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Suddenly, I’m a ‘Russian agent’

By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening! | November 26, 2017

For a number of years now, I have been periodically interviewed as a source or a commentator on news programs and as an occasional panel participant on RT TV, the Russian government-funded English-language television station. For the past year, I’ve been paid a small amount for my work.

Effective Monday, November 13, something changed, though. RT suddenly became a“registered foreign agent.” The Russian government-funded news service, which has its headquarters in Washington, with bureaus in several other US cities, filed the required papers under protest — the only foreign news service operating here that is required to do so — and said it intends to sue. Russia is also retaliating and will be requiring some US news organizations operating in Russia, including Voice of America, to similarly register as foreign agents.

This means that as of two weeks ago, I have been working, at least on a minimal basis of perhaps one short 5-10-minute interview per week, for a “foreign agent.”

The US government, a lot of heavy-breathing members of Congress, and the bulk of the corporate media in the US at this point are suggesting that journalists like me are at best “useful idiots” helping to promote Russian propaganda in the US — propaganda that our government claims is designed to sow discord among the citizenry and to undermine support for American democracy. Why, RT has been accused of such heinous behavior, according to former National Security Director James Clapper “promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, etc.”

Scary stuff, huh? He even accused RT of  airing debates by third-party presidential candidates during the 2016 campaign — something the corporate media for years has dutifully refused to do in what I guess they consider a patriotic defense of our two-party system.

Pathetic as the case against RT may be, I’ve been the butt of jokes by liberal friends who say that I’m a “Russian agent” because they’ve bought the spurious argument that Russia “hacked” the US election and delivered us a Trump presidency. I wonder though, how many such Americans have ever actually watched RT-TV. I suspect it’s very few. First off, it’s not that easy to see it on your TV, since most cable and fiber-optic television bundlers leave it out of their packages, as they also leave out the Al Jazeera English Channel option, in response to pressure from the government. If they did watch it — which you can and should do at least to check it out at RT-America and at RT.com (the international edition) — they would find shows hosted not by Russians, but by American journalists, many of them well known names like Larry King, Ed Schultz, Jesse Ventura and Chris Hedges. A number of these people are working for RT because they were either sacked by US media outlets, like Schultz at MSNBC or had a planned program cancelled like Ventura, also at MSNBC, or left in disgust like Chris Hedges, a veteran war reporter for the NY Times.

For myself, I have agreed to be a go-to expert source for RT because over the years, after once upon a time being called to be on shows like MSNBC, CBS News and NPR programs, I don’t get those calls anymore. It’s not that I or my journalism have changed, but that the corporate media have grown flaccid and afraid of controversy. If I want to talk on TV about a story like the one I broke — based upon documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — showing that the Houston FBI office learned or knew of a well-developed plot to conduct “intelligence” on the Houston Occupy movement, identify the leaders, and then “if deemed necessary” to assassinate them using “suppressed” sniper rifle fire, or the story I broke based upon information obtained from a county coroner suggesting that a potential key witness in the case of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was actually murdered by an FBI agent in Orlando, I have to talk about it on RT. No US corporate news organization will touch such stories. Same thing if I want to make the point that the US has been providing funding, arms and training in Syria to anti-Assad fighters of Al Nusra, an affiliate of the Al Qaeda organization. You simply cannot say such undeniably factually correct things on a US news program, but you can say them on RT.

I’m under no illusion that RT is some sainted news organization that doesn’t have a pro-Russian point of view. Of course it does, just as the government-funded BBC has a pro-British perspective. But I also well know (having worked for years as a staff journalist for major US news organizations), that every corporate news outlet in the US has a pro-US point of view, and that particularly where the story involves both US and Russian interests, as in the case of Ukraine and Syria, the whole truth is not being told by any Russian or US news organization. If I can get a bit of the truth out by talking on RT to counter propaganda and untruths in the US media, so much the better. I would hope that American viewers would have the sense to know that if they watch the news on RT, they are getting a pro-Russian perspective and to take what they see and hear with a grain of salt, just as I would hope they would consider American news reports with the same degree of skepticism (that may be optimistic!).

In any event, the reality is that I am no more an “agent of Russia” for agreeing to be interviewed (for a fee) on Russian TV than I would be an agent of Britain for being interviewed on the BBC or for having an article published in the New York Times or Business Week — both publications I’ve written for, the latter on retainer for five years.

Never once have I had an interview on RT edited to make it appear I’m saying something I didn’t say, and never once have I said something on RT that I didn’t firmly believe to be true based upon my own research.

When the issue of the US government requiring RT America to file as a foreign agent came up, my wife told me she thought by continuing to contribute comments to the station I was probably hoping to get called before some Congressional committee, ala the 1950s House un-American Activities Committee with its hearings on Communist subversion. I told her she was right: I would love nothing better than to get questioned about my work by some Congressional panel, and would be happy to have rabid anti-Russian Congressmembers view any one of my RT clips and point to anywhere that I was pushing Russian propaganda.

Example: Here is a lengthy interview I did on RT International on the issue of “fake news” allegations and concerns expressed by Facebook’s head of security about calls for the company to block alleged fake news its news feeds. I’m betting it’s not a perspective you’ve heard on your evening news, but I certainly stand by the points I’m making, and am not purveying any Russian propaganda, but let the viewer be the judge.

What’s really going on here with this “foreign agent” registration requirement is a kind of paternalistic censorship, much like those North Korean TV sets that didn’t include settings on their channel selection dials for South Korean stations. It should concern every American who believes in the importance of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press, which after all is not just freedom for the US-based press, but also freedom of Americans’ right to read, listen to and view information from any source, and to make their own judgements about its veracity or logic. When the government, as it is doing here in making efforts to block RT from the internet and from cable and fios TV, and in requiring it to register as a foreign agent, thereby implicitly and perhaps eventually actually threatening those journalists like me who continue to contribute to or work for the Russian-funded station, it is deciding what is safe, and what is not safe for Americans to read, listen to or view. That is starting down a very dangerous slope; a slope that inevitably will lead to much broader censorship and self-censorship of media in the US.

Only a year ago, the Washington Post published a shabbily sourced and, frankly, libelous lead story based upon the “research” of a mysterious organization called PropOrNot, whose funding and personnel were left unidentified, that claimed to have uncovered a massive Russian propaganda campaign in the US. This outfit, most likely the work of the Pentagon’s cyber command, claimed that some 200 online news sites in the US, including RT, but also US sites like CounterPunch, antiwar.com, Truthout, Naked Capitalism and the Black Agenda Report, are either active promoters of Russian propaganda or “useful idiots” — a term tossed around wildly during the McCarthy period to demonize people said to perhaps ignorantly back a Communist agenda of subversion.

The thing is, despite claims by rabid members of Congress and in the military industrial complex that Russia has aggressive aims of conquest in Europe, Russia isn’t even a US enemy. In reality, Russia is a major trading partner of Europe’s and is a major supplier of European natural gas, the US and Russia have been fighting on the same side in Syria[?], the Russians are the ones who fly our astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and US corporate investment in Russia, despite several years of increasing sanctions levied over the issue of Ukraine and Crimea, is enormous. In other words, from the point of view of a journalist appearing on an RT program, it is no different from appearing on a BBC or Deutsche Welle, or, for that matter, on a CCTV program in China.

Meanwhile, if we want to really look for foreign agents at work in our country, look no further than the CEOs, presidents and board chairs of some of American’s largest companies. Collectively, the S&P 500 includes companies 48% of whose revenues are earned abroad. Since some, like the big telecom firms, earn almost no revenues abroad, it’s not surprising that some of the biggest corporations on the list are earning the bulk of their revenues and profits overseas (and are booking their profits there too in order to avoid US corporate taxes).

Take seven of the biggest: In the case of Apple, 62.3% of its 2016 revenues of $306 billion was earned abroad. For Qualcom, the figure was a whopping 98.6%$ of its $30.6 billion in 2016 revenues. Intel, meanwhile, “only” earned 82% of its $31.7 billion in 2016 revenues from abroad. ExxonMobil, headed by Rex Tillerson until he was named President Trump’s secretary of state, earned $67.3% of its 2016 revenues from abroad (and has been seeking a deal to license close to $1 trillion in gas an oil reserves off Russia’s Siberian coast in the Arctic Ocean), while Johnson & Johnson earned 5.2% of its 2016 revenues abroad. General Electric meanwhile, doesn’t just earn the bulk of its revenues abroad — about 53% in 2016. As of the end of 2014, 55% of its workforce of 305,000 was located abroad — a number that continues to rise. And yet President Obama, without a hint of irony, named GE’s then CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, to be a “jobs czar” for the administration in 2009 (a year later, GE reportedly paid no US taxes, though it paid $3 billion in taxes to foreign jurisdictions in which it operates).

Although clearly all of these nominally US corporations and their chief executives are American, it is equally clear that their real allegiance — since as we are continuously told, the fiduciary duty of corporate executives is to maximize shareholder value — is not to Uncle Sam. When push comes to shove, if a policy or bill in Congress is going to threaten their international business operations, these executives are going to lobby against it. If there’s a bill that will help them move profits abroad, they’ll push for it. They should, therefore, be required to register as foreign agents, yet never has such a thing even been proposed.

It makes a joke out of this whole campaign attacking RT-TV. Especially as it’s a safe bet — so safe I’m not even going to make the effort to dig up the numbers — that many or most of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress clamoring to have RT banned solicit and happily accept campaign contributions from these so-called American companies every election cycle, which should by rights make them also foreign agents in practice.

November 28, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Reporters Without Borders seeks to cancel press event critical of White Helmets

RT | November 27, 2017

A press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, has asked the Swiss Press Club to cancel a panel discussion on the “true agenda” of the controversial White Helmets group. But the club’s director won’t budge, noting that such demands are typically made by oppressive regimes.

Guy Mettan, executive director of the Swiss Press Club, says he was asked by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Switzerland to cancel the conference. The press freedom organization, which is a member of the Swiss Press Club, said it did not want to be associated with the event.

“I have never seen such a thing,” Mettan told Tribune de Geneve. “Now an organization that defends freedom of information is asking me to censor a press conference”.

“Usually the pressure to cancel press conferences comes from countries that are known to be dictatorships. RSF’s approach stunned me. It’s taking journalists for fools. As if they were not able to form an opinion for themselves!”

Independent journalist Vanessa Beeley, who has done extensive reporting from inside Syria, will speak at Tuesday’s event alongside French journalist Richard Labeviere, an expert on the Middle East and international terrorism, and Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chair of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR).

The conference, which will also include a multimedia presentation, is billed as offering “a clear view on what is the real agenda of these Hollywood so-called ‘first responders’ who received an Oscar for their performance.”

In a letter to Mettan published by Tribune de Geneve, Gérard Tschopp and Christiane Dubois, president and director of RSF in Switzerland, dismissed Beeley as a “so-called” journalist cited only by “Russian media propaganda.” They also claimed Swedish Doctors for Human Rights acts as “a tool of Russian propaganda.”

Noting that perhaps Mettan was unaware of this “information,” the letter urged the Swiss Press Club to “abandon” the event or risk tarnishing the club’s image. Mettan wrote back, denying the organization’s request and expressing disbelief that a group dedicated to protecting press freedom would advocate censorship.

“For the 20 years I have been working at the Swiss Press Club, I have always been under pressure to prevent people from expressing themselves. But so far these pressures have always come from authoritarian or dictatorial regimes, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Bahrain,” wrote Mettan.

“This is the first time that a defense organization for journalists from a democratic country has sent me such a request. It goes without saying that I cannot act on it. It would dishonor a job that, I hope, is still yours.” Mettan called on RSF to participate in the event and present their point of view, rather than attempt censorship.

A documentary praising Syria’s White Helmets as heroes and saviors in Syria won an Oscar in February. Witnesses have meanwhile accused them of collaborating with terrorist groups, filming staged reports about their rescue work, engaging in looting and other misdeeds. Members of the group have been caught on camera several times performing dubious acts, including assisting with an apparent execution of a prisoner.

Read more:

Film about Syrian White Helmets wins Oscar amid allegations of terrorist ties

November 28, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation forces seize Bir Zeit student leader Osama Mafarjeh

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – November 26, 2017

Israeli occupation forces seized Palestinian student leader Osama Mafarjeh, in addition to six more Palestinians taken by occupation forces from their homes in pre-dawn raids. Mafarjeh, 24, is the president of the Islamic Bloc at Bir Zeit University and has been imprisoned before by the Israeli occupation as well as Palestinian Authority security forces.

He was taken away by occupation forces after his vehicle was stopped by an occupation military checkpoint imposed at Beit Ur al-Fuqua southwest of Ramallah.

Palestinian students are frequently subject to arrest and imprisonment on the basis of their student activities; most student blocs are labeled as prohibited organizations by the occupation due to their political affiliations. Over 60 Bir Zeit University students are imprisoned in Israeli jails; just last week a number of students at an-Najah University in Nablus were seized by occupation forces. The Islamic Bloc, which Mafarjeh represents, won the largest share of seats on Bir Zeit’s student council during the annual spring elections.

November 26, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Prof. Tony Hall wins – U. of Lethbridge backs down, does the right thing

Tony Hall (on the right) has the courage to speak truth to power on False Flag Weekly News… and courage is not always appreciated in the academy
By Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today | November 23, 2017

In a victory for academic freedom (and common sense) Professor Anthony Hall is back at work at the University of Lethbridge, starting today, after the Board of Governors announced  that it is rescinding his suspension. Here is the Board’s statement:

The Board of Governors of the University of Lethbridge and the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association have agreed that the outstanding issues that have been raised concerning Dr. Anthony Hall will be addressed in the context of the Faculty Handbook. As a result, the suspension imposed on Dr. Hall has been lifted and he has returned back to work at the University. The parties will be fully participating in the agreed upon procedures in the Faculty Handbook to investigate and address the outstanding issues. – November 23, 2017

Professor Hall was suspended more than one year ago following a witch hunt orchestrated by B’nai Brith Canada. The anti-Hall PR campaign was launched by an outrageous and illegal “kill all Jews” image surreptitiously planted on his Facebook page by parties still unknown. B’nai Brith and its allies falsely insinuated (and in some cases stated) that Hall was responsible for posting the image. The Canadian mainstream media, including CBC, dutifully echoed those lies and false insinuations.

At the height of the media witch hunt, University President Mike Mahon, apparently backed by the Board, unilaterally suspended Hall without pay. Mahon never even contacted Hall to ask whether Hall had posted the offending image! Mahon and the Board took the position that they had the right to fire any faculty member at will, for any reason or no reason, with no due process of any kind, in complete violation of the procedures of the University of Lethbridge Faculty Handbook. In response, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) issued a stinging reprimand to the Board, threatening to censure and sanction the University for its outrageous conduct.  The U of L Faculty Association, U of L founder Owen Holmes, and others rallied to the defense of academic freedom, and the witch hunt gradually crumbled under the weight of its own absurdity.

Professor Hall and I will be discussing and celebrating his return to the University of Lethbridge this Friday, 11 to noon Eastern, on False Flag Weekly News, broadcast live on No Lies Radio and later archived at my VT page and also here.

November 26, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Google’s Censorship of Sputnik and RT ‘Very Dangerous’ – Psychologist

Sputnik – 21.11.2017

Google is “deciding what people see,” which is “very dangerous” since they are legally a tech company and do not adhere to any type of editorial standards our guidelines, research psychologist Robert Epstein told Sputnik following Google’s announcement that it was working to make Sputnik and RT articles less visible on its search engine.

“It’s not clear Google should be able to exercise editorial control” by deranking Sputnik articles since Google “isn’t accountable to editorial standards,” he said.

“Companies like Google and Facebook play both sides: they pretend to be objective but exercise enormous editorial control” and “censorship” over what mass audiences see, Epstein told Sputnik News.

​Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in Vista, California, pioneered research in the “search engine manipulation effect.” The research showed that biased search results presented by Google could influence how undecided voters choose presidential candidates.

“What we’re talking about here is a means of mind control on a massive scale that there is no precedent for in human history,” he said at the time. Research participants spent a much larger percentage of web browsing time visiting search results that were higher up. According to Epstein, biased Google results could have provided an extra 2.6 million votes in support of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race.

His research found that Google’s “autocomplete” function would frequently suggest “little marco” and “lying ted,” two of US President Donald Trump’s preferred pet names during the election, but rarely, if ever, prompted users to search for “crooked hillary” or “corrupt kaine.”

Speaking with Science Magazine last October, Epstein explained, “Google pretends to be the public library, but it isn’t. Public libraries don’t… track people [and] they don’t sell the history of your book borrowing to other companies. They simply help you find stuff. That’s what we need. We need to take Google’s search engine and make it public.”

On Saturday, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, told a session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada “We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites — it’s basically RT and Sputnik. We are we trying to engineer the systems to prevent [the content from being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don’t want to ban the sites — that’s not how we operate.”

​”Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren’t allowed if they come from RT, ‘because Russia’ — even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they’ve found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT,” Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Sputnik and RT, said in response to the news.

November 21, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Google’s plan to isolate Russian media is an act of information warfare’

RT | November 21, 2017

Google’s announcement that it is working to reduce the presence of Russian media in its news feeds has been slammed by lawmakers and political commentators as an act of aggression which will have a global impact on the freedom of speech and thought.

“This is an open form of information warfare waged right now – a bombardment, a direct aggression” against the Russian news outlets, Andrey Svintsov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee for Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, told RT. The lawmaker explained that tweaking search results for the news category would cut off the global readership that remains interested in the Russian position on global events, calling it a “powerful blow” to the freedom of speech.

“We as MPs should think about… limiting [the use of] the Google search engine, as well as certain social networks belonging to this holding in Russia,” Svintsov said. Meanwhile, the head of the Russian Upper House Commission for Information Policy, Senator Aleksey Pushkov, also wondered whether Google should be “de-ranked” in Russia in a tit-for-tat response.

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said earlier that the company is “trying to engineer the systems” to prevent RT and Sputnik content from reaching wider audiences. RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan criticized the initiative as an arbitrary form of censorship that defies “all logic and reason.”

Google’s initiative will have a direct impact on “freedom of speech and thought” in the US, believes Prof. Dan Kovalik, from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

“It is a form of censorship, and the idea is to lead readers away from RT content. And it will have an impact on the discourse in this country,” Kovalik told RT. “When [you start] censoring anyone, they are going to censor everyone, and I think everyone in the US should be appalled by this and very concerned.”

The human rights lawyer remains certain that US companies initiated an anti-RT campaign to woo the American government at the expense of free speech.

“I think what you see has happened is that Google, Twitter and Facebook have been pressured by the US government to try to essentially [put] blame on Russia where there is none, and to appear somehow that they are working with the US government against Russia. And they have bowed to this pressure,” Kovalik said.

Kovalik also argued that RT presents an alternative point of view that is simply incompatible with US policies.

“I do believe that there is a concern in the US government and the mainstream media of this alternative narrative about what is happening in Syria, for example, about whether the US is truly fighting terrorism in Syria as it claims. Well, Russia has a different view of that. RT has a different view of that. The same thing in Ukraine. The US has been backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine. That is something that the powers that be don’t want Americans to know. And so, I think the attack on RT, which has a very different view of those things, is an attack on those alternative narratives of issues that are very important to the American people,” he said.

Google is dancing to the tune of the US government as part of the broader campaign to demonize Russia, political commentator and TV host Steve Malzberg told RT.

“This is all about the fact that Russia is right now the enemy. Russia has been made the enemy by the left, the Democrats and, by definition, the media. The media has been nonstop for a year now about ‘evil Russia.’ Anything associated with the ‘evil Russia’ will incur the wrath of the government,” Malzberg said. “It is because they have been called in before Congress and because of this witch hunt that is going on… They don’t want to risk the wrath of Congress, and that is the problem.”

“There has been nothing found in the whole Russian collusion investigation so far. And there really no meat here when it comes to RT and nefarious doings and dealings, but that does not stop them. They are just going with the flow,” the political commentator added.

Malzberg noted that if Google really wanted to address the so-called ‘fake news’ phenomenon, they should look in their own backyard and check the information flow that comes out of the US mainstream media.

“If they wanted to concentrate on the real program, they certainly have all the opportunity to look at what I call propaganda from the leftist mainstream news media… But they do not have interest in that, because Congress isn’t calling them to say, ‘Oh, big bad CNN or big, bad, evil MSNBC’,” Malzberg said. “Russia is ‘boogeyman’ right now, and this is all part of that deal.”

November 21, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Google exec says new algorithm will suppress RT and Sputnik, ‘those kinds of sites’

Sputnik – 20.11.2017

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced Saturday that the company will “engineer” algorithms that will make it harder for articles from Sputnik News and RT to appear on the Google News service.

“We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites — it’s basically RT and Sputnik,” Schmidt said during a question and answer session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada. “We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don’t want to ban the sites — that’s not how we operate.”

Schmidt’s response came after a guest in the audience asked the 62-year-old executive whether Google facilitated “Russian propaganda.” The comments were in relation to a larger discussion on the search engine’s Google News services which offers viewers a range of articles on certain topics.

Schmidt later noted that he was “very strongly not in favor of censorship,” but that instead he had faith in “ranking” stories. He did not comment on whether engineering a computer program to hide information could be seen as amounting to censorship.

Giving insight on the capabilities of the new algorithm, the official did indicate that it would be able to detect “repetitive, exploitative, false, and weaponized” information.

In response to Schmidt’s statement, RT’s Margarita Simonyan said, “Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren’t allowed if they come from RT, ‘because Russia’ — even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they’ve found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT.”

November 20, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

How America’s Deep State Operates to Control the Message

By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 17.11.2017

It is not possible to overstate the power of certain constituencies and corporate lobbies in the United States. These pressure groups, joined by powerful government agencies, many of which have secret agendas that focus on national security, constitute what is increasingly being recognized as “Deep State America.” Deep State is the widespread belief that there exists in many countries an entrenched and largely hidden infrastructure that really controls the national narrative and runs things. It explains why, for example, a country like the United States is perpetually at war even though the wars have been disastrous failures ever since Korea and have not made the nation more secure.

To be sure, certain constituencies have benefitted from global instability and conflict, to include defense industries, big government in general, and the national security state. They all work together and hand-in-hand with the corporate media to sustain the narrative that the United States is perpetually under threat, even though it is not.

The recent exchanges over the Russia-US relationship exhibit perfectly how the Deep State operates to control the message. American President Donald Trump briefly met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vietnam. Putin reportedly told Trump that Russia “absolutely had not meddled” in the 2016 US election and Trump then told reporters that he believed the Russian leader meant what he said, “which is good.” As détente with Russia is not considered desirable by the Deep State, there was an immediate explosion of a contrary narrative, namely that Trump believes a Russian “enemy” and does not trust what his own intelligence agencies have told him about 2016 because he is being “played” by Putin. This story was repeated both on television news and in all the mainstream newspapers without exception, eventually forcing Trump to recant and say that he does believe in US intelligence.

Not a single major media outlet in the US reported that it just might be possible that Putin was telling the truth and that the intelligence community, which has been wrong many times over the past twenty years, might have to look again at what it considers to be evidence. No journalist had the courage to point out that the claims of the Washington national security team have been remarkably devoid of anything credible to support the conclusions about what the Russian government might or might not have been up to. That is what a good journalist is supposed to do and it has nothing to do with whether or not one admires or loathes either Putin or Trump.

That the relationship between Moscow and Washington should be regarded as important given the capability of either country to incinerate the planet would appear to be a given, but the Washington-New York Establishment, which is euphemism for Deep State, is actually more concerned with maintaining its own power by marginalizing Donald Trump and maintaining the perception that Vladimir Putin is the enemy head of state of a Russia that is out to cripple American democracy.

Beyond twisting narratives, Russiagate is also producing potentially dangerous collateral damage to free speech, as one of the objectives of those in the Deep State is to rein in the current internet driven relatively free access to information. In its most recent manifestations, an anonymous group produced a phony list of 200 websites that were “guilty” of serving up Russian propaganda, a George Soros funded think tank identified thousands of individuals who are alleged to be “useful idiots” for Moscow, and legitimate Russian media outlets will be required to register as foreign agents.

Driven by Russophobia over the 2016 election, a group of leading social media corporations including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have been experimenting with ways to self-censor their product to keep out foreign generated or “hate” content. They even have a label for it: “cyberhate“. Congress is also toying with legislation that will make certain viewpoints unacceptable or even illegal, including a so-called Anti-Semitism Awareness Act that would potentially penalize anyone who criticizes Israel and could serve as a model for banning other undesirable speech. “Defamatory speech” could even eventually include any criticism of the government or political leaders, as is now the case in Turkey, which is the country where the “Deep State” was invented.

November 17, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Anti-Trump groups fund ‘trust indicators’ to combat ‘fake news’ on social media

RT | November 17, 2017

Under pressure to stop the spread of false information, Facebook, Google and Twitter have turned to the Trust Project to inform users of the credibility of news sources. But the supposed nonpartisan effort is funded by deep-pocketed anti-Trump forces.

On Thursday, Facebook, Google and Twitter announced their participation in the initial phase of implementing the Trust Project’s “trust indicators,” notes attached to news posts to let the reader know if the post is an advertisement or to provide background information on the author or sources, including a publisher’s ethics policy and funding arrangements.

The Associated Press, the Washington Post, the Economist, Vox.com, and the Globe and Mail, and other outlets are among the select few currently permitted to use the indicators. Search engines and social media feeds are being improved to gravitate toward, not just what their users want to see, but also sources deemed respectable, and that’s what the indicators seek to influence.

The Trust Project is based at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, but is funded by craigslist.com founder and philanthropist Craig Newmark, as well as Google, the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Markkula Foundation.

Newmark, also a founder of the Trust Project, has poured millions of dollars into various vehicles aimed at restoring trust in the media. Earlier this year, he donated $1 million to ProPublica, saying, “As a news consumer, I won’t pay for news I can’t trust.”

The Trust Project, however, is not simply another way for Newmark to support news outlets with his own money. He has been looking to take stronger steps to boost the journalism he likes best since his favored candidate Hillary Clinton lost the presidential race to Donald Trump last year.

The 2016 election result stunned almost everyone, with many wondering if Americans had made a fully-informed choice. The influence of the internet had increased considerably since 2012 and 2008, just as trust in mass media declined to an all-time low. Gallup found that less than one-third of Americans held a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mainstream news. Meanwhile, people’s enchantment with social media has seen both solid alternative reporting and “fake news” disseminated widely.

For Newmark, the added element of alleged Russian meddling made the issue of trust in media all the more urgent to address. In recent weeks, during and following testimony by Facebook, Google and Twitter representatives to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Newmark tweeted that it was “a huge deal” that the committee kept referring to the matter of “fake news” in terms of war.

Last week, Newmark tweeted a 1970 quote by Canadian media theorist, professor and philosopher Marshall McLuhan: “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.”

Funding for the Trust Project also comes from the Democracy Fund, whose founder, Pierre Omidyar, also founded the online auction site eBay. Omidyar has contributed $1 million to the Clinton Foundation for HIV/AIDS treatment, but also donated $100,000 to the NeverTrump political action committee in April 2016.

Fact-checking news sources is not new to Omidyar. His Omidyar Network also funds projects of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalism that owns the Tampa Bay Times, the home of Politifact, which has been criticized for having a left-leaning bias. Omidyar once went as far as comparing Trump to “the personal and political styles of early Adolf Hitler” in a tweet.

Joe Goldman, president of the purportedly bipartisan Democracy Fund, retweeted a video of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) during the November 1 Senate hearings with social media representatives on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The video showed the ranking committee member admonishing the tech companies for “not getting it.”

“We’re talking about the beginning of cyberwarfare,” Feinstein said. “We’re talking about a major foreign power with the sophistication and ability to involve themselves in a presidential election and sow conflict and discontent all over this country.”

“You’ve created these platforms, and now they are being misused,” she added, “and you have to be the ones to do something, or we will.”

Read more:

Google & Soros-backed ‘fact-checkers’ join forces to control news search results

Twitter, Google & Facebook grilled by Senate, try hard to find ‘Russian influence’

‘Zero collusion’: Trump says Russia probe a disgrace, many ads ‘bad’ for him

November 17, 2017 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Priti Patel and Jewish Conspiracies

By Gilad Atzmon | November 12, 2017

The British Jewish media is upset. Priti Patel, a  cabinet minister responsible for international development, had no fewer than 14 meetings with Israeli politicians and political leaders. It seems that Patel didn’t clear any or most of these meetings with the Foreign Office. So Patel had to go and but now the British Jewish media is pressing the panic button.

The ultra Zionist Jewish Chronicle’s (JC) headline warns that the Patel Affair “will set us [the Jews] back 20 years.” The JC predicts that it will have “a devastating impact on British Jewry.” It may even “bolster antisemitic conspiracy theories and damage relationships with British politicians for a generation.”

This is the crux of the matter — Jews hate ‘Jewish conspiracy theories.’ Why? Because Jews do not conspire or operate in clandestine manner. They do it all in the open. Jews wrote the Balfour Declaration on behalf of Lord Balfour and made sure everyone knows who really wrote it. They make sure we know that it was Leó Szilárd  and Albert Einstein who initiated the Manhattan Project. AIPAC, CFI, LFI and the CRIF openly push for immoral interventionist wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran while JC writers Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch advocate these global wars in the media. All this is not merely a ‘Zionist agenda.’ Jewish anti Zionists employ the same technique to claim that it is down to progressive Jews to define the boundaries of free speech on Israel. I reiterate -there are no Jewish conspiracies. Everything is done in the open. And this was Patel’s mistake. She foolishly attempted to conceal her loyalty to our foreign rulers.

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In a country led by Theresa Je suis Juif, there is no reason for minister Patel to hide her subservience to the Jewish Sate. In a country where the biggest lobby group in the parliament is the Conservative Friends of Israel there is no reason for a minister to be shy about what may seem to be disloyal inclinations. With 80% of the leading party listed as CFI members, treachery is the norm. Patel didn’t have to hide her allegiance to the Jewish State, she should have done it all in the open, like the PM and Sir Eric Pickles (see picture above).

The JC confirms that the “CFI is the largest group in Westminster with an open line to almost every Tory MP, dozens of other countries’ diplomatic and political groups, and influence in Downing Street for decades.” The JC doesn’t attempt to conceal how forceful the CFI is, however, it is honest enough to reveal that “one senior (Jewish) communal figure said CFI would now be regarded as ‘toxic’.”

If you are looking for light Jewish entertainment, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) is the place to go. The CAA is a self-appointed Jewish thought police. It devotes its energies to the total castration of the Brits and their ability to think rationally, morally and independently. The CAA provides a spectacle of anti-ethical thought totally foreign to the Western ethos.

“The resignation of Priti Patel,”  the CAA writes, “ has unleashed some disturbing comments, including from politicians and journalists who have carelessly or deliberately evoked sinister stereotypes of powerful Jews.”

Let’s examine what the CAA considers to be a ‘disturbance’ and what is it they don’t want us to say: In an article in The Times, Policy Editor, Oliver Wright and Political Editor, Francis Elliott, cited an unnamed senior Conservative MP: “Another senior Conservative MP claimed that Ms Patel planned to use her ministerial position in DfID  (Department for International Development) to curry favour with Jewish Tory donors by supporting Israel. ‘The Israel lobby in the Party is hugely influential and this was about Priti cynically trying to win their support. She thought she could be the next leader.”

Confusing, don’t you think?  The JC admits that the CFI is the strongest body in Westminster, while the CAA insists that reference to CFI’s power and influence ‘evokes sinister Jewish stereotypes.’ The CAA openly attempts to police British journalism by stifling criticism of Israel. This shouldn’t take us by surprise. If Jewish power is the power to suppress criticism of Jewish power, here is the CAA exercising this power in broad daylight. But there is good news. This power in falling apart now, and this may explain the panic within the JC’s ranks and the tantrum thrown by the CAA and other Jewish thought police organisations (CST, ADL, Hope not Hate, et al).

The ‘rationale’ of the CAA policing strategy deserves close attention:

“Under the International Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the British Government, ‘Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions’ is antisemitic.”

This is a revolutionary legal defence strategy.  According to the CAA, X is not guilty of committing Y as long as X is stereotypically associated with committing Y. If X is guilty, for instance,  of shoving a banana into someone’s eye (Y), the  defence would be that shoving bananas into other people’s eyes (Y) is one of the stereotypes about X.

Similarly, the CAA claims it is anti-Semitic to refer to the Jewish Lobby as the strongest lobby in Westminster because the accusation is consistent with the Jewish stereotype of Jewish lobbies being influential. Likewise we should vindicate Harvey Weinstein of any wrong doing because Larry David admitted on Saturday Night Live that predatory behaviour has become a Jewish stereotype. I expect Bernie Madoff to capitalise on this line of defence and appeal for his immediate release. Alan Dershowitz can also come clean about his bad habits by blaming them on Jewish stereotypes.

The paradox here is obvious, The CAA’s circular argument has nothing to do with any consideration of ethics, truthfulness or correspondence with reality. The ‘stereotype’ redeems the sin. By this logic the CAA itself is innocent of any wrong thinking because such a Jerusalemite anti-ethical intellectual pattern is also a Jerusalemite stereotype.

The CAA practically calls upon British commentators and politicians to fib. “It is therefore incumbent upon those commenting on the Priti Patel affair to do so in a way that is proportionate and rational. It is a dangerous stretch to accuse Ms Patel of doing Israel’s bidding in order to please wealthy Jews who have the power to influence the selection of the next Conservative leader.” Neither the CAA nor any other Jewish body has offered an alternative rationale for Patel’s misconduct. The CAA  demands that British journalists set aside their intelligence and common sense. They expect British politicians and commentators to put Jewish sensitivities first.

We are touching upon the core of Jerusalemite thinking  – a tyranny of correctness that is removed from morality and Western ethos. Instead of ethics, we are told to follow Mitzvoth, regulations and commandments. For the Brits,  Priti Patel is a wake up call. It is a final reminder that for the nation to sustain its values it must  search for its Athenian roots: philosophy, science and ethics as opposed to a tyranny of correctness that is anti ethical and zero principled.

November 12, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cambridge University under fire for threatening to cancel anti-Israel meeting

Press TV – November 12, 2017

The University of Cambridge has been criticized for threatening to cancel and replacing the chair of a meeting about an anti-Israel movement.

The institution is now facing accusations of censorship following the Wednesday meeting which was related to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Ruba Salih from the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) was supposed to oversee the event featuring Palestinian BDS activist, Omar Barghouti, but organizers said they had been forced to cancel Salih’s participation hours before it was about to start.

They said the university officials had intervened by claiming they were worried about her neutrality.

Palestinian activists say the incident highlights the increasingly restrictive atmosphere for detractors of Israel on campuses across the UK.

“Removing a respected Palestinian academic as chair of a panel event based on an unsubstantiated assumption about her lack of ‘neutrality’, and in doing so bowing to external pressure from a pro-Israel lobby group, cannot be construed as anything other than a naked attack on free speech and, more particularly academic freedom,” Ed McNally, the Cambridge student who organized the event, told Al Jazeera.

Following the incident, hundreds of students and academics signed an open letter slamming Salih’s removal as chair of the event.

Meanwhile, a university spokesperson told Al Jazeera that the institution is “fully committed to freedom of speech and expression”.

Salih said she had not received any explanation from the university about their decision.

“I don’t know the exact terms under which my role as chair was defined as inappropriate for the debate, and which narratives the university has used for the forced replacement of the chair,” she said.

A number of other universities in the UK have already banned their students from holding events in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

November 12, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Behind the mask of liberalism, security has priority over human rights in Jordan

By Inès Osman | MEMO | November 11, 2107

In the western world, Queen Rania of Jordan is viewed largely as one of the most progressive leaders in the Arab and Islamic region. Describing herself as “a mum and a wife with a really cool day job”, her social media accounts – which have approximately 27 million followers, almost three times her country’s population – feature both family portraits and pictures of her meeting women and children in refugee camps.

However, behind this glossy image lies a different reality for Jordanian citizens. For a start, anyone who dares to criticise either the Queen herself or her husband King Abdullah II faces between one to three years in prison under article 195 of the Penal Code. When, in January 2017, a former member of parliament published an article on Facebook denouncing corruption and asking whether the King was aware of the situation, he was arrested by the intelligence services and charged with “insulting the King” and “undermining the political regime”; the latter constitutes a terrorist offence in Jordan.

Alarmingly, this former MP is only one of many peaceful dissenting voices who have become victims of Jordan’s repressive apparatus made up of the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) and the State Security Court (SSC), both under tight control of the executive. The GID, known commonly as the mukhabarat with a director who is appointed directly by the King, is tasked with carrying out operations to “safeguard national security”. In practice, however, the intelligence services have been cracking down on dissent by means of arbitrary arrest and torture.

Although the GID is no law enforcement agency, it arrests and takes suspects to its headquarters, where they are detained with no access to the outside world, be it their lawyer or family. During this period, detainees are subjected to torture and forced to make self-incriminating statements, which are then used as the sole evidence against them at trial. In 2015, the United Nations (UN) Committee against Torture denounced the “widespread” use of this practice by the intelligence services, and called on Jordan to limit the powers of the GID.

It seems unlikely that the authorities will take measures to that end, given that the GID has so far responded to such criticism with denials. Indeed, on its website, the GID states that such reports are “exaggerated”, “politically motivated” and ultimately aimed at “harming Jordan’s good image and standing in the international community.”

However, the GID is not acting alone. Its judicial counterpart, the State Security Court, is another part of this repressive machinery. Not only is its General Prosecutor a military officer sitting at the GID headquarters, but the SSC judges – two from the military and one civilian – are nominated by the Prime Minister and can be replaced at any time by executive decision.

UN human rights bodies have raised concerns repeatedly over the lack of independence and impartiality of this exceptional jurisdiction. On 9 November, after reviewing the human rights situation in Jordan, the UN Human Rights Committee – a group of independent experts assessing the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) worldwide – published its concluding observations, in which it called for the abolition of Jordan’s SSC. The Committee had already made this recommendation twice before in 1994 and 2010, but the authorities have not taken any steps towards its effective implementation to date.

The SSC relies on a flawed legal framework to prosecute those who have exercised their right to freedom of expression. The victims face charges of terrorism, the definition of which has been broadened over the years to include acts of free speech.

It was in October 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, that the Penal Code was amended to criminalise acts of terrorism for the first time. Back then, article 149 was enacted, listing as a terrorist crime any act that would “encourage the contestation of the political system” or “aim at changing the fundamental structure of society”. Several years later, in 2006, the authorities promulgated the “Prevention of Terrorism Act” in response to the 2005 hotel bombings in Amman. In 2014, the law was broadened to include nonviolent acts aimed at “causing disorder to the public order” or “disturbing relations with a foreign country”, definitions which are flawed and leave room for interpretation.

While Jordanian officials claimed that this move was aimed at providing a better response to threats of spillover from the Syrian conflict, in practice, these amendments have allowed the authorities to silence more dissenting voices. In its November 2017 conclusions, the Human Rights Committee reiterated its 2010 call to amend the Anti-Terrorism Law to bring it into compliance with the ICCPR, despite the authorities’ claim that the law is “living up to Jordan’s international obligations”.

Following a wave of demonstrations in 2011 in the context of the Arab Spring, Jordan’s monarch called for “sky-high” freedoms. However, it was also in 2011 that article 149 of the Penal Code was used for the first time against teachers who were protesting near the Prime Minister’s offices for the establishment of a teachers’ syndicate.

Since then, dozens of critics, journalists, political opponents and peaceful demonstrators alike have been arrested and tortured by the GID, and then prosecuted before the State Security Court under terrorism charges for merely having expressed their opinion.

A telling example of the political nature of such judicial harassment is the case of the well-known TV and radio presenter Amjad Qourshah, who was arrested in June 2016 after criticising Jordan’s participation in the US-led international coalition against Daesh. Qourshah had published a video on YouTube in which he stated that Arab states were being forced to fight a war that was not theirs. The State Security Court Prosecutor charged him with “disturbing relations with a foreign state” under the Anti-Terrorism Law.

As a strong ally of western countries, Jordan seems to be succeeding in maintaining its liberal image. In January 2015, Queen Rania and King Abdullah were among the world leaders who marched to defend the right to freedom of expression in Paris following the terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo. Nevertheless, at the same time, the authorities have continued to clamp down on freedom of expression in the Hashemite Kingdom under the pretext of “national security”.

Such contradictions seem rooted in Jordanian politics. In March 2016, the authorities launched a ten-year Comprehensive National Plan for Human Rights, which set among its priorities the enhancement of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Six months later, the Media Commission prohibited news outlets from reporting any news about the King or other members of the royal family.

This gap between Jordan’s liberal public image and conservative domestic policy is largely going unnoticed within the international community. However, as the UN Human Rights Committee recalled recently, one of the Kingdom’s most pressing challenges remains the need to find a balance between security and human rights; behind the liberal mask, the former still has priority over the latter.

November 11, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

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