De suïcide aanslag in het Syrische Manbij waarbij 2 militairen van de VS en 2 VS ‘burgers’ die samenwerken met het VS leger (ofwel huursoldaten) omkwamen, was het sein voor de reguliere media in de VS om hysterisch te gillen dat IS niet is verslagen en de VS moet doorgaan met haar illegale oorlog in Syrië….. IS heeft inderdaad de aanslag opgeëist, maar dat heeft IS intussen al zo vaak onterecht gedaan, dat het maar de vraag is of deze aanslag inderdaad door deze terreurorganisatie is uitgevoerd.
De schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, Caitlin Johnstone heeft zich goed pissig gemaakt over de reactie van de reguliere media in de VS, terwijl deze reactie volledig voorspelbaar was en is…. Maakt verder niet uit, de meer dan belachelijke reacties van de verschillende media-oorlogshitsers zijn het lezen meer dan de moeite waard. Met het voorgaande geven de reguliere massamedia in de VS nog eens aan dat ze volkomen in de zak zitten van: -de oorlogshitsers in het Pentagon, -de geheime diensten van de VS, -de wapenfabrikanten (inclusief de fabrikanten van rollend, varend en vliegend oorlogstuig), -de NAVO en -de oliemaffia (de laatsten verdienen in tijden van oorlog ook fiks meer)….. Overigens ook banken, de farmaceutische maffia en aandeelhouders kunnen fikse winsten boeken door oorlogsvoering…. (zo verdiende Nederland zich scheel aan de raffinage van cocaïne tijdens WOI, waar Nederland alle legers die in Frankrijk vochten van deze drug voorzag….)
Het hieronder opgenomen artikel komt van de site van Caitlin Johnstone en is door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media:
War Whores Scramble to Say Syria Attack Means US Troops Must Remain
(CJ Opinion) — A suicide bombing in Manbij, Syria has reportedly killed 19 people including four Americans, two of whom were US soldiers and two of whom worked with the US military. ISIS, which has an extensive history of falsely claiming responsibility for attacks it had nothing to do with, has claimed responsibility for the attack. Despite the fact that ISIS would claim responsibility for a housewife stepping on a Lego block, and despite the complete absence of evidence that it had anything to do with the deadly explosion, all the usual cheerleaders of endless war are pointing to the Manbij suicide bombing and shrieking “See?? Trump said ISIS is defeated and it’s not!”
“ISIS is still a very real threat here,” CNN international corespondent Clarissa Ward told Jake Tapper from northern Syria. “And the real concern that we are hearing over and over again on the ground, Jake, is that when US troops withdraw, a power vacuum is created, and that only gives them more strength.”
Virulent Syria war pundit Charles Lister, who is notorious for praising Al Qaeda and is a senior fellow at the Gulf state-funded neoconservative think tank Middle East Institute, told AFP that this attack invalidates Donald Trump’s order last month to withdraw troops from Syria.
“Trump’s order was reckless and driven far more by domestic political concerns than it was by facts on the ground,” Lister said, adding, “To suggest ISIS is ‘defeated’ because it no longer controls territory is to fundamentally misunderstand how ISIS and similar organizations seek to operate.”
Former John McCain ventriloquism dummy Lindsey Graham pounced like a rat on a cheese doodle on the opportunity to call for continued US troop presence within hours of the attack, interrupting the confirmation hearing of Attorney General nominee William Barr with an ejaculation about Trump’s Syria withdrawal.
Senator @LindseyGrahamSC this morning spoke about the attacks on American service members in Manbij, Syria.
“I would hope the President would look long and hard at where he’s headed in Syria,” Graham said after repeating the baseless claim that the attack was perpetrated by ISIS. “I know people are frustrated, but we’re never going to be safe here unless we’re willing to help people over there who will stand up against this radical ideology.”
Not to be left out when there are moronic war agendas to be sold, Fox News leapt into the fray with a quote from an anonymous foreign diplomat saying “This attack today is a direct result of the announcement made by President Trump that U.S. forces are pulling out. These troops had a bullseye on them when the president telegraphed that he was ordering a pullout.”
“ISIS has already claimed responsibility for today’s suicide attack, a reminder that the group is not defeated,” added Fox’s Jennifer Griffin.
MSNBC’s deranged intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance topped everyone as usual with a babbling nonsensical post about how US troops were killed in Manbij because there were no US troops in Manbij, proving that Assad and Putin may have allowed the attack to happen, which proves Trump is a Russian asset.
“The moment Russia and Assad took over patrolling Manbij on Trumps go ahead we get hit with suicide bombers for the first time. It’s possible Russia/Assad let the attack happen. Trump’s treachery on this matter now kills our special operators. #RussianAsset,” Nance tweeted between huffs of paint thinner.
The moment Russia and Assad took over patrolling Manbij on Trumps go ahead we get hit with suicide bombers for the first time. It’s possible Russia/Assad let the attack happen. Trump’s treachery on this matter now kills our special operators. #RussianAsset.
Other voices are treating the reports about the bombing with a little more skepticism.
“If ISIS were smart it would hold its fire especially against Americans,” tweeted professor and author Max Abrahms. “The main justification for leaving Syria is the (contested) assessment ISIS is defeated. ISIS attacks convey the opposite, weakening the strategic rationale of withdrawal while making it politically harder.”
“Ok, so Trump announces that the U.S. will begin a phased withdrawal from Syria, which according to his critics, would only benefit ISIS who they say is still operational and would welcome a U.S. pull out. But not waiting for pull out ISIS then targets U.S. troops! Yeah right,” tweeted former Green Party vice presidential nominee Ajamu Baraka.
These are interesting points. If ISIS is indeed responsible for the bombing, as war pundits are unquestioningly asserting is the case, then they’re either really, really stupid or they really want US troops to remain in Syria. Or perhaps the attack was engineered by someone else who has a vested interest in keeping a US military presence in Syria, either using ISIS as a patsy or completely separate from ISIS. Wouldn’t be the first time a suspicious attack took place in Syria while the Trump administration was working to withdraw troops.
Of course, this whole debate ignores the most obvious point of all: that if there was no US military presence in Syria, there would be no US military personnel being killed in Syria. The fight against the terrorist forces who nearly overtook the nation with the help of the western power alliance’s imperialist support have been beaten to the brink of total defeat not by the US, but by the Syrian government and its allies. If US troops were removed Damascus would quickly restore stability to the region and continue rebuilding the war-ravaged nation. But this is precisely what these war whores do not want.
Syria is a strategically crucial geopolitical nation for reasons having to do with natural resources and the power dynamics of Israel, Iran, and the empire-aligned Gulf states. It is not a coincidence that so much energy gets poured into this small stretch of land and its surrounding nations by the western military alliance and its propaganda machine, and it’s unlikely that the global dominators will lose interest in Syria any time soon. Stay skeptical.
In de VS spreekt men n.a.v. de Trump administratie over ‘Trump Hypersensitive Unexplained Disorder’ (THUD), een aandoening die wordt veroorzaakt door het regeringsbeleid van Trump, uiteraard dik gerelateerd aan de leugen die men ‘Russiagate’ noemt……. Mensen die aan deze aandoening lijden hebben last van een groot aantal symptomen, zoals: overeten, hoofdpijn, flauwvallen, chronische nekpijn, depressie en zelfs suikerproblemen plus hartklachten…… (voor een volledige lijst, zie het hieronder opgenomen artikel van Caitlin Johnstone)
Aan voorgaande aandoeningen lijdt men in de VS al decennia lang, niet zo vreemd als je ziet hoe inhumaan men daar met het grote arme deel van de bevolking omgaat, -hoe men omgaat met wapenbezit, -hoe men omgaat met kleurlingen, -hoe men de ene na de andere illegale oorlog voert, -de enorme prestatiedwang in de VS maatschappij en zaken als -de prijs voor gezonde voeding (arme gezinnen zijn altijd goedkoper uit als ze eten halen bij zaken als McDonald’s, i.p.v. gezonde voeding uit de winkel of van de markt)….
Buiten wapenbezit, zijn deze zaken overigens ook van toepassing op veel andere westerse bevolkingen, zelfs in Nederland lijden veel mensen aan de hiervoor benoemde gezondheidsklachten……
Johnstone betoogt terecht dat de reguliere massamedia verantwoordelijk zijn voor doden, niet alleen met hun onvoorwaardelijke steun aan het oneindig illegaal oorlogvoeren door de VS, maar ook voor het bewaren (en bewaken) van de ijskoude, inhumane neoliberale status quo, door deze dag in dag uit als zaligmakend te prediken….. Daarmee propageren deze media de klassenmaatschappij die van nooit weggeweest weer massaal wordt omarmt in de VS (en andere westerse landen), ja zelfs door mensen die arm zijn, daar de media hen voorhouden dat ze volgend jaar wel eens schathemelrijk zouden kunnen zijn…. Ofwel het inleveren van de leugen dat het leven na de dood veel beter zou zijn dan het leven zelf, zoals o.a. door christenen gepropageerd, wordt meer en meer ingewisseld voor het gehersenspoelde ‘kansdenken’, waarvoor de reguliere massamedia en veel politici verantwoordelijk zijn…..
Vergeet niet dat je in de VS aanwijsbaar langer kan leven als je geld hebt, buiten de (gedwongen) voedselkeuze voor arme burgers, is ook de medische hulpverlening voor de welgestelden tientallen procenten beter dan die voor de grote onderlaag van arme mensen in de VS, van wie niet zelden mensen vroegtijdig overlijden aan bijvoorbeeld kanker, daar ze de therapieën niet kunnen betalen……. Buiten de 50 miljoen VS burgers die afhankelijk zijn van voedselbonnen, zijn er vele miljoenen meer, die zelfs met 2 banen niet rond kunnen komen (een zaak die hier ook meer en meer voorkomt, we volgen de VS dan ook in het asociale neoliberale VS beleid…….)
A new, updated data set is now available on a psychological phenomenon that has been labeled “Trump Anxiety Disorder” or “Trump Hypersensitive Unexplained Disorder,” and it says that the phenomenon only got worse in 2018. The disorder is described as a specific type of anxiety in which symptoms “were specific to the election of Trump and the resultant unpredictable sociopolitical climate,” and according to the 2018 surveys Americans are feeling significantly more stressed by the future of their country and the current political environment than they were last year.
As the possibility of a Hillary Clinton victory began to slip away—and the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency became more and more certain—the contours of the new age of American anxiety began to take shape. In a 2017 column, Washington Postcolumnist Dana Milbank described this phenomenon as “Trump Hypertensive Unexplained Disorder”:
“Overeating. Headaches. Fainting. Irregular heartbeat. Chronic neck pain. Depression. Irritable bowel syndrome. Tightness in the chest. Shortness of breath. Teeth grinding. Stomach ulcer. Indigestion. Shingles. Eye twitching. Nausea. Irritability. High blood sugar. Tinnitus. Reduced immunity. Racing pulse. Shaking limbs. Hair loss. Acid reflux. Deteriorating vision. Stroke. Heart attack. It was a veritable organ recital”.
Two years later, the physiological effects of the Trump administration aren’t going away. A growing body of research has tracked the detrimental impacts of Trump-related stress on broad segments of the American population, from young adults to women, to racial and LGBT communities.
“A growing body of research tracked the detrimental impacts of Trump-related stress on broad segments of the American population, from young adults to women, to racial and LGBT communities.” @jaredbkeller on the biological response to living under Trump. https://bit.ly/2TRhIWF
Research Suggests Trump’s Election Has Been Detrimental to Many Americans’ Mental Health
Particularly that of the country’s most marginalized groups.
psmag.com
I do not for one second doubt that Americans are feeling more stressed and suffering more health-degrading symptoms as a result than they were prior to Trump’s election. But Pacific Standard and its “growing body of research” ignore the most obvious and significant culprit behind this phenomenon which is tearing people’s health to shreds: the mass media which has been deliberately fanning the flames of Trump panic.
The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just published a sarcasm-laden piecedocumenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia’s natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing. And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower who just so happens to be a longtime target of US intelligence agencies.
If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, there would be a lot less “Putin’s puppet” talk and a lot more “Hey, maybe we should avoid senseless escalations which could end all life on earth” talk among news media consumers. But there isn’t, because the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it’s in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience.
Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he’s a facilitator of America’s permanent unelected government just like his predecessors, and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he’s not that much different from Barrack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump hasn’t even caught up to Obama’s peak ICE deportation years. If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, people would be no more worried about this administration than they were about the previous ones, because when it comes to his administration’s actual behavior, he’s just as reliable an upholder of the establishment-friendly status quo as his predecessors.
(mijn excuus, deze afbeelding past niet helemaal op de pagina, krijg het niet op orde, voor de volledige lijst zie Caitlin Johnstoneof klik op de afbeelding)
Used to be that the US mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won’t even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water. Now they’re skipping the middle man and killing them directly by psychologically brutalizing them so aggressively that it ruins their health, all to ensure that Democrats support war and adore the US intelligence community.
They do this for a reason, of course. The Yellow Vests protests in France have continued unabated for their ninth consecutive week, a decentralized populist uprising resulting from ordinary French citizens losing trust in their institutions and the official narratives which uphold them. The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting US government institutions. Right now they’ve got Republicans cheering on the White House and Democrats cheering on the US intelligence community, but that could all change should something happen which causes them to lose control over the thoughts that Americans think about their rulers.
Propaganda is the single most overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of human society. The ability of those in power to manipulate the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an inverted totalitarianism which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered by the interests of the common man.
The only thing that will lead to real change is the people losing trust in corrupt institutions and rising like lions against them. That gets increasingly likely as those institutions lose control of the narrative, and with trust in the mass media at an all-time low, populist uprisings restoring power to the people in France, and media corporations acting increasingly weird and insecure, that looks more and more likely by the day.
Caitlin Johnstone heeft zich over de berichtgeving van de massamedia gebogen en zet een aantal feiten wat betreft de reguliere (massa-) media op een rij, waarbij ze tot verrassende inzichten komt.
Als eerste buigt Johnstone zich over de vraag waarom journalisten van de reguliere media in ‘vrije democratieën’ (‘een beetje dubbelop’) zich gedragen als hun collega’s van staatsmedia propagandisten. Waarom gedragen ze zich als betrouwbare vertegenwoordigers van de gevestigde orde en waarom wordt elk idee gemarginaliseerd dat niet past in wat op een bepaald moment als een correcte gedachte wordt gezien? (en dat kan op zeer grove manier gebeuren, zie de smerige en uiterst valse berichtgeving over de Britse Labour leider Jeremy Corbyn door de reguliere media waar ook de BBC deel van uitmaakt, al kan je die ‘onafhankelijke zendgemachtigde’ als staatsomroep onder een dictatuur zien)
Waarom worden mensen die de gevestigde orde bekritiseren altijd door de media veroordeeld? Waarom worden ‘fouten’ in een land dat buiten de invloedssfeer en de macht van de gecentraliseerde VS-alliantie valt, zo kritisch becommentarieerd door de reguliere (westerse) media, terwijl fouten binnen die alliantie worden vergeven, of veelal zelfs niet worden genoemd?
Volgens Johnstone zijn er maar twee verklaringen voor die unanieme instemming van de reguliere media op die onderwerpen:
Die instemming bestaat omdat die media altijd de waarheid zouden vertellen, of die instemming bestaat omdat er een systeem is ontstaan, waarin de journalisten van de reguliere media ons voorliegen en een vals beeld schetsen van wat er gebeurt in de wereld.
Volgens Johnstone zijn dit de enige mogelijkheden, waarbij ze de eerste uiteraard afwijst, immers als deze media altijd de waarheid vertellen, zouden deze media niet de leugens herhalen over bijvoorbeeld de oorlogen in Vietnam en Irak, ofwel dan zou het afslachten van miljoenen op grond van leugens niet zijn verdedigd in die media………
Eén en ander betekent overigens niet dat de grote reguliere media alleen maar liegen, immers dan zou men de klanten snel verliezen, nee men brengt natuurlijk ook echt nieuws, naast halve waarheden, verdraaide feiten en de al genoemde leugens.
Lees het artikel van Johnstone, zij legt deze zaak duidelijk uit, waarna de conclusie wordt getrokken dat de media inderdaad aan de leiband lopen van plutocraten of fondsen van aandeelhouders (oké dat was al bekend, maar Johnstone geeft het geheel handen en voeten). Voorts meldt Johnstone ten overvloede nog eens dat de CIA al sinds de 50er jaren van de vorige eeuw bemoeienis heeft met de reguliere (massa-) media in de VS…….
How Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas
Why do mainstream media reporters within ostensibly free democracies act just like state media propagandists? Why are they so reliably pro-establishment, all throughout every mainstream outlet? Why do they so consistently marginalize any idea that doesn’t fit within the extremely narrow Overton window of acceptable opinion? Why does anyone who inconveniences western establishment power always find themselves on the losing end of a trial by media? Why are they so dependably adversarial toward anything that could be perceived as a flaw in any nation outside the US-centralized power alliance, and so dependably forgiving of the flaws of the nations within it?
The way I see it there are only two possible explanations for the unanimous consensus in mass media on these issues:
Explanation 1: The consensus exists because the mass media reporters are all telling the truth all the time.
OR
Explanation 2: The consensus exists because there is some kind of system in place which keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture about what’s going on in the world.
Those are the only two possibilities, and only one can be true, since any mixture of the two would result in the loss of consensus.
Most mainstream westerners harbor an unquestioned assumption that Explanation 1 is the only possibility. The things they see on CNN, the BBC and the ABC are all accurate descriptions of what’s really going on in the world, and the consensus in their descriptions exists because they’re all describing the same objective reality.
But what would that mean exactly? Well, for starters if the mainstream media reporters are telling us the truth all the time it would mean that the same power institutions which slaughtered millions in Vietnam and Iraq for no good reason are actually virtuous and honest. It would mean the positive, uncritical picture that is consistently painted of those same institutions which wage nonstop campaigns of bloodshed and oppression to ensure the profit of economic manipulators and war profiteers is due to those institutions possessing merits which are overall so positive that no criticism of them is needed. It would mean that the status quo of climate destruction, steadily growing wealth inequality, an increasingly Orwellian surveillance system, an increasingly militarized police force, increasing internet censorship, and crushing neoliberal austerity measures are all things people voted for using the excellent democratic political system the mainstream media defends, based on the accurate information the mainstream media gave them about what’s in their best interests.
Explanation 1 sounds improbable in that light. We know that the system is spectacularly screwed up, and we know that the political establishment which these mainstream outlets always defend does unforgivably evil things, so we should expect to see a lot more critical reporting and a lot less protecting of the status quo. But we don’t. We see war crimes ignored, oppression justified, the two-headed one-party system normalized, dissident narratives smeared as fake news conspiracy theories, and unproven assertions by government agencies with a known history of lying reported as unquestionable fact.
But that leaves only Explanation 2. How could that be right?
This partof a 1996 interviewbetween Noam Chomsky and the BBC’s Andrew Marr describes a foundational element of Explanation 2: that there is a system in place which ensures that all the reporters in positions of influence are there not to report factually on the news of the day, but to sell a particular narrative that is friendly to the state and the status quo. Chomsky describes a “filtering system” which ensures that only those loyal to power rise to the top within the plutocrat-owned media, to which Marr objects and insists that his peers are brave truth-tellers who hold power to account. Subsequently, the following exchange takes place:
”Chomsky: Well, I know some of the best, and best known investigative reporters in the United States, I won’t mention names, whose attitude towards the media is much more cynical than mine. In fact, they regard the media as a sham. And they know, and they consciously talk about how they try to play it like a violin. If they see a little opening, they’ll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn’t make it through. And it’s perfectly true that the majority – I’m sure you’re speaking for the majority of journalists who are trained, have it driven into their heads, that this is a crusading profession, adversarial, we stand up against power. A very self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a value judgement but, the better journalists and in fact the ones who are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different picture. And I think a very realistic one.
Marr: How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are..
Chomsky: I’m not saying your self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”.
“If you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
It is an obvious fact that mainstream media outlets are owned by the extremely wealthy, as has been the case for a very long time. Owning media is in and of itself a profitable investment, “like having a license to print your own money” as Canadian television magnate Roy Thomson once put it. So when it comes to the news media outlets which form people’s perceptions of the world, what incentive would a powerful plutocrat have to platform anti-establishment voices on those outlets and help sow ideas which upset the status quo upon which said plutocrat has built his empire? It certainly wouldn’t make him any more money, and if anti-establishment ideas like socialism, anarchism, non-interventionism or skepticism of government agencies gained popular footing in public consciousness, it could upset the foundation of the plutocrat’s dynasty and cause him to lose everything.
Plutocrats have put a lot of energy into influencing government policy in order to create legislation which ensures the continued growth of their wealth and power. A whole lot of maneuvering has had to happen over the course of many years to create a political system wherein government bribery is legal in the form of campaign finance and corporate lobbying, wherein deregulation of corporations is the norm, wherein tax loopholes are abundant and tax burdens are shifted to the middle class, wherein money hemorrhages upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while ordinary people grow poorer and poorer. What incentive would these powerful oligarchs have to risk upsetting that delicate balancing act by helping to circulate ideas which challenge the very governmental system they’ve worked so hard to manipulate to their extreme advantage? And how many incentives would they have to keep everyone supporting the status quo?
How hard would it be to simply decline to give anti-establishment voices a platform, and platform establishment loyalists instead? How easy would it be for a wealthy media owner or influential investor to ensure that only establishment loyalists are given the job of hiring and promoting editors and reporters in a mainstream media outlet?
Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they’re actually tweeting is “Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I’ll say Corbyn is an antisemite!” And the MSM bosses pay attention.
If you’ve ever wondered what motivates all those blue-checkmarked corporate media journalists to spend so much time on Twitter defending the powerful and attacking the disempowered, this is your answer. They spend their own free time smearing Jill Stein, calling Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite, attacking Julian Assange, supporting longtime neoconservative war agendas against Russia, Syria and Iran and uncritically reporting intelligence agency assertions as fact not because there’s a CIA officer hovering over their shoulder at all times telling them exactly what to tweet, but because they’re auditioning for a job. They’re creating a public record of their establishment loyalism which current and future employers will look at when weighing hiring and promotion decisions, which is why both journalism schools and journalism employers now encourage journalists to cultivate a social media presence to “build their brand”, i.e. their public resume.
So it’s very easy to fill mass media jobs with minds which are not predisposed toward rocking the boat. A pro-establishment consensus is artificially built, and now you’ve got an environment where someone who stands up and says “Uh, hey, so we still haven’t seen any actual hard evidence that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way” or whatever is instantly greeted by a wall of shunning and shaming (observe Aaron Maté‘s interactions with other journalists on social media for a good example of this), which can be psychologically difficult to deal with.
Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they’re actually tweeting is “Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I’ll say Corbyn is an antisemite!” And the MSM bosses pay attention.
Anyone who’s ever gone to high school can understand how powerful the social pressures to seek peer approval and fit in can be, and anyone who’s ever worked a normal job anywhere can understand the natural incentives that are in place to behave in a way that is pleasing to one’s bosses. In any job with any kind of hierarchy, you quickly learn the written rules, and you pay close attention to social cues to learn the unwritten ones as well. You do this in order to learn how to avoid getting in trouble and how to win the approval of your superiors, to learn which sorts of behaviors can lead to raises and promotions, and which behaviors will lead to a career dead-end. You learn what will earn you a pat on the back from a leader, which can be extremely egoically gratifying and incentivizing in and of itself.
It works exactly the same way in news media. Reporters might not always be consciously aware of all the pro-establishment guidelines they’re expected to follow in order to advance their careers, but they know how the reporters who’ve ascended to the top of the media ladder conduct themselves, and they see how the journalists who win the accolades behave. With the help of editors and peers you quickly learn where all the third rails and sacred cows are, and when to shut your mouth about the elephant in the room. And for those rare times that all these filtration devices fail to adequately filter out dissident ideas, you see the example that gets made of those few who slip between the cracks, like CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill for his defense of Palestinian human rights or Phil Donahue for his opposition to the Iraq invasion.
Last week, CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill delivered a speech at the United Nations in support of Palestinian self-determination and equal rights. Less than 24 hours later, CNN was done with him. http://bit.ly/2RTa4La
The six words that got Marc Lamont Hill fired from CNN
Hill’s dismissal highlights how pro-Israel lobbying groups control the US discourse on Palestine and Israel
mg.co.za
So plutocrats own the mass media and platform status quo-friendly voices, which creates an environment full of peer pressure to conform and workplace pressure to advance establishment-friendly narratives. Add to this the phenomenon of access journalism, wherein journalists are incentivized to cozy up to power and pitch softball questions to officials in order to gain access to them, and things get even more slanted. It’s easy to understand how all this can create an environment of consensus which has nothing to do with facts or reality, but rather with what narratives favor the US-centralized empire and the plutocrats who control it. But all those dynamics aren’t the only factors going into making sure a consensus worldview is maintained. Remember that hypothetical CIA officer I mentioned earlier who isn’t actively leaning over every journalist’s shoulder and dictating what they tweet? Well, just because he’s not dictating every word produced by the mass media machine doesn’t mean he’s not involved.
Secretive and unaccountable government agencies have an extensive and well-documented record of involving themselves with news media outlets. It is a known and undisputed fact that the Central Intelligence Agency has been intimately involved in America’s news media since the 1950s, and it remains so to this day. In 2014 it was a scandal when reporter Ken Dilanian was caught collaborating with the CIA in his publications, but now veterans of the US intelligence community like John Brennan and James Clapper openly fill out the line-up of talking heads on MSNBC and CNN. Just recently the Guardian published a lie-filled smear piece on Julian Assange which was almost certainly the resultof the outlet’s collaboration with one or more intelligence and/or defense agencies, and when that article caused an outcry it was defended as the likely result of Russian disinformation in an evidence-free article by a CIA veteran who was permitted to publish anonymously in Politico. The Washington Post is solely owned by Jeff Bezos, who is a CIA contractor, and who we may be certain did not purchase the Post under the illusion that newspapers were about to make a lucrative comeback. Secretive government agencies are deeply involved in the workings of western news media, in many ways we know about, and in far more ways we don’t know about.
Taking all of these factors into consideration and revisiting Explanation 1 and Explanation 2 from the beginning of this article, it should be obvious to you that the most logical explanation for the uniform consensus of support for pro-establishment narratives in the mass media exists because there is indeed a system in place which keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture about what’s going on in the world.
This doesn’t mean that these news media outlets lie about everything all the time, it means they mostly provide half-truths, distortions and lies by omission whenever it benefits the agendas of the powerful, which is functionally the same as lying all the time. I sometimes get people telling me “Caitlin! The MSM lies all the time, and they say global warming is real! That means it’s false!” But it doesn’t work that way; if the TV tells you a celebrity has died then it’s probably true, and if they say it’s about to rain you should probably roll up your car windows. If they lied about everything all the time they would instantly lose all credibility, and their ability to propagandize effectively would be lost. Instead, they advance evidence-free narratives asserted by opaque government agencies, they avoid highlighting inconvenient truths, they ignore third parties and dissident ideas except to dismiss them, they harshly criticize the misdeeds of governments which oppose the US-centralized empire while sweeping the misdeeds of imperial members under the rug, and when there’s an opportunity to sabotage peace or support war, they seize it. They distort only when they have to, and only as much as they need to.
In this way the powerful have succeeded in controlling the people’s narratives about what’s happening in their country and their world. This is the system of narrative manipulation we are up against when we try to sow dissident ideas into public consciousness, and as the old adage goes, it is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
And yet we are gaining ground. The manipulators have been losing control of the narrative, which is why the mass media have been acting so weird and desperate since 2016. The unelected power establishment failed to manufacture support for its would-be Syria invasion, it failed to get the publicto buy into the Russia hysteria, trust in the mass media is at an all-time low, and it’s continuing to plummet. More and more people are waking up to the fact that they are being lied to, which is good, because the only thing keeping them from pushing for real change is the fact that there are all these screens in everyone’s lives telling them that real change isn’t needed.
The liars are against the ropes, and they’re starting to look winded. A populist information revolutionis looking more winnable than ever.
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for mywebsite, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me onFacebook, following my antics onTwitter, throwing some money into my hat on PatreonorPaypal, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
De VS is bezig om binnenkort nog meer sancties op te leggen aan Iran, het gaat nu niet alleen meer om de Iran deal, maar om een verandering van regering, althans anders zijn de VS sancties niet uit te leggen…….
Het meest schunnige is wel dat de VS de Iraanse autoriteiten verwijdt haar volk te terroriseren, terwijl je daar maar één ‘land’ van kan beschuldigen, de grootste terreurentiteit op onze aarde, de VS zelf!!!
De psychopathische oorlogsmisdadiger Mattis en anderen verdraaien de werkelijkheid op zo’n belachelijk grove schaal dat het net lijkt of Iran haar eigen burgers laat sterven, terwijl de VS de werkelijke dader is……..
Zelfs levensreddende medicijnen zijn nu moeilijk te krijgen in Iran, het is werkelijk om te janken als je de voorbeelden leest in het hieronder opgenomen artikel, geschreven door Caitlin Johnstone.
Hoe is het mogelijk dat EU landen de VS niet al lang in de VN Veiligheidsraad hebben aangeklaagd voor grootschalige terreur??? En hoe is het mogelijk dat de EU Iran niet te hulp snelt……….
Het is te hopen dat het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) ten minste de enorme oorlogsmisdaden inventariseert die werden en worden begaan door de VS en onder die oorlogsmisdaden reken ik tegenwoordig ook de economische oorlogsvoering van de VS tegen landen die haar onwelgevallig zijn, zoals Iran, Venezuela en Nicaragua……… Sancties die in feite nooit de leiding van het betreffende land schaden, maar het volk van dat land, waarmee je deze sancties rustig als misdaad tegen de menselijkheid kan duiden, of zoals gezegd oorlogsmisdaden…….
De hoogste tijd dat de internationale gemeenschap de VS opdraagt haar troepen overal ter wereld terug te trekken, het barbaarse neokoloniale beleid van de VS moet gestopt worden! Bovendien dient men als de sodemieter af te stappen van de dollar als internationaal betaalmiddel (als de VS er financieel zo voor had gestaan, maar dan in de 20er jaren van de vorige eeuw, had men daar, net als destijds in Duitsland, bij wijze van spreken een kruiwagen vol met papiergeld nodig gehad om een brood te kopen…..).
De oorzaak van dat niet ingrijpen en bijvoorbeeld wel terechte sancties op te leggen aan de VS, is puur en alleen te danken aan het feit dat de dollar als internationaal betaalmiddel wordt gebruikt, terwijl de VS in feite meer dan failliet is >> de staatsschuld van de VS is niet meer in cijfers weer te geven……. Vandaar ook dat ons financiële systeem zal instorten als de dollar echt volledig onderuitgaat, iets dat welhaast niet is te voorkomen…… (ondanks dat men dit weet, worden er geen maatregelen genomen, alsof het om een konijn gaat dat in het koplicht van een aanstormende auto verstijft….)
US Blames Iran for Impoverishing Civilians While Prepping
(CJ Opinion) — The United States government is preparing to implement an additional level of sanctions against Iran for its refusal to meet a dozen demands that are so absurdly unreasonable that they have been called a regime change policy in all but name. The sanctions which have already been implemented have already badly hurt the Iranian economy, the sting of which is being felt first and foremost by Iran’s poor and sickly.
In an article titled “Iran’s poor to bear brunt of Trump’s oil sanctions”, Financial Times documents how poor Iranians are already strained to the breaking point from the cutbacks they’ve had to make in food and groceries. An article titled “In Iran, US sanctions are being felt, with harsher measures to come” by the Christian Science Monitor details difficulties Iranian charities are having getting medicine to sick children, including chemotherapy treatment, having already run out of four life-saving drugs. In an article titled “US fails to shield humanitarian trade with Iran as sanctions loom”, Al Monitor details the way humanitarian aid, while ostensibly exempt from the sanctions, has been severely impacted by their economic aspect because humanitarian aid costs money. The Wall Street Journal further explains the effects of America’s economic warfare on ordinary Iranian civilians in an article titled “Iran Moves to Shelter Millions as U.S. Sanctions Bite”.
This is before the US implements a new level of attacks upon Iran’s oil industry, a primary economic lifeline, which is scheduled to begin on November fifth. If Iran can’t find a way to get around these crushing sanctions in a significant way, many civilians already stretched far too thin will be pushed past the breaking point.
And who is the US government blaming for the consequences of its economic warfare? Why, the Iranian government, of course.
The International Monetary Fund @IMFNews is projecting a 3.6% decline in #Iran’s economy next year. That’s what happens when the ruling regime steals from its people and invests in Assad—instead of creating jobs for Iranians, they ruin the economy.
“The International Monetary Fund @IMFNews is projecting a 3.6% decline in #Iran’s economy next year,” tweeted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “That’s what happens when the ruling regime steals from its people and invests in Assad — instead of creating jobs for Iranians, they ruin the economy.”
Pompeo talks about the Iranian people a lot. A recent State Department release is packed with lines like “Iran’s actions have made the country a pariah, much to the despair of its own people”, and “clerics and officials have wrapped themselves in the cloak of religion while robbing the Iranian people blind,” and “The United States is asking every nation that is sick and tired of the Islamic Republic’s destructive behavior to stand up for the Iranian people.” But Mike Pompeo does not care about the Iranian people. Plainly.
Sanctions are so weird. Imagine if the US government had listed twelve ridiculously extreme demands of Tehran, and then when those demands weren’t met they launched a few dozen Tomahawk missiles into an Iranian suburb. And imagine, if you will, what the response would be if Secretary Pompeo had then issued a tweet saying “Boy, it sure was awful of the Iranian regime to launch those missiles at its own civilians!”
He would never do such a thing, of course, because nobody would buy it. But for some weird, entirely narrative-based reason, the US government can get away with killing the same number of civilians by depriving them of food and medicine and say it’s Iran’s fault for not bowing to Washington’s twelve demands. The civilians would be just as dead as they would have been if they were killed by Tomahawk missiles, and the US government would be just as culpable for their deaths as they would have been if they’d killed them by missile strike. We can be absolutely certain that the US government would acknowledge such economic sanctions as an act of war (which they unquestionably are) if any foreign nation ever implemented anything similar against America. But for some weird, stupid, nonsense reason, the medieval siege tactic of starving them to death and cutting them off from supplies is something that can still be blamed on a sovereign nation for refusing to obey the commands of a foreign government. For some weird, stupid, nonsense reason, sanctions are the only form of warfare where it is considered both legal and acceptable to deliberately target a civilian population with lethal force.
The responses to this Tweet caught me off guard. Thank you for the kind words. But now I feel selfish for writing it. I didn’t want or expect sympathy; I wanted to make a point about the impact of sanctions on Iran — that it’s the ordinary people who suffer. And for what?
This, by the way, is all coming after the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered the United States to remove any impediments to humanitarian aide in the sanctions that it has implemented, to which Washington responded by withdrawing from two international agreements which could lead to any legally binding rulings by the ICJ. Any other nation which refuses to comply with UN rulings is branded a rogue nation by the US-centralized empire and targeted for regime change, but when the US does exactly the same thing we’re meant to look at it as perfectly normal and acceptable.
The US has defended its dismissal of the ICJ ruling by citing the exemptions it has made for humanitarian aide in its sanctions, with Secretary Pompeo asserting the following:
“Existing exceptions, authorizations, and licensing policies for humanitarian-related transactions and safety of flight will remain in effect. The United States has been actively engaged on these issues without regard to any proceeding before the ICJ. We’re working closely with the Department of the Treasury to ensure that certain humanitarian-related transactions involving Iran can and will continue.”
“Not only is he not being accurate, he is lying,” Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council told the Real News of Pompeo’s remarks. “The Trump administration has not issued a single license since they took power. They know quite well that they’re doing everything to scare banks away from the Iranian market, which then is affecting the ability for the Iranians to pay for medicine and medical supplies, even though that is supposedly exempt. So essentially what they’re saying, hey, we made those exempt. Yes, but you have targeted the financial system so harshly, so indiscriminately, so no bank is willing to handle transactions with Iranian banks. And as a result the Iranians cannot buy medical supplies, and their medical shortages are a direct result of the sanctions.”
What will Secretary Pompeo say when civilians begin dropping dead? Will he claim that “the price is worth it”, as his predecessor Madeleine Albright said of the thousands of Iraqi children killed in sanctions upon Iraq? Will he cite the constantly recurring lie that it is because Iran is the world’s top sponsor of terrorism? Will he claim that it is because it is somehow wrong for Iran to defend its ally Syria from the violent jihadist factions who attempted to effect regime change in Damascus with western backing? Or will he just be honest, and admit that it’s because Iran has one of the few governments in the strategically crucial and resource-rich Middle East which has refused to be absorbed into the blob of the US empire?
Caitlin Johnstone boog zich over de vraag waarom we zo gek zijn en ons tegelijkertijd zo miserabel* kunnen voelen.
Volgens Johnstone ligt dit aan diverse zaken, die ze de revu laat passeren, bijvoorbeeld dat ons wordt verteld dat het volkomen normaal is dat we de aarde naar de kloten helpen, middels zaken als de verbranding van fossiele brandstoffen. Zo werd vorige week bekendgemaakt dat Shell een lespakket heeft voor het voortgezet onderwijs waarin kinderen wordt verteld dat we voorlopig niet zonder fossiele brandstoffen kunnen…… Terwijl Shell al in de 80er jaren wist dat de verbranding van fossiele brandstoffen de klimaatverandering veroorzaakt, Shell had ook daar NB een lesprogramma voor ontwikkeld, echter dat lespakket werd snel door een nieuwe directeur topgraaier in de kluis opgeborgen….. Exxon wist e.e.a. uit eigen onderzoek al in de 70er jaren van de vorige eeuw, dus dat de klimaatverandering wordt veroorzaakt door menselijk handelen, ofwel het verbranden van fossiele brandstoffen…… Niet alleen Shell hield dit onder de pet, Exxon deed precies hetzelfde…… In feite hadden Exxon en Shell na hun onderzoek de gegevens openbaar moeten maken en hadden met wetenschappers moeten zoeken naar manieren om de klimaatverandering af te remmen en maatregelen te nemen om de destijds al voorspelde toename van natuurrampen in te dammen…… De oliemaffia had destijds al landen als Bangladesh moeten helpen maatregelen te nemen tegen heftiger moessonregens en overstromingen uit de zee (door orkanen, of zoals men ze daar noemt tyfonen)……. Vandaar ook mijn eerdere pleidooien om de verantwoordelijken van deze oliemaatschappijen voor een internationaal strafhof te brengen, immers ten gevolge van de klimaatverandering zijn weergerelateerde rampen in hevigheid dusdanig toegenomen dat intussen al duizenden mensen zijn gestorven…..** De manier waarop deze oliemaatschappijen met hun eigen onderzoeken zijn omgegaan, kan je zonder enige fantasie aanwijzen als moedwillig mensenlevens op het spel zetten en dat is niets anders dan (massa-) moord!!
Verder wijst Johnstone naar de illegale oorlogen die de VS voert en die als een niet te voorkomen zaak worden voorgesteld, om op die manier met de steun van het volk zoveel mogelijk oorlogen te kunnen voeren, alles in het belang van het militair-industrieel complex, waartoe ik ook de financiële maffia en de oliemaffia reken, om nog maar te zwijgen over het grote aantal VS bedrijven, die na de enorme vernietiging zoals veroorzaakt door de illegale oorlog van de VS tegen Irak, een groot deel van de contracten krijgen voor de wederopbouw…….
Lees het artikel van Johnstone, die weliswaar de situatie in de VS schildert, echter die verschilt maar weinig van die in ons land……..
The Real Reason Why We’re So Crazy and Miserable All the Time
(CJ Opinion) — We are surrounded by screens full of voices that are always lying to us, and experts wonder why we’re so crazy and miserable all the time.
The screens tell us, “This is a perfectly normal and sane way of doing things. It is perfectly normal and sane to strip the earth bare and poison the air and the water in an economic system which requires infinite growth on a finite planet. People who say otherwise are raving lunatics!” And the social engineers wonder why there’s increasing disaffection and alienation among the populace.
The screens tell us, “Just spend your time in this world turning the gears of the machine and you will be happy. The machine is your friend. The machine takes care of you. Work hard pulling its levers and greasing its cogs until you are old and you will gain satisfaction,” and then they wonder why we’re all gobbling up antidepressants like candy.
The screens tell us, “We need to drop explosives on Nation X because they need Freedom and Democracy™. We know we said that about Nation Y and Nation Z and that went terribly wrong, but that’s because it wasn’t managed properly. Trust that it is good and proper for the citizens of Nation X to be killed with bombs and bullets,” and then they wonder why people keep snapping and committing mass shootings.
The screens tell us, “You are crazy and stupid if you want a functioning healthcare system. Are you trying to put our billionaires and military out of business?” and then they wonder why people are becoming paranoid and angry.
The screens tell us, “Look at that gibbering maniac trying to get a third party up and running in the most powerful nation in the world! Only someone who is deeply awful and defective would believe that the two party system isn’t serving us,” and they wonder why everyone feels disempowered and unheard.
The screens tell us, “Of course this is the way things are; it’s the only way things could ever be.
Anyone who would try to change any part of this is either mentally ill or a Russian propagandist,” and they wonder why people shut down and numb themselves with opiates.
The screens tell us, “Everything is great. Everyone is doing fine. Everyone is happy. Look how happy everyone is on this sitcom. If you aren’t happy like that, it’s not because of the machine, it’s because of you. People need to be protected from your insanity. You mustn’t be allowed on any screens. You need to be silenced on social media. Trust us. Don’t trust yourself. Don’t trust that growing, gnawing sense that everything is fake and everything you’ve been taught is a lie. We have never lied to you. We have never been caught red-handed deceiving you and then acted like nothing happened. We have never gaslit you. You are misremembering things because you are confused. Shut up. You are dangerous. Shut up. You are foolish. Shut up. You are insane. The machine is sanity. The machine is freedom. Everyone is equal here. Everyone matters. Everyone gets a voice. Except you.” And the social engineers wonder why people are trusting them less and less.
The screens tell us, “War is normal. Poverty is normal. Mass surveillance is normal. Censorship of dissenting ideas is normal. Mass media propaganda is normal. Escalating wealth and income inequality is normal. Escalating police militarization is normal. Escalating tensions between nuclear superpowers is normal. Looming ecological disaster is normal.” And people wonder why everything feels like a bubble balancing on a house of cards that was built on top of a ticking time bomb.
The screens tell us, “Insane things are sane. Sane things are insane. Up is down. Black is white. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. If you disagree, you are crazy. If you disagree, you are poison. Shut up. You will contaminate the herd. Shut up. You are garbage. Shut up. You are a disease. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”
And the experts wonder why the old tricks are finding less and less psychological purchase. And we wonder why it is beginning to feel as though we are being startled out of a very long and horrible nightmare. And our rulers wonder, in their very few still and sincere moments, if it was wise to build their empire upon a sleeping giant.
* Nederlanders zouden tot de gelukkigste mensen ter wereld behoren, niet alleen uit ‘onderzoek’ van het CBS, maar ook uit internationale onderzoeken. Dit zou al jaren zo zijn, vreemd genoeg heb ik en velen met mij, nooit mensen ontmoet die zeggen (echt) gelukkig te zijn, of mensen die zeggen te zijn gecontacteerd door het CBS over hun gevoel van geluk…. Ook uit andere cijfers blijkt niet dat we een gelukkig volk zijn, zoals die over jongeren die meer en meer vastlopen in het leven vanwege alle prestatiedruk in ‘onze’ inhumane neoliberale prestatiemaatschappij, waardoor een groot aantal jongeren depressief is, of andere psychische aandoeningen oplopen…… Vergeet niet dat het aantal suïcides onder jongeren aanmerkelijk is toegenomen……. Dan is er nog de armoede in ons land, waaronder een kwart van onze bevolking leeft >> meer dan 4 miljoen Nederlanders leven op, tegen, of onder de armoedegrens, wat voor al deze 3 groepen een leven in armoede betekent…… Onder die groepen bevinden zich 600.000 kinderen (de echte cijfers), kinderen die door die armoede een trauma voor het leven oplopen, zo maken ze o.a. bijzonder vaak mee dat het gezin uit het huis wordt gezet en krijgen ze op school in de meeste gevallen te maken met pestgedrag vanwege de armoede waarin ze leven….. Bij dergelijke onderzoeken van het CBS en anderen, probeert het publiek zich zo gunstig mogelijk af te schilderen, immers wie wil toegeven dat hij of zij ongelukkig is….??? Zou overigens ook wel eens de vragen willen zien, die voor dergelijke onderzoeken worden gebruikt, immers met de manier van vragen stellen kan je een onderzoek sturen……. Zo zou het CBS een onafhankelijke organisatie zijn, echter deze organisatie wordt wel door de overheid betaald. Opvallend het enorme aantal onderzoeken dat ‘oh toeval’ het regeringsbeleid als geweldig afschildert, neem alleen al de jaarlijkse bekendmaking dat Nederlanders zo tevreden en gelukkig zijn, terwijl bijvoorbeeld ook het consumentenvertrouwen veelal het tegenovergestelde laat zien……. ** Iets waar je klimaatsceptici nooit over hoort, is het enorme aantal mensen die wereldwijd jaarlijks te vroeg overlijden ten gevolge van het inademen van smerige lucht, waar autoverkeer één van de grote boosdoeners is…… Deze mensen overlijden na een langdurig en akelig ziekbed (kanker)……. Alleen voor Nederland gaat het om rond de 18.000 mensen op jaarbasis…… (ter vergelijking: aan kanker t.g.v. roken overlijden hier jaarlijks 20.000 mensen…..) Kortom het stoppen met de verbranding van fossiele brandstoffen als steenkool en olieproducten als benzine en diesel, is ook in het belang van de volksgezondheid!!!
In de VS zijn het bestuur en directie van Facebook en Twitter tot de slotsom gekomen dat zij de juiste bedrijven hebben die de internetgebruikers op hun platform moeten censureren……..
Afgelopen donderdag hoorde ik voor het eerst over de uitbreidende censuur van de zogenaamde onafhankelijke organisaties Facebook en Twitter. BBC World Service meldde ‘s nachts al dat Facebook en Twitter in aanloop naar de zogenoemde democratische verkiezingen in de VS hun platforms uitgebreid gaan censureren……. Deze verkiezingen, ‘The Midterm Elections’ worden op 6 november a.s. gehouden in de VS, verkiezingen waar weer veel mensen van worden uitgesloten, ‘uiteraard’ vooral de arme gekleurde burgers……
Kijk, dat vooral de reguliere (massa-) media een hele berg aan ‘fake news’ (nepnieuws) en ronduit propaganda (inclusief angst- en haatzaaien) hebben gebracht en brengen, doet niet ter zaken, zij mogen gewoon hun Facebook- en Twitteraccount blijven gebruiken…..
Mensen dit is de opmaat naar een politiestaat en reken maar dat de EU daar gewoon achteraan hobbelt, ook hier wil men linkse en onafhankelijke berichtgeving weren van het net….. De waarheid mag niet meer worden gezegd, we moeten bang zijn van Rusland, Syrië en Noord-Korea (in de VS is Iran er met een dikke plus aan toegevoegd door de Trump administratie*), terwijl de ware grote terreurbrenger en organisator van terreur wereldwijd, juist de VS is…….. Tja beste bezoeker en dat mag nu juist niet verteld worden,althans niet op de sites met duizenden bezoekers……
Daarover gesproken, Caitlin Jones noemt in het hieronder opgenomen artikel van Anti-Media, eerder gepubliceerd op de website van Caitlin zelf, een aantal voorbeelden, let wel de aantallen zijn sinds de publicatie van dit artikel afgelopen donderdag fiks opgelopen
Men verschuilt zich bij Twitter en Facebook achter lamme argumenten, als dat er niet-authentiek gedrag en sensationeel politieke inhoud wordt geplaatst…… Waarom plaatsen ze dan wel berichten van Trump? (al zit die geloof ik alleen op Twitter), wat hij durft te plaatsen tart elk fatsoen en is niet zelden zelfs oproepend tot geweld!!
Lees het artikel van Caitlin en zegt het voort, Twitter en Facebook overschrijden een grens die anders alleen in fascistische of andersoortige dictaturen wordt overschreden…….. Onder het artikel o.a. nog een video van YouTube over dit onderwerp (benieuwd wanneer die organisatie video’s gaat verwijderen….)
(CJ Opinion) — Facebook has purged more dissident political media pages today, this time under the pretense of protecting its users from “inauthentic activity”. In a statement co-authored by Facebook Head of Cybersecurity Nathaniel Gleicher (who also happens to be the former White House National Security Council Director of Cybersecurity Policy), the massive social media platform explained that it has removed “559 Pages and 251 accounts that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
Facebook has unpublished my page, The Anti-Media, after falsely accusing us of violating policies. 2.1 million followers and 5 years of work gone…for now.
This “inauthentic behavior”, according to Facebook, consists of using “sensational political content — regardless of its political slant — to build an audience and drive traffic to their websites,” which is the same as saying they write about controversial things, and posting those political articles “in dozens of Facebook Groups, often hundreds of times in a short period, to drum up traffic for their websites.”
In other words, the pages were removed for publishing controversial political content and trying to get people to read it. Not for writing “fake news”, but for doing what they could to get legitimate indie media news stories viewed by people who might want to view it. The practice of sharing your material around in Facebook groups is common practice for most independent media content creators; I did it myself a lot in late 2016 and early 2017, and pretty much all my indie media peers at the time did too.
“For those of you who read what I write, you know that I did not violate any standards,” writes Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, whose personal profile and Facebook page for her political blog NoisyRoom.net were both deleted. “In fact, I don’t send out most of what I write. I send on big news links and a few memes. It was enough to get me banned and the pages are simply gone.”
“Facebook took down my page with nearly 70,000 followers, labeling it as ‘spam,’ when I have spent 4 years working to build that page up and using it to post the articles I wrote and videos of my reporting,” tweeted RT America’s Rachel Blevins. “This is so incredibly wrong and is affecting hundreds of similar pages.”
“And just like that 5 + years of hard work promoting ideas of peace and freedom have been erased,” wrote a Facebook user called John Liberty, who lost multiple pages about police accountability, cannabis legalization and libertarianism.
Two of the most high-profile pages which were shut down have probably been seen at some point by any political dissident who uses Facebook; the Free Thought Project, which had 3.1 million followers, and Anti-Media, which had 2.1 million. I’ve found useful information on both sites before, and despite disagreeing with them ideologically in some areas have found them both vastly more legitimate than anything you’ll find on Google News.
Facebook Launches Full-Blown Attack On Independent
Media
Facebook censorship has become a growing problem, especially for independent media outlets. On Thursday, the severity of the situation came to fruition.
thedailyhaze.com
Holy shit. The Anti-Media’s Page was just removed from Twitter. So Twitter and Facebook are coordinating this. I know this
Ford Fischer@FordFischer
Holy shit. The Anti-Media’s Page was just removed from
Twitter. So Twitter and Facebook are coordinating this.
literally just happened because they RT’ed me an hour ago.
As if that wasn’t creepy enough, some of the accounts purged by Facebook appear to be getting censored on Twitter as well, bringing back memories of the August cross-platform coordinated silencing of Alex Jones. The aforementioned Anti-Media has now been suspended from Twitter just hours after tweeting about being removed from Facebook, and Patti Beers who had more than 30,000 Twitter followers has just been removed from both sites as well.
I have said it before and I will say it again: in a corporatist system, wherein there is no clear line between corporate power and government power, corporate censorship is government censorship. You can’t have a system wherein corporate lobbying and campaign finance amount to legalized bribery of elected officials, wherein massive Silicon Valley corporations form extensive ties with secretive government agencies in order to eclipse their competition, and then claim this is a matter of private corporations enforcing their own rules on their own private property. This is just what totalitarian government censorship looks like in a corporatist oligarchy.
Do you want a few Silicon Valley plutocrats determining what political speech constitutes “inauthentic activity” for you? Do you want a world in which the masses are herded into massive government-allied social media stables which are then regularly brought before the US Senate to pledge more iron-fisted censorship of problematic political speech? Do you want a world in which social media corporations are forced to make alliances with existing power structures in order to be allowed to grow? Do you want a world in which venues of political discourse are increasingly sterilized to favor the agendas of the ruling class? If not, the time to act is now.
Regardless of where you’re at on the political spectrum, if you oppose the status quo then opposing internet censorship of any political speech is now a matter of simple self defense. If this wasn’t obvious to you when they shut down Alex Jones, it should damn well be obvious to you now. If you want to change the existing system in any way which takes power away from those currently in power, your voice is next on the chopping block. They’re locking all the doors down as fast as they can to keep us trapped in this Orwellian oligarchy until they get us all killed by war or ecocide. If they shut down the public’s ability to share dissident information, they’ll have locked the final door. Don’t let them.
Without warning or explaination, Facebook just unpublished hundreds of pages including indepedent media outlets with millions of followers. Make no mistake, this is an extreme act of censorsoring the truth.
==================================== * Vreemd genoeg hebben de reguliere media in de VS geen probleem met het onterecht demoniseren van Iran door de Trump administratie, terwijl het grootste deel wel meedoet aan het schoppen van de democraten tegen diezelfde administratie……. Ach ja, die media zijn dan ook in handen van figuren die o.a. hebben in het militair-industrieel complex en je weet het: volgens de in feite topmisdadigers van dit complex kan er niet genoeg oorlog gevoerd worden….. Oorlogen inclusief de onontkoombare vreselijke oorlogsmisdaden, daarom zijn ook de bedrijven en investeerders van het militair-industrieel complex (en de hen steunende politici) mede verantwoordelijk voor die oorlogsmisdaden, waarmee je hen zelfs als oorlogsmisdadigers zou kunnen aanmerken! Zie ook: ‘Robert Epstein: Google en Facebook corrumperen de politiek en manipuleren de presidentsverkiezingen‘
Medea Benjamin, een activist van CodePink, heeft afgelopen woensdag een tv uitzending verstoord waarin Brian Hook, een ultra rechtse plork van de denktank Hudson Institute, met zijn smerige anti-Iraanse propaganda de kijker voorliegt dat een oorlog tegen Iran volkomen gerechtvaardigd is. Het gegeven dat deze Hook de adviseur was van massamoordenaar en oorlogshitser Bolton en dat nu is voor ploert Mike Pompeo, o.a. directeur van Iran Action Team, zal je na het voorgaande niet verrassen.
Benjamin liet voordat ze door twee ‘zware jongens’ werd afgevoerd, precies weten waar het op staat en hekelde ze de afwijzing door de Trump administratie van de nucleaire deal met Iran en de opnieuw opgelegde sancties tegen Iran, die m.n. de gewone Iraniërs treffen…. Voorts hekelde Benjamin de weg die de Trump administratie volgt naar een illegale oorlog van de VS tegen Iran, waar ze nog eens fijntjes wees op de desastreuze gevolgen van de illegale oorlogen die de VS begon tegen Irak, Libië en Syrië……. (o.a. meer dan 2 miljoen doden, ofwel door de VS vermoordde slachtoffers…)
In de VS worden de anti-Trump democraten afgeschilderd als verzetslieden tegen de Trump administratie, dit vanwege de zogenaamde ‘Trump-Rusland connectie’ (‘Russiagate’). Johnstone stelt terecht dat dit zogenaamde verzet zich niet bezighoudt met de genocide (die Johnstone jammer genoeg niet zo noemt), die Saoedi-Arabië met hulp van de VS* uitvoert in Jemen…….
Vandaar ook de titel die Johnstone haar artikel meegaf, waarin ze het echte verzet tegen de Trump administratie door Benjamin verwoordt.
Niet vergeten moet worden dat onder Obama die steun al bestond, de steun voor de genocide die Saoedi-Arabië uitvoert in buurland Jemen Johnstone stelt dan ook terecht dat er geen verschil bestaat tussen de de buitenlandpolitiek van de republikeinen en de democraten**. Wel vreemd dat Johnstone de democraten de enorme ongefundeerde hysterie over Trump-Russische inmenging in de presidentsverkiezingen van 2016 verwijt en de democraten meteen onder de neus wrijft geen kritiek te leveren op de massamoord die in Jemen nu al sinds 2014 plaatsvindt (Johnstone betoogt dat je als democraat de Trump administratie het verwijt kan maken mee te werken aan die massamoord in Jemen en dan m.n. door te wijzen op het grote aantal kinderen dat hier het slachtoffer van is…..) Het is bepaald niet zo vreemd dat de democraten die niet doen, daar de situatie onder het democratisch bewind van Obama hetzelfde was, ook deze ‘vredesduif’ werkte mee aan die genocidale massamoorden, ofwel enorme oorlogsmisdaden……..
Johnstone wijst ook op de VS of beter gezegd de CIA machinaties in Iran, waar de VS een gewelddadige opstand op poten heeft gezet (het gebruikelijke VS scenario), om zo het huidige bewind ten val te brengen en een VS vriendelijk bewind te vestigen (dat hoeft zelfs niet een democratisch bewind te zijn….)….. De VS heeft zelfs toegeven geld te steken in de (gewelddadige) oppositie en met hen samen te werken….. Je kan er dan ook donder op zeggen dat de VS (CIA) regisseur is van de aanslag, die afgelopen zaterdag plaatsvond op een militaire parade in Iran……..
Medea Benjamin Shows America What Real Resistance Looks Like
Almost immediately after hitting publish on my last article about how the so-called “Resistance” to the Trump administration doesn’t actually resist Trump’s most pernicious agendas in any meaningful way, I saw an awesome video clip proving that there is at least one woman out there providing real opposition to Trump where it matters.
A think tank is an organization wherein highly-paid academics pour their collective brainpower into coming up with convincing arguments that it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid. At one such think tank, the Hudson Institute, former John Bolton advisor and current Mike Pompeo lackey Brian Hook had his neocon cuddle party interrupted by CodePink activist Medea Benjamin Wednesday morning. Benjamin excoriated the Director of Policy Planning for Pompeo’s Iran Action Team, decrying the Trump administration’s crippling sanctions following its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.
“That is the most ridiculous thing I have seen,” Benjamin exclaimed while security staff worked to muscle her off the stage. “The world community wants to keep the Iran nuclear deal. Our allies—the Germans, the French, the British—they want to keep in this deal. The world community wants to keep the deal. Let’s talk about normal countries. Let’s talk about Saudi Arabia. Is that who our allies are? They are the biggest threat to the world community. And let’s talk—you’re hurting me. You’re actually hurting me. I want to ask: Do you think these sanctions are hurting the regime, or are they hurting the Iranian people? They’re hurting the Iranian people. You are making a case for war with Iran. How did the war with Iraq turn out? You’re doing exactly the same thing we did in the case of Iraq. We don’t want another war in the Middle East. Let’s see, how did Iraq turn out? How did Libya turn out? We have the people of Syria suffering. And how dare you bring up the issue of Yemen? It’s the Saudi bombing that is killing most people in Yemen. So let’s get real. No more war! Peace with Iran!”
The think tank ghouls chuckled and mocked her, but the damage was done and the video went viral.
As a reminder, the Trump administration has not only leveled crippling sanctions upon Iran with the goal of fomenting civil unrest, but has also escalated CIA covert operations led by Trump-appointed officials and cultivated an intimate relationship with the MEK terror cult, which is spearheading a social media propaganda campaign against the Iranian government directed at western audiences. The Trump administration’s approach to Iran is in these ways mirroring the Obama administration’s approach to Libya and Syria, and has been called a regime change policy in all but name due to the many unrealistic demands being made of the Iranian government in order to deescalate. These escalations could easily erupt into direct hot war in the future, especially with this administration being stuffed to the gills with virulent Iran hawks at the highest levels.
(in het bovenstaande een video die ik niet kan overnemen, hier de meer uitgebreide video van 3 minuten die op YouTube is te vinden, er is in feite weinig verschil tussen alle getoonde video’s in dit artikel:)
The Medea Benjamin video is so tasty I’ve watched it several times. It feels like it’s attuning my cells and reminding me what it takes to put up real time resistance in the stifling atmosphere of opposition by breaking through the somnolent hypnosis of tribal dynamics.
This is what it takes. But this is all it takes. Interrupt our regularly scheduled programming with a burst of truth and humanity will inevitably rouse a few more from their hypnosis, and a few more awake is a few more towards tipping point. While Democrats are holding demonstrations in support of longstanding neocon agendas against Russia and leftists are gathering to punch racist nobodies in the face, this feisty little sheila threw her body into the bright lights of the brainwashing machine and jammed it right up until they had to physically remove her.
Are we seeing the heart of the anti-war left kick back into life? I sure fucking hope so. Unlike the impotent busybox of Russiagate, this is the resistance to Trump that is real, and it will work. Attacking the Trump administration on their continuation of Bushbama’s warmongering ecocidal, omnicidal policies and refusing to fall in line with longstanding neocon agendas runs interference on the very lifeblood of the parasitic elite that seek to suck the tax dollars of working Americans into murdering humans and fattening Raytheon profit margins.
Destroying the war machine fixes everything from climate change to living standards, terrorism, famine, homelessness, mental health, slavery, plus all the horrors that war always necessarily births into the world such as rape, black markets, human trafficking, refugee crises and so on. Not to mention the butchery of humans for profit which is what war is. Putting up resistance by breaking the hypnotic effect of war propaganda works. No one actually wants war apart from a handful of powerful elites who fund these think tanks to weave lies and manipulate truth into stories that will manufacture consent for endless military bloodbaths. Simply using the truth to run interference on these lies and spin is enough.
Medea Benjamin is my hero. People are going to tell me that she and her organization haven’t been exactly 100 percent perfect on every single issue every single day, because this is the left and that’s what the left does. But I don’t care; anyone who’s willing to throw a hammer in the gears of the machine to any extent is a hero to whatever extent that they did so. Enough of us doing what Medea Benjamin did would bring the entire machine crashing down.
Medea Benjamin, thank you. I salute you.
___________________
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for mywebsite, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me onFacebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out mypodcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon orPaypal,buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
* -De VS doet de coördinatie van de bombardementen die de Saoedische terreurcoalitie uitvoert op Jemen, -de VS tankt het vliegend oorlogstuig van deze terreurcoalitie af in de lucht, -de VS levert wapens en munitie (zoals de bom die onlangs een bus met kinderen in Jemen trof, voorts leverde de VS clustermunitie aan Saoedi-Arabië), -de VS levert verder vliegend, rollend en varend oorlogstuig aan S-A en -de VS helpt Saoedi-Arabië bij de zee blokkades voor door de Houthi rebellen beheerst gebied….. De strijd om havenstad Hodeida zorgt ervoor dat er nog minder medische hulpmiddelen de al zo geplaagde Jemenitische bevolking bereiken….. Blokkades die samen met die op land een enorme hongersnood hebben veroorzaakt in Jemen, blokkades die een enorm tekort aan medicijnen hebben veroorzaakt……. Het voorgaande, tezamen met het bombarderen van ziekenhuizen, infrastructuur, water en waterzuiveringsinstallaties door de Saoedische coalitie, hebben gezorgd dat er een cholera en difterie uitbraak plaatsvond in Jemen, die nog steeds honderden doden per week eist…… Bij die hoofdelijke verantwoordelijkheid van de VS moet niet vergeten worden dat dezelfde VS maar hoeft te kikken en S-A zal haar barbaarse terreur stoppen, terreur die zonder de hulp en toestemming van de VS niet eens mogelijk is……. Kortom de VS is in feite dubbel verantwoordelijk voor de massamoorden in Jemen……
Eén van de verdedigers van het neoliberale establishment, ThinkProgress heeft vorige maand een artikel van Casey Michel gepubliceerd waarin Caitlin Johnstone werd uitgemaakt voor Iraanse trol… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Michel reageerde niet één keer op aan hem gerichte berichten van Johnstone, waarin ze uitlegt dat e.e.a. nonsens is.
In het artikel stelde Michel dat nep-accounts op Facebook niet alleen uit Ruslandkomen, maar ook uit Iran……. (valt me nog mee dat hij Noord-Korea niet in één moeite mee heeft genomen) Voorts loofde Michel de pogingen van Facebook Iraanse propaganda te weren van haar ‘platform’*, maar heeft eerder Facebook en Twitter meermaals gewaarschuwd actie te ondernemen tegen dergelijke (Russische) beïnvloeding via accounts op hun sites.
Nu is ThinkProgress dus zelf aan de beurt en wordt van Facebook geweerd, dit voor een artikel over Brett Kavanaugh, de ultrarechtse schoft en favoriete kandidaat van Trump voor het hooggerechtshof. De Weekly Standard doet het feiten controleren (fact checking) voor Facebook en vond het bewuste artikel met ‘fake news’ over Kavanaugh.
Volgens Johnstone zal het weren van ThinkProgress op Facebook niet van lange duur zijn. Jonhstone heeft verder geen leedvermaak over deze zaak en ze stelt dan ook terecht dat Facebook zich niet heeft te bemoeien met wat er wordt gezegd op dat platform, al is ze uiteraard tegen het oproepen tot geweld.
Lees het artikel van Johnstone waarin zij o.a. de vloer aanveegt met The Atlantic Council, de ‘psyops‘ fabriek van de NAVO, die samen met de Weekly Standard de censuur regelt op Facebook…… Volkomen terecht pleit Johnstone voor een volledig vrij internet, waar de plutocraten van Silicon Valley, de NAVO en andere (censuur) organen of lijpe psychopaten als Kristol geen zeggenschap hebben over wat er wel of niet geschreven of getoond mag worden (uiteraard met uitzondering van [kinder] porno en oproepen tot het plegen van geweld**):
ThinkProgress Censored By Facebook After Cheerleading Facebook Censorship
In an article last month titled “Facebook announces that fake accounts are now coming not just from Russia”, fauxgressive establishment apologia firm ThinkProgressfalsely reported that I have been writing for an outlet that is alleged to be part of an Iranian propaganda campaign. I repeatedlybrought this false claim to the attention of Casey Michel, the article’s author, telling him that ten seconds of research or any attempt to contact me would have shown him that the articles published by the outlet in question were just reblogs of earlier publications from my platform, but Michel ignored the many notifications he received from myself and my Twitter followers and went on merrily interacting with other posters. As of this writing, the article remains uncorrected.
In the article, Michel documented Facebook’s heroic efforts to shut down alleged Iranian propaganda outlets, ominously warning his readers that “Russia is by no means the only foreign adversary exploiting social media’s inherent openness.” In other articles for ThinkProgress, Michel is repeatedlyseen wagging his finger at Facebook and Twitter for not doing more to censor “Russian propaganda”, and in a July article titled “Facebook says both sides share fake news, defends Infowars’ presence on its platform — Mark Zuckerberg has an interesting way of prioritizing ‘high quality news’” another ThinkProgress author criticized Facebook for not censoring Alex Jones. Jones was censored by Facebook the following month.
ThinkProgressreports that its traffic from Facebook has been slashed by eighty percent due to a “fact check” by the Weekly Standard which, through a series of moronic mental contortions, found ThinkProgress guilty of reporting fake news about Brett Kavanaugh of all things. In a twist of irony which would be delicious if it weren’t so disgusting, the Weekly Standard is one of Facebook’s authorized “fact checkers”, and happens to be the brainchild of none other than bloodthirsty psychopath and rehabilitated #Resistance hero Bill Kristol.
ThinkProgress is part of a very large and diverse branch of progressive punditry whose ultimate job is to help centrist empire loyalists feel like leftist revolutionaries, and since 2016 one of the many appalling consequences of this bizarre environment has been the embracing of Iraq-raping neoconservatives like Kristol and Max Boot by Democratic Party loyalists. In a bid to stay relevant despite having been consistently wrong about literally everything in foreign policy for the last two decades, these murderous ghouls have repackaged themselves as a woke, cuddly alternative to the Trumpian faction of the Republican Party, and have been rewarded for their efforts with regular platforms on MSNBC and the Washington Post (WaPo).
So with ThinkProgress getting censored by Facebook, you really couldn’t ask for a more clear-cut case of reaping what you sow. Nevertheless, it is wrong for anyone to be deprived of political speech, even if much of their political speech consists of attempts to silence the political speech of others. And if there is anything more gross than political speech being regulated by Silicon Valley plutocrats and a NATO psyop factory, it’s political speech being regulated by Silicon Valley plutocrats, a NATO psyop factory, and Bill Kristol. ThinkProgress should not have its audience restricted.
All the “let me help you cheer for the establishment while pretending to oppose it” pundits who celebrated Alex Jones’ coordinated de-platforming last month are falling all over themselves to spin this new development in a way that allows them to feel as though they aren’t being proven wrong day after day after day, but of course they are. Facilitating the censorship of anyone’s speech is facilitating the censorship of your own speech in the long run, and we’re not even having to wait long to see it this time around. In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship; the massive new media corporations being implored to regulate which political speech gets an audience and which doesn’t have extensive ties to secretive government agencies and a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
I do not expect ThinkProgress to remain on Facebook’s restricted list for long; the real targets of internet censorship are not partisan outlets which prop up establishment politics and help legitimize America’s two-headed one party system. But that isn’t the point. The point is that Silicon Valley plutocrats, the NATO propaganda firm Atlantic Council, and the Weekly Standard should not be determining who gets an audience in the new media environment and who doesn’t. Nothing that has anything to do with Bill Kristol should ever have any power over anyone. If our choices are between letting people think for themselves and letting the guy who’s always wrong about everything determine what shows up in people’s news feed, the choice is obviously the one which doesn’t involve placing faith in the man who helped deceive America into butchering a million Iraqis***.
_____________________
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for mywebsite, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me onFacebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out mypodcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon orPaypal, or buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
======================================= * Je kan er donder op zeggen dat accounts van bestaande Iraniërs die hun regering voor bepaalde zaken prijzen, worden gezien als overheidsaccounts die louter propaganda maken. Anders gezegd als je niet negatief schrijft over Iran (of Rusland) wordt je versleten als een Russische of Iraanse trol (deel uitmakend van een ‘trollenfabriek’, die in Mordor staat met CEO Sauron….)……..
** Al moet gezegd worden dat het internet bomvol oproepen tot geweld staat, oproepen die niet worden geweerd van het internet (en Facebook) al komen die oproepen van de reguliere media en westerse politici, die bijvoorbeeld het liefst Noord-Korea met een kernaanval van de kaart zouden willen vegen…… Als je als persoon een dergelijke oproep zou doen als reactie op laat ik zeggen de illegale oorlog tegen Irak, die aan meer dan 1,5 miljoen mensen (!!!) het leven heeft gekost, een oproep tot geweld tegen terreurentiteit VS en haar oorlogshond, terreurorganisatie NAVO, je onmiddellijk zal worden gearresteerd……..
*** Het dodenaantal in Irak sinds de VS een illegale oorlog tegen dat land startte in 2003 (met politieke en militaire steun van o.a. Nederland) ligt al boven de 1,5 miljoen vermoorden…. (!!!)
In het hieronder opgenomen artikel van Caitlin Johnstone, o.a. gepubliceerd op Medium(.com) en Anti-Media, stelt zij dat de reguliere (massa-) media van de VS eindelijk wakker zijn geworden en aandacht besteden aan de vreselijke oorlog van de Saoedische coalitie (inclusief de steun en onmisbare hulp van de VS en GB) tegen de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen….. Een bevolking die ‘godzijdank’ worden gesteund door de de Houthi’s, een uiterst functionele strijdgroep, die ingreep nadat IS en Al Qaida de sjiitische bevolking aanvielen, zelfs in moskeeën……. Deze 2 extreme terreurgroepen kregen in Jemen van de opgestapte president (onder druk van Saoedi-Arabië weer president) al-Hadi onderdak aangeboden…….
Jammer dat Johnstone het woord ‘genocide’ uit de weg gaat, immers daar is op zeker sprake van, een genocide waar de wereld voor het overgrote deel alweer geen aandacht aan schenkt, althans totdat de Saoedische coalitie toegaf een bus met kinderen onder vuur te hebben genomen, om wraak te nemen voor een Saoedische man die omkwam bij een raketaanval van de Houthi’s……. Al spreken ook die media niet over een genocide, ondanks alle bombardementen, honger, cholera en difterie (allen oorzaak van de Saoedische terreur), die al aan duizenden het leven heeft gekost……
Nu is de verontwaardiging groot, zelfs bij MSNBC, die zoals Johnstone in haar vorig artikel stelde in 1 jaar tijd niet één keer aandacht schonk aan de smerige, door de VS gesteunde en gefaciliteerde oorlog tegen het Jemenitische volk, maar wel 455 keer aan Stormy Daniels……* Zonder steun van de VS en GB zou Saoedi-Arabië de oorlog tegen de Houthi’s niet kunnen voeren, zo doet de VS de coördinatie van de bombardementen, tankt het de straaljagers en bommenwerpers van de Saoedische terreurcoalitie (inclusief Marokko**) in de lucht af, zodat ze zo ‘efficiënt’ mogelijk kunnen bombarderen…..
Doelen van deze moorddadige coalitie: huizenblokken, ziekenhuizen, scholen, energiecentrales, waterbedrijven, huwelijks- en begrafenisceremonies en de infrastructuur inclusief de riolering….. Door het laatst genoemde is er zelfs de eerdere genoemde grote cholera uitbraak ontstaan in Jemen, die nog maandelijks honderden doden eist….. Zelfs een ziekenhuis van Artsen Zonder Grenzen (MSF) speciaal voor cholerapatiënten werd door de Saoedische coalitie plat gebombardeerd, voordat de eerste patiënten konden worden behandeld………. (hoeveel bewijs wil je nog hebben dat de Saoedische terreurcoalitie, inclusief de VS en GB, bezig is met een genocide??)
Intussen is er ook de al eerder genoemde difterie uitbraak in Jemen, dit nog naast de hongersnood die intussen al meer dan 2 jaar aanhoudt en waarvoor vorig jaar nog een actie werd gevoerd in Nederland…….. Over Nederland gesproken, ik moet zeggen dat de media hier wel behoorlijk lauw hebben gereageerd op de Saoedische aanval tegen een schoolbus en dat op een drukke markt……. Als Assad iets dergelijks had gedaan had het land op z’n kop gestaan en waren er al vragen gesteld in de Kamer……. Terwijl de keren dat de hysterie toeslaat over het gedrag ‘van Assad’, die opwinding keer op keer onterecht blijkt te zijn, zoals zelfs bevestigd door VN onderzoek, echter dit verandert niets aan de hysterie, men blijft ‘gewoon’ volhouden dat Assad zijn eigen volk afslacht, zonder ook maar een greintje aan bewijs te leveren……..
In de VS begint men wakker te worden nu nog Nederland en de EU!!
Mainstream Media Finally Concedes Defeat on Yemen, Ends Blackout Of Coverage
(CJ Opinion) — Last month, an article by Fair.org went viral in republications by popular alternative media outlets ranging from Salon to Zero Hedge to Alternet to Truthdig, among many others. The article was initially titled “ACTION ALERT: It’s Been Over a Year Since MSNBC Has Mentioned US War in Yemen”, but many subsequent republications went with variations on the more attention-grabbing headline, “MSNBC has done 455 Stormy Daniels segments in the last year — but none on U.S. war in Yemen”.
The centerpiece of the article was the following graphic, which I saw shared on its own many times in my social media feeds:
That’s about as in your face as it gets, isn’t it?
This is of course outrageous, but because of how media coverage works, mainstream attention was never drawn to the problem. It hasn’t been a total media blackout, but because it only turns up in mainstream media reports every once in a while with little if any emphasis being placed on who is behind the devastation, it occupies a very peripheral place in western consciousness. The average American would probably be able to tell you that some parts of their government appear to be concerned about Russia, Syria, Iran and North Korea, because those rival nations have been the subject of intense mass media coverage, but if you asked them about Yemen you’d likely be told something like “I think there’s some kind of humanitarian crisis there?”, if anything.
This has all changed in the last few days. Suddenly, the atrocities being inflicted upon the people of Yemen are being pushed into mainstream attention by the mass media outlets which have been ignoring them for more than three years. The Washington Post (WaPo) editorial board published an op-ed titled “End U.S. support for this misbegotten and unwinnable war”. CNN did some actual, real journalism for a change with a viral exclusive documenting which American war profiteers were behind some of the more devastating Saudi bombings. And yes, MSNBC finally did cover the violence in Yemen, breaking its year-long silence to report on a US-supplied bomb which killed 40 children with such urgent condemnation of those responsible you’d never know they’d been consistently ignoring such incidents which have been going on for years.
Now politicians and celebrities everywhere are shoving the horror of their government facilitating the slaughter of innocents into mainstream attention.
What’s interesting here is that nothing at all has changed except for the coverage. US-supplied bombs have been dropping on marketplaces, hospitals and funerals and slaughtering civilians in far more deadly incidents for years, and the US has also been providing extensive assistance to Saudi airstrikes, as well as attacking Yemeni targets directly. The only thing that has changed is that now it’s being reported with an urgency and volume that is appropriate for such a horrific incident instead of an occasional low-profile mention with little or no mention of responsibility.
Nobody with their eyes open believes that the mainstream media have just suddenly developed a conscience and now deeply care about the mass murder of Middle Eastern civilians. So why the change? If you ask some of the Trump supporters I’ve seen responding to the shift, it’s because their president can now be unfairly blamed for a military campaign which began long before he took office. But that doesn’t really hold water, does it? I mean, the aforementioned year in which MSNBC didn’t cover Yemen took place entirely during this administration, and every American with cable TV knows that MSNBC markets itself as the anti-Trump network. If they’d wanted to use Yemen as another angle from which to criticize this administration they would have done so, instead of not doing so at all. The entirety of mainstream media have been grossly neglecting this issue up until the last week despite having every opportunity to condemn Trump for it.
For the record, while we’re on the subject, I personally don’t much care if Trump gets all the blame for the Yemen catastrophe at this point. I’ve spent 2017 and 2018 fighting the insane corporate liberal notion that all American depravity began in January of last year, but at this point I’m happy with literally anything that just ends the death and devastation. A year into the war, the 30-year CIA veteran Bruce Riedel said that “if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King Salman that this war has to end, it would end tomorrow, because the Royal Saudi Air Force cannot operate without American and British support.” If using this as an opportunity to attack Trump creates the necessary political pressure to end the bombings, blockades, starvation and disease that is killing untold thousands of Yemeni civilians, then fine, whatever, I’m all for it.
But again, from what I’m seeing right now I don’t believe that this is about Trump. Not directly anyway. From what I can see right now, I think what we are witnessing is a clear instance in which alternative media successfully caused the establishment to lose control of the narrative on an important issue.
In the US, criticism of Saudi Arabia is nearly as taboo as criticism of Israel. As we saw explained in a leaked State Department memo last year, it is standard US policy to use human rights abuses as a bludgeon with which to attack rival governments, while sweeping the atrocities committed by allies under the rug. Because of its lucrative petrodollar deal with the US, and because its opaque and unaccountable monarchy makes it capable of nefarious maneuvers to advance geopolitical agendas that an ostensible democracy would have a hard time getting away with, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of America’s most important allies. And the plutocrat-owned media, whose controllers have a vested interest in protecting the establishment upon which their kingdoms are built, consistently fall right in line with that same State Department policy.
This, and the fact that the control of a key strategic region is at stake, is why we’ve been seeing the Saudi war crimes in Yemen and the US facilitation thereof downplayed for years by the mass media. And they would surely remain downplayed indefinitely were it possible.
But it wasn’t possible. The story kept getting pushed toward mainstream consciousness year after year, and eventually the fact that an outlet which upholds itself as the flag bearer of Trump’s opposition has been completely ignoring this administration’s facilitation of war crimes was made viral. At a certain point a Dem-voting audience which is being told day in and day out that Trump presents a unique and unprecedented level of danger to the world will lose trust in the outlets which market themselves to that demographic if they refuse to make a big deal about the fact that this administration is helping tyrants murder busloads of children.
For this reason, western mainstream media have been forced to finally report on the cruelty being inflicted upon the people of Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allies in order to avoid losing credibility. The story got out, and the story about their lack of coverage of that story got out, and now they’re all reporting on it like they’ve been doing so this entire time. Which, if it continues, will make it very difficult for the US/UK/Saudi war machine to retain the consent of the governed for its mass slaughter.
In my opinion, we can safely call this a win for alternative media. The voices who aren’t beholden to the empire and its geopolitical agendas refused to let this story die, and eventually succeeded in overtaking the dominant narrative. Not because media-controlling oligarchs like Brian L Roberts and Jeff Bezos gave them permission to, but because unauthorized truth was spoken and carried by many ordinary people into mainstream consciousness via Facebook shares, Twitter retweets and speaking out loud and proud wherever possible. A people’s information battle was fought and won by the people.
If things go as I am hoping they will go, we will see more and more such populist hijackings of dominant narratives in the future, and ultimately a failure of the oligarchs to continue manufacturing consent for their omnicidal, ecocidal, Orwellian agendas. We will have to be aggressive, we will have to be creative, and we will have to be interesting enough to catch the eye of the casual citizenry, but the fact that trust in the mass media is at an all-time low and our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high combines with the fact that we have truth on our side to create some very exciting possibilities. I find this all very encouraging.
** Marokko zou deel uitmaken van de coalitie, ook volgens de alternatieve media, echter de laatste 6 maanden heb ik die bewering niet één keer teruggezien, tot Johnstone het weer noemde in haar artikel. Enig onderzoek toont aan dat dit inderdaad zo is. Verder bestaat de Saoedische terreurcoalitie uit de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten, Egypte en uiteraard S-A. ‘Leuk’ voor de Marokkanen die straks weer met dienstplicht te maken krijgen, waarna ze mee mogen doen aan de genocide die in Jemen plaatsvindt……. (deze smerige oorlog zal voorlopig nog doorgaan…..) Zie ook: ‘Pentagon: nieuwe geheime operatie voor steun aan Saoedische coalitie die genocide uitvoert in Jemen……‘
Door de weigering Assange te verdedigen, tonen de reguliere media hun ware gezicht, aldus de kop van een artikel van Caitlin Johnstone op Media.com en hieronder overgenomen van Anti-Media. Een top advocaat van de New York Times (NYT), David McCraw waarschuwde een zaal vol rechters dat de vervolging van WikiLeaks journalist Julian Assange een gevaarlijk precedent zal scheppen en zou kunnen eindigen met het beschadigen van de reguliere (massa-) media….. (ha! ha! ha! Wat er nog te beschadigen is aan de reguliere media is me een raadsel, gezien het enorme gehalte aan nepnieuws [‘fake news] en de leugens die daar dag in dag uit ten toon worden gespreid…..)
Volgens McCraw zullen wetshandhavers uiteindelijk weinig verschil kunnen zien tussen een internetplatform als WikiLeaks en mediaorganen als de New York Times en de Washington Post (WaPo)….. Lullig werden de woorden van McCraw niet gepubliceerd in ‘zijn eigen’ NYT….. (!!) Echter zolang de reguliere media de leugens van politiek en geheime diensten maar blijven herhalen, zal er geen vuiltje aan de lucht zijn…..
Het publiceren van o.a. uitgelekte gegevens die geheim werden gehouden voor het volk, is in feite de taak van de echte journalistiek, immers het is de taak van de journalistiek om de machthebbers te controleren, het volk daarover in te lichten* en het publiek tevens te leren kritisch naar de machthebbers te kijken…..
Daar wringt dan ook de schoen aldus Johnstone, de reguliere media hebben deze taken al lang bij het grofvuil gezet en schikken zich naar de eisen van overheid en degenen die deze media in handen hebben, miljardairs en beursgenoteerde bedrijven……… Niet voor niets dat de journalisten van de reguliere media Assange keer op keer demoniseren en de leugens van de politiek en geheime diensten als CIA en FBI (notoire leugenaars) over bijvoorbeeld de zogenaamde bemoeienis van Rusland met de VS verkiezingen blijven herhalen, ook al is er geen nanometer bewijs voor……
Daarover gesproken: hoorde onlangs een Belgische ‘journalist’ die het gore lef had te zeggen dat hij de ‘stapel aan bewijzen’ voor die Russische inmenging met de VS presidentsverkiezingen had gelezen, een keiharde leugen, daar die bewijzen (nog steeds) niet bestaan…..
(CJ Opinion) — Last Tuesday a top lawyer for the New York Times named David McCraw warned a room full of judges that the prosecution of Julian Assange for WikiLeaks publications would set a very dangerous precedent which would end up hurting mainstream news media outlets like NYT, the Washington Post, and other outlets which publish secret government documents.
“I think the prosecution of him would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers,” McCraw said. “From that incident, from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and I think the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.”
Do you know where I read about this? Not in the New York Times.
“Curiously, as of this writing, McCraw’s words have found no mention in the Times itself,” activist Ray McGovern wrote for the alternative media outlet Consortium News. “In recent years, the newspaper has shown a marked proclivity to avoid printing anything that might risk its front row seat at the government trough.”
So let’s unpack that a bit. It is now public knowledge that the Ecuadorian government is actively seeking to turn Assange over to be arrested by the British government. This was initially reported by RT, then independently confirmed by The Intercept, and is today full mainstream public knowledge being reported by mainstream outlets like CNN. It is also public knowledge that Assange’s asylum was granted by the Ecuadorian government due to a feared attempt to extradite him to the United States and prosecute him for WikiLeaks publications. Everyone from President Donald Trump to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to now-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to ranking House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff to Democratic members of the US Senate have made public statements clearly indicating that there is a US government interest in getting Assange out of the shelter of political asylum and into prison.
The New York Times is aware of this, and as evidenced by McCraw’s comments it is also aware of the dangerous precedent that such a prosecution would set for all news media publications. The New York Times editorial staff are aware that the US government prosecuting a publisher for publishing important documents that had been hidden from the public would make it impossible for the Times to publish the same kind of material without fear of the same legal repercussions. It is aware that the maneuvers being taken against Assange present a very real existential threat to the possibility of real journalism and holding power to account.
You might think, therefore, that we’d be seeing a flood of analyses and op-eds from the New York Times aggressively condemning any movement toward the prosecution of Julian Assange. You might expect all media outlets in America to be constantly sounding the alarm about this, especially since the threat is coming from the Trump administration, which outlets like the New York Timesare always eager to circulate dire warnings about. You might expect every talking head on CNN and NBC to be ominously citing Assange as the clearest and most egregious case yet of Trump’s infamous “war on the free press”. Leaving aside the issues of morality, compassion and human rights that come with Assange’s case, you might think that if for no other reason than sheer unenlightened self interest they’d be loudly and aggressively defending him.
And yet, they don’t. And the fact that they don’t shows us what they really are.
A fine piece of work. I see a handful of international journalists brave enough to write about this. Where are the others? Can they not see that if Assange is persecuted to death, they’re next? #unity4J
Theoretically, journalism is meant to help create an informed populace and hold power to account. That’s why it’s the only profession explicitly named in the United States Constitution, and why freedom of the press has enjoyed such constitutional protections throughout US history. The press today is failing to protect Julian Assange because it has no intention of creating an informed populace or holding power to account.
This is not to suggest the existence of some grand, secret conspiracy among US journalists. It’s just a simple fact that plutocrats own most of the US news media and hire the people who run it, which has naturally created an environment where the best way to advance one’s career is to remain perpetually inoffensive to the establishment upon which plutocrats have built their respective empires. This is why you see ambitious reporters on Twitter falling all over themselves to be the first with a pithy line that advances establishment agendas whenever breaking news presents an opportunity to do so; they are aware that their social media presence is being assessed by potential employers and allies for establishment loyalism. This also why so many of those aspiring journalists attack Assange and WikiLeaks whenever possible.
“Everyone hoping to gain admission to the cultural elite must now strenuously cultivate their social media so as to avoid controversy,” journalist Michael Tracey observed recently. “Eventually they will internalize controversy-avoidance as a virtue, not a societal imposition. Result: a more boring, conformist elite culture.”
A great way for an aspiring journalist to avoid controversy is to never, ever defend Assange or WikiLeaks on social media or in any media outlet, and certainly under no circumstances allow yourself to look like the sort of journo who might someday publish the sorts of materials that WikiLeaks publishes. An excellent way to prove yourself is to become yet another author of yet another one of the many, many smear pieces that have been written about Assange and WikiLeaks.
Mainstream media outlets and those who thrive within them have no intention of rocking the boat and losing their hard-earned privilege and access. Conservative mass media will continue to defend the US president, and liberal media will continue to defend the CIA and the FBI. Both will help advance war, ecocide, military expansionism, surveillance and police militarization, and none will leak anything that is damaging to the power structures that they have learned to serve. They will remain innocuous, uncontroversial defenders of the rich and powerful at all times.
Meanwhile, alternative media outlets are defending Assange ferociously. Just today I’ve seen articles from Consortium News, World Socialist Website, Disobedient Media, Antiwar and Common Dreamsdecrying the persecution of the most important government transparency advocate living today. Alternative media outlets and independent writers aren’t bound by establishment servitude, so the value of WikiLeaks is clear as day. One’s eyes are only blinded to the pernicious behaviors of power when power is signing one’s paycheck.
Mass media outlets in America and around the world have fully discredited themselves with their failure to defend a publisher who actually holds power to account and brings facts into the light of truth to create an informed populace. Every day that goes by where they don’t unequivocally condemn any attempt to prosecute Assange is another day in the pile of evidence that corporate media outlets serve power and not truth. Their silence is a tacit admission that they are nothing other than stenographers and propagandists for the most powerful forces on earth.
===================================== * In Nederland durfde de zwaar over een keeshondendrol getilde zakkenwasser Max van Weezel, die zich godbetert journalist durft te noemen, te zeggen ‘dat hij zich voor kan stellen bepaalde zaken niet te publiceren…….’ Ondanks deze uitspraak en een onnoemelijk aantal andere ‘journalistieke’ uitglijders, wordt deze kwezel geëerd door het grootste deel van de andere Nederlandse ‘journalisten…’ Wat dan weer genoeg zegt over ‘de kwaliteit’ van de Nederlandse reguliere journalistiek…… Voor berichten met blunders van van Weezel, klik op het label met zijn naam, direct onder dit bericht. (als na een aantal berichten het laatste telkens wordt herhaald, even opnieuw op dat label klikken en wel die onder het laatst gelezen bericht)
PS: het is vrijwel zeker dat Ecuador Assange op de Londense straat (hij zit al jaren in de ambassade van Ecuador in Londen) zal zetten en hij na zijn arrestatie zal worden uitgeleverd aan VS……
