Tag: media

How the Left Became Cheerleaders for US War and Imperialism

One of the biggest problems for the left, as it confronts what seems like humanity’s ever-more precarious relationship with the planet – from the climate emergency to a potential nuclear exchange – is that siren voices keep luring it towards the rocks of political confusion and self-harm.

And one of the loudest sirens on the British left is the environmental activist George Monbiot.

Monbiot has carved out for himself a figurehead role on the mainstream British left because he is the only big-picture thinker allowed a regular platform in the establishment media: in his case, the liberal Guardian newspaper. It is a spot he covets and one that seems to have come with a big price tag: he is allowed to criticize the corporate elite’s capture of British domestic politics – he occasionally concedes that our political life has been stripped of all democratic content – but only, it seems, because he has become ever less willing to extend that same critique to British foreign policy.

As a result, Monbiot holds as a cherished piety what should be two entirely inconsistent positions: that British and Western elites are pillaging the planet for corporate gain, immune to the catastrophe they are wreaking on the environment and oblivious to the lives they are destroying at home and abroad; and that these same elites are fighting good, humanitarian wars to protect the interests of poor and oppressed peoples overseas, from Syria and Libya to Ukraine, peoples who coincidentally just happen to live in areas of geostrategic significance.

Because of the vice-like corporate hold on Britain’s political priorities, Monbiot avers, nothing the corporate media tells us should be believed – except when those priorities relate to protecting people facing down ruthless foreign dictators, from Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Then the media should be believed absolutely.

Monbiot’s embrace of the narratives justifying Washington’s “humanitarian” interventions abroad has been incremental. Back in the late 1990s, while generally supporting the aims of NATO’s war on the former Yugoslavia, he called out its bombing of Serbia as a “dirty war”, highlighting the ecological and economic destruction it entailed. He would also sound the alarm – if ambivalently – over the Iraq war in 2003, and later become a leading proponent of jailing former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair as a war criminal for his involvement.

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NBC News Walks Back Report There Was Third Person Inside House During Attack on Paul Pelosi

NBC News walked back a report Sunday that there was a third person in Paul Pelosi’s home during the attack.

“The SFPD also says that there were only TWO people inside the Pelosi home (Paul Pelosi and DePape) when they responded, clarifying statements made at Friday’s press conference which seemed to indicate there was a third person inside the home who opened the door,” wrote NBC investigative correspondent Tom Winter on social media on Sunday afternoon.

Winter reported Sunday morning on Meet the Press that there was a third person inside the home, who opened the door for police.

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott indicated there was a third person during a press conference on Friday evening when he recounted details of what occurred when police arrived on the scene.

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The Military-Industrial Media Complex Strikes Again

Tens of thousands protested against the skyrocketing cost of living and against Macron in France October 16, led by left-wing politician Jean Luc Melenchon, but there were few front page or top-of-the hour headlines in the U.S. Huge protests occurred in Rome the same day to demand an end to Italy’s involvement in NATO, but no coverage on the west side of the Atlantic. Thousands protesting in Paris October 22 against NATO, but little notice in North America. Massive protests against NATO and inflation due to sanctions on Russian energy in France, Germany and Austria in September, but little news of it here in the heart of the empire. German police beat citizens protesting energy shortages and record-high inflation, both due to Russia sanctions, the week of October 17, but that was not covered in the USA. Seventy thousand Czechs protested in Prague September 3 against NATO involvement in Ukraine, demanding gas from Russia (before some mysterious imperial somebody with means and motive blew up Nordstream 1 and 2, probably to nip the political effects of those protests in the bud) and ending the war, but that got little coverage in U.S. corporate media.

Ever get the sense there are things our media hides from us? Hmm. Ever wonder why enormous protests against the policies of the Exceptional Empire and its attack dog, NATO, seem, um, to be downplayed? Ever think our corporate news outlets behave more like the propaganda arm of our neoconservative state department and military than a free press? Well, if so, you may be onto something.

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Advocating World War Three Is Just Mainstream Punditry Now

Mainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to its inability to relinquish its goal of total unipolar planetary domination.

The latest example of this trend is an article titled “Could America Win a New World War? — What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia” published by Foreign Affairs, a magazine that is owned and operated by the supremely influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations.

“The United States and its allies must plan for how to simultaneously win wars in Asia and Europe, as unpalatable as the prospect may seem,” writes the article’s author Thomas G Mahnken, adding that in some ways “the United States and its allies will have an advantage in any simultaneous war” in those two continents.

But Mahnken doesn’t claim a world war against Russia and China would be a walk in the park; he also argues that in order to win such a war the US will need to — you guessed it — drastically increase its military spending.

“The United States clearly needs to increase its defense manufacturing capacity and speed,” Mahnken writes. “In the short term, that involves adding shifts to existing factories. With more time, it involves expanding factories and opening new production lines. To do both, Congress will have to act now to allocate more money to increase manufacturing.”

But exploding US weapons spending is still inadequate, Mahnken argues, saying that “the United States should work with its allies to increase their military production and the size of their weapons and munitions stockpiles” as well.

Mahnken says this world war could be sparked “if China initiated a military operation to take Taiwan, forcing the United States and its allies to respond,” as though there would be no other options on the table besides launching into nuclear age World War Three to defend an island next to the Chinese mainland that calls itself the Republic of China. He writes that “Moscow, meanwhile, could decide that with the United States bogged down in the western Pacific, it could get away with invading more of Europe,” demonstrating the bizarre Schrödinger’s cat western propaganda paradox that Putin is always simultaneously (A) getting destroyed and humiliated in Ukraine and (B) on the cusp of waging hot war with NATO.

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CNBC Journalist Duped By Pranksters Pulling ‘Internet Hoax’ Outside Of Twitter’s HQ

A CNBC journalist was duped by two pranksters outside of Twitter’s headquarters on Friday who were posing as data engineers who had just been fired.

The story comes after Elon Musk took over the company Thursday evening following his $44 billion acquisition being finalized.

Musk reportedly directed engineers from his electric car company Tesla, where he also serves as CEO, to take control of the social media company’s code away from Twitter’s engineers to evaluate potential changes to the system.

Musk also immediately fired leftist CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety, The Washington Post reported. The report said Musk also fired the company’s general counsel, Sean Edgett, who was escorted out of the building.

CNBC journalist Deirdre Bosa showed up to the offices Friday where she took a photograph of two men who were carrying boxes, claiming that they had just been fired.

“It’s happening,” Bosa tweeted. “Entire team of data engineers let go. These are two of them.”

“They are visibly shaken. Daniel tells us he owns a Tesla and doesn’t know how he’s going to make payments,” she claimed. “(To be clear – I don’t think the Tesla was top of mind, I think @elonmusk was).”

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Joke’s On You! Looks Like The Biden Administration Wrote ‘SNL’s’ Unfunny Covid Comedy

It turns out the Federal Election Commission’s rules on disclosing advertisers in political ads don’t apply to all partisan entities.

According to Judicial Watch, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enlisted and paid screenwriters, production companies, comedians, TikTok influencers, Joe Rogan guests, and church leaders to promote its Covid shot propaganda to the public. Yet nowhere have we seen “paid for by the HHS and CDC” on the sponsored ads the government used to bombard Americans over the last couple of years. 

The Biden administration made a plan to recruit “all media companies and show producers” to do its bidding, which would include NBC. NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” (“SNL”) didn’t even need “paid for by” disclaimers for people to pick up on its vaccine propaganda, however. The studio’s pandemic “comedy” sketches felt far more like CDC and Big Pharma ads than jokes. The Federalist reached out to NBC to ask if SNL Studios’ executives, producers, writers, or comedians were involved in the CDC and HHS’s coordinated effort to push the Covid jab, and although the studio did not respond, it’s hard to believe SNL wasn’t involved.”

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The Media’s Cover-Up of John Fetterman

It should now be crystal clear why Democrat John Fetterman refused to take part in more than a single debate with his Republican Senate rival, Mehmet Oz, and why Fetterman insisted on pushing that debate to just two weeks before Election Day—after at least 500,000 Pennsylvania voters had already voted.

Last night’s debate was an unmitigated disaster. 

A disaster for Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor—who appeared confused and could barely manage a coherent sentence, let alone a complete paragraph.

And a disaster for Pennsylvania voters, who didn’t get the tough, substantive debate they deserved, one that would have pushed Oz to explain, among other things, why he was distancing himself from Donald Trump (without whom he wouldn’t be the nominee); his position on abortion; China; and how he plans to bring down gas prices.

Oz had some solid talking points, but they were just that—talking points. But Fetterman lacked even those.

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ABC News Producer Missing Since FBI Raid, Was Writing Book About Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal

A star reporter for ABC News has been missing since an April 27 FBI raid at his Arlington, Virginia apartment.

Emmy award winner James Gordon Meek – a deep-dive journalist who was also a former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee, abruptly quit his job of 9 years and “fell off the face of the earth,” after the raid, one of his colleagues told Rolling Stone.

At the time of the raid, Meek, 52, was co-authoring a now-published book about the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to ‘sources familiar with the matter,’ federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek’s laptop during their raid – though one investigative journalist who had worked with him said it would be highly unusual for a reporter to do so.

“Mr. Meek is unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents,” said his lawyer, Eugene Gorokhov, in a statement. “If such documents exist, as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing. The allegations in your inquiry are troubling for a different reason: they appear to come from a source inside the government. It is highly inappropriate, and illegal, for individuals in the government to leak information about an ongoing investigation. We hope that the DOJ [Department of Justice] promptly investigates the source of this leak.”

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