Tag: mainstream media

‘Fact-Checkers’ Are Technocracy’s Digital Brownshirts

We are under siege. A nihilistic fanaticism is running free among us thanks to the emergence of a journalistic “ethos” that establishes an almost complete equivalence between the “truth” and those utterances that support the strategic goals of the great economic and digital powers of our time.

A few months ago Facebook censored an article in the British Medical Journal that highlighted serious irregularities in Pfizer’s clinical vaccine trials. Then two weeks ago, fact-checkers from the Spanish websites Newtral and Maldita burst into the public square to accuse professor of Pharmacology, renowned expert in drug safety, and ex-WHO adviser, Joan Ramón Laporte of foisting lies and disinformation onto the Spanish populace. This, in reaction to Laporte’s testimony before a Spanish parliamentary commission investigating the country’s vaccination effort.

Despite his towering credentials, his intervention was quickly tarred as problematic by the media and subsequently banned by YouTube. The crime of this new Galileo Galilei? Alerting the assembled parliamentarians to the existence of grave procedural irregularities in the trials for the vaccines, and questioning the wisdom of a health strategy that aims to inject every Spanish child over the age of six with a new, poorly tested, and largely ineffective medication.

This incident reveals that the fact-checkers will attack anyone who does not accept the truth as dictated by the great economic and government centers of the world. This is not the usual official media obfuscation to which we’ve become accustomed over the years, but rather a brazen McCarthyist intimidation device, designed to frighten citizens into submission by appealing to their lowest and most ignoble instincts, an approach lain bare in Maldita’s smug and Manichaean slogan: “Join and support us in our battle against lies.”

Under this harsh binary logic, an internationally famous scientist like Laporte is not even given the opportunity to be judged wrong or misguided in good faith. Rather, he is immediately accused of being a willful and dangerous liar who must be immediately banished from public view.

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CNN, ABC and CBS News to stop broadcasting in Russia after Putin’s threat to lock up journalists for 12 years: Bloomberg, BBC and Canada’s CBC ‘temporarily suspend’ operations

CNN International, the global arm of CNN, ABC and CBS News will stop broadcasting in Russia, after the Kremlin introduced a new law in the country that could jail anyone intentionally spreading ‘fake’ news.

Bloomberg News, the BBC and Canada’s CBC also said they were temporarily suspending the work of their journalists inside Russia. 

Russian officials have said that false information has been spread by enemies such as the United States and its Western European allies in an attempt to sow discord among the Russian people.

Lawmakers in Moscow passed amendments to the criminal code making the spread of ‘fake’ information an offense punishable with fines or jail terms. They also imposed fines for anyone calling for sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

The new legislation was passed by parliament and will become law when Vladimir Putin signs it, as he is widely expected to do. It was not clear when Putin would sign the measure.

It appeared to give the Russian state much stronger powers to crack down, by making it a criminal offense to spread fake information, with a jail term of up 15 years for posting about ‘fake news.’

‘CNN will stop broadcasting in Russia while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward,’ a spokesperson said Friday. 

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The Overton Window Is Being Shoved Toward Warmongering Extremism

A substitute teacher at an Arlington, Virginia middle school has been suspended for teaching an insufficiently one-sided perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Apparently one of the students recorded the lesson and showed it to their parents who complained to the school.

This happens as RT America shuts its doors following an astonishingly aggressive censorship campaign against Russia-backed media outlets throughout the western world.

The virulent post-9/11-like hysteria about Russia that has been promoted by one-sided mass media reporting on the war, and by the five years of fact-free conspiracy mongering which preceded it, has created an environment where you’ll get shouted down on social media for voicing any opinion about this conflict apart from saying Putin invaded because he is evil and hates freedom. Voices calling for diplomacy, de-escalation and detente are being systematically drowned out.

Meanwhile you’ve got massively influential pundits like Sean Hannity calling for a direct NATO airstrike on a Russian military convoy in Ukraine, without the slightest risk of losing his immense platform for advocating a move that would probably lead to a very fast, very radioactive third world war.

“You know, if we can see on satellite imagery where the convoy is, I don’t know, maybe some smart country, maybe NATO might take some of their fighter jets, or maybe they can use some drone strikes and take out the whole damn convoy,” Hannity said on Premiere Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show on Wednesday. “And then nobody takes credit for it, so then Putin won’t know who to hit back.”

Hannity hastily adds that he’s “not talking about nuclear war,” but then adds a “but” which completely contradicts him.

“But at what point is this gonna end?” Hannity asks. “Cuz nobody did anything after Georgia was taken in ’08, nobody cared about Crimea being annexed in 2014.”

Hannity has also made repeated calls for Putin’s assassination, saying that “if you invade an innocent sovereign country, and you kill innocent men, women and children, you don’t deserve to live.” An interesting position for one of the most aggressive defenders of Bush’s Iraq invasion.

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Mystal: U.S. Constitution Is ‘Trash’ Written by Slave-Owning ‘White People’

The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal said Friday on ABC’s “The View” that the United States Constitution is “trash” written by slave-owning white people.

Discussing his new book “Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution,” Mystal said, “Republicans are obviously trying to manipulate those laws, particularly the rights of minorities, women, and the LGBTQ communities, and I explain it in ways we can understand so we can fight them.”

Co-host Ana Navarro said, “I live in Florida, so I’m, like, on ground zero of where all of this is happening. I’m out of my mind about the bills banning conversations about race and ethnicity and LGBTQ, just even mentioning gender identity in primary schools…Are you arguing for throwing out the Constitution? Should the Constitution be thrown out? What do we do? Is it a living document, or is it a sacred document?”

Mystal said, “It’s certainly not sacred. Let’s start there. The Constitution is kind of trash. Again, let’s just talk as adults for a second.”

Co-host Joy Behar said, “What did you say?”

Mystal said, “It’s kind of trash. It was written by slavers and colonists and white people willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn’t ask anybody who looked like me what they thought about the Constitution.”

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BBC Pulls All Reporters From Russia After Moscow Criminalizes “Disinformation”

Following earlier news that Russia will criminalize “disinformation” about military in crackdown on “fake information”, not that different from the wholesale “canceling” and deplatforming of any western media outlets that do not parrot the official narrative, moments ago the BBC announced that it would “temporarily suspend the work of all BBC News journalists and their support staff within the Russian Federation” while the news agency assesses the full implications of this unwelcome development.

Full Statement from Tim Davie, BBC Director-General:

“This legislation appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism. It leaves us no other option than to temporarily suspend the work of all BBC News journalists and their support staff within the Russian Federation while we assess the full implications of this unwelcome development.

“Our BBC News service in Russian will continue to operate from outside Russia.

“The safety of our staff is paramount and we are not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs. I’d like to pay tribute to all of them, for their bravery, determination and professionalism.

“We remain committed to making accurate, independent information available to audiences around the world, including the millions of Russians who use our news services. Our journalists in Ukraine and around the world will continue to report on the invasion of Ukraine.”

Is that an admission that The BBC produces ‘fake news’?

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