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FBI launches open attack on ‘foreign’ alternative media outlets challenging US foreign policy

By Gareth Porter | Grayzone Project | June 5, 2020

The FBI has publicly justified its suppression of dissenting online views about US foreign policy if a media outlet can be somehow linked to one of its adversaries. The Bureau’s justification followed a series of instances in which Google and other social media platforms banned accounts following consultations with the FBI.

In a particularly notable case in 2018, the FBI encouraged Facebook, Instagram and Google to ban the American Herald Tribune (AHT), an online journal that published critical opinion articles on US policy toward Iran and the Middle East. The bureau has never offered a clear rationale, however, despite its private discussions with Facebook on the ban.

The FBI’s first step toward intervening against dissenting views on social media took place in October 2017 with the creation of a Foreign Influence Task Force (FTIF) in the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division. Next, the FBI defined any effort by states designated by the Department of Defense as major adversaries (Russia, China, Iran and North Korea) to influence American public opinion as a threat to US national security.

In February 2020, the FBI defined that threat in much more specific terms and implied that it would act against any online media outlet that was found to fall within its ambit. At a conference on election security on February 24, David K. Porter, who identified himself as Assistant Section Chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force, defined what the FBI described as “malign foreign influence activity” as “actions by a foreign power to influence US policy, distort political sentiment and public discourse.”

Porter described “information confrontation” as a force “designed to undermine public confidence in the credibility of free and independent news media.” Those who practice this dark craft, he said, seek to “push consumers to alternative news sources,” where “it’s much easier to introduce false narratives” and thus “sow doubt and confusion about the true narratives by exploiting the media landscape to introduce conflicting story lines.”

“Information confrontation”, however, is simply the literal Russian translation of the term “information warfare.” Its use by the FTIF appears to be aimed merely at justifying an FBI role in seeking to suppress what it calls “alternative news sources” under any set of circumstances it can justify.

While expressing his intention to target alternative media, Porter simultaneously denied that the FBI was concerned about censoring media. The FITF, he said “doesn’t go around chasing content. We don’t focus on what the actors say.” Instead, he insisted that “attribution is key,” suggesting that the FTIF was only interested in finding hidden foreign government actors at work.

Thus the question of “attribution” has become the FBI’s key lever for censoring alternative media that publishes critical content on US foreign policy, or which attacks mainstream and corporate media narratives. If an outlet can be somehow linked to a foreign adversary, removing it from online platforms is fair game for the feds.

The strange disappearance of American Herald Tribune

In 2018, Facebook deleted the Facebook page of the American Herald Tribune, a website that publishes commentary from an array of notable authors who are harshly critical of US foreign policy. Gmail, which is run by Google, quickly followed suit, along with the Facebook-owned Instagram.

Tribune editor Anthony Hall reported at the time that the removals occurred at the end of August 2018, but there was no announcement of the move by Facebook. Nor was it reported by the corporate news media until January 2020, when CNN elicited a confirmation from a Facebook spokesman that it had indeed done so in 2018. Furthermore, the FBI was advising Facebook on both Iranian and Russian sites that were banned during that same period of a few days. As Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos noted on July 21, 2018, “We have proactively reported our technical findings to US law enforcement, because they have much more information than we do, and may in time be in a position to provide public attribution.”

On August 2, a few days following the removal of AHT and two weeks after hundreds of Russian and Iranian Pages had been removed by Facebook, FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters at a White House briefing that FBI officials had “met with top social media and technology companies several times” during the year, “providing actionable intelligence to better enable them to address abuse of their platforms by foreign actors.” He remarked that FBI officials had “shared specific threat indicators and account information so they can better monitor their own platforms.”

Cybersecurity firm FireEye, which boasts that it has contracts to support “nearly every department in the United States government,” and which has been used by Department of Homeland Security as a primary source of “threat intelligence,” also influenced Facebook’s crackdown on the Tribune. CNN cited an unnamed official of FireEye stating that the company had “assessed” with “moderate confidence” that the AHT’s website was founded in Iran and was “part of a larger influence operation.”

The CNN author was evidently unaware that in US intelligence parlance “moderate confidence” suggests a near-total absence of genuine conviction. As the 2011 official “consumer’s guide” to US intelligence explained, the term “moderate confidence” generally indicates that either there are still differences of view in the intelligence community on the issue or that the judgment ”is credible and plausible but not sufficiently corroborated to warrant higher level of confidence.”

CNN also quoted FireEye official Lee Foster’s claim that “indicators, both technical and behavioral” showed that American Herald Tribune was part of the larger influence operation. The CNN story linked to a study published by FireEye featuring a “map” showing how Iranian-related media were allegedly linked to one another, primarily by similarities in content. But CNN apparently hadn’t bothered to read the study, which did not once mention the American Herald Tribune.

Finally, the CNN piece cited a 2018 tweet by Daily Beast contributor Josh Russell which it said provided “further evidence supporting American Herald Tribune’s alleged links to Iran.” In fact, his tweet merely documented the AHT’s sharing of an internet hosting service with another pro-Iran site “at some point in time.” Investigators familiar with the problem know that two websites using the same hosting service, especially over a period of years, is not a reliable indicator of a coherent organizational connection.

CNN did find evidence of deception over the registration of the AHT. The outlet’s editor, Anthony Hall, continues to give the false impression that a large number of journalists and others (including this writer), are contributors, despite the fact that their articles have been republished from other sources without permission.

However, AHT has one characteristic that differentiates it from the others that have been kicked off Facebook: The American and European authors who have appeared in its pages are all real and are advancing their own authentic views. Some are sympathetic to the Islamic Republic, but others are simply angry about US policies: Some are Libertarian anti-interventionists; others are supporters of the 9/11 Truth movement or other conspiracy theories.

One notable independent contributor to AHT is Philip Giraldi, an 18-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service and and an articulate critic of US wars in the Middle East and of Israeli influence on American policy and politics. From its inception in 2015, the AHT has been edited by Anthony Hall, Professor Emeritus at University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.

In announcing yet another takedown of Iranian Pages in October 2018, Facebook’s Gleicher declared that “coordinated inauthentic behavior” occurs when “people or organizations create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are what they’re doing.” That certainly doesn’t apply to those who provided the content for the American Herald Tribune.

Thus the takedown of the publication by Facebook, with FBI and FireEye encouragement represents a disturbing precedent for future actions against individuals who criticize US foreign policy and outlets that attack corporate media narratives.

Shelby Pierson, the CIA official appointed by then director of national intelligence in July 2019 to chair the inter-agency “Election Executive and Leadership Board,” appeared to hint at differences in the criteria employed by his agency and the FBI on foreign and alternative media.

In an interview with former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell in February, Pierson said, “[P]articularly on the [foreign] influence side of the house, when you’re talking about blended content with First Amendment-protected speech… against the backdrop of a political paradigm and you’re involving yourself in those activities, I think that makes it more complicated” (emphasis added).

Further emphasizing the uncertainty surrounding the FBI’s methods of online media suppression, she added that the position in question “doesn’t have the same unanimity that we have in the counterterrorism context.”

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012. His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

June 6, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , , , | 5 Comments

India Puts the CDC on Notice

By James Corbett –corbettreport.com – June 6, 2020

Flying completely under the radar of the various crises that have come to define 2020, an interesting story is playing out in India. This story shines a light on the increasingly globalized nature of medical research and on the dark practice of using poor people in third world nations as guinea pigs in that research.

In early May, the US Centers for Disease Creation and Propaganda (CDC) announced a $3.6 million grant to “further strengthen and support the Indian government’s efforts to increase laboratory capacity for SARS-COV-2 testing.” But just days later, it was reported that the grant may be delayed because the CDC was placed on a “watch list” by the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs last December.

Wait, what? The Indian government placed the CDC on a “watch list” last year? Why?

Well, according to The Hindustan Times, the Indian government specifically asked the CDC to “stop funding research in India without government approval” after they discovered that the US health agency had helped an under-qualified Indian research facility to study a potential bioweapon. The facility in question—the Manipal Centre for Virus Research—was researching the Nipah virus, a so-called “Risk Group 4” (RG4) pathogen that is “likely to cause serious or lethal human disease for which preventive or therapeutic interventions are not usually available.”

Given their extremely dangerous nature, RG4 pathogens can only be handled in special “biological safety level 4” (BSL4) laboratories. BSL4 labs are completely sealed off from the outside, with dedicated supply and exhaust air systems and rigorous procedures for decontaminating all personnel and materials leaving the building. As a result, BSL4 laboratories are very rare, with only a handful of facilities in the world able to meet the stringent security protocols. Like the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

. . . Oh, wait.

Well, anyway, the key point is that the Manipal Centre for Virus Research (MCVR) is a BSL2 facility, not a BSL4 laboratory, and thus was not cleared to be working with Nipah virus at all. So how did the researchers at the MCVR get their hands on the viral samples? And how did they get the funding for their research?

The illegal research was uncovered after the coronavirus panic prompted the Indian government to order a review of biological weapons grade pathogens in the country. That review discovered that the CDC was funding a training program at the MCVR to detect and diagnose Nipah virus, and that the US agency was secretly funding the program in violation of India’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act 2010. The bold, illegal scheme was laid out in an internal government report titled “Unapproved, US-funded Indian Laboratory stored samples of Nipah Virus – a bioterrorism agent.”

The Hindustan Times report includes a startling accusation from one unnamed Indian government official:

“Our apprehension is that the lab was being used to map the Nipah virus, which can be used to develop a vaccine, the intellectual property right of which [sic] will not be with India. Importantly, understanding how the human body reacted to the virus will also produce a more virulent form of virus for biological warfare.”

That’s right, folks. For some reason, the US CDC was secretly funding a research program into a highly dangerous weapons-grade biological pathogen at an under-qualified research facility in India.

Even more incredibly, this isn’t the first time that the CDC has been accused of nefarious biowarfare activity in the country. In 1994, an outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague hit south-central and western India, causing 693 cases of the disease and 56 deaths. The loss of life may have been relatively small, but the panic surrounding the event was unprecedented. 300,000 people fled the plague-stricken city of Surat in two days, the largest post-independence migration of Indians in history, and the Indian economy suffered a $600 million hit.

Upon further inspection, however, questions began to emerge about whether the outbreak had really been the plague at all. Writing about the questions surrounding the recent coronavirus panic, a jounalist in the Indian publication THE WEEK wrote:

“During the 1994 plague outbreak in Surat and Beed, it was found that the germs had an extra protein ring which could only have been inserted artificially. Indian scientists had raised concerns about a US biowar experiment having gone awry. THE WEEK had carried reports giving details of germ war research being carried on in labs under the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta and about a newly developed germ detector being tested. The US embassy had denied the allegations.”

Yes, perhaps the only surprising thing about this latest Nipah virus scandal is that the Indian government had the gumption to call the CDC out on their illegal activity and even to delay cashing a big juicy bribe check from the agency just to smooth things over.

You see, ever since it was effectively conquered by the British East India Company in the 18th century, India has been used as a giant open-air laboratory for the would-be social engineers of the ruling oligarchy.

The Company began its conquests in the mid-18th century and gradually expanded military, political and economic control over India. At the height of the East India Company’s power, the nation of India had effectively become the plaything of a private corporation. As historian William Dalrymple writes:

“We still talk about the British conquering India, but that phrase disguises a more sinister reality. It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath – [Robert] Clive.”

Fast forward a century or two and India is still the plaything of multinational corporations. The much-touted “Green Revolution” of the 1950s and 1960s, for example—a set of technology transfer initiatives designed to “modernize” agricultural practices in developing countries by selling them American-made machinery running on petrochemicals—not only exacerbated the problems faced by landless peasants in India, but actually slowed the growth of agricultural production in the country. The seed cartels and agricultural giants like Monsanto that colonized the country in the wake of this “Green Revolution” have left their own scar on India in the form of an epidemic of suicides committed by farmers saddled with unpayable debts.

In the current era, however, the privatization of India is done not by the corporations directly, but under the guise of “philanthropy” by nongovernmental organizations and private foundations.

Viewers of Who Is Bill Gates? will already know some of the lowlights of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s involvement in India. From the national vaccination schedule to the national biometric identification scheme (Aadhaar) to the country’s headlong rush towards a mobile digital payment system, there is no aspect of the modern Indian state that does not bear the fingerprints of Gates or one of his minions. In fact, such was the concern over the way that the Gates Foundation was influencing India’s vaccination strategy on behalf of Gates’ Big Pharma buddies that the Indian government was forced to cut all financial ties between the foundation and the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation—the primary body advising New Delhi on all vaccination-related matters.

But, contrary to the headlines that have been generated in the alt media that the Gates Foundation has been “kicked out” of the country, the relationship between the Indian government and Gates is as close as ever. In fact, so close is the relationship that the Gates Foundation actually operates an “India Office,” which “operates as a branch office with permission of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and is appropriately registered under Indian law.”

The reason that India continues to be a rich target for the likes of the Gates Foundation is that it provides an easily accessible testing ground for medical research and its large population provides ready markets for Big Pharma vaccines and other products. As Samiran Nundy, editor emeritus of the National Medical Journal of India, observed regarding a scandal surrounding an HPV vaccine study in the country that committed “gross violations” of consent, “This is an obvious case where Indians were being used as guinea pigs.”

The Indian people, and poor people across Asia and Africa, have been used as human guinea pigs by medical researchers, social engineers and agents of empire for centuries. It should come as no surprise that the US CDC has been caught with their hand in the India cookie jar, funding secret bioweapon development research in the country without the government’s knowledge or consent. The only question now is whether the Indian government is willing to cash their $3.6 million “coronavirus research” bribe and look the other way, or stick to their guns and kick the CDC out of the country for good.

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June 6, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

MSNBC hires former FBI attorney Lisa Page as legal analyst

RT | June 6, 2020

Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer whose leaked anti-Trump text messages with another federal agent indicated deep-seated bias in the Russiagate probe, has been hired as an analyst at MSNBC, drawing jeers and praise alike.

Announcing the move on Friday, MSNBC said Page had been brought on as a national security and legal analyst after making her debut on the channel’s ‘Deadline: White House’ program. Wasting little time before weighing in on the decision, President Donald Trump deemed it a “total disgrace!”

Page rose to fame in 2017 after a series of text messages with FBI agent Peter Strzok – with whom she was then having an affair – were leaked, showing the two bureau employees disparaging Donald Trump, who had not yet won the Oval Office at the time. In one of the messages, Strzok told Page that “we can’t… risk” a Trump presidency, describing an “insurance policy” that was apparently meant either to guarantee he never got elected or to have a back-up plan in case he did. Due to his apparent bias, Strzok was removed from the special counsel probe into Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow following the leaks, while Page later left the bureau on her own accord.

Much like the president, critics online have also castigated MSNBC for the hiring decision, with some poking fun at her credentials as a “non-partisan” and “impartial” analyst.

Page is not the first MSNBC hiree to feature prominently in the Trump-Russia probe following the 2016 election, with jobs also handed to Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan and Andrew Weissmann – who the New York Times described as former special counsel Robert Mueller’s “pit bull.”

June 6, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 3 Comments

Rep. Ilhan Omar Surrenders to Israel Lobby

By Philip Giraldi | American Free Press | June 1, 2020

The nearly complete corruption of the U.S. republican form of government has largely come about due to the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in January 2010 that basically permitted unlimited donor-spending on political campaigns based on the principle that providing money, normally through a political action committee (PAC), is a form of free speech. The decision paved the way for agenda-driven plutocrats and corporations to largely seize control of the formulation process for certain policies being promoted by the two national parties.

No one has benefited from the new rules more than the state of Israel, whose hundreds of support organizations and principal billionaire funders euphemized as the “Israel Lobby” have entrenched pro-Israel donors as the principal financial resources of both major political parties. Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has become relatively well known as the major funder of the Republican Party, having contributed an estimated $100 million to the 2018 midterm election, while Haim Saban, a billionaire Israeli/ American movie producer has filled a similar role for the Democrats. Adelson, who once upon a time served as a draftee in the U.S. Army, has described how he wishes it had been the Israel Defense Force instead. He has also stated that he would be proud to have a son who is an Israeli Army sniper. Haim Saban in a somewhat similar vein has said that he is a one-issue guy, and his issue is Israel.

No one should be surprised that the Jewish donor and activist base is paying particular attention to certain congressional races in 2020, most particularly of the three of the four women comprising the so-called “squad,” namely Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, who have been most critical of the U.S.- Israeli connection. Tlaib, a congresswoman representing Detroit who is of Palestinian descent, is already being targeted by fellow Democrat Brenda Jones, who is currently the Detroit City Council president.

Jones almost certainly has made her positive views of Israel known to Anti-Defamation League (ADL) inquisitors, and she will be showered with money and favorable press in a possibly successful bid to overthrow Tlaib. Prospective candidates for Congress and even state level offices are approached by supporters of Israel and are routinely asked to fill out a form explicitly detailing their view of Israel. It is frequently fatal in political terms to respond incorrectly. Play the game and one has money and press support. Do otherwise, and all that vanishes.

The highly controversial Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also no friend of the Israel Lobby, is likewise being challenged by her own party in the Bronx. She is being confronted by no fewer than five Democratic Party challengers but is well placed to prevail due to her popularity in her district.

The red lines established around the issue of Israel are something that every American politician understands. But perhaps the biggest surprise, and an indication of the reach of Jewish power in the United States, is the flip-flop recently performed by Ilhan Omar, the ethnic Somali congresswoman who represents Minneapolis.

Omar clearly would like to remain in Congress but, not surprisingly, a strong and well-funded Democratic primary candidate named Antone Melton-Meaux, an African-American lawyer, has surfaced. He has raised $500,000 for his campaign chest, much of it coming from outside sources. He has publicly stated that Omar is not connected to her district, has done nothing for Minnesota, and, perhaps the biggest sin of all, she “… has repeatedly made divisive statements that have been hurtful to members of our Jewish community. She creates distraction and drama, not results. Rep. Omar believes that sanctions are economic warfare and is a vocal advocate for abolishing them, particularly for Iran. Yet she supports sanctions on Israel. She has repeatedly refused to explain this inconsistency. That doesn’t work for us.”

Not surprisingly, Melton-Meaux has been described by the Jewish Insider as having the endorsement of “pro-Israel America.” Decisively progressive Muslim-American Omar is indeed a magnet for controversy. She is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea on specific issues, but she has up until now been one of the most powerful voices criticizing the lopsided relationship of the United States with the Jewish state. She was the one who coined the phrase “It’s the Benjamins” when linking Israel’s grip over Congress to hundred-dollar bills, implying very clearly that it is Jewish money that has bought America’s legislators as well as the White House. Omar also dared to condemn her fellow congressmen as having “dual loyalty” when they supported legislation abridging freedom of speech for anyone who criticizes Israel. For her pains, she was accused of being an anti-Semite by both President Trump and Nancy Pelosi as well as by numerous Republicans and other members of her own party in Congress. Under intense pressure, she apologized to Pelosi and expressed appreciation to her “Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.”

To her discredit, Omar has recently surrendered to force majeure, joining 389 of her colleagues in signing on to a House of Representatives letter supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that demands the continuation of the United Nations sanctions regime against Iran, a policy that essentially treats the Persians as if they were a country having no rights beyond what Washington will allow them. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called the overall policy one of “maximum pressure,” punishment of the Iranian people to compel them to rise up against their rulers.

Ironically, the continuation of the embargo on arms sales, which is what the letter deals with, would seem to be superfluous currently, as Iran has been suffering for some time due to U.S. pressure, a process that has been exacerbated by the arrival of the COVID virus. The U.S. has already effectively blocked Iranian oil sales, the country’s only major source of income, and the medical system is broken, with no money for medical equipment and pharmaceuticals as the virus continues to rage.

Omar’s reversal, for such it is, is particularly remarkable as she denounced on humanitarian grounds the U.S. use of sanctions to pressure other governments as recently as late April. After the story of the letter broke, Omar tried to justify her action by stating that she “has consistently, for a long time, supported arms embargoes against human rights abusers. . . . It was just a narrow ask that we couldn’t find anything wrong with.”

What is wrong with the narrow ask is that it is aimed at allowing the U.S. to intercede to block the sunset provision of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that kicks in this fall, which will again allow Iran to buy weapons. Ironically, of course, the U.S. withdrew from the agreement in 2017 but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is now claiming that it is still part of the arrangement, allowing it to press a case against Iran for non-compliance. Even if the U.S. fails in its gambit to interfere directly, the JCPOA will likely come apart, leaving the sanctions in place. Either way AIPAC and Israel win.

Omar’s signature on the AIPAC letter was in reality little more than a surrender to the Israel Lobby by a congresswoman who is under siege and wants to get re-elected. She has undoubtedly done so against her better judgement, as do many of the congressmen who blindly support Israel, because she doesn’t want any problems. In this case, she is aiding the hawks in Congress and the administration who want unrelenting extreme pressure on the Iranian people until the government falls. Or alternatively, an Iran driven against the wall to the point where it does something foolish, enabling the United States and Israel to attack and destroy it. Either way, Ilhan Omar will almost certainly regret placing her signature on the AIPAC letter.

June 6, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | 21 Comments

All Tom Cotton has to do to get back in the NYTimes’ good graces is call for the US military to bomb ANOTHER country’s civilians

The war comes home… literally © Reuters / Andy Sullivan
By Helen Buyniski | RT | June 6, 2020

Republican senator Tom Cotton’s controversial op-ed demanding US troops be deployed against American protesters would have been embraced by the New York Times if he’d just stuck to cheering on military actions abroad.

The Times has been consumed with angst over the backlash to the Arkansas senator’s piece, which called for the military to be turned loose in US cities as an “overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” Hundreds of the outlet’s staffers have slammed management’s decision to publish, insisting Cotton’s words somehow put them in danger.

Yet the Paper of Record has a long, colorful history of publishing op-eds (and even news pieces) supporting the deployment of the US military against civilian populations. Sure, those populations generally live outside the US – maybe they’re in Iraq, or Venezuela, or Iran – but the Times can almost always be relied upon to support the idea that the US military is a force for good, bringing sweetness and light (and, of course, democracy) wherever it goes.

That the Times would then balk at Cotton’s call to send those same troops into American cities is a bit surprising. Are these writers suggesting military activity in civilian areas isn’t limited to building schools for needy children, or freeing kittens trapped up tall trees?

And if they are aware of the destruction that takes place when US troops invade a country – civilian casualties, terrorism, drug and human trafficking – what’s their excuse for declaring, again and again, that military intervention is the answer to any nation’s problems?

© New York Times

For the paper to cry fascism now – when its pages have been used to manufacture consent for war after war among the American people, facilitating the decimation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria – is the pinnacle of hypocrisy. The time to speak up, morally, was long ago. Putting their foot down now is utter cowardice, motivated not by concern over a fascist takeover – that ship has sailed – but by a desire to keep Uncle Sam’s enforcers from stomping back home.

Michelle Goldberg, given the task of refuting Cotton’s ‘dangerous’ views on the op-ed page on Friday, cut to the heart of the matter when she pointed out that Cotton’s recommendations would “almost certainly amount to massive violence against his fellow citizens.” Massive violence, then, is only acceptable when it happens to civilians outside the US.

The rest of the world still has to deal with the fallout from the Times’ warmongering. If Cotton wants to make nice with the Times, all he has to do is write a piece explaining how the children of Hong Kong (or Pyongyang, or Tehran) are crying out for the kind of freedom that can only be delivered from the barrel of a made-in-USA M-16. All will be forgiven.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

June 6, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment