. That Putin invaded Ukraine solely because he is evil and hates freedom, and that the empire is pouring weapons into Ukraine because it loves Ukrainians and wants to protect their freedom and democracy.

9. That foreign propaganda and influence operations are significantly manipulating the way westerners think and vote, but the plutocrats who fully control all the most influential platforms in the western world are not.

10. That we need to be worrying about tyrannical enemies in Beijing and Moscow, instead of tyrannical enemies a lot closer to home.


https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10 ... o-believe/
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 14, 2023 2:50 pm

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U.S. networks are committing journalistic malpractice by only posting reporters in Israel
Originally published: Mondoweiss on October 12, 2023 by Mondoweiss Editors (more by Mondoweiss) | (Posted Oct 14, 2023)

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As Israel struck Gaza in a massive bombing campaign, CNN today featured what appeared to be drone footage of Gaza City reduced to rubble, but the reporter on air was in Israel, Jeremy Diamond in Ashdod.

MSNBC was little different. Josh Lederman was in Tel Aviv. Ali Velshi was in Ashkelon. So was Raf Sanchez.

PBS News Hour last night featured both anchor Amna Nawaz and reporter Leila Molana-Allen—reporting from Tel Aviv.

BBC was similar. Correspondent Nick Beake reported from Tel Aviv. While Jeremy Bowen was in southern Israel. Asked by an anchor about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Bowen said, “It sounds like it’s absolutely dire.” But he said he was a few miles away.

Where are the network reporters in Gaza? There appear to be no English-language news network reporters, with the exception of Al Jazeera English. This reflects an unpardonable double standard for Palestinian and Israeli subjects. During the Iraq invasion in 2003, for instance, Peter Arnett was in Baghdad for NBC.

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ANDREA MITCHELL OF MSNBC INTERVIEWS MICHAEL OREN FORMER ISRAELI AMBASSADOR, OCT. 12, 2023.

What is certain from the network coverage is that the numbers of network reporters in Israel are contributing to a profound bias on the part of the networks, a focus on Israeli victims in the fighting. CNN and MSNBC’s coverage has been unapologetically Israel-centric.

Andrea Mitchell interviewed former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren on MSNBC. While Boris Sanchez of CNN interviewed an Israeli former official, Michael Milshtein, saying that the onslaught is not a “blind attack,” and Israel has “no interest in harming civilians.” CNN also interviewed an adviser to rightwing Israeli politicians, George Birnbaum, likening Hamas attacks to Nazis. CNBC interviewed Nada Zafrir, an Israeli high-tech executive, calling for the flattening of Gaza.

Dana Bash of MNSBC interviewed former Israeli ambassador Danny Danon and allowed him to claim that Israel does not target civilians. Anderson Cooper reported for CNN from Tel Aviv.

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ALI VELSHI OF MSNBC IN ASHKELON, ISRAEL, OCT. 12, 2023.

Today BBC and MSNBC both featured videos from inside a Gaza hospital–but MSNBC said the video came from “our team,” while BBC ran footage a surgeon took of himself, describing desperate conditions.

And those network reporters have focused on the reports of Israeli children killed by Hamas militants, more than they have on the report by the Gaza Ministry of Health that Israel has killed 447 children in Gaza.

It appears that several network reporters are sympathetic to the Palestinians in Gaza. Ali Velshi, for instance, explained that “For the moment nobody can get out of Gaza,” so the Israeli army’s practice of leafleting neighborhoods is meaningless.

But such reports would be far more compelling and factual if the reporters were inside Gaza. Right now the coverage feels like: Israelis are human beings, but Gazans are beneath human empathy.

This is because U.S. networks are not in Gaza to tell the full story.

https://mronline.org/2023/10/14/u-s-net ... in-israel/
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 16, 2023 2:25 pm

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Propaganda Blitz: How mainstream media is pushing fake Palestine stories
By Alan MacLeod (Posted Oct 16, 2023)

Originally published: MintPress News on October 13, 2023 (more by MintPress News) |

After Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, IDF forces responded with airstrikes, leveling Gazan buildings. The violence so far has claimed the lives of more than 2,500 people. Western media, however, show far more interest and have much greater sympathy with Israeli dead than Palestinian ones and have played their usual role as unofficial spokespersons for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS, ZERO EVIDENCE
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Media across the western world were quick to run headlines stirring outrage over the unsubstantiated claims.
One case in point is the claim that, during their incursion into southern Israel, Hamas fighters stopped to round up, kill and mutilate 40 Israeli babies, beheading them and leaving their bodies behind.

The extraordinary assertion was originally reported by the Israeli channel i24 News, which based it on anonymous Israeli military sources. Despite offering no proof whatsoever, this highly inflammatory claim about an enemy made by an active participant in a conflict was picked up and repeated across the world by a host of media (e.g., in the United States by Fox News, CNN, MSN, Business Insider, and The New York Post).

Meanwhile, the front pages of the United Kingdom’s largest newspapers were festooned with the story, the press outraged at the atrocity and inviting their readers to feel the same way.

Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence, and a story like this should have been met with serious skepticism, given who was making the claim. The first question any reporter should have asked was, “Where is the evidence?” Given multiple opportunities to stand by it, the IDF continually distanced itself from the claims. Nevertheless, the story was simply too useful not to publish.

The decapitated baby narrative was so popular that even President Biden referenced it, claiming to have seen “confirmed” images of Hamas killing children. This claim, however, was hastily retracted by his handlers at the White House, who noted that Biden was simply referencing the i24 News report.

The story looked even more like a piece of cheap propaganda after it was revealed that the key source for the claim was Israeli soldier David Ben Zion, an extremist settler who had incited race riots against Palestinians earlier this year, describing them as “animals” with no heart who needs to be “wiped out.”

Manipulating the U.S. public into supporting the war by feeding them atrocity propaganda about mutilating babies has a long history. In 1990, for instance, a girl purporting to be a local nurse was brought before Congress, where she testified that Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein’s men had ripped hundreds of Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and left them to die. The story helped whip the American public up into a pro-war fervor. It was later revealed that it was a complete hoax dreamed up by a public relations firm.

THE MURDERED GIRL WHO CAME BACK TO LIFE
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David Ben Zion in a video from a settlement construction site (left) and hours after he told i24 the IDF had found babies beheaded by Hamas (right). (Photo: The GrayZone)
Another piece of blatantly fake news is the case of Shani Louk. Louk attended the Supernova Festival, ambushed by Hamas. It was widely reported that Hamas murdered her (e.g., Daily Mail, Marca, Yahoo! News, TMZ, Business Insider), stripped her, and paraded her naked body trophy-like through the streets on the back of a truck. Louk’s case incited global anger and calls for an overwhelming Israeli military response.

There was only one problem: Louk was later confirmed to be alive and in hospital, a fact that suggests the videos of her on the back of a truck were actually images of people saving her life by taking her to seek medical assistance.

Few of the outlets irresponsibly publishing these wildly incendiary stories have printed apologies or even retractions. The Los Angeles Times was one exception: after publishing a report claiming that Palestinians had raped Israeli civilians, it later informed readers that “such reports have not been substantiated.”

LIONIZING ISRAEL, DEHUMANIZING PALESTINIANS
Few readers, however, see these retractions. Instead, they are left with visceral feelings of anger and disgust towards Hamas, priming them to support Western military action against Palestine or the wider region.

In case their audiences did not get the message, op-eds and editorials in major newspapers hammered home this idea. The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed entitled “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas”, which insisted to readers that “Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil, depraved culture that resides next to it.” Thus, the outlet implicitly gave Israel a free pass to carry out whatever war crimes it wished on the civilian population, whether that is using banned chemical weapons, cutting off electricity and water, or targeting ambulances or United Nations officials.
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The BBC told its readers that Israelis have been “killed” while people in Gaza merely “died,” removing any agency from its perpetrators and almost suggesting their deaths were natural.
The National Review’s editorial board was of a similar mind, stating that “Israel needs a long leash to destroy Hamas.” This long leash, they explained, meant giving Israel far more time to carry out the destruction of Gaza. Western leaders would have to refrain from criticizing Israel or calling for calm and peace.

The message was clear: international unity was paramount at this time. Mere trifles such as war crimes must be overlooked. And while Israel and its people were treated with special sympathy (e.g., Washington Post), the other side was written off as bloodthirsty radicals. While the phrase “Palestinian terrorists” could be found across the media spectrum (e.g., Fox News, New York Post, New York Times), its opposite, “Israeli terrorists” was completely absent from corporate media. This, despite casualties on the Palestinian side outnumbering Israelis.

Underlining the fact that Israeli lives are deemed more important is the way in which deaths from each side are reported. The BBC, for example, told its readers that Israelis have been “killed” while people in Gaza merely “died,” removing any agency from its perpetrators and almost suggesting their deaths were natural.

CONTEXT-FREE VIOLENCE
Missing from most of the reporting was the basic factual background of the attack. Few articles mentioned that Israel was built upon an existing Palestinian state, and that most of the inhabitants of Gaza are descended from refugees ethnically cleansed from southern Israel in order to make way for a Jewish state. Also left unmentioned was that Israel controls almost every aspect of Gazan’s life. This includes deciding who can enter or leave the densely populated strip and limiting the import of food, medicine and other crucial goods. Aid groups have called Gaza “the world’s largest open-air prison.” The United Nations has declared the conditions in Gaza to be so bad as to be unlivable.

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One of the principal reasons that this crucial context is not given is that it could influence Western audiences into sympathizing with Palestinians or supporting Palestinian liberation. Giant media corporations are largely owned by wealthy oligarchs or by transnational corporations, both of whom have a stake in preserving the status quo and neither of whom wish to see national liberation movements succeed.

Some media outlets make this explicit. Axel Springer—the enormous German broadcaster that owns Politico—requires its employees to sign its mission statement endorsing “the trans-Atlantic alliance and Israel” and has told any staff members that support Palestine to leave their jobs.

Other outlets are slightly less overt but nonetheless have Israel red lines that employees cannot cross. CNN fired anchor Marc Lamont Hill for calling for a free Palestine. Katie Halper was fired from The Hill for (accurately) calling Israel an Apartheid state. The Associated Press dismissed Emily Wilder after it became known that she had been a pro-Palestine activist during her college years. And The Guardian sacked Nathan J. Robinson after he made a joke mocking U.S. military aid to Israel. These cases serve as examples to the rest of the journalistic world. The message is that one cannot criticize the Israeli government’s violent apartheid system or show solidarity for Palestine without risking losing their livelihoods.

Ultimately, then, corporate media play a key role in maintaining the occupation by manipulating public opinion. If the American people were aware of the history and the reality of Israel/Palestine, the situation would be untenable. For those wishing to maintain the unequal state of affairs whereby an apartheid government expels or imprisons its indigenous population, the pen is as important as the sword.

https://mronline.org/2023/10/16/propaga ... e-stories/

*******

Cancel Culture Turned On One Of Its Own After MSNBC Reportedly Suspended Mehdi Hasan’s Show

ANDREW KORYBKO
OCT 15, 2023

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He naively thought that his “woke” cult’s elite members sincerely shared their foot soldiers’ views about Palestine and never could have countenanced that they were just exploiting that cause’s “decolonization” rhetoric to facilitate their goal of reshaping Western civilization. That’s why he continued criticizing Israel’s killing of civilians without worrying about his job, only to suddenly find out that his show has reportedly been de facto suspended as a result.

Semafor’s report about the internal disputes that have erupted within MSNBC over the latest Israeli-Hamas war revealed that Mehdi Hasan and two other Muslim anchors were quietly taken out of the anchor’s chair and had their programs de facto suspended. The company denied these claims and said that they’re simply prioritizing coverage of the conflict above all else, but the conspicuous absence of those three’s shows nevertheless extended credence to their report and sparked an outcry among some.

For however strongly readers might feel about freedom of speech in America, and particularly the right for workers to publicly share views on sensitive matters that contradict their employer’s without fear of punishment, it’s ironic that Hasan of all people just had his show suspended. He’s a hardcore liberal-globalist who hitherto marched in lockstep with this radical movement’s Democrat proxies on Russia, Trump, COVID lockdowns, and all other related matters, only to now have his allies turn against him.

Many people are therefore experiencing intense schadenfreude at seeing him get canceled after he so aggressively demanded the canceling of his political opponents over the years, especially after the January 6th incident. Hasan apparently thought that the same tactics that he supported against others would never be used against him since he calculated that his role as this cult’s token Muslim meant that his employers would never dare cancel him lest they discredit their cause in fellow believers’ eyes.

To add another layer of irony to it all, many of the “woke” happen to be anti-Zionists just like he appears to be too, so he probably thought he could get away with criticizing Israel’s killing of civilians on social media. His mistakes were that he overvalued his importance to his “woke” employers, which he thought made him untouchable, and actually believed that they sincerely supported Palestine. The first is attributable to arrogance while the second is the result of naivete.

A cursory glance at his shows and social media postings confirms the first-mentioned aspect of his personality so there’s nothing more to add to that part of his mistake, but some further insight can be shared about the second since it’s relevant to every member of that radical movement. “Woke” cultists struggle with cognitive dissonance due to their ideology’s inherent double standards, but they work past it since they’re convinced that there’s some order to this chaos and that it’s all for the “greater good”.

Although they all know that tactics like cancel culture are ultimately about power and not accountability and so-called safety like they claim, each of them still sincerely believes in the cause that they’re canceling their opponents for and assumes that their comrades do too. If this false perception wasn’t shared by the majority of their radical movement, then it wouldn’t have ever become as powerful as it has since there’d be a dearth of foot soldiers to fight in its name on social media and in the streets.

The ”woke” elite are a notable exception to the aforesaid observation as proven by their hatred of the Second Amendment and border security despite hiring private security to protect themselves and living in gated communities respectively among other examples. For whatever reason, Hasan never wised up to this “politically incorrect” fact despite being one of the world’s most famous Muslim members of that selfsame elite, hence why he kept criticizing Israel’s killing of civilians without worrying about his job.

What he never realized was that the diverse “woke” elite are actually Zionists who only allow their cultists to virtue signal support for the Palestinian cause since they weaponize related “decolonization” rhetoric in the West as part of their “revolutionary” goal to reshape that civilization. Such concepts are exploited to justify acts of racially motivated violence by their BLM foot soldiers and the large-scale import of civilizationally dissimilar immigrants in order to maximally divide-and-rule the masses.

To be absolutely clear, the “woke” elite’s Zionist sympathies have nothing to do with their goal of reshaping Western civilization, and this class as a whole is very diverse despite certain identity groups being overrepresented relative to their size in the general population. This is crucial to remember since some claim that Judaism is responsible for all the troubles associated with that radical movement, which is nothing but an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that discredits legitimate criticism of this cult’s policies.

In fact, it was none other than Biden himself who said that he’s “a Zionist in my heart” and “you need not be a Jew to be Zionist”. Anyone who speculates that “the Jews” were behind MSNBC’s de facto suspension of Hasan’s program is therefore a bigot who’s taking advantage of this scandal to push their dirty agenda. The “woke” elite’s Zionist sympathies are probably attributable to them associating this cause with the power that they themselves lust after, but it has nothing to do with their other policies.

After all, the self-professed Zionists in Israel favor civilians carrying firearms for self-defense, fully support their country’s border walls around Palestine, and are fervently against BLM-like policies that pit ethnic minorities against the minority, thus making them the exact opposite of the “woke” elite. These Zionists also believe that George Soros, who’s the patron saint of liberal-globalism and practically worshipped by the “woke” masses, is an infamous anti-Semite despite he himself being Jewish.

In sum, Judaism isn’t responsible for all the troubles associated with “wokeism”, and actual self-professed Zionists in Israel ironically stand for the exact opposite of what that radical movement’s Zionist-sympathizing elite do with regards to the right to bear arms and the need for border walls. This selfsame elite’s support for Zionism is therefore hypocritical, just like their private positions towards those two previously mentioned subjects, which makes this counterintuitively logical in its own way.

All of this is relevant with respect to Hasan since he naively thought that his cult’s elite members sincerely shared their foot soldiers’ views about Palestine and never could have countenanced that they were just exploiting that cause’s “decolonization” rhetoric to facilitate their goal of reshaping Western civilization. That’s why he continued criticizing Israel’s killing of civilians without worrying about his job, only to suddenly find out that his show has reportedly been de facto suspended as a result.

It’s incredibly ironic that one of the world’s most well-known and arguably insufferable proponents of cancel culture was just canceled, but it’s unlikely that he’ll defect from “wokeism” since few ever do, especially those of his professional caliber. He just has to be told by trusted figures above him in the movement that this was required in pursuit of the “greater good” and that he’d be impeding that same goal if he dares to protest what just happened. In other words, “trust the plan”, as QAnon cultists say.

Likewise, none of his fellow cultists below him will defect after his show’s de facto suspension either since they trust the wisdom of their elite and have thus already convinced themselves that this advances the “greater good” (whatever they imagine it as being) even if they don’t understand how. All that’s important to them is that powerful people are dealing with problems as they emerge, even if they come from one of their cult’s top propagandists, which gives them a sense of comfort in this chaotic world.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/cancel-c ... one-of-its
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 18, 2023 2:30 pm

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Mass Media Reporters Aren’t Buying Israel’s Hospital Bombing Story

“But what I’d like to quickly document as things unfold is the highly unusual number of mass media reporters I’ve been seeing who haven’t hesitated to point to Israel as the probable culprit.”

Caitlin Johnstone
October 18, 2023

A huge blast in Gaza has destroyed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, killing hundreds of people. The exact death toll is still unknown.

Details of who is responsible for the explosion are being hotly debated by all parties, and this is still a developing story with a lot of details yet to be revealed. But what I’d like to quickly document as things unfold is the highly unusual number of mass media reporters I’ve been seeing who haven’t hesitated to point to Israel as the probable culprit.

After noting that Israel is blaming the blast on a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), MSNBC foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez quickly pointed out that PIJ rockets don’t tend to do that kind of damage, but Israeli missiles do. He also noted that Israel has an extensive history of lying about this sort of thing.


“The Israeli military at this point is not providing any evidence to back up its claims that this was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket; they are citing intelligence that they have not yet made public,” Sanchez said. “We should also say that this kind of death toll is not what you normally associate with Palestinian rockets. These rockets are dangerous, they are deadly, they do not tend to kill hundreds of people in a single strike in the way that Israeli high explosives — especially these bunker buster bombs that are used to target these Hamas tunnels under Gaza City — do have the potential to kill hundreds of people.”

“And we should say finally that there are instances in the past where the Israeli military has said things in the immediate aftermath of an incident that have turned out not to be true in the long run,” Sanchez added. “And the one example I’ll give you is that when the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military initially said that she was killed by Palestinian gunmen, and it was only months and months later that they admitted that it was likely an Israeli soldier who fired the fatal shot.”

CNN’s Clarissa Ward said essentially the same thing.

“I will say, just based on seeing these rocket attacks many times over the years, that they don’t usually have an impact like that in terms of the size of the blast, in terms of the scale of the death toll and the scale of the damage,” Ward said. “It’s also not the first time, it’s important to add, that we have seen the IDF categorically deny something before being forced to kind of do an about-face after an extensive investigation.”


BBC foreign correspondent Jon Donnison gave basically the same opinion.

“It’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli air strike, or several air strikes,” Donnison said from Jerusalem. “Because, you know, when we’ve seen rockets being fired out of Gaza, we never see explosions of that scale. We might see half a dozen, maybe a few more people being killed in such rocket attacks, but we’ve never seen anything on the scale of the sort of explosion on the video I was watching earlier.”


That’s three mass media reporters that I’ve seen just in my random information-gathering meanderings — not on their personal social media accounts, but live on air.

It’s highly unusual to see this degree of skepticism in the western press right off the bat when it goes against the information interests of Israel specifically or the US power alliance more generally. Typically we’ve been seeing the media uncritically report unverified claims about Palestinian militants while expressing rigorous skepticism solely toward any information which might benefit the Palestinian resistance, so there’s clearly something about this particular story which makes mass media reporters remarkably reluctant to push the Israeli narrative.

Maybe they’re getting information in their group chats which has caused them to keep Israel’s claims about the hospital bombing at arm’s length, or maybe they’re just looking at the facts and deciding this narrative is too flimsy to get behind. If it looks like Israel’s version of events will fall apart after investigation, they’re not going to want to stake their reputation and their pride on pushing it with their usual gusto during an Israeli military operation that is facing unusually intense scrutiny from the entire world.

Israel does after all have an extensive history of attacking hospitals and healthcare facilities, including in this current operation in Gaza, including apparently bombing this exact same hospital just a few days ago. ReliefWeb, which is run by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, recently published a report on the numerous Israeli strikes that have hit hospitals, ambulances and healthcare workers between October 12 and October 15, and listed among the hospitals hit is the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City — the same hospital that was just destroyed a few days later.

Citing “Al Jazeera V and Personal Communication,” ReliefWeb reports the following:

“14 October 2023: In Gaza city city and governorate, Ahli Arab Hospital was hit by Israeli airstrikes, partially damaging two floors and damaging the ultrasound and mammography room. Four people were injured.”


It’s also probably worth noting that according to the World Health Organization this hospital was one of the twenty hospitals which the IDF had ordered to evacuate because of the aggressions it was planning to inflict on that part of Gaza.

Again, information is still coming in and this developing story could possibly wind up looking very different from what it looks like right now. But if I was an Israel apologist, I don’t think I’d find the current winds in the mass media very encouraging.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10 ... ing-story/

Perhaps the cynical bastard propagandists are wrong, perhaps some lies are too big.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 19, 2023 4:16 pm

Have you seen this on the MSM?

Protesters Storm US Capitol, Demand Israel Cease-Fire

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Up to 10,000 people marched in front of the U.S. Capitol. Oct. 18, 2023. | Photo: X/@Bballshoeguide

Published 18 October 2023

The demonstration was called by Jewish Voice for Peace, which condemned "the Israeli government's ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."


On Wednesday, demonstrators in defense of the Palestinian people staged a sit-in protest at the U.S. Capitol demanding a cease-fire in Gaza by Israeli occupation forces.

Hundreds of demonstrators took part in the mass protests. The activists broke away from a larger demonstration on the National Mall and sat on the floor of the House of Representatives office building.

They carried banners reading "cease fire," "let Gaza live," and "not in our name," in decrying the support of the U.S. government to Israel. President Joe Biden has pledged unconditional support for Israeli forces in the ongoing conflict, which has so far left more than 3,000 Palestinians dead and thousands more injured.

Several protesters who refused the order to leave the building were reportedly arrested. According to the Capitol Police, some 300 people were detained.

Security forces forced all protesters to leave the Cannon House and closed the entrances to the government building. The surrounding streets were also fenced off.


Protesters have continued to march in the vicinity of Cannon House, and incidents of clashes between protesters and security forces have been reported as demonstrators attempted to cross the fence surrounding the government building.

The demonstration was called by Jewish Voice for Peace, which condemns "the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Israeli government."

According to the group, more than 350 people, including 24 rabbis, participated in the protests and up to 10,000 people marched in front of the U.S. Capitol.

Wednesday marks 12 days of constant Israeli bombardment against Gaza, following an escalation that began on October 7. The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) launched a large-scale attack on irregular Jewish settler settlements around Gaza. The group said it was acting in the face of repeated Israeli aggression against the people of Palestine.

Israel's retaliatory response has left nearly 3,500 dead and more than 12,000 injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Pro ... -0015.html

I have not heard a peep about this on national propaganda radio. There is zero mention of this on the CNN website.

This is how bad it is. If it ain't on TV it ain't real.

It is impossible for me to express my contempt for the presstitutes.

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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