A Non-Hack That Raised Hillary’s Hackles
By Ray McGovern – Consortium News – July 22, 2019
Three years ago Monday WikiLeaks published a trove of highly embarrassing emails that had been leaked from inside the Democratic National Committee. As has been the case with every leak revealed by WikiLeaks, the emails were authentic. These particular ones, however, could not have come at a worse time for top Democratic Party officials.
The emails made it unmistakably clear that the DNC had tipped the scales sharply against Democratic insurgent Bernie Sanders, giving him a snowball’s chance in hell for the nomination. The posting of the DNC emails is also widely seen as having harmed the the electoral prospects of Hillary Clinton, who could not escape responsibility completely, while a handful of the very top DNC officials were forced to immediately resign.
Relatively few Americans read the actual emails, their attention diverted to the incessant media-fostered question: Why Did the Russians Hack the DNC to Hurt Hillary? For the millions of once enthusiastic Democrats who favored Sanders, however, the disclosure that the nomination process had been fixed came as a bitter pill, leaving a sour taste in their mouths and a passive-aggressive reluctance to promote the candidacy of one they considered a usurper. Having had a huge stake in Bernie’s candidacy, they had little trouble seeing through the diversion of attention from the content of the emails.
Clinton Prevails
A mere four days after the WikiLeaks release, a well orchestrated Democratic Convention nominated Clinton, while many Sanders supporters loudly objected. Thus, she began her campaign under a cloud, and as more and more Americans learned of the fraud that oozed through the DNC email correspondence — including the rigging of the Democratic primaries — the cloud grew larger and darker.
On June 12, 2016, six weeks before the convention, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange had announced in an interview on British TV, “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton … We have emails pending publication.”
Independent forensic investigations demonstrated two years ago that the DNC emails were not hacked over the Internet, but had been copied onto an external storage device — probably a thumb drive. Additional work over recent months has yielded more evidence that the intrusion into the DNC computers was a copy, not a hack, and that it took place on May 23 and 25, 2016.
The DNC almost certainly knew what had happened — not only that someone with physical access to DNC computers had copied thousands of emails, but also which ones they had copied, and thus how prejudicial to the Clinton campaign they would be when they saw the light of day.
And so, candidate Clinton, the DNC, and the mainstream media (forever quoting anonymous “current and former intelligence officials”) appear to have colluded, deciding the best defense would be a good offense. No one knew how soon WikiLeaks would publish the emails, but the DNC offense/defense would surely have to be put in place before the convention scheduled to begin on July 25. That meant there were, at most, six weeks to react. But it only took two days. As early as July 24, about 48 hours after the leaks were published, and a day before the convention, the DNC first blamed Russia for hacking their emails and giving them to WikiLeaks to sabotage Clinton.
A Magnificent Diversion
Clinton: Already blaming the Russians at DNC 2016 convention. (Wikipedia)
Granted, it was a stretch — and the DNC would have to hire a pliable cybersecurity firm to back up their claim. But they had good reason to believe that CrowdStrike would perform that service. It was the best Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook and associates could apparently come up with. If they hurried, there would be just enough time to prepare a PR campaign before the convention and, best of all, there was little doubt that the media could be counted on to support the effort full bore.
When WikiLeaks published the emails on July 22, 2016, just three days before the Democratic convention, the propagandists were ready to deflect attention from the damning content of the DNC emails by repeating incessantly that the Russians hacked the emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to hurt Clinton.
It pretty much worked like a charm. The late Senator John McCain and others were quick to call the Russian “hack” an “an act of war.” Evidence? None. For icing on the cake, then-FBI Director James Comey decided not to seize and inspect the DNC computers. Nor, as we now know, did Comey even require a final report from CrowdStrike.
Eight months after the convention, in remarks at the Clinton/Podesta Center for American Progress on April 6, 2017, Clinton’s PR director, Jennifer Palmieri, could scarcely contain her pride that, after a difficult start, she was ultimately successful in keeping the Russian bear front and center.
Transcribed below (verbatim) are some of Palmieri’s more telling remarks when asked to comment, from her insider perspective, on “what was actually going on in late summer/early fall.”
“… I did appreciate that for the press to absorb … the idea that behind the stage that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton was too fantastic for people to, um, for the press to process, to absorb…. But then we go back to Brooklyn and heard from the — mostly our sources were other intelligence, with the press who work in the intelligence sphere, and that’s where we heard things and that’s where we learned about the dossier and the other story lines that were swirling about … And along the way the administration started confirming various pieces of what they were concerned about what Russia was doing. … [Emphasis added.]
“And we did finally get to the point on October 7, when the administration came out with a very stunning [memorandum]. How stunning it was for both the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Homeland Security to put out a statement – a long statement – that said with high confidence that Russia was interfering in the election and they were also directing the timing of the leaks. And it named the institutions – WikiLeaks, DC Leaks, and Guccifer – as being Russian-led, and how stunning that was to be that certain and that public. … So I do think that the answer for the Democrats now … in both the House and the Senate is to talk about it more and make it more real ….”
And so, the Magnificent Diversion worked as intended.
Recognizing Liminal Time
But not all journalists fell for it. Patrick Lawrence (once of The Nation, now of Consortium News) was onto the ruse from the start. He says he had “fire in the belly” on the morning of July 25, 2016, the day the Democratic convention began, and that he dashed off an article “in one long, furious exhale” within 12 hours of when the media started really pushing the “the Russians-did-it” narrative. The title of his article, pointed out to me a few months ago by VIPS member Todd Pierce, was “How the DNC fabricated a Russian hacker conspiracy to deflect blame for its email scandal … a disturbing resemblance to Cold War red-baiting.”
Lawrence’s off-the-cuff ruminations, which Salon published the next day are extraordinarily prescient and worth reading in full. He instinctively recognized the email disclosure-cum-media-obfuscation campaign as a liminal event. Here are some excerpts, reprinted here with Lawrence’s permission:
”Now wait a minute, all you upper-case “D” Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into your computers to sabotage our elections … Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters? …
The Sanders people have long charged that the DNC has had its fingers on the scale … in favor of Hillary Clinton’s nomination. The prints were everywhere … Last Friday WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 DNC email messages providing abundant proof that Sanders and his staff were right all along. The worst of these, involving senior DNC officers, proposed Nixon-esque smears having to do with everything from ineptitude within the Sanders campaign to Sanders as a Jew in name only and an atheist by conviction. …
The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook … appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and … CNN’s “State of the Union” to assert that the D.N.C.’s mail was hacked “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” He knows this … because “experts” — experts he will never name — have told him so.
… the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then associates Trump with its own mess — and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave). Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no “Russian actor” at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever be offered persuasive evidence otherwise. … [Emphasis added.]
Trump, to make this work, must be blamed for his willingness to negotiate with Moscow. This is now among his sins. Got that? Anyone who says he will talk to the Russians has transgressed the American code. … I am developing nitrogen bends … Which way for a breath of air?”
Sad Sequel
A year later Lawrence was commissioned by The Nation to write an investigative report on the so-called “Russian hack.” On August 9, 2017, after he interviewed several Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, among others, The Nation published his findings in an article entitled “A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack.” Lawrence wrote, “Former NSA experts, now members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.”
Again, Lawrence got it right — this time relying less on his own experience and intuition than on applied science as practiced by real technical experts with no axes to grind. But, sadly, that cut across the grain of the acceptable Russia-gate narrative, and a furor erupted among Hillary followers still licking their wounds over her loss. It proved simply too much for them to entertain the notion that Clinton was quite capable, with help from the likes of Mook, to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory — without any help from Vladimir Putin.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. An ex-CIA analyst, his expertise on Russia goes back a half-century. He prepared and briefed The President’s Daily Brieffor Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and in retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
We all deserve an investigation into BBC Panorama’s propaganda
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | July 17, 2019
The British public were subjected to an hour of anti-Palestine propaganda by the BBC last week when it aired a Panorama programme on the “anti-Semitism” row within the Labour Party. The public service broadcaster appeared to be doing very little public service when it unleased what was, by any reasonable assessment, a media broadside taken straight from the disinformation rule book.
Received by the mainstream media as though it were the final say on the anti-Semitism row that has rocked the Labour Party since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015, the public have been duped into submitting to the dominant narrative. The political party that was born out of a desire to fight inequality and headed now by a leader whose record of fighting for social justice and equality is second to none is, we are led to believe, institutionally anti-Semitic.
The main characters used to “prove” this thesis in Panorama dominate the who’s who of people in the anti-Palestine lobby groups in Britain. Such basic information was omitted because it did not serve the presenter’s agenda. By failing to disclose the clearly relevant affiliations of the individuals involved in the programme, including the fabricated claims of anti-Semitism by one of the so called whistle-blowers, the BBC has basically admitted that their connections to the Israeli Embassy in London and anti-Palestine lobby groups like BICOM and Labour Friends of Israel completely discredits the “evidence” put forward.
The BBC producers also ignored the fact that there are dozens of Jewish Labour members and Jewish groups that totally reject allegations of the kind made in the programme. None were interviewed by Panorama veteran John Ware, who is developing a track record of being anti-Palestine and very pro-Israel; hardly the neutral journalism that one would expect from the BBC. Nor did Ware point out that there are Jews among the Labour Party members suspended or expelled for alleged anti-Semitism.
It has been claimed that the programme had such disregard for the truth that it resorted to doctoring quotes in an attempt to drive its point home. It presented an email by Labour’s director of communications Seumas Milne, for example, which gave the impression that senior Labour officials were interfering in the party’s disciplinary process. The BBC version of Milne’s email was, “Something’s going wrong, and we’re muddling up political disputes with racism… I think going forward we need to review where and how we’re drawing the line.” The Labour Party has released the full email, which shows that Milne was responding to a request from a former Labour staff member for a view on a complaint. He was talking specifically about Jewish people being accused of anti-Semitism and the unedited text of his email is this: “Having identified the subject of the complaint as a ‘Jewish activist, the son of a Holocaust survivor’… if we’re more than very occasionally using disciplinary action against Jewish members for anti-Semitism, something’s going wrong and we’re muddling up political disputes with racism.” This gives a very different meaning to the one put out on Panorama.
One has to wonder if the BBC, like the members of the Jewish Labour Movement interviewed in the programme as “whistle-blowers”, thinks that Jews supportive of Labour and refuting allegations of anti-Semitism are “the wrong type of Jew”. Is it just a coincidence that members of the Jewish community ignored by the BBC are very critical of Israel and its brutal occupation of Palestine and those given a voice by the public broadcaster are strongly anti-Palestinian?
Perhaps the BBC’s most glaring omission and disservice to the viewing public was its abject failure to give any background to the “whistle-blowers” who also featured prominently in the 2017 Al Jazeera documentary on the pro-Israel lobby. The two hour documentary detailed how the Israeli Embassy provided covert assistance to supposedly independent groups within the Labour Party; how jobs at the embassy were being offered to groom young Labour activists; and how concerned the embassy was with removing not just Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan, but also Crispin Blunt MP, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (both of whom are Conservative MPs), as well as Labour leader Corbyn.
Anti-Palestinian activists were captured on camera boasting about “taking down” British ministers; how easy it is to get most Conservative MPs to do the bidding of pro-Israel activists; and giving details of how they would write prepared questions for MPs to ask the Prime Minister in parliament. “If you do everything for them,” they explained, “it’s harder for them to say, ‘I don’t have the time, I won’t do it’.”
The four-part Al Jazeera documentary along with its US version marked a watershed moment in exposing the workings of the anti-Palestinian lobbies on both sides of the Atlantic. The Lobby – USA was made by Al Jazeera’s investigations unit, but ironically it was never broadcast by the Qatari channel, after a massive censorship push by the anti-Palestine lobby.
Unsurprisingly, despite their questionable activities being exposed on camera, anti-Palestinian groups cried foul by accusing Al Jazeera of anti-Semitism. Their complaint was investigated by Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom. In its lengthy ruling, Ofcom noted that the complaints received “raised a range of issues about the programme including that they were anti-Semitic and were not duly impartial.” Other complaints “considered that the programme was materially misleading.”
The latter allegation was dismissed by Ofcom without further investigation, following information received from Al Jazeera. With respect to the other complaints, it found that Al Jazeera was not in breach of the obligation to have “due impartiality”, and similarly rejected claims of anti-Semitism. A second attack on the programme was inevitable, and it seems that Panorama’s “shock and awe” tactic has provided such an opportunity, generating the kind of social panic required to silence legitimate opinions and dismiss counter-narratives as anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories.
The Jewish Chronicle was attuned to the public paralysis and did exactly that, launching into a full-on attack on Al Jazeera’s documentary by labelling anyone who defended Labour using facts uncovered in the programme as “conspiracy theorists” which, let’s admit it, is another way of saying that they are anti-Semitic. Panorama’s broadcast was timed perfectly for the community newspaper which, along with anti-Palestinian groups, has been waiting for the opportunity to discredit The Lobby. If the sort of revelations contained therein were made by anyone connected to Russia, or any other state for that matter, there would be calls for investigations into such open foreign interference in Britain’s democracy. It is significant that no such calls have ever been made in political circles for any investigations into Israel’s efforts — captured on camera, remember — to disrupt the British democratic process.
Why did John Ware and Panorama ignore the findings of the Al Jazeera documentary, especially given that it was vindicated by Ofcom? That’s a mystery. Viewers should have been told about the “whistle-blowers” and their backgrounds as well as their connections to the State of Israel and the anti-Palestine lobby. And that the allegations made against them by Al Jazeera were noted by the media regulator not to have been “made on the grounds that any of the particular individuals concerned were Jewish” and that “no claims were made relating to their faith”. Ofcom went on to say that it did not “consider that the [Al Jazeera] programme portrayed any negative stereotypes of Jewish people as controlling or seeking to control the media or governments.”
Ofcom concluded further: “Rather, it was our view that these individuals featured in the [Al Jazeera] programme in the context of its investigation into the alleged activities of a foreign state [the State of Israel acting through its UK Embassy] and their association with it.”
One is not a “conspiracy theorist” for citing evidence from a serious documentary vindicated by the media regulator to expose falsehoods in a BBC programme that one suspects would not survive the level of scrutiny placed on non-mainstream media organisations, including Al Jazeera. At the very least, the British public whose licence fees pay for the BBC — including up to 600,000 Labour Party members —have a right to know if the Corporation is indeed serving the public or simply peddling propaganda in the best interests of a foreign state rather than impartial journalism.
It’s a Lie, We Never Knew of Interference and Would Never Allow It – Ex-Ecuadorian President Correa
© AFP 2019 / JOHN THYS
Sputnik – July 17, 2019
Earlier, CNN published a report based on what it termed “exclusive documents”, accusing Julian Assange of meddling in the 2016 US elections. In an interview with Sputnik, Correa shared his perspective on Assange, CNN’s ‘prejudice’, EU-US relations and more.
Sputnik: What do you think about a CNN story claiming that Assange has meddled in the US 2016 election from Ecuadorian embassy?
Rafael Correa: It is already known. This is the same story when the US intended to invade Iraq and media, starting with CNN, created the whole campaign, claiming that there were weapons of mass destruction. So that even good people could applaud the invasion of the country and the war, which claimed more than a hundred thousand lives among civilians, not counting military personnel.
The same was made with Assange. This is all lynching in the media, this is all a show, so that when he is extradited to the US, he could be sentenced to a life term in prison, a disproportionate penalty that even good people may welcome.
It is already a commonly known strategy, an installation, concocted by certain media. We were not aware of Assange’s intelligence activities. They have not proved it in this story. It is merely a show. That there is some video footage where he walks with a bag and now they claim – they know what was inside of this bag…no, this story tells Mueller’s report. That means that CNN in its investigation uses side sources and cannot be responsible for that?
There are two things. First we were shown this. Secondly, we would not have allowed it if we knew of it. Did not prove that it really happened. The same staging that they want to prove, are the claims about spying activity from the embassy, which Assange – together with Russians – made a centre of special operation and that we allegedly knew this and protected him.
First, they have not proved it. I cannot be deceived with this show. Second, it is a lie. If there was any meddling/spying, we would know about it and would never allow it.
Sputnik: Good. So, when you told the government to cut Assange’s Internet access, it was not because you knew that he spied or meddled in US elections?
Rafael Correa: This happened because [Assange] published information that harmed the [US presidential] candidates. I don’t know how he got it. Maybe, he copied it from somewhere – how am I supposed to know? There is a difference between spying on the US Democratic Party, [working with] a Russian hacker from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, or [getting information] from the Internet. What is clear is that he sent messages that harmed Hillary Clinton. And this is wrong. We don’t like when [other countries] interfere in [our] internal affairs. I wouldn’t have liked if a foreign nation meddled in the presidential elections in Ecuador. Just like any other nation, we would not allow it, we respect other nations’ sovereignty.
Assange had been warned several times. He failed to comply with [asylum agreement] terms and continued to publish information that only harmed one side; this was not balanced information about [both] Clinton and Trump. It was only a negative information on Hillary Clinton. We could not accept it. This is why I personally ordered Assange’s internet connection to be cut on 17 October 2016, ahead of 8 November 2016 elections in the US.
Sputnik: What’s your opinion, why is Russia always blamed for everything related to Assange? For example, CNN mentions Russian nationals who visited Assange in the embassy.
Rafael Correa: It’s a geopolitical matter. Yesterday, I had an interview with CNN’s Patricia Ramos, in which she demonstrated the falseness of her prejudice. She considers it a proven fact that the Russian embassy engaged in the operation, but it’s a lie that the Russians were there, it’s a lie.
So, you know, she asked: why didn’t [embassy personal] search those hackers that visited [the embassy], those German hackers?
If you don’t like someone, it does not mean he’s a hacker. Presumption of innocence is a human right. Just because CNN does not like someone, we won’t deny them entry to the embassy and humiliate them with searches. They don’t understand that, they believe themselves the masters of the world. But, obviously, mentioning Russia is geopolitical. In other cases, they would mention China. They are US’s world rivals.
Imagine a different situation; as if an Australian programmer or hacker hid in the UK embassy in [Ecuadorian capital city of] Quito, because he got his hands on confidential information on Russia and China and discovered war crimes committed by these countries.
Imagine him staying [in the embassy] for seven years – they would have already invaded [Ecuador], am I right? And if that man left the embassy, they would have put him a memorial in Washington or next to Big Ben in London. But, since it’s Assange, who got his hands on information about the US, he must be crushed, he must be denied asylum, he must be next to be crucified. This an international double morality.
Sputnik: Recently, the UK Foreign Secretary said that he would not extradite Assange to any country where his life would be threatened. What is your opinion on this statement?
Rafael Correa: They often play with words. […] Yes, [Assange] won’t receive a death penalty, but, if he gets sentenced to life in prison, or a 30-year term, it’s absolutely [too strict a] measure for what he’s done.
We do not necessarily agree with his actions. We have not granted him asylum because we agreed with his actions. I believe that every country must have confidential information for security’s sake, but it also should not commit war crimes like the US did. Assange was granted asylum because there were no guarantees – and there are still no guarantees – of proper prosecution. In reality, there’s a media lynching going on, there were threats made by US hawks to judge [Assange] in accordance to laws that imply a death sentence.
There is no guarantee of a proper judgement. The British are playing with words a little bit.
Sputnik: Do you think Europe acts as an ally to the US?
Rafael Correa: I think the European Union has a bit more independence now. The world in the 21st century undergoes a sway towards the right-wing, towards liberal capitalism, towards the so-called liberal democracy – if only it was real. A democracy is based on a rule of law, and the law works in someone’s favor.
I will provide the same example I provided earlier: if Assange stole Russia’s and China’s secret documents and hid in the UK embassy in Quito, they would have invaded [our] country if we failed to let him leave to a safe country; they would have also put up a memorial to him as a freedom of speech hero. As long as this international double morality exists, as long as justice works in favor of the strongest, we still have a long way to go towards a real world society, towards real civilizational breakthrough, towards humanism.
Unfortunately, in the 21st century, there is a sway towards double morality, towards principles that are convenient for some. In this sense, Europe has made a step backwards.
It used to be an enlightened continent, an example for Latin America to follow. And now they are often worse than the US, a nation which I respect and admire. The US began its independent existence approximately at the same time as – only 30 years earlier than – the Latin American republics. Why did they develop and we did not? What did they do right and we did not? Obviously, as a hegemon country, its foreign policy – particularly towards Latin American nations that don’t submit – leaves a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, in this sense [the US], matches the EU. That’s very unfortunate, because I adore Europe.
Sputnik: Would you like to add anything that we have not previously addressed?
Rafael Correa: There are a lot of things in [CNN’s] article which – and I insist – depict things as actual and checked, although this is not the case. It appears as if they’ve proven that Assange engaged in espionage – with Russian spies, I think. Do they believe repetition is proof? What proof? Is the Mueller report a big proof? What report? *laughs* It’s like the report which said Iraq had WMDs or those videos where things are shown and God knows what happens to them.
Another part of this montage is to create an impression that we knew [about Assange’s activities]. We didn’t know anything. It does not mean it took place. If it took place, we did not know, because if we knew, we wouldn’t have allowed it. I don’t know how clear it is. Why do they do that?
We remember it well. It’s just the same as what [Lenin Moreno’s] Ecuadorian government did on a national level, all this campaign of hounding Assange, when he was expelled from the embassy in violation of international law, in violation of the Vienna convention, in violation of the Constitution of Ecuador – specifically article 41, which obliges the nation not to give away asylum seekers. Ecuador was humiliated, not only on an international level, but in perspective, for ages to come. The way Ecuador humiliated an asylum seeker will be remembered for ages.
However, before they did that, they engaged in an entire campaign of smearing and conspiring with the media who claimed that Assange is ill-tempered, that he smears feces on the walls, that his cat is spying, etc. It’s nonsense, insanity.
CNN does something similar, but on a slightly higher level: they construct a fake reality so that, when Assange gets extradited and sentenced to disproportionately severe punishment, even the kind-hearted people applauded this giant disgust. It’s a trap and you should be careful not to fall in it. We do remember Iraq’s “WMDs,” which they used to justify an invasion, and the whole world applauded them. And then we discovered it was all a lie.
Newspeak at the Media Freedom Conference
Joint UK-Canada Event Littered With Insidious Undertones
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 16, 2019
OffGuardian already covered the Global Media Freedom Conference, our article Hypocrisy Taints UK’s Media Freedom Conference, was meant to be all there was to say. A quick note on the obvious hypocrisy of this event. But, in the writing, I started to see more than that. This event is actually… creepy.
Let’s just look back at one of the four “main themes” of this conference:
building trust in media and countering disinformation
“Countering disinformation”? Well,that’s just another word for censorship.
This is proven by their refusal to allow Sputnik or RT accreditation. They claim RT “spreads disinformation” and they “countered” that by barring them from attending.
“Building trust”? In the post-Blair world of PR newspeak, “building trust” is just another way of saying “making people believe us” (the word usage is actually interesting, building trust not earning trust).
The whole conference is shot through with this language that just feels… off.
Here is CNN’s Christiane Amanpour:
Our job is to be truthful, not neutral… we need to take a stand for the truth, and never to create a false moral or factual equivalence.”
Being “truthful not neutral” is one of Amanpour’s personal sayings, she obviously thinks it’s clever.
Of course, what it is is NewSpeak for “bias”.
Refusing to cover evidence of The White Helmets staging rescues, Israel arming ISIS or other inconvenient facts will be defended using this phrase – they will literally claim to only publish “the truth”, to get around impartiality… and then set about making up whatever “truth” is convenient.
Oh, and if you don’t know what “creating a false moral equivalence is”, here I’ll demonstrate:
MSM: Putin is bad for shutting down critical media.
OffG: But you’re supporting RT being banned and Wikileaks being shut down.
BBC: No. That’s not the same.
OffG: It seems the same.
BBC: It’s not. You’re creating a false moral equivalence.
Understand now? You “create a false moral equivalence” by pointing out mainstream media’s double standards.
Other ways you could mistakenly create a “false moral equivalence”:
- Bringing up Gaza when the media talk about racism.
- Mentioning Saudi Arabia when the media preach about gay rights.
- Referencing the US coup in Venezuela when the media work themselves into a froth over Russia’s “interference in our democracy”
- Talking about the invasion of Iraq. Ever.
- OR Pointing out that the BBC is state funded, just like RT.
These are all no-longer flagrant examples of the media’s double standards, and if you say they are, you’re “creating a false moral equivalence”… and the media won’t have to allow you (or anyone who agrees with you) air time or column inches to disagree.
Because they don’t have a duty to be neutral or show both sides, they only have a duty to tell “the truth”… as soon as the government has told them what that is.
Prepare to see both those phrases – or variations there of – littering editorials in the Guardian and the Huffington Post in the coming months. Along with people bemoaning how “fake news outlets abuse the notion of impartiality” by “being even handed between liars the truth tellers”. (I’ve been doing this site so long now, I have a Guardian-English dictionary in my head).
Equally dodgy-sounding buzz-phrases litter topics on the agenda.
“Eastern Europe and Central Asia: building an integrated support system for journalists facing hostile environments”, this means pumping money into NGOs to fund media that will criticize our “enemies” in areas of strategic importance. It means flooding money into the anti-government press in Hungary, or Iran or (of course), Russia. That is ALL it means.
I said in my earlier article I don’t know what “media sustainability” even means, but I feel I can take a guess. It means “save the government mouthpieces”.
The Guardian is struggling for money, all print media are, TV news is getting lower viewing figures all the time. “Building media sustainability” is code for “pumping public money into traditional media that props up the government” or maybe “getting people to like our propaganda”.
But the worst offender on the list is, without a doubt…
“Navigating Disinformation”
“Navigating Disinformation” was a 1 hour panel from the second day of the conference. You can watch it embedded above if you really feel the need. I already did, so you don’t have to.
The panel was chaired by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Foreign Minister. The members included the Latvian Foreign Minister, a representative of the US NGO Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Information
Have you guessed what “disinformation” they’re going to be talking about?
I’ll give you a clue: It begins with R.
Freeland, chairing the panel, kicks it off by claiming that “disinformation isn’t for any particular aim”.
This is a very common thing for establishment voices to repeat these days, which makes it all the more galling she seems to be pretending its is her original thought.
The reason they have to claim that “disinformation” doesn’t have a “specific aim” is very simple: They don’t know what they’re going to call “disinformation” yet.
They can’t afford to take a firm position, they need to keep their options open. They need to give themselves the ability to describe any single piece of information or political opinion as “disinformation.” Left or right. Foreign or domestic. “Disinformation” is a weaponised term that is only as potent as it is vague.
So, we’re one minute in, and all “navigating disinformation” has done is hand the State an excuse to ignore, or even criminalise, practically anything it wants to. Good start.
Interestingly, no one has actually said the word “Russia” at this point. They have talked about “malign actors” and “threats to democracy”, but not specifically Russia. It is SO ingrained in these people that “propaganda”= “Russian propaganda” that they don’t need to say it.
The idea that NATO as an entity, or the individual members thereof, could also use “disinformation” has not just been dismissed… it was literally never even contemplated.
Next Freeland turns to Edgars Rinkēvičs, her Latvian colleague, and jokes about always meeting at NATO functions. The Latvians know “more than most” about disinformation, she says.
Rinkēvičs says disinformation is nothing new, but that the methods of spreading it are changing… then immediately calls for regulation of social media.
Nobody disagrees.
Then he talks about the “illegal annexation of Crimea”, and claims the West should outlaw “paid propaganda” like RT and Sputnik.
Nobody disagrees.
Then he says that Latvia “protected” their elections from “interference” by “close cooperation between government agencies and social media companies”.
Everyone nods along.
If you don’t find this terrifying, you’re not paying attention. They don’t say it, they probably don’t even realise they mean it, but when they talk about “close cooperation with social media networks”, they mean government censorship of social media. When they say “protecting” their elections… they’re talking about rigging them.
It only gets worse.
The next step in the Latvian master plan is to bolster “traditional media”. The problems with traditional media, he says, are that journalists aren’t paid enough, and don’t keep up to date with all the “new tricks”.
His solution is to “promote financing” for traditional media, and to open more schools like the “Baltic Centre of Media Excellence”, which is apparently a totally real thing. It’s a training centre which teaches young journalists about “media literacy” and “critical thinking”.
You can read their depressingly predictable list of “donors” here.
I truly wish I was joking.
Next up is Courtney Radsch from CPJ – a US-backed NGO, who notionally “protect journalists”, but more accurately spread pro-US propaganda. (Their token effort to “defend” RT and Sputnik when they were barred from the conference was contemptible). She talks for a long time… without saying much at all. Her revolutionary idea is that disinformation could be countered if everyone told the truth. Inspiring.
Beata Balogova, Journalist and Editor from Slovakia, gets the ship back on course – immediately suggesting politicians should not endorse “propaganda” platforms. She shares an anecdote about “a prominent Slovakian politician” who gave exclusive interviews to a site that is “dubiously financed, we assume from Russia”.
They assume from Russia. Everyone nods. It’s like they don’t even hear themselves.
Then she moves on to Hungary.
Apparently, Orban has “created a propaganda machine” and produced “antisemitic George Soros posters”. No evidence is produced to back-up either of these claims. She thinks advertisers should be pressured into not giving money to “fake news sites”. She calls for “international pressure”, but never explains exactly what that means.
The stand-out maniac on this panel is Emine Dzhaparova, the Ukrainian First Deputy Minister of Information Policy. (She works for the Ministry of Information – nicknamed the Ministry of Truth, which was formed in 2014 to “counter lies about Ukraine”. Even The Guardian thought that sounded dodgy.)
She talks very fast and, without any sense of irony, spills out a story that shoots straight through “disinformation” and becomes “incoherent rambling”. She claims that Russian citizens are so brainwashed you’ll never be able to talk to them, and that Russian “cognitive influence” is “toxic… like radiation.”
Is this paranoid, quasi-xenophobic nonsense countered? No. Her fellow panelists nod and chuckle.
On top of that, she just lies. She lies over and over and over again.
She claims Russia is locking up Crimean Tartars “just for being muslims”, nobody questions her.
She says the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, but doesn’t mention that her side is responsible for over 80% of civilian deaths.
She says only 30% of Crimeans voted in the referendum, and that they were “forced”. A fact not supported by any polls done by either side in the last four years, and any referenda held on the peninsula any time in the last last 30 year. It’s simply a lie.
Nobody asks her about the journalists killed in Ukraine since their glorious Maidan Revolution.
Nobody questions the fact that she works for something called the “Ministry of Information”.
Nobody does anything but nod and smile as the “countering disinformation” panel becomes just a platform for spreading total lies.
When everyone on the panel has had their ten minutes on the soapbox, Freeland asks for recommendations for countering this “threat” – here’s the list:
- Work to distinguish “free speech” from “propaganda”, when you find propaganda there must be a “strong reaction”.
- Pressure advertisers to abandon platforms who spread misinformation.
- Regulate social media.
- Educate journalists at special schools.
- Start up a “Ministry of Information” and have state run media that isn’t controlled, like in Ukraine.
This is the Global Conference on Media Freedom… and all these six people want to talk about is how to control what can be said, and who can say it.
They single only four countries out for criticism: Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia…. and Russia takes up easily 90% of that.
They mention only two media outlets by name: RT and Sputnik.
This wasn’t a panel on disinformation, it was a public attack forum – a month’s worth of 2 minutes of hate.
These aren’t just shills on this stage, they are solid gold idiots, brainwashed to the point of total delusion. They are the dangerous glassy eyes of a Deep State that never questions itself, never examines itself, and will do anything it wants, to anyone it wants… whilst happily patting itself on the back for its superior morality.
They don’t know, they don’t care. They’re true believers. Terrifyingly dead inside. Talking about state censorship and re-education camps under a big sign that says “Freedom”.
And that’s just one talk. Just one panel in a 2 day itinerary filled to the brim with similarly soul-dead servants of authority.
Truly, perfectly Orwellian.
Sic Transit Gloria Mueller
Making the Worst Case Appear the Better
By Ray McGovern | Consortium News | July 16, 2019
Friday’s surprising report that Robert Mueller had successfully sought an extra week to prepare for his House testimony on Russiagate (now set for July 24) must have come as scary news to those of his fans who can put two and two together. Over the past few weeks, it has become clearer that each of the two frayed findings of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come apart at the seams.
Saturday’s New York Times reports that “the Democrats said they chose to delay at the request of Mr. Mueller” after a day of negotiations, “as both Democrats and Republicans were deep in preparations for his testimony” earlier scheduled for July 17. The Washington Post, on the other hand, chose not to say who asked for the delay. Rather, it explained the abrupt change in timing with a misleading article entitled, “Mueller, House panels strike deal to delay hearing until July 24, giving lawmakers more time to question him.”
How to Avoid Eating Crow
Friedrich: Told Mueller put up or shut up (Flickr)
As the truth seeps out, there will be plenty of crow to go around. To avoid eating it, the Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, the stenographers who pass for journalists at the Times and Post, and the “Mueller team” will need all the time they can muster to come up with imaginative responses to two recent bombshell revelations from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Perhaps the most damning of the two came last Monday, when it was disclosed that, on July 1, Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Mueller to stop pretending he had proof that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency’s supposed attempt to interfere via social media in the 2016 election. While the corporate media so far has largely ignored Judge Friedrich’s order, it may well have been enough to cause very cold feet for those attached to the strained Facebook fable. (The IRA social-media “interference” has always been ludicrous on its face, as journalist Gareth Porter established.)
Ten days is not a lot of time to conjure up ways to confront and explain Judge Friedrich’s injection of some unwelcome reality. Since the Democrats, the media, and Mueller himself all have strong incentive to “make the worst case appear the better” (one of the twin charges against Socrates), they need time to regroup and circle the wagons. The more so, since Mueller’s other twin charge — Russian hacking of the DNC — also has been shown, in a separate Court case, to be bereft of credible evidence.
No, the incomplete, redacted, second-hand “forensics” draft that former FBI Director James Comey decided to settle for from the Democratic National Committee-hired CrowdStrike firm does not qualify as credible evidence. Both new developments are likely to pose a strong challenge to Mueller. On the forensics, Mueller decided to settle for what his former colleague Comey decided to settle for from CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC despite it’s deeply flawed reputation and well known bias against Russia. In fact, the new facts — emerging, oddly, from the U.S. District Court, pose such a fundamental challenge to Mueller’s findings that no one should be surprised if Mueller’s testimony is postponed again.
Requiem for ‘Interference’
Daniel Lazare’s July 12 Consortium News piece shatters one of the twin prongs in Mueller’s case that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” It was the prong dripping with incessant drivel about the Kremlin using social media to help Trump win in 2016.
Mueller led off his Russiagate report, a redacted version of which was published on April 18, with the dubious claim that his investigation had
“… established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen documents.”
Judge to Mueller: Put Up or Shut Up
Mueller: Needs more time. (Flickr)
Regarding the social-media accusation, Judge Friederich has now told Mueller, in effect, to put up or shut up. What happened was this: On February 16, 2018 a typically credulous grand jury — the usual kind that cynics say can be persuaded to indict the proverbial ham sandwich — was convinced by Mueller to return 16 indictments of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and associates in St. Petersburg, giving his all-deliberate-speed investigation some momentum and a much-needed, if short-lived, “big win” in “proving” interference by Russia in the 2016 election. It apparently never occurred to Mueller and the super-smart lawyers around him that the Russians would outsmart them by hiring their own lawyers to show up in U.S. court and seek discovery. Oops.
The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a “Russian organization.” But in Mueller’s report 14 months later, the “Russian organization” had somehow morphed into “Russia.” The IRA’s lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller’s ipse-dixit “Russia did it” does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and ordered Mueller to cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that “any future violations of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions.”
More specifically, at the conclusion of a hearing held under seal on May 28, Judge Friedrich ordered the government “to refrain from making or authorizing any public statement that links the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government or its agencies.” The judge ordered further that “any public statement about the allegations in the indictment . . . must make clear that, one, the government is summarizing the allegations in the indictment which remain unproven, and, two, the government does not express an opinion on the defendant’s guilt or innocence or the strength of the evidence in this case.”
Reporting Thursday on Judge Friedrich’s ruling, former CIA and State Department official Larry C. Johnson described it as a “potential game changer,” observing that Mueller “has not offered one piece of solid evidence that the defendants were involved in any way with the government of Russia.” After including a lot of useful background material, Johnson ends by noting:
“Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth–if you cannot produce evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers.”
IRA Story a ‘Stretch’
Last fall, investigative journalist Gareth Porter dissected and debunked The New York Times’ far-fetched claim that 80,000 Facebook posts by the Internet Research Agency helped swing the election to Donald Trump. What the Times story neglected to say is that the relatively paltry 80,000 posts were engulfed in literally trillions of posts on Facebook over the two-year period in question — before and after the 2016 election.
In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, “Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or ‘served,’ a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds.” Shamefully misleading “analysis” by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA’s 80,000 posts helped deliver the presidency to Trump.
Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even though the Times’ own coverage of Stretch’s 2017 testimony stated outright: “Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users’ News Feeds everyday.”
The chances that Americans saw any of these IRA ads—let alone were influenced by them—are infinitismal. Porter and others did the math and found that over the two-year period, the 80,000 Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just 0.0000000024 of total Facebook content in that time. Porter commented that this particular Times contribution to the Russiagate story “should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses of statistics of all time.”
And now we know, courtesy of Judge Friederich, that Mueller has never produced proof, beyond his say-so, that the Russian government was responsible for the activities of the IRA — feckless as they were. That they swung the election is clearly a stretch.
The Other Prong: Hacking the DNC
The second of Mueller’s two major accusations of Russian interference, as noted above, charged that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen documents.” Sadly for Russiagate aficionados, the evidence behind that charge doesn’t hold water either.
CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department admitted.
The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness.
The filing was in response to a motion by Stone’s lawyers asking for “unredacted reports” from CrowdStrike challenging the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. “The government … does not possess the information the defendant seeks,” the DOJ filing says.
Small wonder that Mueller had hoped to escape further questioning. If he does testify on July 24, the committee hearings will be well worth watching.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and a presidential briefer. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His colleagues and he have been following closely the ins and outs of Russiagate.
How Assange & RT meddled in 2016, according to CNN’s ‘possibilities’, innuendo & lies
RT | July 16, 2019
CNN has released a new ‘exclusive’ report, accusing Julian Assange of conspiring with ‘the Russians’ (including RT) to meddle in the 2016 US election – again.
Citing a report compiled by a private Spanish security company – but not providing any of it – the network basically re-hashed the entirety of the Russiagate conspiracy on Monday, painting a sinister portrait of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, RT and “Russians and world-class hackers” that supposedly made the revelations of Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Podesta emails happen during the 2016 election. It includes speculation, insinuation, selective quoting of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, and even an easily and repeatedly disproven lie about RT.
Let’s dispense with the last point first. Per CNN: “On at least two occasions, RT even published articles detailing the new batches of emails before WikiLeaks officially released them, suggesting that they were coordinating behind the scenes, which they deny.”
In reality, RT journalists simply noticed a pattern to the WikiLeaks’ releases and kept a close eye on its website in expectation of every new batch. As RT’s Dublin bureau editor-on-duty at the time Ivor Crotty put it, “We merely watched a trend and performed journalism.” It was Clinton’s aides that suggested“coordinating behind the scenes,” which CNN here uncritically endorses.
The rest of CNN’s sensationally-titled “scoop” openly admits the Spanish papers merely “build on the possibility” raised by Mueller’s report about how WikiLeaks received the emails. Safe words for “unprovable speculation” begin a few lines below the headline, and keep multiplying from there on.
CNN quotes the Mueller report as having named German hacker Andrew Müller-Maguhn as someone who “may have assisted” WikiLeaks in obtaining the files – something page 55 of the report “cannot rule out” happened, based on “public reporting”, not actual evidence.
Throughout the story, the CNN authors seem almost incredulous that Ecuador allowed Assange, a political refugee, to have basic facilities like high-speed Internet or the absence of 24/7 snooping – all of which he is portrayed as having exploited to undermine American democracy.
Assange also had visitors – including a “Russian national named Yana Maximova” (who the authors never tracked down, but appear to assume her an insidious figure by the sole merit of her being Russian) and with “senior staffers from RT” such as London bureau chief Nikolay Bogachikhin, who even “gave him a USB drive on one occasion.”
Bogachikhin, one of the very few people who actually responded to CNN’s requests for comment, was open about RT’s cooperation with Assange. RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan joined in by tweeting about her own visits to Assange and listing quite a few more things RT staff brought to him: “Cassettes, floppy disks, flash drives, pieces of paper, technical equipment, candy…”
That’s because RT hosted a show with Assange, and widely advertised it both on air and online. “It’s hard to host a show without equipment, you know. It was an awesome show. Can you google it up yourself?” Simonyan tweeted.
CNN, meanwhile, repeats the literal smear – not substantiated by a single photo or video clip since Assange’s arrest in April – that the journalist “smeared feces” on the embassy walls.
Wrapping up the piece, CNN finds it sinister that the Russian government denounced the arrest as a violation of Assange’s human rights and dignity – the ultimate proof Assange “still has allies in Russia.”
Also on rt.com:
Another nail in Russiagate coffin? Federal judge destroys key Mueller report claim
Ending the myth of the ‘Millionaire Mullah’ – Part 2
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei waves to tens of thousands of Basij members from Tehran province at Azadi Stadium, Oct. 4, 2018. (Photo by Khamenei.ir)
By Ramin Mazaheri – Press TV – July 5, 2019
Part 1 of this article discussed why the recent US sanctions on Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei provoked laughter in Iran, and derision even from Iranophobic Western mainstream media.
Beyond Ayatollah Khamenei, I can very briefly explain how and why the West can persist with its “Millionaire Mullah” mythology:
There are many economic principles that guide the Iranian economy which have no basis in the West – they are, after all, “revolutionary”. Many are based on the principles of Islamic charity and of Islamic finance; many are also based on the anti-capitalist principles which were obviously drawn from the 20th century socialism. There are almost too many to list, but in Part 2 of this 3-part article I will pick a few key ones which specifically relate to the clergy, and which – when added with Iranophobia – create such widespread and ignorant propaganda.
One of the five pillars of Islam is to give to charity (zakat), but one of the five additional pillars of Shia theology is that businessmen must give 20% of their profits to charity (khums). Thus, it should be clear why some say that Iran has an “alms-based economy”. That’s an exaggeration, because there are state taxes as well, but this money goes directly to religious authorities and has gone there for over 1,000 years.
For example, Ayatollah Khamenei was raised in a family (lower middle class clerics on both sides of his parents) which would have never received this money directly – they would have been the recipients of this charity from the much higher-ranking clergy.
Ayatollah Khamenei, through hard work, sacrifice and other virtues, is now a “Marja’” (top religious authority). He now heads various religious foundations which receive – and redistribute downwards – this zakat and khums money.
Of course, he heads these foundations, but this money cannot (and is not) be used by him to buy a Ferrari for his favourite nephew, for example. The Iranian press would die of happiness at the sales prospects caused by such a sensational, unheard-of event! These are “religious foundations” not “The Clinton Foundation”: These foundations serve the poor – they do not trade high-level political access and favours in return for funding a jet-set lifestyle. Of course, most Western media cynically assume that everyone – even a Marja’ as publicly present as Ayatollah Khamenei – secretly operates on shameless Western capitalist principles.
Let’s clarify two key issues: zakat and khums are individual choices – they are not compelled to go to Ayatollah Khamenei. Iranians can send their charity to a Marja’ in Iraq if they like, and many do. Secondly, drastically changing this historic process of zakat and khums would certainly constitute a major revolution in Iran – however, for many it would constitute a rather “un-Islamic Revolution”, and there is no doubt that the democratic majority wanted an “Islamic Revolution”.
Therefore, Islamic charity is a reality of modern economics and finance in Iran. It is not something which non-Muslims can easily comprehend, perhaps, but the failure to do so will help fuel nonsense like “Millionaire Mullahs”. Unlike neoliberalism in the West, these financial principles have the virtue of being democratically-supported, and I can easily argue that they have the additional virtue of far more efficiently increasing economic equality than neoliberalism does.
Ayatollah Khamenei, as the Supreme Leader, is also often listed as the head of companies simply out of respect by the company’s founders. It is often purely honorary. Ayatollah Khamenei is not, for example, giving ideas on product improvement or production strategies to such companies (now the rare ex-president Rafsanjani – rare because he was an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary cleric from a rich, business-oriented background – might have gotten involved, but Ayatollah Khamenei has evinced no such interest)and he is absolutely not in any control of the companies’ assets. He is there in name only as a sign of respect for him, Islam, Iran, etc. Of course, this is distorted/misunderstood by Western pro-capitalist papers.
The Iranian Islamic Revolution also did something which no doubt enrages Western imperialist-capitalists, and about which they have no desire to spread honest information: the revolution took a huge chunk of the factories and industries owned by the Shah and his tiny coterie and gave them to charity.
These are called the bonyads, and they are an estimated 15-20% of the entire Iranian economy. A staggeringly revolutionary concept, no?
The bonyads are thus different from the Islamic charity I have described, and the Islamic foundations which administer that charity, because the bonyads were expressly charged with getting involved in economic production.
The bonyads are not designed for capitalist profit, but are cooperatives which exist to create low-cost goods and jobs for Iranians. This planned” inefficiency” – in attaining maximum profit, but not in social cohesion and equality – is falsely branded as“corruption” by raging Western capitalists, sadly.
Ayatollah Khamenei heads some bonyads, and this gives him economic influence, of course, because the popular, democratic, openly-debated decision to award a significant chunk of the Iranian economy to the administration of religious authorities was a popular, democratic, openly-debated decision of the Iranian people. Oppose decisions arrived at in this manner, and you oppose democracy for Iran.
Bonyads are not specifically proscribed in the Qur’an, unlike zakat and the ubiquitous concepts of charity and anti-usury (high interest/compound interest), but if one tries to overturn them, well, all I can say is – prepare for a serious fight. If you think the millions of bonyad workers and recipients of bonyad lower-cost goods want all that to be replaced by (mostly-Western) stockholders, good luck with your efforts.
Very obvious, but of course not perfect, parallels can be made elsewhere: the lower class supporters of Chavismo’s collectivos have won an unprecedented number of votes (and street battles) to preserve similar anti-neoliberal economic concepts and structures. Iran is not nearly as susceptible to Washington’s meddling, in large part because such gains have been consolidating democratic support for the government for a generation longer than in Venezuela. Cuba adopted similar (though not Islamic-influenced) concepts a generation earlier than Iran did. China is a generation up on Cuba, and aren’t they doing rather well? China doesn’t have bonyads, of course, but Beijing and Tehran have such a strong and long-term alliance because they obviously have much in common.
The common threat here is modern economic solutions designed to fight imperialism, and also those forms of capitalism which are rapacious and undemocratic.
So, between zakat, khums, the bonyads, generalized Iranophobia and a desire to denigrate any economic thought which is not far-right neoliberal capitalism, this is how we have arrived at Western nonsense like “Millionaire Mullahs”, and the propaganda is unrelenting.
Like, for example, the 2013 Reuters report on Setad, a bonyad headed by the Leader, was absurdly titled, “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures”.
Part 3 will examine this report, which is still being cited today despite its obvious bias, misrepresentations and clear goal of spreading Iranophobic and Islamophobic propaganda.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China”.
US, UK Intel Services Prepare Fakes About Putin’s Inner Circle Via Soros, Browder Entites – Source
Sputnik – July 13, 2019
According to a military diplomatic source, the defamation campaign repeats the Panamagate scenario in 2015 when Western media published dossiers about tax havens implicating various political leaders.
UK and US intelligence services are currently in an active phase of the anti-Russian campaign aiming to discredit individuals from the inner circle of the Russian president, as well as the leadership of the Defence Ministry.
“As part of the undisguised provocative actions, specialists from the American and British intelligence agencies fabricate fakes about the Russian leadership”, the source stated.
The source noted that aggressive actions could be seen in the information space, and provocations were no longer being concealed.
The fake information will wind up in the media controlled by foundations established by influential financiers such as George Soros and William Browder, according to the report. The source added the defamation campaign will also engage news agencies openly funded by US authorities, naming Radio Freedom and Current Time among others.
According to the report, the campaign follows the Panamagate template by disseminating biased information through non-commercial organisations affiliated with the State Department.
The source underlined that the fakes about the Russian leadership constitute direct interference in Russia’s internal affairs.
“As in the case with the Panama dossier, despite the absurdity of the accusations, the White House predictably uses fakes to justify sanctions. Such actions are direct interference in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation aimed to destabilise the country, weaken the economic potential of Russia and form the levers of political influence on its leadership”, the source added.
Millions of documents known collectively as the Panama Papers were leaked in 2016 from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The leaked data exposed a large number of offshore operations and shell companies, and implicated multiple highly-placed individuals from across the world.
Two Think Tanks Claim Sputnik Meddled in 2017 French Election, Present No Proof… Again
Sputnik – July 11, 2019
Russian media outlets last year faced accusations of interfering in France’s internal politics, but a recent probe by French intelligence has reportedly found no signs of such activities.
The French Institute of Strategic Research of the Military School (IRSEM) and American think-tank the Atlantic Council have in a recent collaborative project produced a report, the latest in a row of similar ones, claiming that Russia meddled in the internal affairs of a foreign government. This time, the researchers accused Moscow of trying to prevent the victory of Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 French presidential election.
The researchers try to prove that by using state-funded media outlets, namely Sputnik, as an “information weapon”, the Kremlin allegedly organised a coordinated “disinformation campaign” against then presidential hopeful Macron. However, like many similar papers on alleged “Russian meddling”, this research also fails to present solid facts that substantiate the claims and stumbles into certain problems when trying to prove that such a targeted “campaign” actually existed in the first place.
Notably, the report’s key author and head of the IRSEM, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, who also serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the NATO Defence College, took most of his points of evidence from the works of Ben Nimmo, a researcher at the Atlantic Council. The latter, like many other Western think tanks, regularly publishes research devoted to proving the existence of Russian attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Western countries and proposing ways in which they can counter this alleged “threat”.
“Anti-Macron Campaign” or Factual Reporting?
The IRSEM study recalls that back in February 2017, Macron’s digital manager accused Sputnik of publishing “fake news” about his employer from the “very beginning of [the election] campaign”. The author of the paper, Vilmer, claims that this “disinformation campaign” began when the French edition of Sputnik published a report about statements by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in which he revealed that he possessed “interesting information” about Macron, albeit without specifying whether it was compromising in any way.
Referring to the Sputnik article as “menacing”, the IRSEM report draws parallels to the 2016 US presidential election and WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. At the same time, the paper didn’t elaborate any further on how exactly reporting on an interview with a famous whistle-blower, in which no compromising information about Macron was published, was able to affect the outcome of the election. It also failed to mention that WikiLeaks’ threats, covered by Sputnik, were not limited to Macron, but also touched his main opponent in the second round, Marine Le Pen.
“Hand-Picked” Speakers vs Hand-Picked Examples
The IRSEM head admits in the report that Sputnik didn’t publish any “fake news” during the election campaign in France, but instead accused it of “information manipulation”. Vilmer claims that the Russian media outlet had expressed “a strong bias” by allegedly leaving out important information and by “hiding behind the quotations” of the “right people”.
While failing to present any proof that Sputnik had omitted any important facts in its articles, the researcher instead tried to substantiate his claim by indicating that Sputnik had interviewed only two persons, who happen to be members of the French Parliament – Thierry Mariani and Nicolas Dhuicq – in regards to the upcoming election. However, a simple search on the news outlet’s website reveals that in reality Sputnik had interviewed far more contributors on the topic, such as Jacques Lamblin, another member of the country’s parliament, as well as various European lawmakers and pundits.
Alleged “Focus” on “Macron Affair”
The paper proceeds to claim that Sputnik covered the election in France with “a distinct bias against Macron”. According to Vilmer, this was expressed in a strategy of giving a deaf ear to scandals involving other contenders for the presidency, such as “the Kremlin’s favoured candidate”, Marine Le Pen, and instead focusing on “rumours” about Macron’s alleged offshore accounts.
The IRSEM research insisted that most of Sputnik’s articles were devoted to the “invented Macron affair” involving offshore accounts while it “defended Le Pen and amplified her party”. However, the paper does not include any factual proof of a discrepancy in the coverage of Macron-related scandals and controversies involving his rivals. It also fully omits the actual fact that Sputnik covered the latter.
“Blame Russia” Trend
France was the second Western country to try to blame Russia for interfering in its domestic affairs. This was preceded by an attempt by the US Democratic Party, and specifically its candidate Hillary Clinton, to shift the blame for the defeat in the 2016 presidential election on to supposed meddling by Moscow.
This blame-game later became a trend among Western governments and political parties in countries such as the UK, Germany, and Spain, to name only a few. But just as in the case of the US, none of these states managed to provide any credible evidence to substantiate the claims, at best referring to obscure “intelligence reports”. Moscow has repeatedly pointed out this lack of underlying proof when rejecting these groundless accusations
Notably, following Macron’s victory in the elections his team abandoned the narrative for a while, only to return to it in February 2019, accusing Moscow of “orchestrating” the Yellow Vest rallies, which demanded Macron’s resignation, and pointing to Sputnik and RT for this purpose. However, earlier reports by local news outlets said that the French intelligence services’ investigation had failed to find any signs indicating that the Russian media was able to impact French domestic affairs.
Hiring the swamp: Meet new RFE/RL boss, a Russiagate-pushing neocon
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | July 11, 2019
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US government-funded propaganda outfit, will soon get a new president – a NeverTrump neoconservative flack, who last worked at an outfit promoting the ‘Russiagate conspiracy.’
Jamie Fly is supposed to take over at RFE/RL in Prague on August 1, having reportedly been handpicked by board chair Kenneth Weinstein and endorsed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He reportedly received unanimous support from the board, composed of Democrats and Republicans appointed under the Obama administration.
Fly’s name may not be familiar to the general public, but he is well known in Washington. His latest posting was at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), a quasi-non-governmental outfit that sponsors the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), among other things. The ASD was set up by leading Democrats and neoconservatives in July 2017, and operates the notorious Hamilton68 dashboard, the shady analysis tool that sees “Russian bots and trolls” everywhere.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has followed ASD since its inception, called Hamilton 68 “the single most successful media fraud & US propaganda campaign” he had seen in years of covering US politics.
The ASD was just one of the outfits that sprung up since 2016, driven by the allegations that Russia “meddled” with the US presidential election that were concocted and weaponized to help explain how President Donald Trump got into the White House instead of the establishment favorite Hillary Clinton – and fuel calls for Trump’s impeachment.
What they all had in common was seeing “Russians” all over social media, and demanding purges from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms. Fly himself boasted, from his GMF/ASD perch, that his outfit was guiding Facebook in its crackdown on “Russian” pages and other “fringe” views in October 2018, and that it was “just the beginning.”
Meanwhile, RFE/RL was getting caught red-handed violating Facebook’s advertising rules by posting pro-NATO propaganda.
The rest of Fly’s work history is hardly better. Between 2013 and 2017, he worked as a foreign policy adviser to Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida). Rubio, you may recall, currently champions “regime change” in Venezuela and seems to enjoy Trump’s favor even after voting against his efforts to secure the US-Mexico border.
Prior to working for Rubio, Fly was executive director at the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), an interventionist think-tank that operated between 2009 and 2017 and was co-founded by a trio of prominent neoconservatives. Dan Senor served as the chief spokesman for the US occupying authority in Iraq and later as a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012. The other two co-founders were Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, formerly of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and authors of an infamous 1996 treatise advocating “benevolent global hegemony” by the US.
During the neoconservative-dominated George W. Bush administration, Fly worked at the National Security Council and at the office of the Secretary of Defense, under both Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.
In other words, Jamie Fly is the perfect example of what Trump had called the “swamp” and vowed to “drain” in his 2016 campaign – a neoconservative Washington operative dedicated to policies and ideas that Trump got elected by denouncing and opposing. Yet in an administration whose foreign policy is run by Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, he should be a perfect fit.
IRGC rejects US claim of Iran attempt to seize UK tanker in Persian Gulf
Press TV – July 11, 2019
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has dismissed a claim by US officials that its naval forces tried to stop a British tanker in the Persian Gulf.
Early on Thursday, two American officials, who were speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, claimed that five boats believed to belong to the IRGC had approached the tanker British Heritage at the northern entrance of the Strait of Hormuz and ordered it to stop.
The Iranian boats dispersed, said one of the sources, after the UK’s Royal Navy frigate HMS Montrose, which had been escorting the tanker, “pointed its guns at the boats and warned them over radio.”
The other official also called the alleged incident an act of “harassment and an attempt to interfere with the passage.”
However, the IRGC rejected the US officials’ claim, stressing that Iranian boats were carrying out their normal duties.
“Patrols by the IRGC’s Navy vessels have been underway in the Persian Gulf based on current procedures and missions assigned to them with vigilance, precision and strength,” said the Public Relations Department of the IRGC Navy’s Fifth Naval Zone in a statement.
“In the past 24 hours, there has been no encounter with foreign ships, including British ones,” it added.
The statement further noted that the IRGC Navy’s fifth zone has the power to act “decisively and swiftly” and seize foreign vessels in the area it is tasked with patrolling if an order is issued to that effect.
Similarly, Britain claimed Thursday that three Iranian vessels had tried to block the passage of its tanker but backed off.
“HMS Montrose was forced to position herself between the Iranian vessels and British Heritage and issue verbal warnings to the Iranian vessels, which then turned away,” a British government representative said.
Zarif: Such claims have no value
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also reacted to the allegations, saying they are merely meant to create tensions.
Those who make such claims attempt to “cover up their weak point,” he added. “Apparently the British tanker has passed. What they have said themselves and the claims that have been made are for creating tension and these claims have no value.”
The claims came two weeks after British marines illegally seized an Iranian oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar under the pretext that the vessel had been suspected of carrying crude to Syria in violation of EU sanctions against the Arab country.
Reports, however, said the seizure took place at the request of the US.
The Islamic Republic condemned the illegal seizure as “maritime piracy” and summoned the British ambassador on three occasions to convey its protest at the confiscation.
Salvini Refutes Claims About Receiving Russian Financial Support for Lega Party
Sputnik – July 10, 2019
ROME – Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini once again refuted claims on Wednesday about receiving financial support from Russia for his Lega party.
“I have already filed a lawsuit [concerning this issue] earlier and I will do it today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. I took no ruble, no euro, no dollar, no litre of vodka of financing from Russia”, Salvini said in a statement released by his press office.
The statement may be triggered by an article that appeared on the BuzzFeed News portal earlier in the day and included a transcript of a conversation between Salvini’s representatives and alleged Russians discussing financing Salvini’s Lega party through the supply of Russian oil. The conversation took place on October 18, 2018, according to the media outlet.
This is not the first time Salvini is suspected of gaining financial support from Russia. Late February, Italian weekly L’Espresso also published an investigation claiming that Salvini and his representatives had visited Moscow in secret on October 18. 2018, to discuss financing of the Lega party with Russians ahead of European election. The party has allegedly gained 3 million euros ($3.3 million) under cover of Russian diesel exports. Moscow, as well as Salvini, has repeatedly refuted such allegations.
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Are the Jews indigenous to Palestine?
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | August 3, 2022
There is a rising tide of claims from apologists for the crimes of Zionism that they have been misunderstood. Palestinians might be indigenous to Palestine, but the Jews definitely are. What is called the ‘Israel-Palestine’ conflict, they say, is competition over the same small piece of land by two rival groups of indigenous people. But are the Jews indigenous to the Levant? And what are the consequences of the argument?
In fact, most of the power structure of the Zionist state is dominated by Ashkenazi Jews who have no ancestral link to Palestine. Overall despite very significant financial and infrastructural contributions from Western European countries (especially the US, UK and France, for example via the Rothschild family), Eastern European Ashkenazim have been at the centre of the Zionist power structure since the early years of the 20th Century. … continue
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