Media misinformers…
Tag: mainstream media
Thomas Jefferson on the media…
Perception Vs. Reality
If you only get your news from the mainstream media, you would be tempted to believe that global conditions are relatively stable right now.
Yes, there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, but the mainstream media is assuring us that Ukraine is winning that war.
Other than that, the mainstream media seems to think that everything is just fine.
Of course the truth is that our planet is facing a whole host of extremely challenging problems at the moment. The UN has warned that we are entering the worst global food crisis since World War II, inflation has started to spiral out of control all over the world, the war in Ukraine is making our supply chain nightmares even worse and an absolutely horrifying bird flu plague is killing millions upon millions of chickens and turkeys.
But if you flip on one of the corporate news channels tonight, they will be focusing on other things.
And you probably won’t even hear them talk about the food riots that have suddenly begun erupting around the world at all.
For example, a “curfew” has just been imposed on the capital of Peru after a series of extremely passionate protests that were sparked by rapidly rising fuel and food prices…
Peruvian President Pedro Castillo announced a curfew for Tuesday in the capital Lima and neighboring port city Callao, after demonstrations across the country over fuel prices caused roadblocks and “acts of violence”.
Protests had erupted across Peru in recent days due to a hike in fuel prices and tolls, during a time of rising food prices.
Is this the first time that you have heard about this?
For many of you it will be, and that is because the mainstream media in the U.S. is largely ignoring this.
In Sri Lanka, severe shortages of “food, medicine and fuel” have caused a full-blown economic collapse and tremendous chaos in the streets…
In Sri Lanka, where an economic crisis is growing, more than 40 lawmakers walked out of the ruling coalition today. That leaves the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the minority in Parliament. There have been new calls today for both the president and prime minister to step down after the entire Cabinet resigned on Sunday. Shortages of food, medicine and fuel have sparked countrywide protests, and security forces have fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters marching on the president’s home.
Most of you have probably not heard about that either, and that is because our largest news outlets are being really quiet about it.
But USA Today wants to make sure that you know about a new promotion that McDonald’s is running: “McDonald’s brings back Spicy Chicken McNuggets to select restaurants for a limited time”.
More than ever before, our perception of the world around us is shaped by the corporate elite. Americans get more than 90 percent of the “television news” that they consume from just five giant media corporations, and so that gives those corporations an incredible amount of influence over how our society views reality.
For example, far more Americans are talking about “the slap” at the Academy Awards than about the fact that North Korea just threatened South Korea with nuclear war…
US Officials Admit They’re Literally Just Lying To The Public About Russia
NBC News has a new report out citing multiple anonymous US officials, humorously titled “In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn’t rock solid“.
The officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out “intelligence” about Russia’s plans in Ukraine that is “low-confidence” or “based more on analysis than hard evidence”, or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.
The report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin’s advisors misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.
It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.
It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance.
So they lied. They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true, and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in the western world.
Washington Post Admits NATO Wants to Prolong War in Ukraine
In an article about the potential for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, the Washington Post admits that some within NATO want to prolong the war for as long as possible.
The admission is contained in a piece titled ‘NATO says Ukraine to decide on peace deal with Russia — within limits’.
“Even a Ukrainian vow not to join NATO — a concession that Zelensky has floated publicly — could be a concern to some neighbors. That leads to an awkward reality: For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe,” states the article.
“There is an unfortunate dilemma. The problem is that if it ends now, there is a kind of time for Russia to regroup, and it will restart, under this or another pretext.”
And there you have it.
Now we know why the NATO-aligned legacy media and journalists are constantly lobbying for an escalation that could spark World War III.
NATO wants the war to continue for as long as possible so Russia can be drained and isolated, while the media is addicted to the clicks and ratings it brings.
The article also reveals how Zelensky wants a “legally binding security guarantees from the United States and others to defend it if it were attacked,” something that is totally delusional.
Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Self-Victimize to Bar Criticisms of Themselves
The daily newspaper USA Today is the second-most circulated print newspaper in the United States — more than The New York Times and more than double The Washington Post. Only The Wall Street Journal has higher circulation numbers.
On Sunday, the paper published and heavily promoted a repellent article complaining that “defendants accused in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 crowdfund their legal fees online, using popular payment processors and an expanding network of fundraising platforms, despite a crackdown by tech companies.” It provided a road map for snitching on how these private citizens — who are charged with serious felonies by the U.S. Justice Department but as of yet convicted of nothing — are engaged in “a game of cat-and-mouse as they spring from one fundraising tool to another” in order to avoid bans on their ability to raise desperately needed funds to pay their criminal lawyers to mount a vigorous defense.
In other words, the only purpose of the article — headlined: “Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online” — was to pressure and shame tech companies to do more to block these criminal defendants from being able to raise funds for their legal fees, and to tattle to tech companies by showing them what techniques these indigent defendants are using to raise money online.
The USA Today reporters went far beyond merely reporting how this fundraising was being conducted. They went so far as to tattle to PayPal and other funding sites on two of those defendants, Joe Biggs and Dominic Pezzola, and then boasted of their success in having their accounts terminated:
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Biggs fundraiser was listed as having received $52,201. Pezzola had received $730. Biggs’ campaign disappeared from the site shortly after USA TODAY inquired about it….
Friday, a USA TODAY reporter donated to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Stripe. Stripe told USA TODAY it does not comment on individual users. A USA TODAY reporter was able to make a $1 donation to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Venmo, a payment app owned by PayPal. After being alerted by USA TODAY, Venmo removed the account.
Soon a PayPal account took its place. PayPal caught that and removed it, too.
Wow, what brave and intrepid journalistic work: speaking truth to power and standing up to major power centers by . . . working as little police officers for tech giants to prevent private citizens from being able to afford criminal lawyers. Clear the shelves for the imminent Pulitzer. Whatever you think about the Capitol riot, everyone has the right to a legal defense and to do what they can to ensure they have the best legal defense possible — especially when the full weight of the Justice Department is crashing down on your head even for non-violent offenses, which is what many of these defendants are charged with due to the politically charged nature of the investigation.
The right to a vigorous defense has always been a central cause of mine as a lawyer and a journalist (it also used to be a central cause of left-wing groups like the ACLU, years ago; it was that same principle that caused then-candidate Kamala Harris to solicit donations last summer that went to protesters charged with violent rioting). A federal prosecutor was recently referred for disciplinary procedures for publicly threatening to charge some of these Capitol protesters with sedition, one of the gravest crimes in the U.S. Code. That is how grave the legal jeopardy is faced by these people trying to raise money for lawyers.
What makes all of this extra grotesque is that, as The Washington Post reported, most of those charged with various crimes in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot, including many whose charges stem just from their presence inside the Capitol, not the use of any violence, are people with serious financial difficulties: not surprising for a country in the middle of a major economic and joblessness crisis, where neoliberalism and global trade deals have destroyed entire industries and communities for decades:
Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories. . . . The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.
This USA Today article is thus yet another example of journalists at major media outlets abusing their platforms to attack and expose anything other than the real power centers which compose the ruling class and govern the U.S.: the CIA, the FBI, security state agencies, Wall Street, Silicon Valley oligarchs. To the extent these journalists pay attention to those entities at all — and they barely ever do — it is to venerate them and mindlessly disseminate their messaging like stenographers, not investigate them. Investigating people who actually wield real power is hard.
Biden’s “booming economy” is just another front in the media’s war on reality
Did you know the economy was booming? This may come as a shock to anyone out there who a) is alive or
b) has to buy things, but it’s definitely true.
MSNBC and the New York Times said so.
Mehdi Hasan did a segment on his show.
NBC report “President Biden’s approval rating has fallen to lowest level of his presidency despite booming economy”, and Hasan just doesn’t understand why people would be “unhappy with the way Biden is handling the economy” when wages are growing and they’ve added a “record 6.4 million job” in 2021.
Now, OK, that reported 4.5% wage growth is lagging way behind inflation, meaning in real terms people are being paid less.
Yes, alright, the “new jobs” were really just (some) of the people who lost their jobs during lockdown being rehired.
And fine, the reason spending is increasing could be that everything costs more.
But seriously, we’re fine, it’s booming.
Now, some booming economy deniers, Russian bots or anti-vaxxers will doubtless point to all the “evidence” that the US economy is not booming.
They’ll probably point out that inflation is at a 40 year high, and likely to keep on rising.
That the current price of gas is the highest ever in US history.
That the US is expected to enter a recession by the end of the year.
That house prices are increasing so fast that experts are predicting a “housing bubble”.
That “homeless camps” and “tent cities” with populations in the thousands are popping up in dozens of cities.
That the “crippling sanctions” placed on Russia seem to have “accidentally backfired” and hurt the US economy badly.
And, most of all, that moves are afoot which could see major oil trades being done in Yuan, not dollars. A change that could potentially cause the death of the petrodollar, the end of the USD as the global reserve currency, and send the US economy into a death spiral somewhere between Black Monday and Weimar Germany.
Clearly, this is all just conspiracy theories and nonsense. The economy really is booming. Oh, and in more good news the chocolate ration has increased from 30 grams a week to 20.
Media Ran a Disinformation Campaign to Protect Fauci From Criticism Over Dog Torture
Based on Reinhard and Milbank’s work in the Post, Politifact, USA Today, Snopes, FactCheck.org, Media Matters, Mic and others parroted the claim that NIAID didn’t fund the study.
Now, thanks to a FOIA request from White Coat Waste, we have obtained the NIAID-approved grant application which confirms that, contrary to its public statement and denial, the agency did indeed fund an experiment in which sedated dogs were placed in cages full of sand flies.
“Dogs will be anaesthetized by subcutaneous injection of 200 μI of ketamine (10 mg/ml) (Merial, Lyon, France) and for 2 hours will be placed in a cage containing between 15 to 30 females P. perniciosus.”
The truth about Bucha is out there, but perhaps too inconvenient to be discovered
“In war, truth is the first casualty.” This quote has been attributed to Aeschylus, a 6th BCE Greek tragedian noted for his “copious use of imagery, mythic allusion, grand language, wordplay and riddles.” It is only fitting, therefore, that the man who first gave word to the concept of modern-day war-time propaganda would see his quote come to life in the present-day Ukraine. The Kiev government and their Western information warfare advisers may have coopted all of Aeschylus’ playwright devices to craft a modern-day tragedy in the Ukrainian town of Bucha that exemplifies the notion of the lie as not just a byproduct, but also a weapon of war.
The main source of the Bucha tragedy reports is a videotape, taken by the Ukrainian National Police, of one of their convoys driving through a street in the town. A dozen or so corpses litter the roadway, many of them appearing to have been bound. This video has gone viral, producing a pandemic of anguish and anger that has swept over much of the world, capturing the attention of heads of state and the head of the Catholic Church alike, resulting in a tidal wave of condemnation and outrage directed at Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. The cause-and-effect relationship between the video and the global backlash is clear – the former could not exist without the latter.
One of the first lessons of objectivity is to slow things down to make sure that fact is not obscured by emotion. The Bucha videotape is disturbing. The video has been released in its present form, it appears, with the express intent of producing a visceral “shock and awe” moment for the viewer. If this was indeed the case, then those who released it – the Ukrainian National Police – have succeeded beyond their wildest imagination. Or that of their advisors, as the case may be.
The linkage between the dead and the Russian military was established immediately, without any fact-based data to back it up, and subsequently echoed in all forms of media – mainstream and social alike. Anyone who dared question the established “Russia did it” narrative was shouted down and belittled as a “Russian shill,” or worse.
That these conclusions are the byproduct of mass hysteria is beside the point – why seek to be objective when the narrative fits every stereotype that had been carefully assembled beforehand by the same people parroting the Bucha story today. Social “preconditioning” of an audience unused to critical thinking is an essential step in getting this audience to accept at face value anything that is put before it, regardless of how egregiously the facts of the story strain credulity. And let’s be clear – the Ukrainian narrative of the events in Bucha seems to stretch credibility.
Pundits Who Advocate Hot War With Russia Are Enemies Of Humanity
In an appearance on the MSNBC show Velshi, The Modern War Institute’s John Spencer explicitly advocated direct US military conflict with Russia due to allegations of war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
“I’m ready to commit at this moment — unlike I was before this day — to put people in direct contact with Russia, to stop Russia,” Spencer said. “Call it peacekeeping. Call it what you will. We have to do more than provide weapons. And by ‘we,’ I mean the United States. Yes, we’ll do it as a coalition with lots of other people, but we are the example. So put boots on the ground, send weapons directly at Russia.”
Notice the bizarre verbal gymnastics being used by Spencer to obfuscate the fact that he is advocating a hot war with a nuclear superpower: “put people in direct contact with Russia,” “send weapons directly at Russia”. Who talks like that? He’s calling for the US military to fire upon the Russian military, he’s just saying it really weird.
To be clear this isn’t just some arms industry-funded think tanker saying this; The Modern War Institute is part of the Department of Military Instruction for the United States Military Academy, which is operated directly by the Pentagon.
Asked by the show’s host Ali Velshi what he thought of warnings that direct military confrontation with Russia could lead to nuclear war, Spencer said, “It is a huge risk, I understand that. But today is different.”
Velshi himself was much more to the point than his guest, both online and on social media.
“We are past the point of sanctions and strongly-worded condemnations and the seizing of oligarchs’ megayachts,” Velshi told his MSNBC audience. “If this is not the kind of moment that the United Nations and NATO and the UN and the G-20 and the Council of Europe and the G-7 were made for, what was the point of these alliances if not to stop this? The world cannot sit by as Vladimir Putin continues this reign of terror.”
“The turning point for the west and NATO will come when the sun rises over Kyiv on Sunday, and the war crimes against civilian non-combatants becomes visible to all,” Velshi said on Twitter over the weekend. “There is no more time for prevarication. If ‘never again’ means anything, then this is the time to act.”
Asked what specifically he meant by this, Velshi clarified that he was advocating “Direct military involvement.”
“Lines have been crossed and war crimes have been committed by Putin that make direct military intervention something NATO now must seriously consider,” Velshi added.
Hellbound and Down 
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