Western media headlines manufacturing consent for Israeli aggression against Iran

By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | October 27, 2024
In a twisted interpretation and in line with the preestablished propaganda narrative, the Western media unanimously declared Israel’s aggression against Iran as “retaliation.”
From CNN to Fox News to Axios to the New York Times to the Washington Post – all major Western media outlets rallied behind the Tel Aviv regime as it added fuel to the already raging flames.
In the early hours of Saturday, the regime jets carried out a fresh act of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, attacking several sites in Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam provinces with missiles.
Although most of the missiles were intercepted and the military damage was minor, the regime’s move represented a serious escalation as four servicemen on Iranian soil were martyred in the attacks.
The motive for the attack was face-saving after a barrage of Iranian ballistic attacks pounded Israeli military and intelligence sites earlier this month that again laid bare the inefficacy of much-hyped Israeli air defense systems such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow.
Iran’s ‘Operation True Promise II’ was carried out as a response to the cowardly assassinations of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Iranian military commander Abbas Nilforoushan by the Israeli regime.
Iran’s military action was in full accordance with its inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, and a direct response to the regime’s repeated acts of aggression, including the violation of Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Manipulative headlines used by major US television networks and newspapers
The same applied to ‘Operation True Promise I’ in April when Iran retaliated after the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
These facts, however, were deliberately disregarded by most of the Western media outlets while reporting on Saturday’s aggression against Iran, offering the audience a decontextualized interpretation of the Israeli regime as a victim “retaliating” against the Iranian attack.
Manipulative headlines
A cursory look at Western media, of which a sample of about 20 are selected here, it is noticeable that they all shaped the headline in the same suggestive way, using the same terminology.
The term “retaliation” has been used by all these outlets for the Israeli act of aggression against Iran, while also employing other terms such as “reprisal”, “response” and “payback,” while ignoring the full sequence of events that have shaped this region in the past year.
The list of media outlets that employed such terminology includes major US networks CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, together covering over three-quarters of the American audience.
It also includes six of America’s most circulated newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Post.
Among them, Fox News went the farthest in its pro-Zionist bias, stating in its headline that Israeli “retaliatory” strikes against Iran followed a “missile barrage targeting Israelis,” although only military targets were precisely targeted and there were no settler casualties.

The Washington Post stated that the Israeli attacks add to the “cycle of tit-for-tat strikes” between the two sides, without specifying who started that cycle by provocatively targeting the other side.
Most other media outlets in the story summary and the text itself treated the Iranian retaliatory ballistic attack as the “cause” and did not mention what preceded it.
In this way, media analysts say, the deception of the majority of the American public has been completely achieved and there has been no progress since the times when by similar propaganda methods they turned the majority of the population for military aggressions in the West Asia region.
Other US media that resorted to the same distortions by describing Israeli aggression as “retaliatory” are the news agency Associated Press (AP), National Public Radio (NPR), the state propaganda broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), news websites Al-Monitor and Axios, etc.
Among the international media, the same terminology in the headlines was also used by the French pan-European television network EuroNews, the newspaper Le Monde, the British television news channel Sky News, the Saudi television network Al Arabiya, Emirati news website The National, and of course, the Israeli media.
Congruently, the headline of the five mentioned major American television networks for the Iranian retaliatory attack from the beginning of the month was again almost uniform, “Iran launches missile attack on Israel,” without mentioning that it was retaliatory in nature.

Headlines in Western media seek to manufacture consent for Israeli terrorism
These identical headlines with unanimous manipulation of the context are by no means a coincidence, according to media analysts, but a reflection of centralized propaganda emanating from the top of the American regime and projected further onto the media and client states.
Such statements and the aforementioned media headlines are the result of unquestioningly following the official American narrative that the Israeli regime is a “victim” and that their aggressions on all surrounding countries are “the right of self-defense.”
Social media users took to X to call out the hypocrisy of Western media outlets.
“This is ridiculous pro-Israel propaganda in the media. Israel’s attack on Iran was not “retaliatory”; Iran’s response to Israel was retaliatory,” wrote journalist Ben Norton.
“Israel started this by first bombing Iran’s consulate in Syria, then launching an attack inside Tehran, then killing an IRGC general.”
Peter Daou, a political analyst, said these distortions are how the propaganda works.
“You’ll notice mainstream US media outlets using the word “retaliatory” in describing Israel’s attack on Iran. That’s how state propaganda works,” he wrote.
The Kims Are Coming!
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | October 26, 2024
After a few cat and mouse days of Defense Secretary Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin’s denials, the Pentagon finally yesterday affirmed that there was evidence of a North Korean military presence in Russia. Asked what they were doing in Russia, Austin replied, “What exactly they are doing? Left to be seen. These are things that we need to sort out.”
For days, South Korea (no conflict of interest there) and Ukraine (nor there) had been claiming that thousands of North Korean soldiers had swooped in to rescue a beaten and bloodied Russian army from certain defeat at the hands of Ukraine (which has lost nearly a million men at arms in the nearly three year war). As the Russian army accelerates its pace, burning through the last fortified towns in eastern Ukraine, the mainstream media continues – with a few reluctant but panicked exceptions – to push the “Russia is losing” narrative.
The added twist of thousands of “evil communists” from North Korea screaming across the Russian tundra (on horseback, no doubt) promises to add new plot lines to the drama concocted by the mainstream media and most of Washington, and indeed the usual suspects are biting furiously at the bait.
Take US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael Turner. He is so outraged that there might be members of the North Korean military in Russia that he actually sent a letter to President Biden calling for war. “If North Korean military forces join Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Fox News reported him to say, “the US should consider the possibility of direct military action.”
Against whom? We are already involved in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine. We are already directly involved in Israel’s seven-front war against its neighbors and Iran. Who does Chairman Turner think we should attack if North Korean troops are present in Russia? Russia? North Korea? China? All of them?
North Korea and Russia have just signed a treaty whereby their two militaries will more closely collaborate and even come to each other’s aid if one is threatened. While such an agreement may give Turner and the other neocons the vapors, it is nothing different than the mutual defense treaty the US has with its NATO partners and with many others on a bipartisan basis.
Treaties for me but not for thee? Is that the name of the “rules-based international order” game?
The hypocrisy runs even deeper. It is well-known and widely reported that NATO countries are training Ukrainian troops not only in NATO countries but inside Ukraine itself. So it’s absolutely fine for the US and its NATO partners to insert troops inside Ukraine to train its military to kill more Russians and to even operate sophisticated weapons systems inside Ukraine that the Ukrainian military could never operate on its own, but if Russia strikes up a deal with North Korea where the two armies can train together inside Russia, it’s a “red line” (as Chairman Turner wrote) that demands that we start WWIII.
It seems we are not sending our best and brightest to Congress.
What we are witnessing is the birth of a new narrative after some 500 Ukraine narratives have already collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions. Remember the two years of “Russia is losing” narrative? Well just this week NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, said in an interview with the German Spiegel magazine that Russia would emerge from this conflict actually STRONGER than when it entered!
But of course they are losing…
So what to do? Just as the Hollywood writers do once a sit-com has run too many seasons and is playing itself out, plot-wise, insert a new character. Insert a new twist, to bamboozle the viewers and give them a new reason to keep watching the program. It’s funny but not funny, because the future of the world hangs in the balance. Just like the film “Idiocracy” has become a documentary in our absurd times, so has “Wag the Dog.” The military industrial complex with its Hollywood-like allies producing endless narratives to keep the gravy train rolling…
P.S. if anyone believes this whole insane and hysterical anti-North Korea narrative is not political…well I have a bridge in Brazoria, TX, to sell you…
This article first appeared as an exclusive for Ron Paul Institute subscribers. Subscribe for free here.
Joe Biden Allowed His Friend Bibi to Destroy His Presidency and Legacy
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 22, 2024
In 2020, amid lockdowns, Joe Biden prevailed in the election, running his campaign from his home. Biden was clearly experiencing significant cognitive decline, so the American people were presented with a carefully choreographed message that a vote for Biden was a return to normalcy.
Since Donald Trump descended the golden escalator, Americans have been subject to a non-stop barrage from establishment media and politicians wailing that we are in an existential battle for our country’s soul. We were told Russia hacked the election, Trump was Hitler, Democracy was on the ballot, and the sitting president was bowing to dictators around the world.
But Biden would save us: no more inflammatory rhetoric, no more prosecutions of the political opposition, and a more stable world.
While Biden was never going to return the US to a normal country in a normal time, he had the potential to significantly de-escalate America’s foreign entanglements. However, during his time in the Oval Office, 46 has done the opposite, starting wars and undermining international norms.
Upon taking office, Biden had two easy foreign policy victories he could have secured. Firstly, the current White House could have followed Trump’s deal with the Taliban and exited Afghanistan in a coordinated manner during May 2021.
Rather, the White House mishandled the situation, first by pushing back the exit from Afghanistan until September, the height of the Afghan fighting season. By then, the US-built government in Kabul had collapsed. This chaos culminated in an ISIS-K bombing at the Kabul airport that killed hundreds of desperate Afghans and 13 US soldiers.
Botching Iran Talks
The other easy win for the new president was returning to the Iran Nuclear Deal. Negotiated during the Barack Obama administration, the deal implemented additional safeguards on Iran’s civilian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Tehran was entirely in compliance with the deal in May of 2018 when Trump unilaterally pulled out of the agreement at Tel Aviv’s behest. Washington then placed crippling sanctions on Iran aimed at cutting the Islamic Republic’s oil output to a minimum.
Upon taking office, Biden could have easily negotiated with the moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to return to the deal and lift the sanctions. But, the Biden team was determined to demand Tehran agree to a “longer and stronger” agreement, and at the same time, looked the other way as Israel began attacking Iranian shipping and nuclear facilities.
Over the following two years, US and Iranian officials would engage in several rounds of indirect talks while Israel continued to attack Iranian shipping and conducted assassinations and other sabotage inside Iran. Under those conditions, a deal was never reached, and talks were abandoned last year.
Pushing Tehran from the table and the crippling economic sanctions on Iran had an important impact on Biden’s Ukraine policy.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Washington and its NATO partners engaged in a two-front strategy to use Ukrainian soldiers to bleed and “weaken” Russian invaders. The first was providing billions in weapons, training, and intelligence. The second was launching an economic war to cripple and isolate the Russian economy and bring the Kremlin’s war machine to a halt.
However, as the Iran Nuclear Deal is what ostensibly tied Tehran to Western economies, once the war broke out, the Islamic Republic saw no downside in strengthening its ties with Moscow. Additionally, as is the case with Iran, Russia’s main export is energy. The law of supply and demand says it would have been easier to push the Russian supply off the market if the US was not attempting to simultaneously remove the Iranian oil supply.
Genocide, War, Annexation
After a few years out of power, Netanyahu returned to his post as Prime Minister of Israel, leading a far-right-wing government in late 2022. That government included two extremist settlers in key positions who made clear a top priority was the annexation of the West Bank.
That government ushered in a brutal regime for the Palestinians, with 2023 killings in the West Bank before October 7 reaching a multi-year high.
Still, when Hamas broke the Israeli siege of Gaza on October 7, the White House pretended that Israel had been a normal democracy, not a declared Jewish state with apartheid oppression directed at the native Arab population.
The White House was a key amplifier of the atrocity propaganda put out by Tel Aviv following the Hamas attack. This gave Israel an unlimited blank check for killing in Gaza.
Netanyahu has cashed in that check for $23 billion in military aid from the US, Washington’s protection from UN resolutions at the Security Council, and the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, thousands of Lebanese civilians, and hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank.
The killing has intentionally targeted civilians and civilian targets such as hospitals, schools, shelters, and aid convoys. After each Israeli war crime, the US State Department acts as an Israeli PR firm and insists the world must blame Hamas, not Israel.
What Happened to International Law?
So now President Biden has spent the final year of his presidency providing arms to Netanyahu so his government can commit war crimes every day. This is the same president who has insisted to every American that we must send nearly $200 billion to Ukraine to defend international law.
If Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine, why can Israel invade Lebanon?
If Russia is violating international law to extend its border, why is Israel allowed to continue settlement expansion in the West Bank?
If Russia was wrong to detain American journalists in Russia, why has Israel been allowed to kill at least 170 Palestinian journalists, including Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen?
If Russia is wrong to attack civilian targets in Ukraine, why has Israel been allowed to destroy nearly every hospital, school, and shelter in Gaza?
One could go on at some length citing the myriad hypocrisies intrinsic to Biden’s murderous foreign policy. When it comes to starving the people of Gaza, assassinations in Iran, bombing diplomatic facilities in Syria, and attacking UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon, it’s clear that Netanyahu wipes his ass with the international “rules-based order” that Joe Biden claims to love so much on a daily basis.
Currently, Americans care more about domestic issues, but history will evaluate Biden by his elective and catastrophic wars. The x-rays of Israeli bullets lodged into the brains of Palestine’s pre-teen children will define the legacy of Biden and his good pal Bibi during the coming decades.
EU President Likens Free Speech to Infectious Disease
Ursula von der Leyen advocates “pre-bunking” in the public forum to “vaccinate” people against “disinformation”
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | October 23, 2024
EU President Ursula von der Leyen just joined the ranks of former Senator John Kerry and other globalist ghouls in declaring war on free speech by perversely proclaiming that the EU citizenry needs to be “vaccinated against disinformation.”
Like every censor in history, she characterizes her censorship program as a means of expunging erroneous information and ideas from public discourse. By using the word “disinformation,” she implies that she and her clique are already the sole possessors of the truth about everything, and that everyone who has and shares heterodox ideas is necessarily in error.
Her entire premise is FALSE for the following reasons:
1). Knowledge about the world is constantly evolving through constant inquiry, discussion, and dissemination. Knowledge is NOT a static thing. This is why countries with stifling censorship regimes have experienced intellectual, scientific, and artistic stagnation. Their rulers try to freeze the human mind in its state at their moment in history.
2). NO state, university, or ecclesiastical committee has ever been in possession of the full truth of any matter. Official orthodoxies have always been challenged by heterodox thinkers. Indeed, virtually every major advance in human insight has been performed by heterodox thinkers.
3). As John Milton observed in his 1644 pamphlet, Areopagitica, contending with error is an intrinsic part of learning and discovery. We literally learn by making mistakes and correcting them. If free speech is suppressed for the objective of preventing the propagation of erroneous thought—or “vaccinating against it”—it will become extremely difficult if not impossible for people to learn and discover.
4). Without a single exception in history, the people who hold power always advocate the orthodoxy that sustains and extends their power and that of their friends and supporters.
Ursula von der Leyen is the quintessence of this principle. As president of the EU, she conducted secret negotiations with Pfizer CEO to purchase a 20 billion Euros of Pfizer’s fraudulent and dangerous vaccine so that it could be inflicted on all the citizens of the European Union. She is currently under criminal investigation for her conduct in this affair that has come to be known as Pfizergate.
It takes a special kind of chutzpah for a powerful state official who is probably guilty of committing a major crime—a crime that has been systematically and ruthlessly concealed—to lecture the public about the need for censorship. The time has come for the citizens of Europe to rid themselves of Ursula von der Leyen and her clique of corrupt tyrants.
To be sure, there is increasing evidence that the Biden Administration has been exerting pressure on Germany—which remains an American vassal state—and the EU to step up its censorship regime. I will cover this strange development in a subsequent post.
US Government Behind Campaign Violating North Korean Airspace
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – October 23, 2024
North Korea has recently warned against the use of drones over its sovereign airspace to spread subversive propaganda.
CNN in its October 11, 2024 article, “North Korea accuses South of flying drones over Pyongyang,” reported, “North Korea accused South Korea of flying propaganda-filled drones over Pyongyang and threatened “retaliation,” state media reported.”
The same article admits that “South Korean activists and North Korean defectors have sent balloons to the North, loaded with propaganda material criticizing leader Kim Jong Un, along with USB sticks filled with K-pop songs and South Korean television shows.”
What the article omitted is that this campaign is not an organic activity carried out by independent activists, but a campaign of subversion organized and funded by the US government.
A US State Department Provocation…
As early as 2014, the Western media promoted what was called, “Thumb Drives for Democracy,” a campaign organized by the New York-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF).
The Atlantic published an article in early 2014 titled, “We Hacked North Korea With Balloons and USB Drives,” by HRF founder Thor Halvorssen, which admits its balloons carry “subversive information” meant to undermine the North Korean government. It also admits that before HRF began its campaign, “the U.S. government provided support for these groups through the National Endowment for Democracy* and the State Department’s DRL [The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs] programs.”
The balloons were just one part of a much wider campaign of subversion and ultimately regime change.
HRF also organizes the annual “Oslo Freedom Forum” (OFF) funded in part by the Freedom Fund, which includes the US State Department as a “key investor.” The OFF is a continuation of US State Department-funded training programs gathering agitators from around the globe, training, funding, and equipping them to then return to their respective nations and attempt to overthrow them.
The New York Times in its 2011 article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” admits the US government prepared years ahead of the so-called “Arab Spring,” backing the core organizations that ultimately carried it out across the Middle East and North Africa. The article explicitly states:
A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
Clearly, HRF serves as an intermediary continuing US government-funded sedition around the globe in a way more difficult to trace directly back to the US government itself. Its objectives nonetheless remain to undermine, divide, destabilize, and overthrow nations targeted by the US State Department for regime change, including North Korea.
More Than Just Balloons…
Considering the aftermath of the admittedly US-engineered “Arab Spring” which included the full-scale destruction of Libya, a deeply divided Egypt, and a nearly destroyed Syria, North Korea’s concerns regarding similar US government-sponsored activities being aimed at it falls far short of an overreaction.
The CNN article reporting on North Korea’s recent warning notes that previous South Korean governments prohibited the use of balloons to spread subversive information across North Korea, recognizing the role it plays in damaging relations and raising tensions. This decision has since been reversed by a client regime more obedient to Washington.
This years-long campaign of subversion aimed at North Korea eventually prompted North Korea itself to respond with its own balloons laden with garbage. The collective Western media depicted this action out of context, omitting the US government-sponsored program targeting North Korea for over a decade, or that the ultimate goal of the campaign is “Arab Spring-style” regime change.
In 2023, when a Chinese weather balloon flew off course across the continental United States, headlines were undulated with hysteria and hostility toward China. The US Department of Defense, without providing evidence, identified it as a “high-altitude surveillance balloon,” implying it was spying on American territory. F-22 fighter jets were eventually deployed, launching air-to-air missiles at the balloon, destroying it off the eastern US coast.
Clearly, the US government itself desires other nations to respect its airspace, considering the unauthorized flight of any object, including balloons, as a potential danger to both national security and public safety. Yet, it is funding a program admittedly designed to subvert the government of a sovereign nation by flying balloons and now most likely drones into its airspace, obviously endangering both national security and public safety.
South Koreans may be convinced that the greatest obstacle to peace on the Korean Peninsula lies across the northern border, but the US has repeatedly demonstrated that it itself obstructs peace for the Korean people, and deliberately so. Continued tensions allows the US to perpetually justify the presence of its military on the Peninsula – not to defend South Korea from North Korea – but to encircle and threaten South Korea’s largest trade partner – China.
While Washington has appointed itself underwriter of stability on the Korean Peninsula, peace cannot be achieved as long as this deliberate obstruction to it remains stubbornly entrenched upon it.
ECHR orders Russia to compensate ‘foreign agents’
RT | October 23, 2024
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Russia to pay out hundreds of thousands of euros in compensation to 107 organizations and individuals it has designated as ‘foreign agents’. Russia rejected the court’s jurisdiction after leaving the Council of Europe in 2022.
Russia’s foreign agent law, similar to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, was first adopted in 2012 and expanded in 2022. It requires anyone who receives support from abroad or is under the influence of entities from outside the country to register and be labeled as such. The designation does not ban persons or entities from operating in Russia, but introduces a range of restrictions. Those in violation of the law face fines of up to 5 million rubles and up to six years in prison.
Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin has explained that the law is necessary in order to protect the country’s sovereignty and “prevent outside interference in internal affairs.”
A number of these individuals and organizations have since filed a joint complaint with the ECHR, including Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, the International Memorial and the Memorial Human Rights Center, journalist Yuri Dud, opposition activist Lyubov Sobol, who is also designated as an extremist, and political scientist Ekaterina Shulman.
In a ruling published on Tuesday, the ECHR claimed that the law violates the rights of NGOs, media organizations, and individuals by introducing “restrictions on their freedom of expression and association” and infringing on the individual applicants’ “right to respect for private life.” The court also claimed that those who received the designation have been “discriminated against and subjected to restrictions” that are not in line with the ECHR’s conventions.
“The Court held that Russia was to pay the applicants amounts ranging from 5,500 euros (EUR) to EUR 10,000 [$5,900-$10,700] in respect of non-pecuniary damage, and various other amounts in respect of pecuniary damage and costs and expenses, indicated in the appendix to the judgment,” the ECHR said in a press release outlining the ruling.
While Russia has yet to comment on the ECHR’s decision, the court’s jurisdiction was earlier rejected, with President Vladimir Putin signing a law nullifying all ECHR verdicts after March 15. The move came after Russia left the Council of Europe (COE) in 2022, accusing the body of taking a blatantly anti-Russian stance and turning into an “obedient instrument” of the West, while becoming immersed in “double standards.”
Last year, in light of the ECHR accepting complaints from individuals and entities declared ‘foreign agents’ by Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin described the court as a “mad printer rubber-stamping politically charged complaints against Russia,” while “censoring” any cases considered to be linked to Russian interests.
EU accuses Russia of ‘unprecedented’ referendum interference
RT | October 21, 2024
Brussels has accused Moscow of pressuring Moldova over its EU integration referendum and presidential election on Sunday.
A constitutional amendment which sets the goal of eventually joining the European Union is poised to pass by a razor-thin margin. Russia has called the vote unfree and described it as suspicious.
On Monday, EU spokesman Peter Stano said, “We noted that this vote took place under unprecedented interference and intimidation by Russia and its proxies aiming to destabilize the democratic processes.”
Early results reported by Moldovan election officials indicated a slight majority of votes cast against the constitutional amendment proposed by pro-Western President Maia Sandu, who is running for a second term in office. During counting overnight, the pro-integration vote pulled into the lead.
Sandu declared victory on the issue after 98.6% of the votes were counted, with preliminary results showing 50.27% of the vote cast in favor and 49.73% against. Moldovan citizens residing in Western nations, whose ballots were counted last, reportedly tipped the balance in favor of the initiative.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the dynamics of the tally were “difficult to explain.”
“Any observers with basic understanding of political processes can attest to those anomalies with the vote count,” Peskov said. He added that considering Chisinau’s crackdown on the opposition, the reported outcome was significant.
Moscow previously claimed that the Moldovan government restricted the ability of citizens living in Russia to participate in the vote. Only two polling stations worked in the country, with 5,000 ballots available at each, while an estimated 500,000 Moldovan citizens live in Russia, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier this month.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) praised Moldovan officials for the organization of the election, but acknowledged that it had issues with opposition representation. The conditions “did not provide the contestants with a level playing field,” Urszula Gacek, the head of the body’s observer mission, said on Monday.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Moldova earlier this month to meet with Sandu and announce an EU plan to invest €1.8 billion ($1.95bn) in the country’s economy between 2025 and 2027. She urged Moldovans to vote for the president’s proposal.
American Killed By Israeli Bombardment of Lebanon

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 6, 2024
A Michigan man is one of more than one thousand people in southern Lebanon killed by Israel over the past two weeks. Israel has conducted massive bombardments of its northern neighbor, often using American weapons to perform the operations.
Kamel Ahmad Jawad was killed in southern Lebanon Tuesday morning, according to his family. He frequently made trips where he provided financial support and other assistance to the people of southern Lebanon.
Israel has ramped up its attacks in Lebanon over the past several weeks. Last month, Tel Aviv conducted multiple widespread terror attacks by planting explosives in small electric devices. Then, Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah after he accepted a ceasefire deal.
The assassination of Nasrallah kicked off a large-scale bombing campaign and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel has hit a number of civilian targets, often claiming some kind of Hezbollah assets were hidden in homes and other structures.
The State Department said it was “aware and alarmed” regarding Jawad’s death, but did not go on to condemn or threaten Tel Aviv for the murder.
Throughout the Joe Biden administration, there has been a distinct difference in reaction compared to when Americans are killed by Israel or if they are killed by a militant in a resistance group.
For example, the State Department regularly mentions the Americans who were killed and captured by Hamas on October 7 to justify the unlimited US support for Israel. However, when Israeli forces kill Americans, the White House allows Tel Aviv to investigate itself and accepts the often dubious results of the inquiry that absolves Israeli forces of any wrongdoing.
Reporters Without Borders’ Attack on Sputnik and RT Highlights NGO’s Status as ‘Media Wing of NATO’
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 30.09.2024
Reporters Without Borders has published a sensationalist report on Russian media’s work in the Balkans as part of a new project known as ‘The Propaganda Monitor’, accusing Sputnik and RT of spreading “disinformation” and demanding a crackdown by the EU. Balkan affairs expert Stevan Gajic tells Sputnik why such fearmongering doesn’t work on Serbs.
Reporters Without Borders’ (French acronym RSF) new ‘Propaganda Monitoring’ multimedia minisite promises to “promote reliable journalism” by exposing “the many faces and tactics behind propaganda worldwide, bolstering the public’s understanding of the information space and helping them navigate it more safely.”
Russian media, including Sputnik and RT, have become the self-anointed Paris-headquartered media watchdog’s first target, with RSF rolling out a series of articles on Russian media’s ability to find evade censorship, custom-tailor content, and in Serbia’s case, transmit so-called “Kremlin propaganda in the Balkans despite EU sanctions.”
RSF wants the European Union and its members to “hold Serbia accountable for hosting Vladimir Putin’s factory of lies,” spending much of its investigation complaining about Russian media’s refusal to answer its loaded questions, whining about its successes captivating local audiences, and crying about Serbia’s receptiveness to hosting Russian outlets.
“Reporters Without Borders cannot be regarded as a reliable source because every line in this report is soaked with biased language,” Belgrade-based Balkan affairs expert and Institute of European Studies research associate Stevan Gajic told Sputnik, commenting on RSF’s report.
“The motivation” behind RSF’s demands for a crackdown comes down to its status as “a media wing of NATO, a media wing of the collective West. This is a pure Freudian projection. They are accusing others of what they are doing themselves,” Gajic stressed.
“Where were Reporters Without Borders when Radio Television of Serbia was bombed in 1999 and when 16 TV staff were murdered in cold blood?” the observer asked, referencing the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. There is no credibility from people like this who did not act when they should have,” the observer recalled.
Narratives by RSF and others about Sputnik and RT being threats that need to be silenced have a clear end goal: “to nullify any kind of information coming from the other side to hush, to silence everybody who is not playing along NATO’s narrative. And this is especially a problem for NATO and for these puppet organizations, such as journalists with Reporters Without Borders, during times of war,” Gajic said.
As for RSF claims about RT’s spreading of “Kremlin narratives” in Serbia, Gajic emphasized that “pro-Russian sentiment amongst the Serbs has nothing to with the Kremlin, and everything to do with Washington and NATO.”
“Serbs are now more militantly pro-Russian because we were in a war against NATO and actually NATO was conducting and still is conducting hybrid aggression against us. I think that this speaks volumes about the falsehood of the presumptions and of the conclusions [made by RSF, ed.]. You can see how unrealistic and completely detached these people are from the reality, and how they are not really conducting deep research to see what is going on and how come,” Gajic said.
RSF’s conclusions are patently ridiculous, the observer suggested, highlighting the absurdity of “the presumption… that if it weren’t for RT and Sputnik, everybody, I guess in the Balkans and in Serbia and amongst the Serbs especially would be thrilled with the EU and NATO and so forth.”
“The new wave of the pro-Russian sentiment in Serbia was primarily created by the West. It was created by the West systematically targeting the Serbs for the last 30 years, since the moment of the breakdown of the bipolar global system” in place during the Cold War. Serbs became “the prime target,” a “Voodoo doll” for the West to “sting the Serbs in order for the Russians to feel pain,” according to Gajic.
“They were always demonstrating on us what they would like to do with Russia. That’s why many Serbs in the past said that all the wars we had with NATO and their proxies in the Balkans were actually just a preparation for a war that we are now seeing against Russia. That’s why I think the conclusion [of the RSF’s report, ed.] is false, because it comes from the presumption that if there were no ‘Russian propaganda’, quote-unquote, somehow people would feel different toward NATO.”


