Tag: propaganda

Look At NYT Coverage Of Comey, Trump Indictments To See How The Propaganda Machine Operates

On Thursday, disgraced former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by a grand jury on two counts: false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. In other words, Comey allegedly broke the law — and the evidence appears to support the charges. But you wouldn’t necessarily glean that if you read The New York Times’ editorial board meltdown about the indictment.

“The Comey Indictment Plunges the Country Into a Grave New Period,” the piece is headlined. The esteemed “opinion journalists” at The Times warn that Trump “is undermining a core promise of the American justice system: the fair and equal enforcement of the law.”

It matters naught to the board that Comey allegedly provided false testimony to Congress in September of 2020 about his handling of the Russia collusion hoax. Comey previously testified in 2017 that “he did not authorize leaking information regarding the FBI’s investigations into President Donald Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” as described by NBC News. Comey later told Sen. Ted Cruz he stood by the testimony.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said Comey was made aware of the leak of information to the press and essentially gave it the stamp of approval after the fact, a 2018 Justice Department inspector general’s report found.

But no, according to The Times, Trump is apparently a “despot” who is “persecuting people he considers his enemies, with little justification other than raw political power.”

Although, however, the board even highlights that the grand jury that indicted Comey declined to bring a third false statement count.

“Grand juries typically file the indictments that federal prosecutors ask for,” the board writes, unwittingly undercutting its own hysteria. You see, by conceding that the grand jury — not Trump — declined to pursue the third charge (which according to The Times is atypical) it must mean the grand jury found credible evidence to indict Comey on the other two charges, but used their discretion and declined to bring the third charge. In other words, the charges stand on merits, not Trump’s alleged desire for retribution.

Nonetheless, according to the board, the “biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years” is that Trump (according to the “experts”) ran on “promising to prosecute his enemies.” (Notably, the editorial board must have forgotten about New York Attorney General Letitia James’ campaign promise to nail Trump).

And yet here I was thinking the “biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years” was the last administration trying to throw a former president in jail. But The Times disagrees with me there, you see.

In fact, the editorial board was quick to declare that “Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law,” in a 2022 piece that claimed the criminal investigation into the then-former president was “required.”

“Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leave little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people,” the board wrote.

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Denmark Accused of Spreading False Claims to Push EU’s Mass Surveillance Law

A growing confrontation over major digital surveillance powers is unfolding within the European Union, as Denmark’s Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard stands accused of using false claims to pressure hesitant governments into backing the European Commission’s proposed Chat Control 2.0 regulation.

In a press release, digital rights campaigner and former Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer has denounced what he describes as a manufactured crisis aimed at forcing through legislation that would subject all private communications in the EU to automated scanning.

Classified minutes obtained by Netzpolitik from a September 15 Council meeting reveal that Hummelgaard, currently presiding over the EU Council, told interior ministers that the European Parliament would block any renewal of the existing voluntary scanning framework unless governments agreed to adopt the new regulation.

Breyer immediately pushed back on this claim.

“This is a blatant lie designed to manufacture a crisis,” said Breyer.

“There is no such decision by the European Parliament…We are witnessing a shameless disinformation campaign to force an unprecedented mass scanning law upon 450 million Europeans. I call on EU governments, and particularly the German government, not to fall for this blatant manipulation. To sacrifice the fundamental right to digital privacy and secure encryption based on a fabrication would be a catastrophic failure of political and moral leadership.”

The regulation in question, officially called the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), would compel messaging platforms, email providers, and cloud storage services to scan all user content for potential child abuse material.

This would apply even to services using end-to-end encryption, meaning private conversations on platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage would no longer be truly confidential.

Although supporters describe the system as targeted and limited, the legal framework allows broad application.

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German State Public Radio and TV Broadcaster NDR Suppresses Explosive Documentary Exposing OCCRP Election Meddling and Secret U.S. Funding

Germany’s taxpayer-funded state broadcaster NDR is desperately trying to bury its own investigative documentary that exposes the shady journalist network OCCRP. The reason? The film caught OCCRP chief Drew Sullivan on camera bragging that his organization was “responsible for overthrowing five or six governments.”

The revelations are devastating. NDR reporters uncovered that OCCRP—whose media partners include Der Spiegeland Die Zeit—was secretly bankrolled from the United States for decades. When the documentary turned out to be critical instead of a love letter, Sullivan reportedly pressured NDR to kill the project. The state broadcaster complied, scrapping the documentary before it aired and cutting ties with OCCRP in 2023. The scandal finally leaked in December 2024 through the French platform Mediapart.

Censorship and Threats Against an Elected Official

Now, as OCCRP is embroiled in a massive EU funding scandal, the suppressed film has resurfaced. MEP Petr Bystron (AfD) revealed through an inquiry that OCCRP received €600,000 from EU coffers immediately after the European elections—right after the network ran smear campaigns against conservative candidates, including Bystron himself.

Despite this interference, Bystron won his seat and published the hidden film online. That’s when NDR struck back, issuing him a cease-and-desist order and threatening fines of up to €50,000. The state broadcaster appears terrified that Sullivan’s own words might reach the public.

OCCRP in Panic Mode

Sullivan and OCCRP reacted furiously on X, dismissing the leaked documentary as “attacks” on their organization. But Sullivan offered no explanation as to how quoting his own on-camera admissions could be an “attack.” OCCRP also dodged questions from the Berliner Zeitung about its EU payments, merely insisting it was still “independent.”

Sullivan’s radical views are also on display elsewhere. After the brutal murder of American conservative Charlie Kirk, the OCCRP boss gloated: “A moment of silence is not appropriate. He was no hero. […] He was a racist, an anti-democratic liar.”

U.S. Fallout

The scandal is reverberating across the Atlantic. President Donald Trump already cut OCCRP’s lifeline by halting its funding via USAID. And now, U.S. media like Gateway Pundit and InfoWars are exposing how this so-called “investigative” network has been weaponized to manipulate elections and topple governments worldwide.

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Matt Gaetz Blasts Israel: Secret Hamas Funding, Propaganda Deals, and Political Screening Exposed

Matt Gaetz launched a blistering critique of Israel, exposing shocking secrets and tangled alliances behind the Gaza conflict. He revealed Netanyahu’s secret $30 million monthly funding request to Hamas via Qatar—an admission only recently made public—while condemning Israel’s bombings of Qatar despite the Gulf state gifting the U.S. a $400 million jet.

Gaetz also called out Israel’s $45 million deal with Google to push propaganda on the Gaza war and took aim at Speaker Mike Johnson’s controversial stance on screening congressional candidates for alignment with Israeli government policies amid waning support.

Gaetz stated on his show, “Israel is using American-made weapons to bomb Qatar — a country that hosts our largest military base in the Middle East. This isn’t just a conflict; it’s a betrayal of a close ally.”

Gaetz is right to point out the alarming reality that Israel used American-made weapons to attack Qatar — a vital U.S. ally that hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East.

This unprecedented strike against a partner nation raises serious questions about Netanyahu’s intentions: Is he targeting the U.S. military presence in Qatar next? What further aggressive moves might be planned in this escalating regional conflict?

The attack marks a dangerous escalation with major implications for U.S. defense cooperation and Middle East stability.

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Chinese propaganda has even infiltrated the halls of Congress

On my very first day as a US congressman in January, I walked into my office on Capitol Hill and learned a startling lesson.

There among the array of American newspapers delivered free to every member of Congress was a copy of China Daily — a state-run propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

That’s when I knew my first piece of legislation needed to send a clear message: America is not for sale.

For too long, Washington has looked the other way as foreign adversaries have bought influence, shaped narratives and quietly infiltrated the institutions that are supposed to safeguard our democracy.

The bill I introduced to halt unsolicited delivery of China Daily to Capitol Hill was a necessary act of defense against information warfare being waged on our own soil.

China Daily is not journalism, but the voice of the Chinese Communist Party, registered as a foreign agent under US law.

By allowing it to be distributed through our internal mail systems — with taxpayer resources covering that cost — Congress was effectively endorsing foreign propaganda.

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Discussions Before Iran War Indicate Nuclear Weapons Issue Was Less Pressing Than Netanyahu Claimed

Private discussions between Israeli officials before launching the war against Iran in June indicate that Tehran’s development of nuclear weapons was not an immediate concern. At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s nuclear program was an immediate threat. 

“We are at a historic moment with a crucial decision. If we don’t stop [them], within a few years, they will get tens of thousands of kilograms of [nuclear] explosives,” the Prime Minister said at a top-secret meeting the day before launching the war. “Iran has already enriched fissile material at a level that is enough for eight to nine bombs, and they are working on the weaponization.” 

According to The Times of Israel, one unnamed senior military official said the attack would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon in “the long term” and the war would “improve Israel’s strategic balance.”

Publicly, Netanyahu gave far more alarming warnings about Tehran’s breakout time to build a nuclear weapon. He said, “Iran’s nuclear teams were racing to build nuclear warheads. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad claimed Iran could assemble a nuclear weapon within 15 days. 

The private discussions also reveal that Israeli officials believed that they would not be able to destroy Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and were depending on Trump entering the conflict. “The basic assumption is that at the end of the operation, Iran will still possess enriched material,” one official said.

Tel Aviv needed the US to destroy the Fordo nuclear facility. One senior official admitted, “Fordo will be destroyed only if the US attacks it.” Setergetic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer was confident that Trump would decide to bomb Fordo and provide Israel with assistance in shooting down Iranian missiles. 

The conversations additionally reveal that Tel Aviv was trying to overthrow the Iranian government, not just destroy its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. 

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New owner of CBS coordinated with former Israeli military chief to counter the country’s critics, according to leaked emails

A widely noted dataset of purportedly leaked emails from former Israeli minister of defense Benjamin Gantz appears to show that David Ellison, the new head of media conglomerate Paramount, was coordinating with the recently retired commander-in-chief of the Israeli military on a nascent campaign to sabotage critics of the Israeli military’s activities in Palestine.

The previously unreported emails appear to show David Ellison being recruited in December 2015 as a core American supporter of a nascent Israeli government effort which Gantz labeled the “Counter-BDS Initiative.” The original concept of the program, according to leaked emails and PowerPoint presentations, was to raise $1 million each from twelve prominent Jewish philanthropists in order to fund “state-of-the-art cyber technology as a soft weapon” and to contract the controversial private intelligence firm Black Cube to spy on and disrupt activists.

David and his father, Larry Ellison – the centi-billionaire founder of the enterprise database company Oracle – have come under increased scrutiny as a result of their joint financing of an $8 billion merger between Paramount and David’s own media company, Skydance. The purchase took place alongside Paramount agreeing to pay $16 million to President Trump over editorial choices regarding an interview with former Vice President Harris. Focus further increased on Wednesday, when Larry Ellison was reported to have overtaken his business partner Elon Musk as the world’s richest man.

Larry Ellison’s ties to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a prominent opponent of Gantz, are well known. According to reporting in Haaretz in 2021, the Oracle founder went as far as offering Mr. Netanyahu a seat on his company’s board.

The New York Times further reported on Wednesday that David Ellison is considering appointing the former New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss as co-president or editor-in-chief of the CBS News division of Paramount. The possible role comes alongside Ellison’s widely reported consideration of a roughly $100 million acquisition of Weiss’s ‘anti-woke’ media outlet, The Free Press, which prominently criticized CBS for its handling of a contentious interview conducted by its anchor Tony Dokoupil with author Ta-Nehisi Coates on September 30. “The sad truth is that Coates is not speaking truth to power,” editorialized The Free Press, in response to Coates having criticized the Israeli military’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

Paramount has also received criticism for its recent appointment of Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former head of both the conservative think tank Hudson Institute and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, as the conglomerate’s new ombudsman for CBS News.

The previously unreported emails between David Ellison and former Israeli military chief Benjamin Gantz are part of an archive originally released by the hacktivist group ‘Handala’, which is widely believed to be associated with Iranian intelligence, with the U.S.-based nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets serving as the primary intermediary for journalists. A related repository of leaked emails from former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, also published by Handala, led to recent reporting on Barak and the convicted child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein discussing potential investments in the now-defunct data analytics firm Fifth Dimension, which Gantz chaired from 2015 to 2018.

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Top US firm ends contract with Israel to whitewash Gaza war crimes

US public affairs giant SKDK has ended a $600,000 contract with the Israeli government that “promoted Israel’s perspective” about the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, according to POLITICO.

“SKDK stopped this work on Aug. 31 and has begun the process of de-registering,” a spokesperson for SKDK told the DC-based magazine, declining to comment on the reasons why the contract was cut short early, saying only that the work “had run its course.”

According to POLITICO, the contract between Tel Aviv and SKDK was expected to run until March 2026.

The announcement followed a report by Sludge on 15 September that said the firm was involved in a bot program to boost pro-Israel content online. 

“The contract, worth $600,000 from April 2025 through March 2026, also tasks SKDK with coaching Israeli civil society spokespeople for on-camera appearances, testing the effectiveness of social media influencers, and arranging tailored outreach to journalists at outlets including BBC, CNN, Fox, and the Associated Press to secure favorable coverage,” the Sludge report details.

However, SKDK and its parent company, Stagwell, denied this, insisting their work was limited to media relations. “Our work focused solely on media relations and nothing else,” the SKDK spokesperson told POLITICO.

An investigation by MintPress News in July revealed that Israel has spent millions of dollars per day on an expansive advertising campaign across YouTube, aimed at shifting European public opinion in support of its genocide and its unprovoked war against Iran.

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Backlash over Stagwell’s Israel work puts PR ethics in the spotlight

Stagwell, the US-based holding group that owns agencies including agencies Assembly, 72andSunny, Allison+Partners and Anomaly has come under scrutiny following reports of a major research and messaging program conducted for the Israeli government.

According to leaked documents first reported by Drop Site news website, the project involved research across more than 13,000 people and tested campaign messages designed to improve perceptions of Israel internationally. The recommendations included emotional storytelling, messaging around terrorism, and connecting Islamic radicalism to the conflict.

The presentation also recommended the “notion of radical Jihadism” being “universally effective” for conservative audiences. It said connecting radical Jihadism to a desire to dominate other religions was effective as communications means. The report also said that Mark Penn, chairman and chief executive of Stagwell, has long-standing links to Israel.

In a statement to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, the holding group confirmed a small team had worked on the project, but stressed that each agency in the network operates with autonomy and that its portfolio spans clients “across the political and issue spectrum.” Still, the revelations have prompted strong reaction across the PR and advertising industry.

Strategy consultant Zoe Scaman called on talent within Stagwell-owned agencies to “walk away,” with her LinkedIn post attracting almost 1,000 likes and more than 140 reposts. A follow up post also read:

This industry has a problem with selective blindness.

“We’re brilliant at seeing every nuance of consumer behaviour, every shift in cultural sentiment, every emerging trend. But somehow we develop convenient myopia when it comes to examining our own moral architecture.”

Other agency leaders also voiced criticism, highlighting growing concerns about the role of communications firms in politically charged work.

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BBC Media Action: Britain’s overseas info warfare unit

Leaked documents reveal how a shadowy BBC unit is “embedding” staff in foreign media outlets to “contest the information space” and generate “behaviour change” in favor of London’s geopolitical objectives.

Though BBC Media Action (BBCMA) portrays itself as the “international charity” of the British state broadcaster, files show the group frequently carries out politically-charged projects overseas with government funding. Furthermore, the group consistently trades upon the BBC’s reputation and its intimate “links” with the British state broadcaster when pitching for contracts with donors, including the Foreign Office, which operates in tandem with MI6.

The leaks reveal that BBCMA’s work is explicitly “driven by a social and behaviour change communication approach.” The organization’s “project design” is informed by “psychology, social psychology, sociology, education and communication,” and consideration of “the specific factors that can be influenced by media and communication that could lead to changes in behaviours, social norms and systems” in foreign countries. Which is to say, BBCMA is concerned with psychological warfare, warping perceptions and driving action among target audiences.

“We recognise that different formats achieve different things when it comes to change… and consider audience needs, objectives and operational context when deciding which format to use,” BBCMA asserts in one file. In another, the organization crows, “people exposed to our programming are more likely to: have higher levels of knowledge on governance issues; to discuss politics more; to have higher internal efficacy (the feeling that they are able to do something); and participate frequently in politics.”

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