Censorship, fake news, perception management

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 04, 2022 1:49 pm

ACTION ALERT: NBC Off by 18 Years on US’s Last Use of Cluster Bombs
OLIVIA RIGGIO
NBC: Ukraine's Major Cities Under Siege
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NBC Nightly News (2/28/22) depicts cluster bombs dropped by Russia on Ukraine, which it falsely claimed have not been used by the United States since 1991.
NBC Nightly News (2/28/22) falsely reported that the United States has not used cluster bombs since 1991—when it fact the US has employed the weapons as recently at 2009, and has even more recently sold them to allied countries that have dropped them.

Cluster bombs are munitions that include numerous small explosive devices that land separately; the bomblets frequently explode long after they land, with devastating effects on civilians.

In the report, NBC correspondent Matt Bradley described possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, and noted that Russia appears to be using cluster bombs there. After quoting Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch (“We think that cluster munitions should never be used at all”), Bradley added:

They’re banned by 110 countries, though not by Russia or the US. Still, the US hasn’t used them since the first Gulf War, over 30 years ago. They’re used by the Russians in Ukraine, another sign of this war’s growing savagery.

This claim is inaccurate. Since the 1990–91 Gulf War, the US has dropped cluster bombs on Bosnia (1995), Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001–02) and Iraq (2003), according to the Landmine & Cluster Munition Monitor. The last reported US use of cluster munitions was against Yemen in 2009. (Before the Gulf War, the US used cluster bombs in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Grenada, Lebanon, Libya and Iran.)

Moreover, the US has refused to join the 123 countries that have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions that bans the use, production, transfer or stockpiling of these weapons. In 2017, the Trump administration canceled a plan to end the US military’s use of most cluster munitions, saying they are a “vital military capability” (Washington Post, 11/30/17). In 2019, the US abstained from a UN vote endorsing the ban.

The US military was buying cluster bombs until 2007, and US armsmakers were building them for foreign sale as late as 2016. According to a 2015 Human Rights Watch report (5/3/15), credible evidence indicated that the Saudi-led coalition used US-made and -supplied cluster munitions in airstrikes against Houthi forces in Yemen.
FAIR Action Alert: NYT Gives a False Pass to US on Cluster Bomb Sales
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The New York Times (9/3/15) corrected the record on US cluster bomb sales in response to this 2015 FAIR Action Alert (9/3/15).
In 2015, following a FAIR Action Alert (9/3/15), the New York Times corrected a report that inaccurately claimed that the US was following the provisions of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, despite manufacturing and selling them.

Because these weapons release smaller bombs, they can’t be fired precisely and put civilians at a devastating risk. Additionally, when the smaller bomblets don’t detonate, they can pose postwar risk to civilians as de facto landmines. A 2003 Human Rights Watch report (3/03) estimated 14% of these bomblets are “duds” that put civilians at a grave risk.

Leftover bombs the US dropped during the Vietnam War in Laos are still being removed by humanitarian groups. The HALO Trust reports that about 20,000 people—40% of them children—have been killed or injured by dormant cluster bombs or other unexploded items since the war ended.

NBC described Russia’s use of these bombs as “savagery”—a word corporate media rarely if ever applied to the US’s use of these same weapons. In 2003, US TV news did no in-depth reporting on the US’s use of cluster bombs during the Iraq War (FAIR.org, 5/6/03). In 2011, FAIR (4/16/11) criticized the New York Times (4/15/11) for describing cluster bombs used by Libya’s Col. Moammar Gadhafi as “indiscriminate weapons” that “place civilians at grave risk,” while at the same time falsely claiming that the US only used them “in battlefield situations.”

ACTION ALERT:
Please tell NBC to correct its misstatement that the US hasn’t used cluster bombs since 1991.

CONTACT:
You can send messages to NBC Nightly News at nightly@nbcuni.com (or via Twitter: @NBCNightlyNews).

https://fair.org/home/action-alert-nbc- ... ter-bombs/
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 05, 2022 3:22 pm

TIMELINE OF A HOT GUN

THE ANTI-RUSSIAN ESCALATION ON THE INTERNET OF TECHNOLOGICAL MULTINATIONALS
4 Mar 2022 , 5:44 pm .

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The war in networks during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has a multiplatform approach (Photo: Business Recorder)

The usual misinformation and much more circulates through social media. The war on networks during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has a multiplatform approach: censorship, cyber attacks, political statements, viralization campaigns, cyber troops, memes... They are all that and a hot gun that allows military systems to be prolonged before the eyes of the world. and intelligence of the parties in conflict, although here the coalition of technological multinationals, the United States government and NATO has the advantage.

In this blog we follow day by day the scattered and often conveniently buried data of the ferocious war that has been unleashed to impose a single account of the events.

FEBRUARY 23, 2022

They filter from the United States, through an open source intelligence investigator, the combinations of satellite radar images and traffic jam data from Google Maps on the border with Ukraine. The alert is given that the Russian military operation is underway. The complaint prevents the element of surprise.

"According to @googlemaps , there is a 'traffic jam' at 3:15am on the road from Belgorod, Russia, to the Ukrainian border. It starts *exactly* where we saw a Russian formation of armor and IFVAPC yesterday. Anyone is on the move," says user Jeffrey Lewis .

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Meta has also temporarily removed the ability to view and search the friend lists of users in Ukraine. In addition, it has established a special operations center staffed by experts - including native Russians and Ukrainians - "who monitor the platform 24 hours a day."

FEBRUARY 25

Cyber ​​attacks allegedly originating from Russia affect Ukrainian banks and institutions, such as the Parliament and the Foreign Ministry. According to the Ukrainian government, the pirates did not even hide that they came from Russia. The main cyberattacks were classified as "denial of service" (DDoS) attacks.

A group of volunteers organized by the Ukrainian government, calling itself the IT Army of Ukraine , has more than 230 thousand followers on its Telegram channel and has been attacking Russian targets, such as Russian banks and cryptocurrency exchanges. According to Wired , Ukraine has recruited thousands of cybersecurity professionals. Hacktivists, including hacking group Anonymous, have claimed DDoS attacks against Russian targets and seized data from Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr.

FEBRUARY 25, 2022

The war benefits from the high penetration of encryption technologies and applications to navigate without connection to the local network. Communications apps lead the ranking of both the Play Store and the App Store in Ukraine, according to data from Apptopia.

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"Applications that are rising to the top of the charts in Ukraine are walkie-talkies, VoIP (to make voice calls over the Internet), offline browsing, VPN and radio communications" Apptopia spokesman Adam Blacker tweeted . Some of these alternatives allow offline communication through radio signals or via bluetooth.

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26 OF FEBRUARY

Russia partially restricted access to Facebook after accusing the technology company of censoring its media. Meta's head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, tweeted another version of the story: "Yesterday, Russian authorities ordered us to stop independent fact-checking and labeling of content posted on Facebook by four Russian state media organizations. We refused. As a result, they have announced that they will restrict the use of our services."

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26 OF FEBRUARY

NATO spokesmen denounced Russia for allegedly developing a malware (or malicious program) called "wiper", which manages to destroy the data of different systems. "What it does is it removes the boot record from devices. That means they can't boot up afterwards; you have to start completely from scratch and reinstall everything. This takes even more time to get back to full operational capacity." said Richard Smith, director of the Institute of Cyber ​​Technology at the University of Montfort, in the United Kingdom. Cyber ​​security experts from ESET and Symantec companies named this virus "HermeticWiper", claiming that it had been installed on hundreds of computers in the country. The malware was created on December 28, 2021, which implies,, that the attack may have been planned since then.

26 OF FEBRUARY

The Starlink satellite Internet service was activated in Ukraine. Elon Musk announced that more terminals were on the way.

Starlink is a constellation of internet satellites that aims to blanket the planet with high-speed broadband. The idea calls for a swarm of satellites operating in low Earth orbit -- about 340 miles up, in SpaceX's case -- to provide continuous coverage. They don't work without ground terminals.

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FEBRUARY 27
John Spencer, head of Urban Warfare Studies at the US Military Academy's Institute of Modern Warfare, tweets a guide on how "civilian resistance" could strike fear into Russians and "successfully" take on a regular army .

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Encourages using Molotov cocktails against tanks, erecting barricades and using weapons:

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Ukrainian users translated the thread almost immediately and shared it via social media. The tweet was viewed more than 10 million times, according to The Washington Post . Users tell Spencer, "This seems like a good way to make sure the city is leveled with huge civilian casualties."

FEBRUARY 27

Twitter has banned more than a dozen accounts linked to an alleged Russian operation that pushes links to propaganda sites. "On February 27, we permanently suspended over a dozen accounts and blocked several link exchanges in violation of our spam and platform handling policy. Our investigation is ongoing, however our initial findings indicate that the accounts and The links originated from Russia and were attempting to disrupt the public conversation about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, " a Twitter spokesperson told NBC .

FEBRUARY 28TH

The Ukrainian deputy prime minister asked “all major cryptocurrency exchanges to block addresses of Russian users.” DMarket, a platform for trading NFT and metaverse items, froze the accounts of users from Russia and Belarus. Mykhailo Fedorov has urged many other companies - such as Visa, Mastercard, Viber and Paypal - to stop offering some of their services in Russia.

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FEBRUARY 28TH
Twitter begins to add labels to tweets that share links to media websites and journalists allegedly affiliated with the Russian state, which provokes international rejection and accusations of censorship against the platform. It marks the profiles of journalists who work for news media of Russian origin, such as Sputnik or Russia Today, but also of independent journalists (freelance) and technical personnel who have provided services through companies on a subcontracted basis for Russian companies.

The company has also activated an alert both in search and in the timeline that takes users to a Twitter moment with security and digital protection resources in English, Ukrainian and Russian. It is announced by Yoel Roth , Head of Integrity for the platform.

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FEBRUARY 28TH

Google disables Google Maps real-time traffic data in Ukraine ("because it could reveal the location of civilians to the Russian Army"). Also, it blocks the monetization of media allegedly financed by the Russian government on its platforms and claims "to be blocking ads related to this crisis that seek to take advantage of the situation," Reuters reports .

FEBRUARY 28TH
Meta and Tik-Tok announce the blocking of Russia Today and Sputnik in the European Union following a request made by the community club. "We have received requests from various governments and the EU for us to take further action in relation to Russian state-controlled media, " Meta Vice President Nick Cregg said on Twitter .

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The European Union also announces that it will ban Russia Today and Sputnik:

"The state-owned companies Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin's war, and see the division in our union," EU President Ursula von der Leyen said . "We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe."

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for the Internal Market, and Vera Jourova, Commissioner for Values ​​and Transparency, spoke to Google executives, urging them to step up their efforts against Russian propaganda .

FEBRUARY 28TH
Facebook and Twitter announce that they have taken down two anti-Ukrainian "covert influence operations" over the weekend, one linked to Russia and one with connections to Belarus.

A Facebook spokesperson said Russia used computer-generated faces to bolster the credibility of fake columnists on various platforms, including Instagram.

FEBRUARY 28TH
Ivy Choi, a spokesperson for YouTube, confirms that the company has removed a number of channels linked to an alleged Russian influence operation, even though the channels have very low numbers of subscribers.

MARCH 1
The ghost of Kiev "The ghost of Kyiv", the legend of the Ukrainian pilot who shot down 6 Russian planes, was spread by the official networks of the Ukrainian government and its Ministry of Defense with images of a video game. The video belongs to the DCS game . The company that owns the video game asked on their networks not to use it to simulate war actions.

Facebook users followed live, for more than 6 hours, alleged Russian bombings in Ukrainian towns that was actually the ArmA3 video game. More than 178 thousand people connected simultaneously.

"Contrary to the decisions of the big social media corporations, who decided to block Russian media and personal accounts from objectively reporting on the situation in Ukraine, these fake videos are circulating and have gone viral on these big platforms, which apparently took part in this war in favor of the West," affirms Misión Verdad .

MARCH 1
Apple has stopped all sales of its products in Russia, while the Apple Pay payment platform as well as other services have also been "limited". In a statement , the company noted that last week both Russia Today and Sputnik were removed from the App Store for download and live traffic and incidents on Apple Maps in Ukraine were disabled "as a safety and precautionary measure for users". Ukrainian citizens". Products were also stopped being exported to Russia.

MARCH 1
North American media praise the use of social platforms against Russia and the prowess of the Ukrainians on the digital stage. A local Telegram channel urged its 400,000 subscribers to "carefully film" and share videos of passing Russian troops so Ukrainian fighters can hunt them down.

Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs has used the Internet to foment dissent in Russia, posting photos and videos of allegedly killed or captured Russian soldiers on the website https://200rf.com/ .

MARCH 1
Ukrainian authorities have asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known by its acronym ICANN, to disconnect Russia from the Internet. In addition to Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, it has been requested by Andrii Nabok , Ukraine's representative at ICANN. The idea is to disable the .ru and .РФ TLDs used in Russia, but also to revoke the SSL certificates that help ensure that those websites are secure.

Fedorov went further and asked another body, the RIPE NCC, which is responsible for validating domain registration in much of the world, to disable Russia's ability to use the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of its domains. This is unprecedented, and is very different from a country voluntarily disconnecting itself from the internet as Russia actually did in late 2019.

MARCH 2
Few internet outages are reported in Ukraine. Outages are being recorded at provider Kyivstar, which is reporting approximately 500 base antennas disabled due to infrastructure and power damage, according to NetBlocks .

MARCH 3RD
Maldita.es publishes 66 hoaxes and disinformation about Russia and Ukraine that have circulated on the networks since the early hours of February 24. However, many of them are not current nor have they been recorded in these Eastern European countries.

MARCH 3RD
The Storyful agency has been hired to monitor TikTok videos about the war and in less than a week it has deleted more than 300 contents. The Times of London quotes Darren Davidson, editor-in-chief of Storyful, a social media intelligence agency owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Times, as saying.

Focusing on video fact-checking, Davidson's team of 50 journalists analyzes propaganda, footage from past conflicts, and video game footage to separate fakes from the real thing.

MARCH 3RD
Spanish journalist @PabVis was arrested in Rzeszow near the Ukrainian border and has now been detained for more than 72 hours by the Internal Security Agency (ABW) without any credible explanation. He has not had access to his lawyer, which is a denial of his fundamental rights.

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"In 2015, the journalist @PabVis , now imprisoned in Poland accused of espionage, was included in a list of 'pro-Russians' prepared by @marta_ter and @nicolasdepedro for the Open Society Foundation. They pointed him out and now he is detained" , says Helena Villar on Twitter .

MARCH 3RD
Spanish Internet users denounce RTVE on networks for publishing a report entitled "Support in schools for Ukrainian children" in which the flag of Ukrainian ultranationalism appears. The insignia was created by Nazi Stepan Bandera.

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MARCH 4
Roskomnadzor, the Service for Supervision of Telecommunications, Information Technologies and Mass Media of Russia has decided to block access to the Facebook social network throughout the country.

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In Russia, the two chambers of Parliament approved laws that will sanction both "disinformation" and support for international sanctions against Russia. Moscow has also blocked its citizens' access to several Western media outlets, including Britain's BBC and Germany's Deutsche Welle.

"It is possible that from literally tomorrow (Saturday, February 5) the regulations will punish, and very severely, those who lied and made statements that have discredited our armed forces," warned Viacheslav Volodin, president of the State Duma, according to a report. statement from the lower house. The West condemns censorship.

(To be continue)

Originally published in Dominio Cuba on March 3, 2022.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... cnologicas

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

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Sun Mar 06, 2022 12:03 am

Racism, hypocrisy, and lies: What to watch out for in Western media coverage of Ukraine

Can English-language news outlets change largely anti-war public opinion by beating the drums of war between two nuclear powers?

March 03, 2022 by Natalia Marques

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Journalist questions US President Joe Biden after Russia escalates military conflict, asking, “If sanctions cannot stop President Putin, what penalty can?”

Before the Russian military escalation in Ukraine, the people of NATO countries felt apprehensive at best about the possibility of military involvement of their own governments in the conflict. Only a quarter of the people of the United States, the most well-armed of the NATO countries, supported the US playing a major role in Ukraine, according to a poll taken before the Russian military escalation. Results from a poll referenced in the Spectator on February 17 show that a plurality of people in the United Kingdom would oppose troops being deployed if Russia were to invade Ukraine. For Europeans, a poll from early February shows that while most believe NATO should defend Ukraine from a Russian invasion, most believe such a defense is not worthwhile if there is a threat of Russian military action.

These polls were taken before the Russian government escalated the military conflict in Ukraine. It is unclear what the people living in NATO countries support as of now. However, the numbers are apparent. There was no broad base of support for NATO military action before the Russian escalation.

All the same, English-language news media seems to be doing it’s level best to create this broad support, or at the very least, to distract from the NATO aggression which led to this conflict. Through a mixture of racist tropes, censorship, and blatant falsehoods, the people of NATO countries, and especially in the highly militarized United States, are provided with a steady stream of pro-war rhetoric.

Below is a round-up of some of the most notable examples.

1. Beating the drums of war

From the very start of the conflict, on February 24, after President Joe Biden announced comprehensive sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, the press lined up to beat the drums of war. A reporter from ABC News asked Biden, “Clearly, sanctions have not been enough to deter Vladmir Putin at this point. What is going to stop him, how and when does this end, and do you see him trying to go beyond Ukraine?” Another reporter asked, “You’re confident that these devastating sanctions are going to be as devastating as Russian missiles and bullets and tanks?” Yet another asked Biden, “If sanctions cannot stop President Putin, what penalty can?”

Although the United States has not yet taken military action against Russia, it is not for lack of trying on the part of Western media. Apart from urging escalation beyond sanctions, the English-language press has published hastily-corrected misinformation, including how Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island were all killed in a Russian attack, when in reality, all had survived.

A confrontation between nuclear powers would be devastating for the entire world. Yet, time and again, English-speaking media has subtly, or not-so-subtly urged escalation. On February 28, NBC News reporter Richard Engel tweeted, “A massive Russian convoy is abt 30 miles from Kyiv. The US/NATO could likely destroy it. But that would be direct involvement against Russia and risk, everything. Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?” Is the West truly “watching in silence” if it is imposing massive sanctions, which could have a devastating impact on the people of Russia and the world? And if so, what is the alternative?


Other news outlets have promoted the voices of those pushing for NATO countries to impose a no-fly zone, similar to the no-fly zone over Libya in 2011, the enforcement of which led to the destruction of that country. The enforcement of a no-fly zone over Ukraine implies a direct confrontation with Russian military aircraft, which would be devastatingly violent, primarily for the people of Ukraine.

2. Hypocrisy

“When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime,” said a Fox News reporter, to the agreement of Condoleeza Rice, one of the key architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The English-language press has shown that all invasions are not treated equally. As Palestinian journalist Asmaa Yassin writes in Mondoweiss, “for over a week the Israeli occupation has killed, attacked, and arrested a number of Palestinian people, most of whom are minors, yet this news was barely mentioned even in the corner of the news screen.”


When those victim to invasions and occupations by NATO countries or allies resist, they are labeled as terrorists. Ukrainians, who also have a right to resist military invasion, are glorified for their “stalwart faith in their ability to resist Russia”. UK outlet Sky News went as far as showing, in detail, footage of Ukrainian civilians making molotov cocktails. Such coverage of those resisting invasion in places invaded by NATO countries, such as Iraq, Syria, or Libya is unheard of. As journalist Ali Abunimah tweeted, “Have you ever seen such glowing and supportive coverage of even unarmed Palestinian resistance to Western-backed Israeli occupation?”

3. Racism

“This isn’t a place…like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European…city,” said CBS foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata as Russian forces closed in on Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

News outlets in NATO countries have let numerous racist remarks slip about the conflict in Ukraine and demonstrated a racist double standard with the tone and content of their reporting. Reporters and journalists are seemingly shocked and confused about how such a violence is occurring in a European country, or a country populated by “people with blue eyes and blonde hair” as a Ukrainian official on BBC put it.

English-language media has also downplayed the racist reality in Ukraine, a country in which openly fascist groups like the Azov Battalion are incorporated into the military and police forces. The BBC quickly deleted a tweet directly referencing a Nigerian student who, after dealing with the Ukrainian military in trying to find refuge from the invasion in Poland, said, “They were just so heartless…they treated us like animals.”


4. Censorship and lies

News media which receives funds from the Russian government, such as Russia Today, Sputnik News, and Redfish, have been censored by companies such as Google, Meta and Twitter, sanctioned by the European Union, and completely blocked by broadcasting services such as DStv. Long before the recent military escalation, these outlets have been labeled as “Russian state-affiliated media” or “Russian state-controlled media” for their ties to the Russian government. Outlets such as the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US, which are also funded by their respective governments, have never been labeled as such.

While some media is censored, Western media is free to promote falsehoods. After President Vladmir Putin’s announcement of the invasion, in which he references NATO expansion towards Russia as a key reason, the New York Times reported, “​​Mr. Putin spends a substantial portion of his speech retelling the past 30 years as a history of false Western promises to divide Europe in a stable balance between American and Russian spheres of influence.” After a quick look through declassified US government documents, however, it is clear that these “Western promises” are anything but false, and that there were decades of promises made to Russia that NATO would not expand eastward. It is without this necessary context that English-language media reports on the Ukraine conflict.

5. China and the New Cold War

“Trump says he believes China will invade Taiwan” reads a March 2 headline on The Hill. Another from March 2 on Fox News reads, “China is ‘big winner’ of Russia-Ukraine war, former FBI agent who worked in China warns”.

China is not part of the conflict in Ukraine. In fact, China has expressed concern for loss of life in Ukraine and labeled the conflict a war, rather than sticking with the Russian government label “special military operation”. After a quick look through the Western media, however, can lead the uninformed to believe that China is working closely in support of Russia, or even that China plans to lead a military invasion of its own. Several recent articles in Western Media have hinted at Taiwan as a potential site of a future Chinese invasion. The UK tabloid The Daily Mail writes, “US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with the island’s president Tsai Ing-wen to warn that Taiwan must not be allowed to suffer the same fate as Ukraine following Russia’s barbaric invasion of the country.” Reuters reports, “The United States stands firmly behind its commitments to Taiwan, a visiting U.S. delegation said on Wednesday, as Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen vowed to work more closely with allies in response to what she called China’s growing military threat,” later admitting that “Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, is on alert in case Beijing tries to use the opportunity of the Ukraine crisis to make a move on the island, though the government has reported no unusual Chinese activity.” [emphasis added]

Peoples Dispatch has previously written on the West’s “New Cold War” against China. Western hegemonic power views China, as a country that is developing and even prospering independently of US and NATO influence, as a threat. The mainstream English-language media appears to be using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an opportunity to double down on this threatening portrayal of China.

In light of the rhetoric of the New Cold War, it is important to be crystal clear: China has expressed no desire to invade Taiwan, nor is there concrete proof that China had any role in the military conflict in Ukraine, beyond vague “Western intelligence reports” that claim China had previous knowledge of Russian military action.



It is unclear, post-Russian escalation, what public opinion in NATO countries is towards NATO military intervention in Ukraine. But if the devastation wrought in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan is any testament, such escalation would be disastrous, primarily for the Ukrainian people.

Western media appears to push towards further conflict, not only with Russia, but with any country that does not toe the line laid out by NATO. However, the people of the West are not united in a love of NATO, and many have protested NATO expansion. As Brian Becker, longtime US-based anti-war activist, articulated:

“The war danger, which emanates from here in the United States, is premised on the justification and rationale provided to the American people by the establishment and echoed by the media…By winning working class and poor people over to our side, by carrying out that kind of political education, we build a mighty force that can actually make change.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/03/03/ ... f-ukraine/
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Tue Mar 08, 2022 2:54 pm

You won’t know what hit you and why
gilbertdoctorow Uncategorized March 7, 2022 3 Minutes

In recent days, in what is surely a coordinated action by NATO and European authorities acting hand in glove, Russian news broadcasters have been taken off servers in Europe and effectively made inaccessible to the entire European public. This modern day “jamming” concerns not just RT or Sputnik, the best known state owned voices of Russia because they broadcast in English and other languages that we all know, but virtually every news outlet based in Russia, public and privately owned, and broadcasting in the Russian language.

In this regard, EU Member States are waging an Information War of greatest significance that is absolutely not mentioned, let alone discussed in Western media, whether mainstream or otherwise. The victim is the European public, which, if bad turns to worse, will not know what hit them and why when cruise or hypersonic missiles descend on NATO bases or infrastructure. This enforced silence prevents Western civil society from taking any steps to save its own neck in what have become wartime conditions on the Continent.

The blockage is not uniformly enforced at all times, so that some Russian print and video producers can be accessed at one moment or another before going black.

In particular, one vitally important 3.30 minute video of Russian military spokesman Igor Konoshenkov yesterday and this morning remains accessible on youtube. I will detail below what he was saying, because the messenger and the message concern whether you and I will live to see another day.

Konoshenkov’s points in this video were the following:

1) Russia has now destroyed the entire Ukrainian air force that remained within the confines of Ukraine

2) There are also Ukrainian fighter jets that left the country and are now parked in Romania and other neighboring countries. If these planes are allowed by local authorities to take off from Romania, etc. and enter Ukrainian air space, Russia will consider the country from which they took off as a co-belligerent and will take appropriate action against them. The subtext is that Russia is ready to make missile strikes against NATO airfields that transgress the rules of war.

3) Russia is now about to destroy all military industrial complex factories in Ukraine and has formally warned all employees of these factories to leave the premises and stay away

4) Russia has received documentation from Ukrainian health authorities on the production of biological weapons (anthrax, Siberian plague and much more) by Ukrainian labs in Kharkiv and elsewhere in cooperation with the United States. Stocks of such weapons were being stored in direct violation of international conventions. On 24 February, in advance of the start of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, the Ukrainian health authorities destroyed these illicit biological weapons. However, Russia has obtained the official documentation certifying this destruction of what should never have been there. Moscow is now studying this documentation, which indicates United States participation in the development of the biological weapons and will publish the incriminating documents, starting from yesterday.

5) Russia has also obtained documentation proving that Ukraine, in cooperation with the United States, was since the presidency of Petro Petrushenko, actively developing nuclear weapons, including “dirty” nuclear devices using readily available fuel from its reactors. Such activity was going on in the Zaporozhye nuclear plants, and it is very likely that the fire reported at a ‘training unit’ adjacent to an active reactor two days ago related to destruction of incriminating papers, if it was not otherwise a ‘false flag’ operation to allege a Russian attack on the power station, in violation of international law.

From this list, the most threatening to European peace in the immediate days ahead is point 2, regarding Ukrainian aircraft based outside of Ukraine and being assigned missions to fly back into Ukrainian air space to thwart Russia’s ongoing military offensive. This bears directly on the patently insane plans of Secretary of State Blinken to allow the Poles to transfer to Kiev, its stock of Soviet era MIGs for missions into Ukraine.

As regards American involvement in the illicit production of biological weapons and of dirty or other types of nuclear arms, we may expect very heated discussions in the United Nations and other forums in coming days.

In the context of the Russian recovery of incriminating documentation that exposes foreign aiders and abetters of Ukraine’s hoped for but not yet achieved production of weapons of mass destruction, it is entirely possible that this explains the sudden and unanticipated flight to Moscow of Israel’s President Bennett two days ago for urgent consultations with President Putin. So far accusations of foreign participation are directed solely against the United States.

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/03/07/ ... u-and-why/
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 11, 2022 2:42 pm

Facebook allowed calls for violence against Russians
colonelcassad
March 11, 5:36 am

Image

Facebook allowed calls for violence against Russians

Meta Platforms, due to the situation in Ukraine, will allow Facebook and Instagram users in "certain countries" to call for violence against the Russians and the Russian military, Reuters writes, citing internal documents of the corporation.
Social networks will also allow publications "calling for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko," but without specifying the "location or method."
Calls for violence against Russians are said to be skipped if the message explicitly refers to a special operation in Ukraine. Thus, we are talking about changing the policy of banning hate speech in social networks, and "certain countries" are Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.
The agency claims that relevant emails have already been sent to content moderators.


https://t.me/boris_rozhin/30659 - Zinc

Meta Platforms (FB.O) will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russian and Russian soldiers in the context of the invasion of Ukraine, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday , which is a temporary change in the hate speech policy.

The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts calling for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to a series of internal emails to content moderators.

These death calls for leaders will be allowed as long as they don't contain other targets or don't have two metrics of credibility such as location or method, one letter says, in what was the latest change to the company's rules on violence and incitement.

The emails say calls for violence against Russians are allowed as long as the message explicitly refers to an invasion of Ukraine. They stated that incitement to violence against Russian soldiers was allowed because the post was being used as a proxy for the Russian military, and said that this did not apply to prisoners of war.

The meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Temporary policy changes apply to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

Last week, Russia said it was banning Facebook in the country in response to restrictions on access to Russian media on the platform. Moscow has lashed out at tech companies, including Twitter(TWTR.N), which has declared a ban on access to the country, during its invasion of Ukraine, which it calls a "special operation."

Many major social media platforms have announced new conflict-related content restrictions, including blocking Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik in Europe, and have shown exceptions to some of their wartime policies.

The emails also revealed that Meta would allow praise for the right-wing Azov Battalion, which is normally prohibited, as first reported by The Intercept.

Meta spokesman Joe Osborne said earlier that the company "is currently making a narrow exception to praising the Azov Regiment strictly in the context of defending Ukraine or their role as part of Ukraine's National Guard."

Translated using www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)


https://vott.ru/entry/605271

How amusingly all the masks continue to fly off. But anyway, everything was clear there.
I would like to remind you that Instagram has not yet been disabled in Russia. After this demarche, I can hardly imagine that any Meta product could continue to work in Russia. Now or ever after.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7 ... tml#cutid1

700 euro fine for watching Russian TV
colonelcassad
March 11, 9:16 am

Image

700 euro fine for watching Russian TV

The Seimas approved administrative liability for illegal viewing of content. The penalty for such a violation may be a warning or a fine of up to 700 euros.

“After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we must work even harder to strengthen the information space of Latvia. As practice shows, people use illegal decoders and satellite dishes and still have access to TV channels containing disinformation and Kremlin propaganda,” Artuss Kaimins, head of the commission, explained. Seimas for Human Rights and Public Affairs.

For the use of such devices, a fine of up to 140 units, that is, up to 700 euros, can be imposed. The annotation to the bill notes that often people themselves do not know that they are using illegal devices, or that they are prohibited, so they need to be informed. It is also important to note that illegal devices can be ascertained without entering the home of the one who uses it.

As reported, Russian and Belarusian TV channels were banned in Latvia. However, on March 6, the broadcast of Nekā personīga on TV3 found out that it is still possible to purchase devices for viewing banned Russian TV channels on the ss.lv portal. In addition, people use satellite television and special receivers imported from neighboring countries.

https://rus.delfi.lv/news/daily/latvia/ ... d=54138216


The next stage, the hunt for VPN service users, otherwise they will suddenly start watching banned TV on the internet...

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7 ... tml#cutid1

Ah yes, one of NATO's freedom loving democracies...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 12, 2022 3:26 pm

What Polls About a Ukraine ‘No-Fly Zone’ Really Tell Us
DAVID W. MOORE
Reuters: Americans broadly support Ukraine no-fly zone, Russia oil ban -poll
Image
Reuters (3/4/22): “It was not clear if respondents who supported a no-fly zone were fully aware of the risk of conflict.”
Last week, Reuters/Ipsos (3/4/22) reported on a poll that found

some 74% of Americans―including solid majorities of Republicans and Democrats―said the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine.

This was a surprising result, because there was strong bipartisan opposition in Congress to such an action. Typically, public opinion―especially on foreign policy―tends to reflect the prevailing political consensus.

That poll announcement was followed this week from a report from YouGov (3/9/22) about three polls it had recently conducted―two for the Economist (2/6/22–3/1/22 and 3/5–8/22), and one for US News (3/7–9/22). The earliest poll found 45% of Americans saying it was a “good idea” for the US to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, with 20% saying it was a “bad idea.” The second poll showed a smaller margin of support, 40% to 30%.

In its third poll for US News, YouGov ran a split-sample experiment, with half the sample asking respondents if they would “support or oppose the US enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine,” and the other half asking the same question with the additional comment: “which would mean the US military would shoot down Russian military planes flying over Ukraine.” The purpose was to determine if an explanation of what a no-fly zone means would affect support.

Both questions elicited plurality support for the no-fly zone―42% to 28% when no explanation was provided, 42% to 33% when an explanation was provided. The explanation seemed to have little effect.

But when YouGov rephrased the no-fly question in terms of the action required, it got a markedly different response. The second Economist poll asked, “Should the US military shoot down Russian military planes flying over Ukraine?” A 46% plurality said no—16 percentage points more than said a no-fly zone was a bad idea.

And as the report indicated, large segments of the respondents gave self-contradictory answers:

Nearly three in 10 of those who say that enforcing a no-fly zone is a good idea also say that they oppose the US shooting down Russian military planes flying over Ukraine; 13% of those who call enforcing a no-fly zone a bad idea support the US shooting down Russian planes.

Making sense of polls

The Reuters poll can be dismissed as a representation of actual public opinion. Typically, Reuters/Ipsos does not measure, or ignores, “don’t know” or “unsure” responses. As I noted in a previous post (FAIR.org, 2/11/22), using that “forced-choice” format creates the illusion of public opinion, but does not give a plausible picture of reality.

The YouGov polls, by contrast, all included measures of “no opinion.” The poll for US News also included a measure of intensity, which provides even more insight into what the public is thinking.
US News/YouGov Poll on US Enforcing a ‘No-Fly Zone’ in Ukraine
No Explanation % “No-Fly” Explained %
Strongly support 22 18
Somewhat support 20 24
Not sure 30 25
Somewhat oppose 13 15
Strongly oppose 15 18
b]

Typically, news media combine the “strong” and “somewhat” categories when reporting the results—as I did above (42% to 28% in the first group; 42% to 33% in the second group). But that format suggests a more solidly opinionated public than is warranted.

Note the highlighted numbers. For both groups, only just over a third of respondents felt “strongly” about their views (37% strongly support or oppose in the first group; 36% in the second group). The rest are either “unsure” or hold views that are loosely held (“somewhat” support or oppose).

The weakly held or “top of mind” views explain how many people can provide self-contradictory responses. They simply haven’t given the issue much thought. New questions elicit new opinions, some of which contradict previous responses.

Those weakly held views also explain why “public opinion” can seem to fluctuate so greatly, as new information comes to light.

The key conclusion here is that most Americans have not firmly decided about the merits of a US-enforced no-fly zone. That conclusion no doubt holds true for most, if not all, of the other policy proposals included in the poll.

https://fair.org/home/what-polls-about- ... y-tell-us/

*******************************************

The White House is briefing TikTok stars about the war in Ukraine
With millions getting their information about the war from the platform, the administration wants to get its message to top content creators.

By Taylor Lorenz
Yesterday at 11:23 a.m. EST

On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.

As the crisis in Ukraine has escalated, millions have turned to TikTok for information on what is happening there in real time. TikTok videos offered some of the first glimpses of the Russian invasion and since then the platform has been a primary outlet for spreading news to the masses abroad. Ukrainian citizens hiding in bomb shelters or fleeing their homes have shared their stories to the platform, while dangerous misinformation and Russian propaganda have also spread. And TikTok stars, many with millions of followers, have increasingly sought to make sense of the crisis for their audiences.

The White House has been closely watching TikTok’s rise as a dominant news source, leading to its decision to approach a select group of the platform’s most influential names.

This week, the administration began working with Gen Z For Change, a nonprofit advocacy group, to help identify top content creators on the platform to orchestrate a briefing aimed at answering questions about the conflict and the United States’ role in it. Victoria Hammett, deputy executive director of Gen Z For Change, contacted dozens with invitations via email and gathered potential questions for the Biden administration.

The invitations to the event were distributed Tuesday and Wednesday. Kahlil Greene, 21, a creator with more than 534,000 followers on TikTok, said he wasn’t surprised when an invitation arrived in his email inbox. “People in my generation get all our information from TikTok,” he said. “It’s the first place we’re searching up new topics and learning about things.” So, he figured, it made sense that the Biden administration would engage people like him on the platform.

The briefing was led by Matt Miller, a special adviser for communications at the White House National Security Council, and Psaki. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the call, and in it, Biden officials stressed the power these creators had in communicating with their followers. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest,” said the White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, “so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source.”

Jules Terpak, a Gen Z content creator who makes TikTok essays about digital culture, said the White House’s decision to engage creators such as she was essential in helping to stop the spread of misinformation. “Those who have an audience can ideally set the tone for how others decide to assess and amplify what they see online,” she said.

After the call, several influencers said they felt more empowered to debunk misinformation and communicate effectively about the crisis. TikTok has been overrun with false and misleading news since the war broke out, and, on Thursday, the company said it finally would begin labeling state-controlled media on its platform.

Biden has increasingly sought online creators to sell major policy initiatives. The administration worked with dozens of top TikTok stars last year to encourage vaccination. He also hosted a briefing for influencers to educate them about his infrastructure plan. To emphasize the child-care components of his “Build Back Better” initiative, he sat for interviews with two parenting influencers on Facebook Live and YouTube.

Teddy Goff, a founder of Precision Strategies, a consulting firm, said that the White House’s strategy of embracing the next generation of media voices was crucial. “There’s a massive cultural and generational shift happening in media, and you have to have blinders on not to see it,” he said. “The reach of a piece in a traditional news outlet is a fraction of what a big TikToker gets.”

President Donald Trump often engaged online creators and Internet figures, and he hired an influencer marketing firm during his reelection campaign. On Wednesday, he appeared on the NELK boys “Full Send Podcast” where he spoke at length about the Iran nuclear deal and the U.S. strategic oil reserve. The episode was live on YouTube for only a few hours before it was removed for violating the platform’s policy on misinformation.


The voices dominating conversation on the Internet can be freewheeling and unexpected. Many creators on Thursday’s call, for instance, were shocked by the presence of Aaron Parnas, the 22-year-old son of Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born American businessman and former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s who assisted Trump’s plan to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rivals. Parnas was convicted in October on campaign finance charges and recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Aaron Parnas has recently emerged as a powerful TikTok influencer by providing nonstop news updates about Ukraine. On the night of Russia’s invasion, he hosted TikTok live streams discussing the events to over 800,000 viewers. Since then, each day he has posted videos breaking down news about the war every 45 minutes from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Parnas said that his news was not partisan and that he was getting information directly from reputable sources in the country, such as his family members there, local Ukrainian journalists and Ukrainian television. “I love my father, but I am not my father,” he said.

Jules Suzdaltsev, a Ukrainian-born journalist who operates the popular TikTok news channel Good Morning Bad News, said that he thought the overall tone of the briefing was too soft and that officials dodged hard questions. “The energy of the call felt like a press briefing for kindergartners,” he said.


Within hours of the briefing’s conclusion, the influencers began blasting out messaging to their millions of followers. A video posted by Marcus DiPaola, a news creator on TikTok, offered key takeaways from the meeting in a video that has been viewed more than 300,000 views. Greene also posted a recap, adding his own critical analysis at the end, calling out the Biden administration for not “acknowledging its role in other occupations and invasions around the world.”

Ellie Zeiler, an 18-year-old TikTok star with more than 10.5 million followers, said she hopes to remain in communication with the White House and continue to press officials there about key issues. She sees herself as a voice for young people and the growing contingent of news consumers getting information primarily through social media platforms.

“I’m here to relay the information in a more digestible manner to my followers,” she said. “I would consider myself a White House correspondent for Gen Z.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... ite-house/

It's 1984 all over again....The manipulation so heavy handed, so pervasive, so 'full spectrum' that it boggles the mind.

No George Orwell, you pathetic trot, it does not take an inefficient, corrupt, socialist government to manifest a grey unlovely world of near poverty that controls it's populace through psychological/media manipulation. All it takes is a insanely wealthy ruling class presiding over a working class numbed by excessive commodities and bedazzled by electronic media overdose that gets 'played' each and every time to it's eventually terminal demise.

The only MSM media that I've tolerated despite it all has been National Propaganda Radio but I can no longer take it: 'parsing' and 'interpreting' their ruling class messaging has become intolerable. It is like the 'Two Minute Hate' 24/7. Guess I'll get to the library and refresh my memory of Orwell's monumental lie which has proved to be a boomerang.

PS- I don't understand why that chart turned out screwy.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Sun Mar 13, 2022 9:58 pm

The Uyghur Podcast Brought to You by a CIA Torture Propagandist
By Kit Klarenberg - March 11, 2022 6

Image
[Source: mronline.org]

On February 2nd, eagle-eyed pro-China activist Arnaud Bertrand revealed that WEghur Stories, a podcast “working to create a conversation within and about the global Uyghur diaspora” that has been aggressively promoted on Facebook and Spotify, is funded by Washington’s French diplomatic mission—and that John Bair, its co-creator, co-host and producer, is a former CIA operative.

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Arnaud Bertrand [Source: mobile.twitter.com]

No trace of Bair’s deep-state background can be detected from the podcast’s website, where he is merely referred to as a former “foreign policy analyst, political speechwriter, and narrative consultant.” However, his LinkedIn profile—which characterizes him as a “narrative development” specialist—reveals an eight-year stint with the Agency from 2004 to 2012, the first seven of which were spent as an intelligence officer.

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Former CIA operative John Bair [Source: weghurstories.com]

Since then, he has enjoyed a colorful, diverse career in a number of fields, serving as ghostwriter for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and foreign policy and national security adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s in 2020, which overlapped with a three-and-a-half year spell at Threat Pattern LLC.

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[Source: open.spotify.com]

The latter company uses CIA “intelligence and counterintelligence analysis techniques to protect corporate brands and assets.” Trade outlet Intelligence Online describes the firm as “a CIA and Wall Street alliance”—in March 2015, Michael Sulick, the Agency’s long-time Clandestine Service Director, joined as senior partner.

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Michael Sulick, the Agency’s long-time Clandestine Service Director. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Bair, moreover, sits on the board of Foreign Policy for America, a D.C.-based advocacy group founded in the weeks following the 2016 presidential election, “as a home for Americans who support principled American engagement in the world.” In other words, to shill for empire after the victory of Donald Trump, in the event his isolationist, anti-war rhetoric on the campaign trail turned out just to be hot air—which it did, of course.

Lately, he has worked as content director for Thresher, a company offering corporate clients a range of products combining “signal-rich proprietary data, AI-powered technology, and world-class expertise to help decision makers understand China.” Thresher claims to rely on “the best technology the world has to offer, incubated at Harvard and leveraging innovations from Silicon Valley.”

Deep-state liberal performing arts collective
Since January 2014 too, Bair has been part of The New Wild, “a multidisciplinary art lab that brings together artists, writers, scholars, and technologists in a rigorously collaborative environment to create large-scale theater, opera, and spectacles.”

It is as part of this group that Bair produces WEghur Stories, and wrote Tear a Root from the Earth, an elaborate musical about the legacy of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan that has been performed at theaters across America. Additionally, he served as communications director for Everybody Is Gone, an immersive “art installation and performance” seeking to provide “reparative spaces to the Uyghur community” and “counteract the Chinese government’s objectives.”

Image
Image

Little information on The New Wild can be derived from its website—there isn’t even a means of contacting the troupe—although its “collaborators” section is intriguing, for behind the handsome hipsteriffic headshots often lurk deep-state backgrounds.

For example, Jessica Batke, creator of Everybody Is Gone and Tear a Root from the Earth’s music director, was previously a foreign affairs research analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

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Jessica Batke [Source: thenewwild.org]

She currently serves as senior editor of the opaquely funded ChinaFile, where she manages its China NGO Project, and has published numerous bizarre, scaremongering stories about Beijing subsequently picked up by the mainstream media.

In late January, for example, Batke authored a report framing as sinister a network of youth centers across China, at which attendees can, among other things, have their umbrellas repaired and watch showings of The Dark Knight for free. This while earning “points” for showing “respect for their elders and family, righteousness and trustworthiness, pleasure in helping others, hard work, and thrift in running their household affairs” that can be redeemed for essential products in supermarkets.

The Wall Street Journal was widely ridiculed for presenting this mundane youth engagement program as a malign, insidious Communist Party plot “to quietly [insert] itself into everyday life” in China.

Johnny Walsh, a cellist who co-authored Tear a Root from the Earth and composed its score, is a veteran U.S. foreign policy apparatchik currently occupying a senior post at intelligence cutout USAID, while Nicolas Benacerraf, director and scenographer, is an academic studying “advertising as a means of theatrical population control,” and its relevance to “political theater,” in his spare time.

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Johnny Walsh [Source: thenewwild.org]
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Nicolas Benacerraf [Source: thenewwild.org]

New Wild founder Marina McClure—a theater director “who grew up internationally,” with an extensive dramatic résumé and virtually no social media presence—has since 2019 received grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the U.S. government’s regime-change arm, which financed the production of Everybody Is Gone.

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Marina McClure [Source: willamette.edu]

The NED has since 2004 funded propaganda operations surrounding the purported Uyghur genocide to the tune of millions annually, bankrolling a nexus of advocacy groups, human rights NGOs and media operations to further the controversial narrative, among them right-wing, anti-communist separatists, in order to discredit and ostracize China.

All along, the U.S. has frequently clashed with Uyghur militants in Afghanistan.

It is surely no coincidence the NED wellspring began flowing the year after publication of The Xinjiang Problem, authored by Graham E. Fuller, former vice chair of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate and CIA station chief in Kabul, and academic S. Frederick Starr, a distinguished Eurasian fellow with the American Foreign Policy Council, a neoconservative Beltway think tank.

“It would be unrealistic to rule out categorically American willingness to play the ‘Uyghur card’ as a means of exerting pressure on China in the event of some future crisis or confrontation,” they wrote. “Many of China’s rivals have in the past pursued active policies in Xinjiang and exploited the Uyghur issue for their benefit…The possibility cannot be excluded from any survey of possible longer-range futures for the Xinjiang issue.”

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[Source: turkistanlibrary.com]

Elsewhere in the text, the authors acknowledged that Uyghurs were in contact with Muslim groups outside Xinjiang, and “some of them have been radicalized into broader jihadist politics in the process, a handful were earlier involved in guerrilla or terrorist training in Afghanistan, and some are in touch with international Muslim mujahidin struggling for Muslim causes of independence worldwide.”

There is reason to believe the U.S. may be providing covert support to these same militants. In 1999, a CIA operative was recorded as saying:

“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia [emphasis added].”

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Purported members of the Uyghur-led East Turkestan Islamic Movement [ETIM] in training video. Inspired by the Taliban, the ETIM led a violent insurgency against the Chinese government from the late 1990s until 2017, according to Newsweek, “in a bloody bid to weaken China’s resolve in Xinjiang.” Ironically, for many years, the ETIM was on Washington’s terrorist list, and was targeted in airstrikes by the Pentagon in Afghanistan up until 2018. [Source: newsweek.com]

“We love the CIA,” Ben Affleck writes

Intriguingly, John Bair’s biography on The New Wild website notes that, after his lengthy run as an intelligence officer, he served in the CIA’s entertainment liaison office, which consults directly with TV, streaming and movie productions. Via this mechanism, Langley exerts enormous, insidious and little-known influence over a wide variety of popular culture, influencing scripts and narratives in its own malign interests.

Image
[Source: mronline.com]

During this time, the résumé notes, Bair served as consultant on several high-profile projects, including the 2012 movies Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. This is striking, for production of those films was heavily influenced by Langley, creating a truly extraordinary situation in which two pictures vying against each other for numerous industry awards that year were both effective CIA propaganda infomercials.

Argo tells the real-life tale of the CIA rescuing six American diplomats who evaded capture during the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, via the cunning connivance of dispatching operatives to the Iranian capital under the guise of scouting for shooting locations for a sci-fi movie.

It was a story the Agency had wanted someone to adapt for the silver screen for some time—in December 2007, an essay by Tony Mendez, who led the daring operation, outlining the experience was published on a section of the CIA’s website which regularly suggests possible storylines writers and producers should pursue.

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[Source: warnerbros.com]

In Argo, Mendez was played by Ben Affleck, who also directed the movie. Email exchanges between the actor and CIA liaison office during the production process unearthed by academic Matt Alford speak to an extremely chummy and affectionate rapport, with actors and production staff receiving rare private tours of Langley, and being provided with exclusive archive photos. All Agency personnel identities are redacted in the emails, although there are many written by and mentioning names short enough to be “John Bair.”

“We would love, in brief, to film a quick bit walking through the lobby, something in the parking lot and a wide shot of the building as an establishing shot,” Affleck wrote to the CIA in one missive. “We love the Agency and this heroic action and we really want the process of bringing it to the big screen to be as real as possible.”

In return for its assistance, the CIA was provided with multiple drafts of the script—Langley was very taken with the writer’s efforts, with one entertainment liaison office representative commenting, “the Agency comes off looking very well, in my opinion, and the action of the movie is, for the most part, squarely rooted in the facts of the mission.”

Upon release though, Argo was widely criticized for its historical inaccuracies, such as determinedly diminishing Canada’s prominent role in the mission, falsely charging that the British embassy refused to help the diplomats, and fabricating whole-cloth a daring runway escape scene.

Neglecting to highlight how the CIA’s 1953 coup had helped destroy Iranian democracy and provoke the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it was also harshly condemned for universally depicting Iranians—with the exception of a single character—as rabid, aggressive, violent, moronic and possessed of surging anti-Western animus. This did not prevent the movie from securing three Academy Awards though, including Best Picture.

“Grossly inaccurate and misleading”
Zero Dark Thirty dramatizes the CIA’s decade-long worldwide manhunt for Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks, culminating with the Navy SEAL team raid on his secret compound in Pakistan in May 2011.

The film generated even more controversy than Argo, due to its depiction of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and false implication that they were fundamental to locating the al-Qaeda chief, with even the CIA’s then-acting chief Michael Morrell expressing grave concern about this fundamental aspect of the narrative.

Image
[Source: sonypictures.com]

A bipartisan group of senior U.S. senators—including notorious war hawk John McCain—were so outraged by it that they wrote a joint letter to Sony Pictures, Zero Dark Thirty’s distributor, slamming the movie as “grossly inaccurate and misleading,” and declaring the company had a “social and moral obligation” to make categorically clear torture played no role in bin Laden’s location.

The executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s torture program, declassified two years later, confirmed that “the vast majority of intelligence” which helped track down the al-Qaeda chief was not only “originally acquired from sources unrelated” to the program, but “the most accurate information acquired from a CIA detainee was provided prior [emphasis added] to the CIA subjecting the detainee to enhanced interrogation techniques.”

The enormous and unprecedented support provided to Zero Dark Thirty by not only the CIA but the Pentagon was well-publicized at the time of its release, although it would be some time before internal documents revealing in detail how its narrative was directly shaped by deep-state interests were declassified.

Among the tranche was an internal memo describing how the film’s writer consulted directly Agency representatives—which may well have included Bair—on the script over four separate conference calls. In turn, they dictated what should be changed or even removed from the screenplay, in order to protect Langley’s image.

For example, a spy “[firing] a celebratory burst of AK-47 gunfire into the air” at a party, and the use of a dog during an interrogation, were both cut, the latter because “such tactics would not be used by the Agency.”

Interestingly though, the filmmakers were moreover explicitly told to stick to torture techniques already in the public domain—suggesting they may have been made party to classified information, and the CIA did not want that leaking out.

Curiously, the aforementioned Senate report also reveals that the CIA had been planning to “publicly attribute” the operation to the success and efficacy of the torture program two months before its execution, with the Agency’s Office of Public Affairs specifically deployed for the purpose. After the raid, the CIA “engaged the media directly in order to defend and promote the program.” Was Zero Dark Thirty the product of this perverse propaganda push?

Whatever the truth of the matter, the relationship between the CIA and the filmmakers over the course of Zero Dark Thirty’s production was so concerningly intimate and intensive that it triggered three separate internal investigations, probing lavish gifts to Agency operatives, possible granting of classified material to the studio, and more generally the ways in which Langley engaged with the entertainment industry.


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A number of ethics violations were identified, and various processes reformed, but no one was prosecuted or fired.

Bair had left the CIA by the time of the film’s release, and long prior to the investigations being launched, after just one year in the liaison post. It is unclear if he was pushed in advance of potential censure, or left of his own accord, and it remains an open question what he was doing and where over the 18-month gap following his departure and next stated role on LinkedIn.

Still, it can only be considered utterly grotesque that an individual so intimately involved in the production of clandestine state propaganda demonizing the Islamic world and justifying the unspeakable criminal excesses of the War on Terror—to say nothing of whatever evils he himself may have perpetrated over his intelligence career during the same period –now plays the public role of a committed friend and humanitarian protector of Uyghur Muslims within and without China.

As the New Cold War grows hotter every day, we can expect its cultural component to become correspondingly turbocharged.

Theater-goers are an ideal target audience for anti-China propaganda—overwhelmingly liberal, educated, wealthy, and influential opinion formers, their support for or acquiescence to dangerously rising tensions with Beijing provides absolutely crucial grease for the imperial war machine’s ever-churning wheels.

Unlike Washington’s battle against Soviet Communism though, this time around the CIA does not have to rely on covertly co-opting academics, authors, creatives and musicians—there are clearly enough creatively minded veteran deep-state operatives out there who can be relied upon to faithfully execute the West’s informational assault on global perceptions regarding China in a variety of innovative ways.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/0 ... pagandist/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 14, 2022 1:50 pm

Revealed: Documents Show Bill Gates Has Given $319 Million to Media Outlets

Sifting through over 30,000 grants in the company’s database, MintPress can reveal that the Gates Foundation has bankrolled hundreds of media outlets and ventures, to the tune of at least $319 million.

by Alan Macleod

November 15th, 2021

SEATTLE — Up until his recent messy divorce, Bill Gates enjoyed something of a free pass in corporate media. Generally presented as a kindly nerd who wants to save the world, the Microsoft co-founder was even unironically christened “Saint Bill” by The Guardian.

While other billionaires’ media empires are relatively well known, the extent to which Gates’s cash underwrites the modern media landscape is not. After sorting through over 30,000 individual grants, MintPress can reveal that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has made over $300 million worth of donations to fund media projects.

Recipients of this cash include many of America’s most important news outlets, including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS and The Atlantic. Gates also sponsors a myriad of influential foreign organizations, including the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom; prominent European newspapers such as Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany) and El País (Spain); as well as big global broadcasters like Al-Jazeera.

The Gates Foundation money going towards media programs has been split up into a number of sections, presented in descending numerical order, and includes a link to the relevant grant on the organization’s website.

Awards Directly to Media Outlets:

NPR- $24,663,066
The Guardian (including TheGuardian.org)- $12,951,391
Cascade Public Media – $10,895,016
Public Radio International (PRI.org/TheWorld.org)- $7,719,113
The Conversation- $6,664,271
Univision- $5,924,043
Der Spiegel (Germany)- $5,437,294
Project Syndicate- $5,280,186
Education Week – $4,898,240
WETA- $4,529,400
NBCUniversal Media- $4,373,500
Nation Media Group (Kenya) – $4,073,194
Le Monde (France)- $4,014,512
Bhekisisa (South Africa) – $3,990,182
El País – $3,968,184
BBC- $3,668,657
CNN- $3,600,000
KCET- $3,520,703
Population Communications International (population.org) – $3,500,000
The Daily Telegraph – $3,446,801
Chalkbeat – $2,672,491
The Education Post- $2,639,193
Rockhopper Productions (U.K.) – $2,480,392
Corporation for Public Broadcasting – $2,430,949
UpWorthy – $2,339,023
Financial Times – $2,309,845
The 74 Media- $2,275,344
Texas Tribune- $2,317,163
Punch (Nigeria) – $2,175,675
News Deeply – $1,612,122
The Atlantic- $1,403,453
Minnesota Public Radio- $1,290,898
YR Media- $1,125,000
The New Humanitarian- $1,046,457
Sheger FM (Ethiopia) – $1,004,600
Al-Jazeera- $1,000,000
ProPublica- $1,000,000
Crosscut Public Media – $810,000
Grist Magazine- $750,000
Kurzgesagt – $570,000
Educational Broadcasting Corp – $506,504
Classical 98.1 – $500,000
PBS – $499,997
Gannett – $499,651
Mail and Guardian (South Africa)- $492,974
Inside Higher Ed.- $439,910
BusinessDay (Nigeria) – $416,900
Medium.com – $412,000
Nutopia- $350,000
Independent Television Broadcasting Inc. – $300,000
Independent Television Service, Inc. – $300,000
Caixin Media (China) – $250,000
Pacific News Service – $225,000
National Journal – $220,638
Chronicle of Higher Education – $149,994
Belle and Wissell, Co. $100,000
Media Trust – $100,000
New York Public Radio – $77,290
KUOW – Puget Sound Public Radio – $5,310

Together, these donations total $166,216,526. The money is generally directed towards issues close to the Gateses hearts. For example, the $3.6 million CNN grant went towards “report[ing] on gender equality with a particular focus on least developed countries, producing journalism on the everyday inequalities endured by women and girls across the world,” while the Texas Tribune received millions to “to increase public awareness and engagement of education reform issues in Texas.” Given that Bill is one of the charter schools’ most fervent supporters, a cynic might interpret this as planting pro-corporate charter school propaganda into the media, disguised as objective news reporting.

The Gates Foundation has also given nearly $63 million to charities closely aligned with big media outlets, including nearly $53 million to BBC Media Action, over $9 million to MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, and $1 million to The New York Times Neediest Causes Fund. While not specifically funding journalism, donations to the philanthropic arm of a media player should still be noted.

Gates continues to underwrite a wide network of investigative journalism centers as well, totaling just over $38 million, more than half of which has gone to the D.C.-based International Center for Journalists to expand and develop African media.

These centers include:

International Center for Journalists- $20,436,938
Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (Nigeria) – $3,800,357
The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting – $2,432,552
Fondation EurActiv Politech – $2,368,300
International Women’s Media Foundation – $1,500,000
Center for Investigative Reporting – $1,446,639
InterMedia Survey institute – $1,297,545
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – $1,068,169
Internews Network – $985,126
Communications Consortium Media Center – $858,000
Institute for Nonprofit News – $650,021
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies- $382,997
Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (Nigeria) – $360,211
Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies – $254,500
Global Forum for Media Development (Belgium) – $124,823
Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting – $100,000

In addition to this, the Gates Foundation also plies press and journalism associations with cash, to the tune of at least $12 million. For example, the National Newspaper Publishers Association — a group representing more than 200 outlets — has received $3.2 million.

The list of these organizations includes:

Education Writers Association – $5,938,475
National Newspaper Publishers Association – $3,249,176
National Press Foundation- $1,916,172
Washington News Council- $698,200
American Society of News Editors Foundation – $250,000
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press- $25,000
This brings our running total up to $216.4 million.

The foundation also puts up the money to directly train journalists all over the world, in the form of scholarships, courses and workshops. Today, it is possible for an individual to train as a reporter thanks to a Gates Foundation grant, find work at a Gates-funded outlet, and to belong to a press association funded by Gates. This is especially true of journalists working in the fields of health, education and global development, the ones Gates himself is most active in and where scrutiny of the billionaire’s actions and motives are most necessary.

Gates Foundation grants pertaining to the instruction of journalists include:

Johns Hopkins University – $1,866,408
Teachers College, Columbia University- $1,462,500
University of California Berkeley- $767,800
Tsinghua University (China) – $450,000
Seattle University – $414,524
Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies – $254,500
Rhodes University (South Africa) – $189,000
Montclair State University- $160,538
Pan-Atlantic University Foundation – $130,718
World Health Organization – $38,403
The Aftermath Project- $15,435

The BMGF also pays for a wide range of specific media campaigns around the world. For example, since 2014 it has donated $5.7 million to the Population Foundation of India in order to create dramas that promote sexual and reproductive health, with the intent to increase family planning methods in South Asia. Meanwhile, it alloted over $3.5 million to a Senegalese organization to develop radio shows and online content that would feature health information. Supporters consider this to be helping critically underfunded media, while opponents might consider it a case of a billionaire using his money to plant his ideas and opinions into the press.

Media projects supported by the Gates Foundation:

European Journalism Centre – $20,060,048
World University Service of Canada – $12,127,622
Well Told Story Limited – $9,870,333
Solutions Journalism Inc.- $7,254,755
Entertainment Industry Foundation – $6,688,208
Population Foundation of India- $5,749,826 –
Participant Media – $3,914,207
Réseau Africain de l’Education pour la santé- $3,561,683
New America – $3,405,859
AllAfrica Foundation – $2,311,529
Steps International – $2,208,265
Center for Advocacy and Research – $2,200,630
The Sesame Workshop – $2,030,307
Panos Institute West Africa – $1,809,850
Open Cities Lab – $1,601,452
Harvard university – $1,190,527
Learning Matters – $1,078,048
The Aaron Diamond Aids Research Center- $981,631
Thomson Media Foundation- $860,628
Communications Consortium Media Center – $858,000
StoryThings- $799,536
Center for Rural Strategies – $749,945
The New Venture Fund – $700,000
Helianthus Media – $575,064
University of Southern California- $550,000
World Health Organization- $530,095
Phi Delta Kappa International – $446,000
Ikana Media – $425,000
Seattle Foundation – $305,000
EducationNC – $300,000
Beijing Guokr Interactive – $300,000
Upswell- $246,918
The African Academy of Sciences – $208,708
Seeking Modern Applications for Real Transformation (SMART) – $201,781
Bay Area Video Coalition- $190,000
PowHERful Foundation – $185,953
PTA Florida Congress of Parents and Teachers – $150,000
ProSocial – $100,000
Boston University – $100,000
National Center for Families Learning – $100,000
Development Media International – $100,000
Ahmadu Bello University- $100,000
Indonesian eHealth and Telemedicine Society – $100,000
The Filmmakers Collaborative – $50,000
Foundation for Public Broadcasting in Georgia Inc. – $25,000
SIFF – $13,000
Total: $97,315,408



$319.4 million and (a lot) more

Added together, these Gates-sponsored media projects come to a total of $319.4 million. However, there are clear shortcomings with this non-exhaustive list, meaning the true figure is undoubtedly far higher. First, it does not count sub-grants — money given by recipients to media around the world. And while the Gates Foundation fosters an air of openness about itself, there is actually precious little public information about what happens to the money from each grant, save for a short, one- or two-sentence description written by the foundation itself on its website. Only donations to press organizations themselves or projects that could be identified from the information on the Gates Foundation’s website as media campaigns were counted, meaning that thousands of grants having some media element do not appear in this list.

A case in point is the BMGF’s partnership with ViacomCBS, the company that controls CBS News, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, and BET. Media reports at the time noted that the Gates Foundation was paying the entertainment giant to insert information and PSAs into its programming and that Gates had intervened to change storylines in popular shows like ER and Law & Order: SVU.

However, when checking BMGF’s grants database, “Viacom” and “CBS” are nowhere to be found, the likely grant in question (totaling over $6 million) merely describing the project as a “public engagement campaign aimed at improving high school graduation rates and postsecondary completion rates specifically aimed at parents and students,” meaning that it was not counted in the official total. There are surely many more examples like this. “For a tax-privileged charity that so very often trumpets the importance of transparency, it’s remarkable how intensely secretive the Gates Foundation is about its financial flows,” Tim Schwab, one of the few investigative journalists who has scrutinized the tech billionaire, told MintPress.

Also not included are grants aimed at producing articles for academic journals. While these articles are not meant for mass consumption, they regularly form the basis for stories in the mainstream press and help shape narratives around key issues. The Gates Foundation has given far and wide to academic sources, with at least $13.6 million going toward creating content for the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

And, of course, even money given to universities for purely research projects eventually ends up in academic journals, and ultimately, downstream into mass media. Academics are under heavy pressure to print their results in prestigious journals; “publish or perish” is the mantra in university departments. Therefore, even these sorts of grants have an effect on our media. Neither these nor grants funding the printing of books or establishment of websites counted in the total, although they too are forms of media.



Low profile, long tentacles

In comparison to other tech billionaires, Gates has kept his profile as a media controller relatively low. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s purchase of The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013 was a very clear and obvious form of media influence, as was eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s creation of First Look Media, the company that owns The Intercept.

Despite flying more under the radar, Gates and his companies have amassed considerable influence in media. We already rely on Microsoft-owned products for communication (e.g. Skype, Hotmail), social media (LinkedIn), and entertainment (Microsoft XBox). Furthermore, the hardware and software we use to communicate often comes courtesy of the 66-year-old Seattleite. How many people reading this are doing so on a Microsoft Surface or Windows phone and doing so via Windows OS? Not only that, Microsoft owns stakes in media giants such as Comcast and AT&T. And the “MS” in MSNBC stands for Microsoft.

The Faux Generosity of the Super-Wealthy: Why Bill Gates is a Menace to Society





Media Gates keepers

That the Gates Foundation is underwriting a significant chunk of our media ecosystem leads to serious problems with objectivity. “The foundation’s grants to media organizations…raise obvious conflict-of-interest questions: How can reporting be unbiased when a major player holds the purse strings?” wrote Gates’s local Seattle Times in 2011. This was before the newspaper accepted BMGF money to fund its “education lab” section.

Schwab’s research has found that this conflict of interests goes right to the very top: two New York Times columnists had been writing glowingly about the Gates Foundation for years without disclosing that they also work for a group — the Solutions Journalism Network — that, as shown above, has received over $7 million from the tech billionaire’s charity.

Earlier this year, Schwab also declined to co-report on a story about COVAX for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, suspecting that the money Gates had been pumping into the outlet would make it impossible to accurately report on a subject so close to Gates’s heart. Sure enough, when the article was published last month, it repeated the assertion that Gates had little to do with COVAX’s failure, mirroring the BMGF’s stance and quoting them throughout. Only at the very end of the more than 5,000-word story did it reveal that the organization it was defending was paying the wages of its staff.

“I don’t believe Gates told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism what to write. I think the bureau implicitly, if subconsciously, knew they had to find a way to tell this story that didn’t target their funder. The biasing effects of financial conflicts are complex but very real and reliable,” Schwab said, describing it as “a case study in the perils of Gates-funded journalism.”

MintPress also contacted the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for comment, but it did not respond.

https://twitter.com/TimothyWSchwab/stat ... 3326592007

Gates, who amassed his fortune by building a monopoly and zealously guarding his intellectual property, bears significant blame for the failure of the coronavirus vaccine rollout across the world. Quite aside from the COVAX fiasco, he pressured Oxford University not to make its publicly-funded vaccine open-source and available to all for free, but instead to partner with private corporation AstraZeneca, a decision that meant that those who could not pay were blocked from using it. That Gates has made over 100 donations to the university, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, likely played some role in the decision. To this day, fewer than 5% of people in low-income countries have received even one dose of COVID vaccine. The death toll from this is immense.

Poor Nations Left Reeling After Bill Gates Advised Oxford to Ditch Open Source COVID Vaccine



Unfortunately, many of these real criticisms of Gates and his network are obscured by wild and untrue conspiracy theories about such things as inserting microchips in vaccines to control the population. This has meant that genuine critiques of the Microsoft co-founder are often demonetized and algorithmically suppressed, meaning that outlets are strongly dissuaded from covering the topic, knowing they will likely lose money if they do so. The paucity of scrutiny of the world’s second-richest individual, in turn, feeds into outlandish suspicions.

Gates certainly deserves it. Quite apart from his deep and potentially decades-long ties to the infamous Jeffrey Epstein, his attempts to radically change African society, and his investment in controversial chemical giant Monsanto, he is perhaps the key driver behind the American charter school movement — an attempt to essentially privatize the U.S. education system. Charter schools are deeply unpopular with teachers’ unions, which see the movement as an attempt to lessen their autonomy and reduce public oversight into how and what children are taught.



All the way to the bank
In most coverage, Gates’s donations are broadly presented as altruistic gestures. Yet many have pointed to the inherent flaws with this model, noting that allowing billionaires to decide what they do with their money allows them to set the public agenda, giving them enormous power over society. “Philanthropy can and is being used deliberately to divert attention away from different forms of economic exploitation that underpin global inequality today,” said Linsey McGoey, Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, U.K., and author of No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy. She adds:

The new ‘philanthrocapitalism’ threatens democracy by increasing the power of the corporate sector at the expense of the public sector organizations, which increasingly face budget squeezes, in part by excessively remunerating for-profit organizations to deliver public services that could be delivered more cheaply without private sector involvement.”

Charity, as former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee noted, “is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.”

None of this means that the organizations receiving Gates’ money — media or otherwise — are irredeemably corrupt, nor that the Gates Foundation does not do any good in the world. But it does introduce a glaring conflict of interest whereby the very institutions we rely on to hold accountable one of the richest and most powerful men in the planet’s history are quietly being funded by him. This conflict of interest is one that corporate media have largely tried to ignore, while the supposedly altruistic philanthropist Gates just keeps getting richer, laughing all the way to the bank.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/documents ... ts/278943/

All the 'free speech' that money can buy.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/documents ... ts/278943/

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CBS is lying, anyone can watch the video and hear the witness's voice. He does not mention "Russian Forces".
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"He's been shot and left behind": U.S. journalist Juan Arredondo describes the moment he and Brent Renaud came under attack by Russian forces at a checkpoint in Irpin, Ukraine, on Sunday. Renaud was shot and killed. https://cbsn.ws/3i5hB8
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"the territorial defense [Ukrainian] fighters" shot #BrentRenaud, not Russian Forces.
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The mayor's order completes the picture of today's death of ex-New York Times contributor Brent Reno in Irpin. Apparently, the deceased journalist tried to take pictures from his car, but the territorial defense fighters mistook these actions for espionage and (2/3)
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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:33 am

‘Worse than Hitler’: Nazi revisionism in the service of US foreign policy
15 Mar
By Louis Allday

The past week has seen a flurry of public figures drawing direct parallels between the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the former dictator of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler. In some cases, Hitler has even been compared favourably to Putin – said to be less corrupt and less brutal as he had never killed ‘his own people’ and ‘did not use Chemical weapons’. As offensive and ahistorical as these comparisons are, to be fully understood they must be placed within the broader historical pattern of the US and its allies time and again cynically portraying leaders of their officially designated enemy states as some form of re-incarnation of Hitler in order to generate the emotional public reaction needed to justify their belligerent policies and add a superficial moral veneer to them.

Even a cursory look at the historical record of recent decades shows clearly that this comparison has been made so consistently and in such a way that it is effectively tantamount to a form of Holocaust denial and even an insidious rehabilitation of Nazism. In repeatedly making these comparisons to serve the needs of an imperialist and expansionist foreign policy agenda, and in exaggerating (and in many cases fabricating) the crimes of US enemies, the crimes of the Nazis have been systematically downplayed, distorted and, at times, outright denied. This trend has reached a crescendo in recent weeks as mainstream commentators and politicians whitewash overtly neo-Nazi paramilitary groups in Ukraine and, at the same time, declare Putin to be the new Hitler – or worse.

It is a trope that has surprisingly long roots and goes at least as far back as only a decade after the end of the Second World War. When the Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, purchased arms from Communist Czechoslovakia in 1955, much to chagrin of the US, The New York Times – an always reliable mouthpiece of the US establishment – began to refer to him as ‘Hitler on the Nile’.[1] This label became even more widespread after the anti-imperialist Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, and a host of British and French politicians, including the British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, repeatedly compared him to Hitler in order to pre-emptively justify their and Israel’s disastrous joint invasion of Egypt that took place later that year. Without offering any evidence, the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, even went so far as to declare that vehicles of Egyptian military officers were decorated with the swastika – a claim that was then reported uncritically by the press in both Israel and the US.[2] The Cuban President Fidel Castro was also compared to Hitler by the US in the 1980s when as a part of its decades-long campaign to slander the revolutionary leader, its permanent representative to the United Nations declared:

I am old enough to remember those who apologized for Hitler and Stalin. I remember the cries of shock and betrayal when the truth of what those dictators had done filtered out to the world. I think that sooner rather than later the same cries will go up when the world finally acknowledges the horrors of life under Castro.

It appears, however, that the sustained prominence of this ‘new Hitler’ framing did not come into full swing until the post-Soviet period, in which the US – now the uncontested global hegemon – had virtually free rein to overthrow any government that opposed its dominance, but still required public outrage to be generated in order to secure enough domestic support for its serial ‘interventions’. For instance, when speaking at a public rally in the US just two months before the launch of Operation Desert Storm and the start of the First Gulf War in January 1991, President George Bush Sr. compared the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein – formerly a close ally of the US – unfavourably with the German dictator and accused him of a level of ‘brutality that I don’t believe Adolf Hitler ever participated in’, a disturbing interpretation of events that is in effect Holocaust denial in itself. He would go on to make the same comparison to justify the conflict once it was raging and the US had already committed multiple war crimes in the space of only a few months. A particularly obscene irony of Bush’s rhetorical use of Hitler in this war-mongering fashion is that his own father, Prescott Bush, was directly involved in financing the Nazi Party’s rise to power and profitted from his position on the board of companies directly involved with the financial architects of Nazism up until 1942. Bush was far from alone in drawing this comparison of course. A Gallant Foundation study found that, between 1 August 1990 and 28 February 1991, the U.S. print media alone compared Hussein to Hitler on 1,035 occasions.[3]

The same trope re-appeared in 1999 when, in order to justify NATO’s assault on Yugoslavia and portray it as motivated by humanitarian concerns, the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milošević, was repeatedly compared to Hitler by US officials.[4] Perhaps most significantly, when making a live address to the American nation from the Oval Office on 24 March 1999, the day that NATO’s military assault on Yugoslavia began, Bush Sr.’s successor as President, Bill Clinton, drew direct comparisons between Milošević and the Nazi ruler, asking sombrely: ‘What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Adolf Hitler earlier? Just imagine if leaders back then had acted wisely and early enough, how many lives could have been saved, how many Americans would not have had to die?’.[5] The following month, the Labour Party MP, Ken Livingstone, echoed Clinton’s words, arguing that it wasn’t wrong to compare the two leaders as the President and many others had done.

When Milošević died in 2006, The Wall Street Journal published an article about him written by the man who led NATO’s murderous bombing campaign on Yugoslavia – its former Supreme Allied Commander, Wesley K. Clark – that was titled simply, ‘A Petty Hitler’. That Clark, who led what the former Nuremberg Trials Prosecutor, Walter J. Rockler, described as ‘the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland…[in which] the United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok’, was given the last word on Milošević says much about the moral blackhole at the heart of the US media and the seriousness with which any of its condemnations of a ‘new Hitler’ should be taken.

Next, when defending his hostile intent towards Iraq in March 2003, shortly before the US-UK invasion of the country was launched, the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, also invoked the spectre of Hitler – arguing against any ‘appeasement’ and claiming that although ‘a majority of decent and well-meaning people said there was no need to confront Hitler and that those who did were war-mongers’, such people were wrong. As his father had done before him twelve years previously, President George Bush Jr. also compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler more than once and like his counterpart Blair argued that ‘[a] policy of appeasement could bring (devastation) of the kind never seen on the face of the earth’ – an especially sickening line of argument to read in hindsight knowing the immense devastation that the invasion and its reverberations have inflicted upon the people of Iraq and the broader region ever since.

This by now familiar rhetorical device was dusted off again in 2011, this time to justify NATO’s destructive assault on Libya and help provide it with a humanitarian intervention narrative.[6] At a time when lurid, evidence-free claims of mass-rape and other atrocities being committed by Libyan forces (later proven to be unsubstantiated) were being uncritically reported in Western media, ABC reported on the ‘New Hitler’ Gaddafi. Two years later, as the US’ proxy war against the Syrian state was well underway, it was the turn of Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, who was compared directly to Hitler (and also Saddam Hussein) by the-then Secretary of State, John Kerry, and subsequently labelled the ‘New Hitler’ in the US tabloid press. This argument was later built on in especially deranged fashion when David Simon, most widely known as the creator of The Wire, tweeted: ‘Possessing sarin gas, Hitler wouldn't use it on soldiers even as his Reich fell. He'd been gassed in WWI. Assad has used it 2x on civilians.’ Simon’s implication that Hitler took a praise-worthy moral stance to not use sarin is disturbing enough in isolation, but is all the more outrageous in hindsight as substantial evidence exists that indicates the chemical weapon attacks in Syria that were alleged to have been carried out by ‘Assad’ (i.e. Syrian government forces) were in fact perpetrated by Western-backed ‘rebel’ forces.

More recently the ‘worse than Hitler’ framing has even been used by Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who in 2018 while in conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg, a former IDF prison Guard and now editor of The Atlantic, claimed: ‘I believe the Iranian supreme leader makes Hitler look good. Hitler didn’t do what the supreme leader is trying to do. Hitler tried to conquer Europe… The supreme leader is trying to conquer the world.’ A similarly absurd recent example of this phenomenon is when The Daily Mail referred to the DPRK leader, Kim Jong-Un, as ‘channelling his inner Hitler’ simply for wearing a leather jacket.

The recent comparisons between Putin and Hitler have been especially vociferous and widespread, not only because of the outrage generated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine but because those making the argument have been able to draw indirectly on a related and long-standing political project underway to conflate Hitler and the Nazis with Stalin and the Soviet Union. The tactics, rationale and history of this campaign, in which the work of historian Timothy Snyder is central, are of direct relevance to the current moment and can be read about at length in this detailed essay on the topic.

Testament to just how disingenuously and cynically this emotionally manipulative framing has been used is not just the vastly different character, circumstances and political direction of those leaders to whom it has been applied over time, but how the label appears to have been used for everyone except the rulers of the very states that actually inspired Hitler’s vision: the US and Britain.[7] What then unites this disparate group of states and their leaders is that, one way or another, they have either directly resisted or somehow stood in the way of US-led imperialist hegemony and of the penetration of Western capital wherever it desires. Putin, who has previously made no secret of his opposition to the US’ repeated undermining of international law and checks and balances, is a case in point in this regard.

By focussing on the ostensibly irrational, blood-thirsty and unhinged actions of individual leaders and stressing their supposed similarity to Hitler, a figure who is justifiably the bête noire in the minds of so many in the West, the US is able to effectively obscure the broader political context of the given crisis in question and whitewash its direct role in causing it. This process of the personalisation of conflicts by focussing on leaders serves to de-contextualise events from their broader setting and erases relevant geo-strategic, economic, and political factors in favour of a myopic focus on the leader in question’s alleged character traits. Thereby aggressions against entire nation-states become commonly understood as virtuous campaigns against a single ‘bad man’ who must be stopped and those who seek to analyse the relevant political context and the role of the West are condemned as ‘apologists’ for the leader in question.

Both in its own rhetoric and by using its extensive propaganda apparatus in the media, academia and beyond to portray itself as continually fighting a ‘new Hitler’ of one form or another allows the West to maintain the fiction – in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary – that it uses its military power (and other means of aggression including sanctions) in pursuit of justice and a commitment to some kind of universalist norms aimed at improving the conditions or alleviating the suffering of the peoples impacted. In doing so, their real motivations – namely the relentless pursuit of their state political interests and goals, are hidden from view. It is incumbent upon those of us who know what those true goals are to not be intimidated into silence about them by the same old accusations of being apologists of tyrants or whatever other disingenuous insults are slung at us by those whose job it is to bolster the perpetually crumbling façade of Western benevolence at all costs.



[1] Ali Rowghani, ‘The Portrayal of Nasser by the New York Times’ (unpublished manuscript, Stanford University, Department of History, Mar. 1994) as quoted in Joel Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry

Culture, Politics and the Formation of Modern Diaspora (University of California Press, 1998).

[2] Joel Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry Culture, Politics and the Formation of Modern Diaspora (University of California Press, 1998).

[3] Richard Keeble, ‘The Myth of Saddam Hussein: New Militarism and the Propaganda Function of the Human-Interest Story.’ in Media Ethics Ed. Matthew Kieran. (Routledge, 1998), 73.

[4] For discussion of the broader context of NATO’s war, its true intent and the media’s portrayal of it, see: Philip Hammond & Edward S. Herman, Degraded Capability: The Media and The Kosovo Crisis (Pluto Press, 2000) and Diana Johnstone, Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Pluto Press, 2002).

[5] President Clinton, ‘Address to the Nation,’ The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Washington, D.C., 24 March 1999.

[6] See Maximilian Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (Baraka Books, 2012)

[7] A particular theme of praise was offered for British ‘ruthlessness’ and ‘lack of moral scruples’ in building and defending their empire, which was held as a model for the Germans to follow. Hitler professed an admiration for the imperial might of the British Empire as proof of the racial superiority of the Aryan race, and British rule in India was held up as a model for how the Germans would rule Eastern Europe. Gerwin Strobl, The Germanic Isle, (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 42-43, 91.

Louis Allday
Louis Allday is a writer and historian based in London. He is the founding editor of Liberated Texts, the first published volume of which can be purchased via Ebb.

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/worse-than-hitler
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 19, 2022 1:08 pm

How Much Less Newsworthy Are Civilians in Other Conflicts?

A lot less, particularly when they’re victims of the US
JULIE HOLLAR

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Ukrainian (left) and Iraqi children during the invasion of their countries

So This Is What It Looks Like When the Corporate Media Opposes a War
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Jeff Cohen (Common Dreams, 2/28/22): “Unfortunately, there was virtually no focus on civilian death and agony when it was the US military launching the invasions.”
As US news media covered the first shocking weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some media observers—like FAIR founder Jeff Cohen (Common Dreams, 2/28/22)—have noted their impressions of how coverage differed from wars past, particularly in terms of a new focus on the impact on civilians.

To quantify and deepen these observations, FAIR studied the first week of coverage of the Ukraine war (2/24–3/2/22) on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News. We used the Nexis news database to count both sources (whose voices get to be heard?) and segments (what angles are covered?) about Ukraine during the study period. Comparing this coverage to that of other conflicts reveals both a familiar reliance on US officials to frame events, as well as a newfound ability to cover the impact on civilians—when those civilians are white and under attack by an official US enemy, rather than by the US itself.

Ukrainian sources—no experts

One of the most striking things about early coverage has been the sheer number of Ukrainian sources. FAIR always challenges news media to seek out the perspective of those most impacted by events, and US outlets are doing so to a much greater extent in this war than in any war in recent history. Of 234 total sources—230 of whom had identifiable nationalities—119 were Ukrainian (including five living in the United States.)

However, these were overwhelmingly person-on-the-street interviews that rarely consisted of more than one or two lines. Even the three Ukrainian individuals identified as having a relevant professional expertise—two doctors and a journalist—spoke only of their personal experience of the war. Twenty-one (17% of Ukrainian sources) were current or former government or military officials.

Airing so many Ukrainian voices, but asking so few to provide actual analysis, has the effect of generating sympathy, but for a people painted primarily as pawns or victims, rather than as having valuable knowledge, history and potential contributions to determine their own futures.

Meanwhile, Russian government sources only appeared four times. Sixteen other Russian sources were quoted: 13 persons on the street, an opposition politician and two members of wealthy families.

Eighty sources were from the United States, including 57 current or former US officials. Despite the diplomatic involvement of the European Union, only two Western European sources were featured: the Norwegian NATO Secretary General and a German civilian helping refugees in Poland. There were also eight foreign civilians featured living in Ukraine: three from the US, three African and two Middle Eastern.
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For Ukrainian-American reaction to the Russian invasion, CBS (2/24/22) turned to the leader of a group that “played a leading role in opposing federal investigations of suspected Nazi war criminals” (Salon, 2/25/14).
And while political leaders certainly bring important knowledge and perspective to war coverage, so too do scholars, think tanks and civic organizations with regional expertise. But these voices were almost completely marginalized, with only five such civil society experts appearing during the study period. All were in the United States, although one was Ukrainian-American Michael Sawkiw (CBS, 2/24/22), who represented the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (an organization associated with Stepan Bandera’s faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which participated in the Holocaust during World War II).

In effect, then, US news media have largely allowed US officials to frame the terms of the conflict for viewers. While officials lambasted the Russian government and emphasized “what we’re going to do to help the Ukrainian people in the struggle” (NBC, 3/1/22), no sources questioned the US’s own role in contributing to the conflict (FAIR.org, 3/4/22), or the impact of Western sanctions on Russian civilians.

The bias in favor of US officials, and the marginalization of experts from the country being invaded—as well as civil society experts from any country—recalls US TV news coverage of another large-scale invasion in recent history: the US invasion of Iraq. A FAIR study (Extra!, 5–6/03) at the time found that in the three weeks after the US launched that war, current and former US officials made up more than half (52%) of all sources on the primetime news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and PBS. Iraqis were only 12% of sources, and 4% of all sources were academic, think tank or NGO representatives.

In other words, though the bias is even greater when the US is leading the war, US media seem content to let US officials fashion the narrative around any war, and to mute their critics.

Visible and invisible civilians

But there are striking differences as well in coverage of the two wars. Most notably, when the US invaded Iraq, civilians in the country made up a far smaller percentage of sources: 8% to Ukraine’s 45%.

US reporters, almost all of them embedded with the US military in Iraq at the beginning of the war, absorbed and regurgitated US propaganda that painted the war as liberating Iraqis, not killing them. There was little motivation, then, to talk to or feature them, except to show them praising the US—the kind of reaction that a journalist embedding with heavily armed soldiers was likely to produce.

Another noteworthy difference is the way US news media cover antiwar voices from the aggressor nation. Interestingly, Russian public opposition to the Ukraine war appears to be roughly similar to US public opposition to the Iraq War, in that while a majority in each country supported their government’s aggressive actions at the start of both wars, around a quarter opposed them (Gallup, 3/24/03; Meduza, 3/7/22).

But on US TV news, antiwar sentiment appeared starkly different in the two conflicts. Of the 20 Russian sources in the study, ten (50%) expressed opposition to the war, significantly higher than the proportion polls were showing. Meanwhile, antiwar voices represented only 3% of all US sources in early Iraq coverage (FAIR.org, 5/03), a dramatic downplaying of public opposition.

Civilian-centered war coverage
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In the Ukraine invasion, US TV news coverage focused appropriately on the civilians who pay the highest price in modern warfare (ABC, 2/28/22)—but this focus was largely missing in reporting on US-led wars.
The brunt of modern wars is almost always borne by innocent civilians. But US media coverage of that civilian toll is rarely in sharp focus, such that recent reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offers an exceptional view of what civilian-centered war coverage can look like—under certain circumstances.

In our study, we looked not just at sources, but also the content of segments about Ukraine. In the first week of the war, the US primetime news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC offered regular reports on the civilian toll of the invasion, sending reporters to major targeted cities, as well as to border areas receiving refugees.

Seventy-one segments across the three networks covered the impact on Ukrainian civilians, both those remaining behind and those fleeing the violence. Twenty-eight of these mentioned or centered on civilian casualties.

Many reports described or aired soundbites of civilians describing their fear and the challenges they faced; several highlighted children. A representative ABC segment (2/28/22), for instance, featured correspondent Matt Gutman reporting: “This little girl on the train sobbing into her stuffed animal, just one of the more than 500,000 people leaving everything behind, fleeing in cramped trains.”

Making the impact on civilians the focus of the story, and featuring their experiences, encourages sympathy for those civilians and condemnation of war. But this demonstration of news media’s ability to center the civilian impact, including civilian casualties, in Ukraine is all the more damning of their coverage of wars in which the US and its allies have been the aggressors—or in which the victims have not been white.

‘They seem so like us’

CBS: Russia Closes in on Kyiv
Charlie D’Agata (CBS News, 2/25/22): “This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city.”

Many pundits and journalists have been caught saying the quiet part loud. “They seem so like us,” wrote Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph (2/26/22). “That is what makes it so shocking.”

CBS News‘ Charlie D’Agata (2/25/22) told viewers that Ukraine

isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.

“What’s compelling is, just looking at them, the way they are dressed, these are prosperous—I’m loath to use the expression—middle-class people,” marveled BBC reporter Peter Dobbie on Al Jazeera (2/27/22):

These are not obviously refugees looking to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa. They look like any European family that you would live next door to.

While US news media have at times shown interest in Black and brown refugees and victims of war (e.g., Extra!, 10/15), it’s hard to imagine them ever getting the kind of massive coverage granted the Ukrainians who “look like us”—as defined by white journalists.
‘Give war a chance’
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Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 4/6/99): “Twelve days of surgical bombing was never going to turn Serbia around. Let’s see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does.”
And one can certainly think of instances in which non-white refugees are given short shrift by US news. Despite their claims of deep concern for the people of Afghanistan as the US withdrew troops last year, for example, these same TV networks have barely covered the predictable and preventable humanitarian catastrophe facing the country (FAIR.org, 12/21/21). More than 5 million Afghan civilians are either refugees or internally displaced.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, named the world’s most neglected displacement crisis last year by the Norwegian Refugee Council (5/27/21), with 1 million externally and 5 million internally displaced, merited not a single mention in the last two years on US primetime news. And in the 2000s, when an estimated 45,000 Congolese were dying of conflict-related causes every month, they mentioned it an average of less than twice a year (FAIR.org, 4/09).

At our country’s own borders, news coverage minimizes refugees’ voices, largely framing their story as a political crisis for the US, not a humanitarian crisis for the predominantly Black and brown refugees (FAIR.org, 6/19/21).

But being white does not automatically give civilian victims a starring role in US news coverage. In the Kosovo War, Serbian victims of NATO bombing were downplayed—and sometimes their deaths even egged on—by US journalists (FAIR.org, 7/99). When NATO relaxed its rules of engagement, increasing civilian casualties, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (4/6/99) wrote: “Twelve days of surgical bombing was never going to turn Serbia around. Let’s see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does. Give war a chance.”

Similarly, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (4/8/99), critical of the “excruciating selectivity” of NATO’s bombing raids, cheered that “finally they are hitting targets—power plants, fuel depots, bridges, airports, television transmitters—that may indeed kill the enemy and civilians nearby.”

‘Designed to kill only targets’

As these examples suggest, while race might inform journalists’ feelings of identification with civilian victims, in a corporate media ecosystem that relies so heavily on US officials to define and frame events, the interests of those officials will necessarily shape which crises get more coverage and which actors more sympathy.

]quote]Image
Iraq Body Count notes that “gaps in recording and reporting suggest that even our highest totals to date may be missing many civilian deaths from violence.”[/quote]

The Iraq War offers a clear contrast to Ukraine coverage. The US invaded Iraq on pretenses of concern about both Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and his treatment of the Iraqi people—pitching war as humanitarianism (FAIR.org, 4/9/21). But Iraq Body Count recorded 3,986 violent civilian deaths from the war in March 2003 alone; the invasion began March 20, meaning those deaths occurred in under two weeks. (The IBC numbers—which are almost certainly an undercount—documented some 200,000 civilian deaths over the course of the war.) The US-led coalition was overwhelmingly responsible for these deaths.

(While the war ultimately resulted in over 9 million Iraqi refugees or internally displaced people, that displacement did not begin to reach its massive numbers until later on, so early coverage would not be expected to focus on refugees in the same way that Ukraine coverage does.)

During the first week of the Iraq War (3/20–26/03), we found 32 segments on the primetime news programs of ABC, CBS and NBC that mentioned civilians and the war’s impact on them—less than half the number those same news programs aired about Ukrainian civilians.

Remarkably, only nine of these segments identified the US as even potentially responsible for civilian casualties, while 12 framed the US either as acting to avoid harming civilians or as working to help civilians imperiled by Hussein’s actions. NBC‘s Jim Miklaszewski (3/21/03), for instance, informed viewers that though “more than 1,000 weapons pounded Baghdad today…every weapon is precision-guided, deadly accuracy designed to kill only the targets, not innocent civilians.”

In Ukraine coverage, by contrast, these shows named Russia as the perpetrator in every single one of the 28 mentions of civilian casualties, except in one brief headline announcement about a tank crushing a car with a civilian inside (ABC, 2/25/22); that incident was expanded upon later in the show to clearly identify the tank as Russian.

‘A direct result of Saddam‘

Viewers of CBS Evening News did not hear until the very end of the first week of the US invasion of Iraq any mention of US-perpetrated harm to civilians—though they did hear that Iraqi fighters were dressing as civilians and then firing at US troops (3/23/03, 3/24/03); that in one city, US coalition forces “are not firing into the center of the city because we cannot risk the collateral damage” (3/25/03); and that in a nearby town, “allied forces bring the first water relief to desperate Iraqi civilians” cut off by Hussein (3/25/03). The show briefly mentioned civilian casualties twice (3/24/03, 3/26/03) without identifying the side responsible for the injuries, though one (3/24/03) emphasized that the appearance of a wounded Iraqi family at a US camp “brought these [US] soldiers streaming out to give what aid they could.”

After US airstrikes ravaged a residential area of Baghdad on March 25, the US military’s carefully curated media management began to show some cracks—but not all outlets were ready to acknowledge US responsibility. To CBS‘s Dan Rather (3/26/03):

Scenes of civilian carnage in Baghdad, however they happened and whoever caused them, today quickly became part of a propaganda war, the very thing US military planners have tried to avoid.
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Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke (C-SPAN, 3/26/03): “Any casualty that occurs, any death that occurs, is a direct result of Saddam Hussein’s policies.”
Even in coverage that didn’t wave off civilian casualties as propaganda, journalists often danced around the responsibility for them, softening the critique. On one NBC segment (3/26/03), for instance, Peter Arnett never used an active voice to identify the perpetrator of strikes on civilians and civilian areas, circling around it with lines like: “We get the sense that Baghdad is becoming increasingly a target,” or “First, with the television station and now with bombing closer to the center of the city,” or “the whole area was devastated” or “When these missiles came into the city today, the city was relatively crowded.” Instead, at the end he described “American troops” as “massing to attack Baghdad”—as if the bombing described was not already an attack by American troops.

Combined with the repeated mentions of “human shields” and Iraqi fighters “dressing as civilians,” this kind of coverage directly fed the Pentagon line as enunciated by spokesperson Torie Clarke (C-SPAN, 3/26/03): “We go to extraordinary efforts to reduce the likelihood of those casualties. Any casualty that occurs, any death that occurs, is a direct result of Saddam Hussein’s policies.”

Iraqi civilians may well have been of less interest than Ukrainians to US reporters because they didn’t “seem like us.” But their deaths were certainly covered less because they didn’t fit with the official line journalists were parroting.

‘Perverse to focus too much on casualties’
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Amnesty International (4/19) on the US-led assault on Raqqa, Syria: “In all the cases detailed in this report, Coalition forces launched air strikes on buildings full of civilians using wide–area effect munitions, which could be expected to destroy the buildings.”
The US launched the Iraq War almost 20 years ago, but news coverage of civilian victims of US aggression has changed little over time. Throughout the ongoing Syrian civil war, the US has intervened to varying degrees, with a major escalation under Donald Trump in 2017. From June through October of that year, a US-led coalition pummeled the densely populated city of Raqqa, which had been taken over by ISIS, with a brutal air war.

Amnesty International (4/19) accused the coalition of destroying the city with air and artillery strikes, killing more than 1,600 civilians—ten times the number the US and its allies admitted to—and wounding many more. More than 11,000 buildings were destroyed. As the New Yorker‘s Anand Gopal (12/21/20) wrote, “The decimation of Raqqa is unlike anything seen in an American conflict since the Second World War.”

During the five months in which the offensive took place, only 18 segments on the three networks’ primetime news shows mentioned civilians in Syria. On ABC and NBC, the only references to civilian casualties were mentions of Trump highlighting an earlier deadly chemical weapon attack by Syrian forces elsewhere in the country (ABC, 6/27/17; NBC, 6/27/17). (CBS also mentioned the attack in the study period—7/17/17.) In fact, up to this day, neither ABC World News Tonight nor NBC Nightly News have made any mention of US attacks on civilians in Raqqa, despite the release of not one but two damning reports by Amnesty International (6/5/18, 4/19).

Only nine of the 17 segments mentioned civilians in Raqqa; all of them came from CBS, which was the only network of the three that bothered to send a correspondent to the city the network’s country was bombing. CBS correspondent Holly Williams filed eight reports that mentioned civilian casualties, from August 24 to October 17. Six of these named US airstrikes as causing civilian deaths, but each report mentioned in the same breath ISIS brutality against civilians or use of human shields, as if to absolve the US or shift the blame to ISIS.

For instance, on October 10, Williams reported:

Without American airstrikes, defeating ISIS would have been near impossible. But some of those now escaping ISIS territory say it’s the strikes that are their biggest fear. The US coalition admits that more than 700 civilians have been inadvertently killed in Syria and Iraq, others claim the number is far higher.

For Renas Halep, though, anyone who wants to destroy ISIS is a friend. He told us ISIS falsely accused him of stealing and amputated his hand four years ago. It’s a punishment the extremists have used extensively.


This “balance” is suspiciously consistent. It’s worth remembering that during the Afghanistan War, CNN chair Walter Isaacson ordered his staff to offset coverage of civilian devastation with reminders of the Taliban’s brutality, saying it “seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan” (FAIR.org, 11/1/01).

None of Williams’ on-camera sources criticized US coalition airstrikes, while many criticized ISIS—perhaps by CBS policy, or perhaps a function of Williams being embedded with coalition forces.

‘The booms of distant wars’
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Lester Holt (NBC, 2/25/22): “So often the booms of distant wars fade before they reach our consciousness.”
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine commenced, NBC anchor Lester Holt (2/25/22) mused:

Tonight, there are at least 27 armed conflicts raging on this planet. Yet so often the booms of distant wars fade before they reach our consciousness. Other times, raw calculations of shared national interests close that distance. But as we are reminded again in images from Ukraine, the pain of war is borderless.

Holt spoke as though journalists like himself play no role in determining which wars reach our consciousness and which fade. The pain of war might be borderless, but international responses to that pain depend very much on the sympathy generated by journalists through their coverage of it. And Western journalists have made very clear which victims’ pain is most newsworthy to them.

Featured image: During the invasions of their countries, US TV news was much more likely to talk to civilians from Ukraine (left, ABC, 2/26/22) than from Iraq (right, CBS, 3/19/13).

Research assistance: Luca GoldMansour

https://fair.org/home/how-much-less-new ... conflicts/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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