WORTHY VS. UNWORTHY VICTIMS: STUDY REVEALS MEDIA’S SELECTIVE COVERAGE OF NAVALNY AND LIRA

Anew MintPress News study of media coverage of the deaths of American journalist and commentator Gonzalo Lira and Russian political leader Alexey Navalny has found that the establishment U.S. press overwhelmingly ignored the former and focussed on the latter. The New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News and CNN collectively ran 731 segments on Navalny between February 16 and February 22, compared to just one on Lira since his death on January 12, perhaps because one was a Western-backed figure who died at the hands of an official enemy state, while the other was a pro-Russian voice who met their end at the hands of the Ukrainian government.

ROUND-THE-CLOCK COVERAGE VS RADIO SILENCE

MintPress conducted a quantitative analysis of the media coverage of two political figures who recently died in prison: Alexey Navalny and Gonzalo Lira. Both were controversial characters and critics of the governments that imprisoned them. Both died under suspicious circumstances (their families both maintain they were effectively murdered). And both died in the past six weeks, Navalny in February and Lira in January. A crucial difference in their stories, however, is that Navalny perished in an Arctic penal colony after being arrested in Russia (an enemy state), while Lira’s life ended in a Ukrainian prison, abandoned by the pro-Kiev government in Washington, D.C.

The study compared the coverage of Navalny and Lira’s death in five leading outlets: the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News, and CNN. These outlets were chosen for their reach and influence and, together, could be said to reasonably represent the corporate media spectrum as a whole. The data was compiled using the Dow Jones Factiva news database and searches on the websites of the news organizations. This study takes no position on the matter of Navalny, Lira, or the Russia-Ukraine war.

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“So We Get No Say?” – Wealthy Elites from Affluent Neighborhood in Sanctuary City Boston Outraged Over Local Migrant Shelter Plans 

These leftist elites are all alike.

Residents from Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood gathered this week to complain about a planned migrant facility that is opening soon in their affluent community.

When these elites approved of the Boston’s sanctuary status they sure didn’t agree to this!

The local residents complained to city officials, “So we have no say?” After the plans were announced for the shelter in their area.

It’s just not right.

The Blaze reported:

Residents of a wealthy neighborhood in Boston expressed outrage at a recent community meeting after they learned that a new migrant shelter would soon open up nearby.

On Tuesday night, residents gathered to meet with General Scott Rice, the emergency assistance director for Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, to discuss their concerns about a temporary migrant shelter opening up in Fort Point, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Seaport area of Boston.

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Hunter Biden Claims Not Doing Crack Is a ‘Fight for the Future of Democracy’

Hunter Biden not doing crack is a “fight for the future of democracy,” the president’s son told Axios Monday in reference to former President Donald Trump’s bid for reelection.

Hunter’s attempt to somehow tie the fate of the nation to his legal imperative to abstain from drug use fits his long-running narrative of victimhood.

Hunter pleaded not guilty to gun charges in October and underwent random drug testing. Judge Christopher Burke released him on several conditions, including that he not use alcohol or ingest controlled substances.

“I have something much bigger than even myself at stake,” Hunter said about his legal battles. “We are in the middle of a fight for the future of democracy.”

“Most importantly, you have to believe that you’re worth the work, or you’ll never be able to get sober. But I often do think of the profound consequences of failure here,” Hunter said.

“I don’t care whether you’re ten years sober, two years sober, two months sober or two hundred years sober — your brain at some level is always telling you there’s still one answer,” he said about his history of addictions and parmesan cheese.

Hunter is set to testify before the House impeachment inquiry on Wednesday. It is unknown if he will actually appear for the interview. Hunter failed to show last time he said he would appear.

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Alexei Navalny’s Death and Curious Well-Timed Coincidences

There is propaganda by commission and propaganda by omission, the former often serve to conceal the latter. Timing is crucial.

That the U.S. President Joseph Biden, his British, NATO, Israeli allies, and their corporate media mouthpieces are in need of a major propaganda victory is obvious. They are losing the war in Ukraine, have been condemned throughout the world for the genocide in Gaza, and are ruling over a disintegrating empire. Biden and Netanyahu’s political lives are at serious risk. And so they have just rolled out a full-court propaganda press effort aimed at covering their losses. It should be crystal clear to anyone who can use logic to see the timing involved.

The great French scholar of propaganda and technology, Jacques Ellul, wrote years ago that propaganda “is not the touch of a magic wand. It is based on slow constant impregnation. It creates convictions and compliance through imperceptible influences that are effective only by continuous repetition.”

However, once this groundwork has been laid over time – as it has been with the continuous anti-Russia Putin hysteria and support for Israel’s Zionist policies – it can be intensely ratcheted up in exigent circumstances when the long-serving narrative is in jeopardy, such as it is now.

Once the death in a Russian prison of the Western backed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was announced on Friday, February 16, 2024, it was immediately followed by a cascade of anti-Russia pronouncements whose aim was to not only continue the demonization of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin but to serve other purposes as well.

With one fell stroke, the calm history lesson about Ukraine, Russia, and U.S./NATO that Putin had just delivered to the world via Tucker Carlson disappeared down the memory hole, as Biden, without any evidence, declared that “Putin and his thugs” and Putin’s “brutality” are responsible for Navalny’s death. This, of course, is a replay of the false charges sans evidence waged against Russia for an earlier poisoning of Navalny, the Skripals (since disappeared by the British government), Alexander Litvinenko, et al.

Shortly after, Zelensky, performing his puppet routine while coincidently appearing at the Munich Security Conference – on Saturday, February 17, a day after Navalny’s death was announced – with Navalny’s then widow, said it was “obvious” that Putin had killed Navalny, while Biden pushed for more money for Ukraine’s doomed war against Russia, a U.S./NATO war created by the U.S. from the start with its aggressive military push to Russia’s borders and its 2015 Ukrainian coup d’état that ousted the pro-Russian leader, setting the stage for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in February 2022. That Putin told Carlson these obvious facts, while slyly mentioning to Carlson that he understood that Carlson once tried to join the CIA, is now for most people in the West history lost behind the headlines, if it ever were anything more.

All this happened while Russia pushed through Ukraine’s defenses and took the city of Avdeevka, which had long been contested. With each day that passes, it is obvious that Biden’s Ukraine war strategy is that of a desperate politician on the ropes and that Putin has completely outfoxed the American desperados and their NATO European stooges. The MSM prefer to suggest otherwise, that hope is just around the corner if we send billions more dollars and weapons, and if with the help of our British friends, we take the war further into Russian territory and risk a nuclear confrontation. But we are in a propaganda war for the minds of the Western public.

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ADL pushed BMG to drop Roger Waters by threatening to weaponize company’s Nazi past

The Grayzone has obtained a private letter authored by ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt threatening to weaponize the Nazi past of the BMG music company unless executives terminated a major deal with Roger Waters. BMG has publicly denied Israel lobby influence on its decision to nix Waters’ contract.

When the Berlin-based BMG music company terminated its business relationship with Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd co-founder claimed the decision was spurred by a concerted Israel lobby-directed campaign to financially retaliate against his outspoken support for Palestine. The Grayzone has obtained a threatening private letter sent by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to BMG executives which confirms the musician’s accusation.

“Given the fact that your parent company, Bertelsmann Group, has made laudable and necessary efforts to repair its Nazi past,” the ADL director warned in his June 16, 2023 letter, “it would be deeply unfortunate to have those efforts continue to be tarnished by such hurtful and injurious conduct.”

In an interview with The Grayzone, Waters described the ADL’s menacing missive as the culmination of a months-long intimidation campaign which began well before the October 7 attacks in Israel. The ADL’s push resulted not only in the termination of the company’s deal to release the new 50th anniversary recording of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” he said, but in the departure of BMG’s CEO as well.

“As far as attacks on me by the ADL and and all the rest of the lobby are concerned, the jury has been out for a long time, but it’s not out anymore,” Waters commented to The Grayzone. “The contention that I’m an antisemite because I’ve stood up against the attempted genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine is dead in the water. The people of the world have seen through the wall of hatred and tissue of lies.”

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Prosecutor Fani Willis Touts the Value of Cash, But What About the Rest of Us?

It’s quite a turn when a prosecutor defends the use of cash for financial transactions. After years of authorities treating mere possession of physical money as sketchy and grounds for seizure, this week a law enforcement official claimed there’s nothing to see in her alleged cash reimbursements to her boyfriend for an enviable lifestyle arguably funded by the taxpayers. Either Fani Willis and company were right in the past and she should be subject to scrutiny for anonymous transactions, or she’s right today and she and her colleagues owe the rest of us a pass on our taste for financial anonymity.

If you haven’t kept up on the details, Fani Willis is the Fulton County district attorney overseeing the Georgia election interference case, which has been described as potentially the strongest and most consequential case against former (and maybe future) president Donald Trump. At least, it was described that way until defense attorneys revealed that Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in the case, is unqualified for the job, was romantically involved with Willis, and is being paid much more than any of his colleagues (around $654,000 in all)—money from which Willis seemingly benefited in the form of expensive vacations and other pleasures of life with Wade.

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Powerful LGBTQ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign welcomes man they know is convicted PEDOPHILE to gala, after previously handing him prestigious award

A prominent North Carolina LGBTQ advocacy group welcomed a known-convicted pedophile to their gala – despite knowing about his criminal past. 

Chad Turner, 45, was one of the attendees at the February 10 Human Right Campaign annual event, called ‘Without Exception,’ that was sponsored by Bank of America.

HRC Press Secretary Brandon Wolf and Democrat State Senator Lisa Grafstein both spoke at the dinner that was held at the Le Meridien Charlotte. Turner was previously awarded an honor by the HRC, who refused to say at the time whether they knew of his child abuser past, Reduxx reported. 

Turner, a former youth minister, was accused by three boys of sexual abuse in 1998 when he was 20 or 21 years old. The victim he was convicted of attacking was 14 and woke up to find the predator fondling his genitals. 

He served only two years of a 10-year sentence for committing the lewd acts on a minor under the age of 16. After his parole, he was ordered to enroll in North Carolina’s sex offender registry.

Despite his criminal past, Turner, who is the Chief Executive Officer at the Carolina LGBT + Chamber of Commerce, has managed to become a prominent member of the Charlotte LGBTQ advocacy community.

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Inside the Far Left Billionaires’ Push to Maintain Control of San Francisco

The far left partisans who dominate San Francisco politics may be throwing stones in a glass house.

Over the last week, as early voting began for the March 5th primary, with hot button issues on the ballot, the New Republic, the Guardian, and Mission Local published nearly identical follow-the-money-style news articles depicting a right-wing power grab. The reporting tracks, in the words of one of the reporters, the “network of interlocking non-profits, dark money groups and political action committees” pushing to “undo” San Francisco’s “progressive policies.”

Supervisor Dean Preston, who has used his perch on the city council to push for abolishing prisons and police, seized upon the news to claim that it confirms a “right wing takeover” of San Francisco. Preston, who is facing reelection, promised to “fight back” against “dystopian conservatives.”

Yet the groups and individuals named as conservative donors, like Michael Moritz and Garry Tan, are virtually all Democratic moderates with a history of donating to liberal causes. The issues these donors have zeroed in on are traditionally associated with political moderates, like restoring algebra to public middle school – the classes were removed by city leftists for racial equity reasons – hiring more police officers in the midst of a crime wave and street addiction crisis, and encouraging new construction to bring down the price of housing.

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Girlfriend charged with murder of former Texas judge who died of fentanyl overdose

Authorities in Texas have arrested the 35-year-old girlfriend of a former judge for allegedly supplying him with fentanyl that led to his overdose death late last year. Kami Ludwig was taken into custody on Monday and charged with the murder of 47-year-old former Associate Tarrant County Judge William Shane Nolen.

The murder charge is the result of a novel interpretation of a new law that Gov. Greg Abbott signed in June 2023 and went into effect on Sept. 1, 2023, classifying the supplying of fentanyl that results in death as murder. The law was enacted to combat the thousands of Texans who die annually from fentanyl poisoning, but appeared to primarily target drug dealers who distribute the deadly substance.

According to a news release from the Grapevine Police Department, officers at about 4:45 a.m. on Nov. 20, 2023, responded to a call regarding a deceased male — later identified as Nolen — at a residence located in the 4100 block of Mapleridge Drive. Ludwig placed the initial 911 call and identified herself to the dispatcher as Nolen’s girlfriend.

Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they found Nolen deceased in his bedroom “with signs consistent with an opioid overdose.” Authorities on the scene said they also recovered “several” additional pills from inside the home.

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