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Media Disinformation on Purported Aleppo Atrocities Fits Historical Pattern

By Matt Peppe | Just the Facts | February 5, 2017

It has been several months since the barrage of nightmarish reports about the horrors in East Aleppo as the Syrian government army prepared to drive out the remaining rebels from the city in mid December. Purported “activists” posted their “goodbye” messages, claiming they feared they would be slaughtered by government forces. Women were said to have chosen suicide over rape. And most widely disseminated of all were reports that regime soldiers had executed 82 civilians, including women and children. (See here, here, here, here and here.) None of these shocking reports were verified by journalists on the ground. Though none of the news media admitted it, there were no foreign journalists in East Aleppo because they feared being kidnapped and killed by the al Qaeda-aligned rebels, as American reporter James Foley had been in 2014. But after hostilities concluded in East Aleppo with the rebels being driven out of the city, the same organizations who propagated the doomsday narrative have shown no interest in examining it and setting the record straight.

There have been no indications that anyone inside East Aleppo who posted a goodbye message was actually harmed. Lina Shamy, who miraculously enjoyed a reliable Wi-Fi connection and a steady supply of power to tweet constantly and grant Skype interviews from East Aleppo, warned on Dec. 12, 2016 that “this may be my last video. More than 50,000 civilians who rebelled against the dictator al-Assad are threatened with field executions or are dying under bombing.” CNN published this terrifying message from Shamy along with another in which she claimed “genocide is still ongoing!”

But Shamy was not executed upon the government taking control of the city. Instead, she was evacuated by the government out of the city. She is now living freely and recounting her experience in the pages of the New York Times, where she falsely blamed attacks on evacuation buses on the government’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA). In reality, it was the rebels who set fire to the buses full of civilians and imperiled the peaceful evacuations.

As for reports of executions of 82 civilians by government troops, it does not appear that anyone has followed up by presenting any evidence that this actually happened. There have been no names of the 82 people allegedly killed, no photos, no bodies, and no grave sites indicating that mass murder had occurred.

Perhaps this should not come as a surprise. The original reports were completely unsubstantiated, based on nothing more than one United Nations official repeating hearsay. News media relied on the authority of the United Nations to bolster the credibility of their headlines (“UN says civilians shot on the spot.”) Amnesty International took the UN reports at face value and said they “point to apparent war crimes,” phrasing meant to prejudice legal claims against the Syrian government while deflecting responsibility for making them.

The reports came from a single official: Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Colville told a news conference that in addition to 82 civilians (including dozens of women and children) reportedly killed by government troops, the death toll could actually be much higher, Buried deep below the headlines in the news coverage, we come across an important caveat. Colville admitted “it was hard to verify the reports.”

Rather than present evidence of these horrible atrocities, Colville admits that they are merely rumors from an undisclosed source. To present this as an factual finding of the United Nations is like taking a prosecutor’s opening argument and saying it was the decision of the jury at the end of the trial. If the media was really interested in reporting the truth, they would frame the allegations skeptically rather than treat them as settled and proven.

But the purpose of media in the United States and Western democracies is not to report the truth but to reinforce the government’s position by accepting the fundamental validity of its narrative. As Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman write in Manufacturing Consent, “(a) propaganda model suggests that the ‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state.” [1]

It is evident that the political and military establishment is fixated on regime change in Syria, and thus has chosen to align with Syria’s local al-Qaeda affiliate — if not directly then indirectly by supporting groups that make common cause in fighting under their command. The propaganda model would predict that the media would portray the Assad government as uniquely cruel and savage, and the opponents of the regime as worthy victims of the Syrian government’s evilness.

Thus it should not be surprising that after the re-capture of East Aleppo actual evidence of a massacre was discovered, but was ignored.  Since the evidence pointed to atrocities by the rebels against the government, instead of vice versa, it went unreported in the Western press.

In late December, 100 government soldiers were found dead inside East Aleppo. Video by Syrian “activists” showed that at least some of the dead soldiers had been captured days earlier, suggesting they were executed rather than killed in battle. Despite photographic and video evidence, these deaths were not worthy of being covered by CNN, the New York Times, the BBC or other outlets who did report on unverified accusations of executions by the other side.

The Hue and Racak “Massacres”

Several historical examples are useful to see how stories that coincide with the government line are amplified by the media, no matter how little evidence exists. Later, when evidence emerges which calls into question the original narrative, the media simply ignore it and it is lost to history.

During the U.S. aggression against Vietnam, the brutality and viciousness of the “Communists” was exemplified in the American public imagination by the “Hue Massacre” in January 1968. The official narrative was that North Vietnamese troops, while retreating from the city of Hue after the Tet offensive, carried out indiscriminate massacres of civilians and buried them in mass graves.

London Times correspondent Stewart Harris reported in March 1968 that Hue Police Chief Doan Cong Lap claimed there had been 200 killings and a mass grave discovered with 300 bodies. The next month, the Saigon government’s propaganda agency put out a report claiming there were 1,000 victims of a Communist massacre, many of whom had been buried alive. After this was not picked up, the U.S. State Department put out the same report the following week. It was duly splashed across all the major American newspapers.

“The story was not questioned, despite the fact that no Western journalist had ever been taken to see the grave sites when the bodies were uncovered,” write Chomsky and Herman in The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism. “On the contrary, French photographer Marc Riboud was repeatedly denied permission to see one of the sites where the Province Chief claimed 300 civilian government workers had been executed by the Communists. When he was finally taken by helicopter to the alleged site, the pilot refused to land, claiming the area was ‘insecure.’ ” [2]

Subsequently, a purported “captured document” was found that allegedly showed Communists had admitted to killing 2,748 people. This was taken at face value and became the new official version of the incident.

In reality, a vicious U.S.-led assault to recapture Hue had resulted in massive casualties. Photographer Philip Jones Griffiths wrote that most of the victims were killed by the air assault. The dead were falsely designated as victims of a Communist massacre.

Gareth Porter, who thoroughly investigated the events in Hue, described his findings as follows:
The available evidence – not from NLF sources but from official U.S. and Saigon documents and from independent observers, indicates that the official story of an indiscriminate slaughter of those who were considered to be unsympathetic to the NLF is a complete fabrication. Not only is the number of bodies uncovered in and around Hue open to question, but more important, the cause of death appears to have been shifted from the fighting itself to NLF execution. And the most detailed and ‘authoritative’ account of the alleged executions put together by either government does not stand up under examination. But there was never any attempt by the mainstream Western press who were so quick to amplify the U.S. government’s accounts to investigate what really happened and set the record straight if their findings did not match the initial story. Nor was there any interest in investigating casualties in Hue when there was substantial evidence that they were caused by the U.S. military and forces loyal to the military dictatorship they were supporting.

30 years later in Kosovo, the Western media reported the latest massacre by the evil forces of an official enemy. In this case, the Serbian military had allegedly murdered 45 unarmed Kosovo Albanians in the village of Racak. The first reports of a “massacre” and a “crime against humanity” in Racak were pronounced by Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission head William Walker.

On January 18, 1999, Chief International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia prosecutor Louise Arbour showed up at the border of Kosovo and demanded entry to investigate the incident. In March, U.S. President Bill Clinton would use the pretext of Racak to justify an illegal air war against Serbia when he declared, “(w)e should remember what happened in the village of Racak, where innocent men, women and children were taken from their homes to a gully, forced to kneel in the dirt, sprayed with gunfire — not because of anything they had done, but because of who they were.” [3]

Clinton’s version was created out of whole cloth. There were no women and children, and there was no evidence the dead had been marched from their homes and forced to kneel in the dirt. The Serbian government determined that there was only 22 men, and that the deaths had resulted from a fire fight during a police action to catch Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters who had killed four policeman the week before.

While the Serb version, which was exculpatory to their own side, should not be accepted at face value either, it does raise possibilities worth examining. There was a context that could explain the dead bodies, i.e., heavy fighting between KLA and Serbian forces. As Michael Mandel writes in How America Gets Away with Murder: “to the extent that there was a massacre, it was provoked by the KLA as part of a deliberate and consistent pattern aimed at bringing on NATO’s military intervention.” Mandel notes that even NATO supporters such as Michael Ignatieff had written several months before that KLA tactics “were not a miscalculation, but a deliberate strategy” designed to force Serbian forces to overreact and force NATO to intervene on the KLA’s side. [4]

It is not hard to see the double standard by which the media operates when reporting alleged atrocities by enemies of the U.S. government. Actual massacres by the U.S. armed forces are portrayed as one-off cases attributable to low-level rogue offices, like My Lai in Vietnam, or as honest mistakes and collateral damage, like the Kunduz hospital bombing in Afghanistan. Even in the wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent noncombatants, like the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the systematic carpet bombing of vast swaths of Cambodia and Laos, U.S. actions are never conceived of as evidence of barbarity and indiscriminate violence. Whereas atrocities by the other side are unfailingly portrayed as unprovoked mass murder, unconscionable examples of the enemy’s lack of humanity and indicative of the difference between us and them.

The mainstream media is best understood as an appendage of the government and ruling class interests, one which functions as part of a propaganda system that has nothing to do with providing with facts, but rather creating an acceptable ideological framework for its audience. This explains why the media exhibits such a blatant confirmation bias. In this light, it should be anything but surprising that the story about the Syrian government executing 82 civilians can become an official historical fact without any serious attempt to verify the actual course of events either at the time they happened, or after the fog of war has cleared.

References

[1] Chomsky, Noam and Edward S. Herman. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon, 2011. Kindle edition. (Loc. 7556)

[2] Chomsky, Noam and Edward S. Herman. The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume 1. Boston: South End Press, 1979. (pp. 346)
[3] Quoted in Mandel, Michael. How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity. Pluto Press, 2004. Kindle edition. (Loc. 1737)

[4] Mandel, Michael. How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity. Pluto Press, 2004. Kindle edition. (Loc. 1820)

February 8, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

All the News That Fits the Agenda

Mainstream journalists have betrayed their calling

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • February 7, 2017

The Editorial page of The Washington Post newspaper generally holds to its current progressive-dominated program consisting of anti-racism, pro-diversity plus multiculturalism, “choice,” LGBTQ “rights,” and, ironically, constant war. It is not noted for its sense of humor except on Saturday morning when it runs a number of cartoons ridiculing Donald Trump.

All of which contributed to my surprise when I read a piece on January 29th penned by no less than Fred Hiatt, the Editorial and opinion pages editor. Fred, a Harvard graduate, of course, has been around at The Post since 2000. His foreign policy is pure John McCain and his domestic policy is Elizabeth Warren. Apparently kicking around people overseas is okay while in the United States white male Christian heterosexuals in particular can be targeted with impunity, but no one else.

Hiatt’s piece entitled “Trump considers the media his enemy. We shouldn’t treat him as ours” is the type of faux high-minded nonsense that one expects from the new breed of journalist that considers that reporting a story is not enough. For them, it is far more important to actually be the story through selective use of available information and the random insertion of opinion disguised as fact.

But back to Hiatt’s clearly robust sense of humor. He cited presidential adviser Stephen Bannon’s labeling the media the “opposition party,” noting that press-phobia is not exactly unusual for any White House, but warning “it is vital that we not become that party.” Rather than take on the Administration aggressively by exposing its lies, shutting it out or “be[ing] the voice of the other side,” the media should not “answer dishonest or partisan journalism” with “more partisan journalism, which would only harm our credibility.”

Hiatt’s answer to the “dishonest or partisan” journalism problem is “professionalism: to do your jobs according to the highest standards, as always.” He then adds “So far, I believe The Post has been setting the standard in this difficult job. It is not boasting for me to say so…” Regarding his own particularly bailiwick the “opinion side of the house… it is important to maintain a thoughtful perspective.”

Fred Hiatt cites a number of examples of Trump’s failings, including how, regarding immigration, “favoring one religion over another… defaces our democracy.” Surely Hiatt is aware that in practice immigration into the U.S. has frequently favored one religion or nationality or culture over others. During the past 50 years it has worked favorably for Cubans, Irishmen and Vietnamese Christians. Russian Jews benefited particularly as they were admitted as refugees under the 1975 Jackson-Vanik Amendment even though they were not notably persecuted and only had to prove that they were Jewish.

Jackson-Vanik was one of the first public assertions of neoconism, having reportedly been drafted in the office of Senator Henry Jackson by no less than Richard Perle and Ben Wattenberg. Its provision favoring Jews was expanded by the 1990 Lautenberg Amendment which widened the field to include Iranian Jews. As refugees instead of immigrants they received welfare, health insurance, job placement, English language classes, and the opportunity to apply for U.S. citizenship after only five years.

Hiatt’s apparent ignorance about how his Russian-Jewish neocon buddies like Max Boot arrived here is particularly noted as he is also Jewish. And Boot is far from alone. Steve Sailer reports that journalist Julia Ioffe, who complains regularly about American racism, Vladimir Putin and also Donald Trump, entered the U.S. under the Russian-Jewish waiver in 1990, bringing 60 of her family members along with her. One suspects that selective immigration policies are okay for Fred when it is one’s own tribe but immoral when it somehow involves Donald Trump.

Hiatt’s editorial page has also roundly condemned Donald Trump for his decision to restrict immigration from seven Muslim majority countries, conveniently ignoring the fact that President Barack Obama first came up with the exact same list of Muslim countries for special vetting in the December 2015 Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act.

Now consider Hiatt’s more general allegations regarding partisan and dishonest journalism for a minute. Anyone who regularly read either The Washington Post or New York Times during the recently concluded electoral campaign would have noted that the mainstream media was extremely hostile to Donald Trump and everything that he represented. It was and still is the “opposition,” as Bannon put it. The Post‘s journalists have been daily running multiple pieces, both in the news and opinion sections, criticizing everything relating to Trump for months including his wife’s clothing choices and there is no sign that it will stop anytime soon. And they have not been shy about it, criticizing not only his policies but also his appearance and character. The lampooning and sharp critique continue now that Trump is president. It is not that Trump is or should be immune from criticism – to be sure he has many legitimate detractors all across the political spectrum – but it is a question of how the critique is packaged and whether he is being treated fairly.

In fact, The Washington Post might well be the current leader when it comes to partisanship, fake news and heavily editorialized alleged “news reporting,” particularly when it comes to Russia, Iran or Donald Trump. It featured a completely fabricated story describing how a utility in Vermont had been hacked by the Russians without checking with the utility first. It also ran a front page piece on how hundreds of U.S. based media outlets and alternative websites were Russian “useful idiots” spreading Kremlin produced fake news and propaganda, basing its assessment on a questionable anonymously produced website called PropOrNot. Both stories were replayed widely in the national media before it was determined that they were completely wrong.

In support of its domestic agenda, The Post also ran a story describing how Planned Parenthood provides a broad range of women’s health services, including mammograms, which turned out to be untrue while failing to mention that it also performs 300,000 abortions each year. However one feels about Planned Parenthood, is that balanced and fact based reporting?

Apart from completely fake news, The Post is a master at editorializing what it describes as its news coverage. In a front page story on February 2nd, “Trump badgered, bragged and abruptly ended phone call with Australian leader,” paragraph four reads “Trump’s behavior suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders, including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently employs against political adversaries and news organizations in speeches and on Twitter.” Does that pass the smell test for news reporting? Does “badgered, bragged”? And it later turned out that the call was not ended abruptly.

People like Fred Hiatt are precisely the reason why Donald Trump was elected by a public tired of arrogance, lies and media condescension. Fred’s hypocrisy is so blatant that anyone who dips into his newspaper to find enlightenment instead comes away reeking of propaganda, and particularly low propaganda at that. No Fred, The Washington Post is not the “highest standard” of journalism. It is hardly journalism at all. And the same goes for the crew at The New York Times as well as Charley Rose at CBS News, Wolf Blitzer at CNN and Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. Liars and knaves, every one of them.

The mainstream media talking heads want wars with Russia and Iran as well as heavy-handed intervention in Syria, hate Trump and everything he stands for, and love the whole world and its wonderful multicultural promise. Of course, their children go to private schools and will never be unemployed or have to put on a uniform or struggle to pay a mortgage while those pesky immigrants they love from a distance will never be able to afford to move in next door. Their understanding of flyover America and its problems is nil and their love of country is negotiable as they pursue higher ratings and more pats on the head from Hollywood celebrities, preening politicians and the country’s oligarchs. Steve Bannon was absolutely right when he said “the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”

February 7, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Trump: Kremlin Candidate?’: BBC doc becomes MSM manual to ‘verified’ journalism

RT | January 17, 2017

The BBC’s flagship current affairs programme has aired an edition on the alleged financial ties between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It also reports on whether Russia played a key role in Trump’s election success. Making its assumptions very clear, the BBC called the programme ‘The ‘Kremlin Candidate’. RT’s Ilya Petrenko explains how pulling-in the viewers often means rolling with the rumours.

January 17, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

The politics of de-legitimization – the race to bottom

By Peter Lavelle | The Duran | January 13, 2017

The corporate mainstream media’s massive campaign to de-legitimize Donald Trump’s election as president is failing and will eventually epically fail. In the process media are destroying themselves, which is a blessing for free speech and a healthy public sphere. In the end, attempts to de-legitimize Trump will de-legitimize the de-legitimizers.

There can be no doubt what kind of relationship President Trump will have with the corporate media. His calling out CNN as fake news tells us everything we need to know. The Clinton Network News backed the Democratic Party’s nominee, sought to explain Hillary Clinton’s defeat as the result of nefarious actors (the Russians did it! ), and now it is desperately attempting to portray Trump as being in cahoots with Vladimir Putin. CNN is fake news – it has no real use of facts; it relies almost exclusively on its core narrative: justifying and reinforcing its liberal worldview at the behest of the unelected Deep State.

There is no way around it – Hillary Clinton lost the election on her own merits (or lack thereof). She believed she deserved to be coronated because it was her turn. She believed she was entitled to the presidency. The media believed and acted in the same way. Instead of reporting on the campaign, media constructed a “story” that reinforced Clinton’s sense of entitlement. In a very important way mainstream media intentionally de-legitimized the election before the first ballot was cast.

The corporate media’s treatment of Donald Trump was also part of the de-legitimizing process. During the Republican primary he was media’s favorite – he was good for ratings and advertising dollars. He was portrayed as a buffoon and as such the perfect reason to vote for Clinton. Media didn’t cover Trump in a conventional way – he was always a marketing tool to legitimize the candidacy of Clinton. In the process media completely overlooked what was really happening: Trump built a coalition and possibly a political movement.

Trump’s victory and the GOP’s return as the ruling party was the doings of the media, though unwittingly. They got Clinton wrong; they got Trump wrong, failed to honestly cover the election, believed in their own propaganda, and only talked among themselves – all while disparaging the very real pain of many voters. Incredibly, though not surprisingly, the mainstream media cannot acknowledge these hard truths – or said differently accept real news.

This lack of introspection fuels fake news and accelerates the de-legitimization campaign against Trump. At the same time the mainstream media is signing its own death warrant. They will not be missed.

Peter Lavelle is host of RT’s political debate program CrossTalk. His views may or may not reflect those of his employer.

January 13, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

Trump: ‘Russia Has Never Tried to Use Leverage Over Me’

Sputnik – 11.01.2017

On Tuesday, the CNN and the BuzzFeed news website reported on memos, compiled by an unnamed former intelligence officer from the United Kingdom, which allege that Trump has been groomed and supported by Russian intelligence for at least five years.

The documents, which BuzzFeed admitted were unsupported and which the CNN did not fully disclose due to lack of independent corroboration, also alleged that Russian intelligence had compromising material on Trump related to his “unorthodox behavior” during a visit to Russia.

Donald Trump denied that Russia has ever attempted to use leverage over him and reiterated that he has no business links with Russia.

Trump further pointed out that the “leak” should not have emerged in the mainstream media at all.

January 11, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Russia has no compromising info on Trump or Clinton, report is ‘total bluff’ – Kremlin

RT | January 11, 2017

Moscow says documents alleging that Russia has compromising information on Donald Trump are a fabrication and a “total bluff.” Russia has never gathered information of this kind on either the US president-elect, or his former rival, Hillary Clinton.

“The Kremlin has no compromising information on Trump. This report does not correspond to reality and is nothing but an absolute fiction,” the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday.

“This is a total bluff, an absolute fabrication, complete nonsense,” he said.

He reiterated that there is no compromising information on Hillary Clinton either, and that the Russian authorities do not accumulate this type of information.

“Of course not. The Kremlin does not collect compromising information. The Kremlin [and] the Russian president are engaged in building relationships with our foreign partners, firstly – in the interests of the Russian Federation, in the interests of the Russian people, secondly – in the interests of global peace, stability and security,” Peskov said.

On Tuesday, CNN published an article stating that US intelligence handed over a two-page synopsis of classified documents, which included claims that Russian operatives have compromising personal and financial information about Trump, to the president-elect and US President Barack Obama.

The information was included as an annex to a classified version of the report prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election, according to CNN.

Buzzfeed picked up the story, publishing the entire dossier purportedly “prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent.”

The most appalling part of the dossier was the claim that Donald Trump has “personal obsessions and sexual perversion,” including graphic sex acts, and a report that the president-elect once had Russian prostitutes urinate on each other in a hotel bed that the Obamas previously shared.

Apart from sex orgies, the dossier also suggests Russian officials offered the Republican real estate magnate lucrative deals in order to win influence over him ahead of the election.

The story exploded on Twitter with the hashtag #GoldenShowers shooting up the trending charts.

Later in the day, however, an anonymous member of the chatboard on 4chan posted a refutation of the now infamous “golden showers” story, calling it a hoax and “fanfiction.” He or she claimed that several months ago, the story was sent to Republican political strategist Rick Wilson, who proceeded to send it to the CIA, which then put it in their official classified intelligence report on the election.

Moscow considers the scandal a clear attempt to damage relations with Washington and the president-elect personally.

“This is an obvious attempt to harm our bilateral relations,” Peskov said.

“Pulp fiction, that’s what it is called in English. Of course, probably the best way to react would be accordingly – with a certain sense of humor.”

“Although there is a downside – indeed, there are those who are stirring up the hysteria, who go out of their way to maintain this state of a witch-hunt,” he added.

January 11, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Something’s Rotten at CNN

By Greg Bacon | Aletho News | January 4, 2017

CNN and Mossad Asset Rita Katz both use video game “Fallout!”

They both used video footage from the game. Katz from “Fallout 3” to show us that ‘al CIA Duh’ was going to nuke DC and the huckster Don Lemon–apt name–of CNN using “Fallout 4” footage to show that their LIE about alleged Rooskie hacking of the US election was true, at least in their warped, deluded minds.

First, the back story on Rita Katz using Fallout 3 back in 2008:


Be afraid, be very afraid!

The fallout from Fallout 3

Tell me, Rita, how does a Jewess manage to get access to al Qaida password protected sites? And then use those sites repeatedly to obtain what you claim is cutting edge spy stuff? Is aL Qaida that stupid or do you think Americans are so stupid as to believe your agitprop?

Those al Qaida types are so ingenious to get Jewish Media Groups to release their latest batch of “Death to America” tapes.

Tell me, Ms. Katz, who pays better? The Pentagon or MOSSAD? And can you give us a “sneak” preview of your next al Qaida tape or do we have to wait for the nationwide release?

More, as shown in this article:

Fallout 3 Image Spooks Terror Experts

Turns out terrorist are familiar with both kinds of RPGs. by Ryan Geddes

May 30, 2008 – A computer-generated image of a post-nuclear Washington D.C., crafted by the Fallout 3 artists at Bethesda Softworks, has apparently popped up on terrorism-related Internet forums, and the image is now at the center of an online brouhaha.

According to the Entertainment Consumers Association’s GamePolitics blog, U.S. defense contractor and intelligence analyst group SITE found the image while perusing message boards commonly used by Islamic terror groups, who were apparently discussing the possibility of nuclear attacks on Western nations.

As GamePolitics points out, videogame images have crept into terrorism discussions before. In 2006, Battlefield 2 footage was presented to the House Select Committee on Intelligence as al Qaeda propaganda.

The “House Select Committee on Intelligence?” I’ll abstain from the obvious joke….

Who is creating and pushing these absurd stories that are nothing more than LIES to keep us bogged down in the M.E. for the next 30 years, fighting ‘Wars for Wall Street and Israel?’

Now CNN is using the same worn-out LIE, pushing images from “Fallout 4” to poison American minds?

CNN used footage from popular video game ‘Fallout 4’ for coverage of alleged Russian hacking

fallout-cnn-footage-800x430-800x430

Erin Corbett | Raw Story | January 2, 2017

In its recent coverage of President Obama’s proposed sanctions on Russia for allegedly hacking the 2016 U.S. election, CNN used footage from the popular video game Fallout 4, a post-apocalyptic video game series, BGR reports.

According to the report, Reddit user Poofylicious first spotted the footage, posting screenshots of CNN’s report and the corresponding footage from the video game. CNN used the footage of a hacking terminal in the Fallout 4 video game in its segment about alleged Russian hacking of the election. … Full article

January 4, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | 4 Comments

America’s Lynch Mob ‘Democracy’

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 03.01.2017

The dark, infamous days of American lynch-mob rule and burning witches at stakes are back as never before. But not in backwater enclaves of benighted bigotry. Oh no, the modern lynch mobs are running amok in Washington’s seat of government, across prime TV and on the editorial pages of its supposed finest newspapers.

It is the effete, self-regarding ruling US elite who are acting like a murderous rabble. The hate-figures are Russian leader Vladimir Putin and incoming president Donald Trump. Both are being lined up to be lynched, one as a foreign enemy, the other as a traitor.

Lynch mob blood-lust is a mere finger pointed, the baying of deranged crowds and the stringing up of some unfortunate from the nearest tree without pause for a fair trial. «Guilty!» shouted with red-faced thunder is all that’s needed. And anyone who dares to question the madding crowd is liable to meet the same grim fate.

Public opinion in the US is being stampeded to accept as unquestioned fact that Russia «attacked American democracy» as Senators like John McCain are claiming on prime time television. Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin is accused of being the mastermind behind the alleged cyber attacks, which supposedly subverted the US presidential election in favor of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Incumbent President Barack Obama, the US «intelligence community» and a consensus of lawmakers on Capitol Hill are all asserting without a flicker of doubt that Russian state-sponsored hackers interfered in the November election. The US mainstream media have abdicated any pretense of independence or journalistic standard by rowing in behind the assertions, stating what are fundamentally tendentious claims as if they are fact. The word «alleged» before the words «Russian hacking» has been shorn from headlines and commentaries. The American lynch mob has decreed Russia as guilty. No due process, no skepticism, no verifiable proof, just stampeding group-think let loose.

Never mind that Moscow has repeatedly rejected the vapid claims, and has demanded verifiable evidence to be presented. Never mind that Washington has failed to provide any verifiable evidence to support its accusations. Never mind that several respected former US intelligence experts, such as William Binney formerly of the NSA, have come forward to dismiss the claims of Russian hacking as preposterous.

The inherent lack of credibility in Washington’s narrative was given a seeming fix when Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats last week. The intention of the sanctions was to brand the word «scumbag» over the Kremlin in the eyes of the world, a US cyber security expert told Reuters. This is more of the same demonization-mentality that resulted in African-Americans being dangled from branches or suspected sorcerers being torched alive by self-righteous American christians.

A second seeming fix to the attenuated «Russian hacker» story came with reports of an alleged attempt to disable the US power grid. The CIA-linked Washington Post broke the story of an electric company in Vermont finding «Russian malware» on a laptop. The report can be quickly parsed as fake, but it seemingly gave substance to claims that the US was «under attack from Russia». Right on cue.

Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to be baited by Obama’s expulsion of diplomats by declining to reciprocate similar measures against US officials in Moscow. Wisely too. For such a response would tend to only lend credibility to what are otherwise baseless American claims.

More insanity to back up Russophobia is expected this week when shadowy «US intelligence officials» give «briefings» to President-elect Trump and members of Congress. The latter will inevitably be «wowed» by more of the same anti-Russian claims that the CIA has already inculcated the American mass media with.

Trump, however, is not such an easy pushover. He appears to remain skeptical about «intelligence» impugning Russia. Trump previously lampooned CIA claims as «ridiculous». Again this week he referred to the «disaster of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction» when false US intelligence led to a decade-long war in the Middle East country, the death of over a million people and the unleashing of jihadist terrorism across the globe.

To browbeat Trump into joining the lynch mob to hang Putin and Russia, the US media are blatantly setting him as a «traitor» if he doesn’t comply.

Referring to his forthcoming presidential inauguration, the New York Times editorial board demanded: «In less than a month, Mr Trump will have to decide whether he stands with his democratic allies on Capitol Hill or his authoritarian friend in the Kremlin».

The editors at the Washington Post continued the treason theme, making the reckless claim that Russia had perpetrated a «Cyber Pearl Harbor» on the US. The newspaper then went on to note Trump’s «odd behavior in the face of a clear threat from Russia». The Post insinuated that Trump was putting alleged personal business interests with Russia ahead of patriotic duty.

Another report in the New York Times quoted various pundits claiming that Trump is undermining national security by being friendly towards Russia and expressing his skepticism towards US intelligence.

One senior lawmaker, Democrat Representative Adam Schiff called on Trump «to stop denigrating» US secret services.

Moreover, if veteran Republican Senator John McCain is allowed to assert on CNN that Russian cyber attacks are an «act of war» – then, it follows according to this warped logic, that Trump is in bed with the enemy.

This embodies lynch mob rule rolled into burning witches at Salem along with McCarthyite Red Scaremongering.

Trump is effectively being noosed with claims that he is a Russian stooge and a traitor to his country. Claims that are in turn based on unfounded, hysterical allegations that Russia has «attacked our nation». All that’s missing here are effigies of Putin and Trump being set alight on Capitol Hill.

What this represents is a profound degeneration in American democracy. Rumor, speculation and propaganda have become the currency of US public discourse, ranging from the supposedly highest office of the White House to the legislative branch of government – and all reinforced by a supine media.

Anyone who shows the slightest dissent from the stampeding mentality to lynch Russia is also liable to be lynched. The fate of Donald Trump is in the balance.

The irony in all this is that it is not some external enemy who is eroding American democracy. It is its own political establishment that is throttling the supposed pillars of democracy.

Whenever two of its purported leading newspapers are openly accusing the next president of «treason» – based on fabricated accusations – then it is a clear sign that American democracy has indeed become condemned.

January 3, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | 3 Comments

Moscow blasts CNN’s ‘false’ US school closure report

RT | December 30, 2016

The CNN is spreading ‘false information’ by reporting that Russia closed the Anglo-American School of Moscow in retaliation to a new set of US sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“It’s a lie. It appears the White House has completely lost its mind and is now coming up with sanctions against their own children,” Zakharova commented on the report on her Facebook page.

“The CNN broadcaster and other Western media have again distributed false information citing official US sources,” the spokeswoman added.

The Anglo-American School of Moscow has also denied media speculation, with director Ian Forster writing on Facebook that the “school is planning to open as scheduled following the New Year’s break.”

Earlier, CNN cited an unnamed US official who claimed that the Russian authorities ordered the closure of the Anglo-American School of Moscow, attended by children from the US, UK, and Canadian embassy staffs, and a US Embassy vacation house in Serebryany Bor.

The report was quickly picked up by other Western media outlets, which came up with juicy, Star Wars-style headlines for their stories, including “Russia Strikes Back: Moscow Closes US School in Response to Obama Sanctions,” from ABC, and “Putin fires back by closing American school and embassy vacation home in Moscow…” from the Daily Mail.

The CNN source called the move a direct retaliation to the closure of two Russian diplomatic compounds in Maryland and New York, which US President Barack Obama announced on Thursday as part of a set of new sanctions against Russian.

According to Obama, the countermeasures were introduced in response to what he called “the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election.”

Thirty-five Russian diplomats have been expelled from the US, and nine Russian entities, including the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) and the FSB (Federal Security Service), added to Washington’s blacklist.

The facilities in Maryland and New York, located in the coastal area, were used by Russian Embassy staff for recreational purposes. Many diplomats and their families who went there to celebrate New Year’s were forced to leave after the announcement of the sanctions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow will not respond in kind to the US restrictions.

“We won’t cause problems for American diplomats. We’re not going to expel anybody. We won’t forbid their families and kids from using familiar vacation spots during the New Year holidays,” he said.

“Moreover, I invite the children of all American diplomats with accreditation in Russia to New Year’s and Christmas festivities in the Kremlin,” Putin added.

Though the Russian leader expressed regret that President Obama is concluding his term “in such a way,” he added: “I still wish him and his family a Happy New Year.
“I also wish President-elect Donald Trump and the entire American people a Happy New Year!”

According to Putin, Russia will “take further moves on restoring Russian-American relations based on the policies that the administration of President-elect Donald Trump adopts.

READ MORE:

US expels 35 Russian diplomats, closes 2 compounds

Putin: Russia will not expel anyone in response to US sanctions

December 30, 2016 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia-Hack Story, Another Media Failure

By Joe Lauria | Consortium News | December 19, 2016

President Obama admitted in his press conference on Friday that his government hasn’t released any evidence yet of Russian interference in the election, but he said some would be coming.

That’s proof that an uncritical press has already printed stories as if true without any evidence just on the say-so of the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization long dedicated to deception, disinformation and meddling in other countries’ elections, not to mention arranging coups to overthrow elected governments.

Forty years ago, the established press would have been skeptical to buy anything the CIA was selling after a series of Congressional committees exposed a raft of criminal acts and abuses of power by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Today’s journalists work for newspapers that fraudulently still bear the names New York Times and Washington Post, but they are no longer the same papers.

The vast U.S. news media also is not the same. The working journalist today is living off the reputation for skepticism and determination to get beyond government pronouncements that was established by their papers decades ago. Rather than add to that reputation, the credibility of the biggest newspapers continues to erode.

Both the Times and the Post should today be stained by their credulous reporting of official lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Instead of showing professional skepticism, the big papers became cheerleaders for an illegal invasion that killed hundreds of thousands of people and left behind a disaster that still reverberates today. Neither the Times nor the Post suffered any consequences and have picked up where they left off, still uncritically reporting anonymous U.S. officials without demanding proof.

On the contrary, any reporter who did demand evidence was in danger of career consequences. An editor for a newspaper chain that I was reporting for called me to chew me out because he said my stories were not in support of the Iraq war effort. He told me his son was a Marine. I told him I was sure he was proud but that my job was to report the news based on the evidence. On the very day when the invasion began, I was fired.

Of course, the television networks, including CNN, were most egregious for selling the war. I was shocked when I heard reporter Kyra Philips from aboard a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf gleefully announce: “Welcome to Shock and Awe!” just after a cruise missile was shown being fired. The people it killed on the receiving end were almost never mentioned.

CNN, which has accepted Russian interference in the U.S. election as a given, is also living off its reputation of a once very serious news organization. On its very first broadcast on June 1, 1980, Cable News Network aired as its second story a lengthy investigative report on faulty fuel gauges in commercial airliners. It broadcast an in-depth live report from the Middle East, and veteran newsman Daniel Schorr interviewed and challenged President Jimmy Carter.

But 1980 was when the period of skeptical, professional journalism that demanded proof from its own government started to decline as Ronald Reagan was elected. He worked to stamp out the skepticism bred from Watergate, Vietnam and the Congressional intelligence hearings. Reagan did this, in part, by resurrecting the most obvious and adolescent myths about America. And he worked with the CIA to manage America’s perceptions away from the critical thinking of the 1970s, as journalist Robert Parry has extensively reported.

There have been a few periods in American journalism when demanding proof from government was expected. The muckraking period led by Lincoln Steffens of the Progressive Era was one. The 1970s was another. But mostly it has been a business filled with careerists who live vicariously through the powerful people they cover, disregarding the even greater power the press has to cut the powerful down to size.

Egregious Case

The reporting on the supposed Russian hack of the elections is one of the most egregious examples of unprofessional journalism since 2003, particularly because of the stakes involved.

There have now been a slew of stories, each of which seems to offer a new promise of evidence, such as one under the ludicrous New York Times headline, “C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence.” But when you read the piece, its only sources are still unnamed intelligence officials. A later 8,000-word Times article was the same, as though the length by itself was supposed to lend it more credibility.

If there were any doubts, Obama wiped them away with his admission that no evidence had been released. Worse still, perhaps, is that counter-evidence has been suppressed, another consistent feature of today’s journalism.

The former British diplomat Craig Murray, has written and told at least two radio interviewers that the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta emails were not obtained by WikiLeaks through hacks, but instead from leaks by American insiders.

This story was totally ignored by established media until the Daily Mail in London reported it online, but incorrectly said Murray had himself received the leak. In the U.S., only The Washington Times reported the story, quoting the Mail. But that story took a swipe at Murray’s reputation, merely saying he was “removed from his diplomatic post amid allegations of misconduct.” In fact, Murray was let go for blowing the whistle on U.K. use of evidence extracted by torture by the corrupt Karimov administration in Uzbekistan. The rest of the Washington Times story just repeats what every other reporter has written about Russian interference.

Two Obstacles

Even if it were proven that Russian government operatives hacked these emails as part of their intelligence gathering, there remains the additional evidentiary hurdle that they then supplied the data to WikiLeaks, when the recipients, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, say the source or sources weren’t Russians.

It’s also noteworthy that none of the information in the emails has been shown to be false. The leaks provided real insights into how the DNC favored Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders and revealed some shady practices of the Clinton Foundation as well as the contents of Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street bankers that she had tried to hide. In other words, the leaks gave voters more information about Hillary Clinton, confirming what many voters already believed: that she was beholden to the financial sector and benefited from her insider connections. But none of that was particularly news.

It is important to note, too, that Obama himself in his press conference said there is zero evidence Russia tried to hack into the electronic voting systems. In fact it now emerges from dogged reporting by a local Atlanta TV station that the Department of Homeland Security appears to have been behind earlier attempted hacks of voting systems in several states.

So, it would be virtually impossible to prove that the DNC and Podesta emails were the deciding factor in the election. Indeed, before the election, pro-Clinton corporate media downplayed the email-related stories and Podesta said the emails may have been faked (although none of them appears to have been made up).

The emails also revealed numerous instances of reporters colluding with the Clinton campaign before publishing stories, something no hard-boiled editor from an earlier era would have stood for.

Democratic Misdirection

By focusing on the alleged Russian role now, Democrats also have diverted attention from other factors that likely were far more consequential to the outcome, such as Clinton largely ignoring the Rust Belt and not going once to Wisconsin or her calling many Trump supporters “deplorables” and “irredeemable.” Further, Clinton was a quintessential Establishment candidate in an anti-Establishment year.

And, there was the fact that in the campaign’s final week, FBI Director James Comey briefly reopened the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State, a move that reminded many Americans why they distrusted Clinton.

Yet, as the mainstream U.S. media now hypes as flat fact the supposed Russian role, there remains the inconvenient truth that the Obama administration’s intelligence community has presented no verifiable evidence that the Russians were the source of the leaks.

Demanding to see the evidence on Russia, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee called the CIA, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to a closed-door briefing. Though these agencies are obligated to show up in response to requests from their Congressional oversight committees, the three agencies flatly refused. Then, DNI James Clapper refused to brief concerned Electoral College voters whose votes for or against Trump may have been influenced by the news media frenzy about alleged Russian interference. Clapper reportedly is preparing a report on Russia’s “hacking” for Congress.

Political Strategy

The Russia fiasco appears to have been part of a political strategy that I first wrote about on Nov. 5 – three days before the election – that a fallback plan, if Trump won a narrow victory, would be to influence the electors to reject Trump when they assemble in state capitals on Dec. 19. Playing the Russian card was designed to appeal to the electors’ patriotism to defend their country against foreign interference.

Assuming that Electoral College long shot failed, there would be one more chance for Clinton to stop Trump: on Jan. 6, when Congress meets to certify the election. The Clinton camp needs one Senator and one Representative to sign an objection to Trump’s certification (no doubt citing Russia) forcing a vote by both chambers.

If Trump loses – and there are a number of anti-Trump Republicans in Congress – the election would be thrown to the House where Clinton or a more conventional Republican could be selected as President.

Given those stakes for the American democracy and the risks inherent in U.S. relations with nuclear-armed Russia, the fact that the most influential establishment media has bought into this extremely flimsy story about Russian hacking should condemn them further in the minds of the public.

Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@gmail.com and followed on Twitter at @unjoe.

December 19, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | 2 Comments

CNN to the BBC: Faking and Bellyaching

By Phil Butler – New Eastern Outlook – 15.12.2016

If the western world cared for Syria as much as CNN and the BBC appear to, heaven would reign here on Earth. Every waking hour of every day the tears of British, American, and European media publishers cascade over us. Those “White Helmets”, the humanitarian saints, the word wielding White House spokespeople immerse us in their humanity. And their humanity is a sinful joke.

For nearly four years now I’ve watched this sardonic drama unfold. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate turns the dogs of war loose. Morals and ideals are upended like dancing bowling pins. Liars blame truthtellers for the chaos we see, and those of us who embrace a moderate stance get labeled as trolls, traitors, fakes or worse. Proven criminals and elitist warmongers roam everywhere, and somehow we’ve evolved to accept it all. Madness is the only word that comes close to describing American policy these days, but the most maddening thing is the hypocrisy and arrogance. BBC! Every time I see the letters under a headline I cringe.

According to CNN, the Syrian Army is executing the families of Free Syrian Army rebels. With western world leaders up in arms over so-called “Fake News”, the Cable News Network is sourcing an “activist” named Mohammad Basbous, and a suspect media network called the Aleppo Media Center. With its Twitter account suspended, its Facebook broadcasting clear jihadist propaganda, this writer wonders at how CNN even considered this source. The YouTube channel features videos from Aleppo with soundtrack elements reminiscent of the film The Last Samurai. Bleeding children filmed like method actors, distraught mothers whaling, the angelic White Helmets workers salvaging what they can, the AMC channel shows the Al Nusra side of things without apology. Embedded within this propaganda though, the reality of a lie is readily seen. Scant days before the Syrian Army takes over a neighborhood, brave captains of the rebel uprising proclaim one small victory after another in the face of demonic attacks by Assad and Russia. If the Syria coverage were seen in a carnival tent it would be more convincing.

Still some believe the battle for Aleppo, Palmyra, and all of Syria is somehow a noble quest for democracy! But who are these CNN and BBC sources really? On the AMC Facebook pages we find four people associated with the account. Yousef Seddik, Zein Al-Rifai, Hasan Kattan, and the aforementioned CNN source Mohammad Basbous. Maybe if we look at them one at a time we can discern how the most prolific media in the west validates them.

Yousef Seddik broadcasts White Helmets heroism via Twitter to his 329 followers. As an expert in social media I can glean much from this account established back in 2013. First follows are often telling of people not so aware of social media, and Seddik creating this account as a function of the AMC network is brutally clear. Among his initial Twitter pals we find none other than Rima Maktabi, who hosted for two years CNN‘s monthly program Inside the Middle East. She works for Saudi TV Al Arabiya. Seddik’s very first “follow” was in fact Zidane Zenglow, another Al Arabiya correspondent. I could go on but what’s more telling than who someone follows in social media, is who “is” following a subject. Saudis quoting the Koran and how paradise is won by the faithful are Seddik’s first admirers, along with Al Arabiya correspondents following back.

Zein Al-Rifai is the freelance photojournalist who works for AMC. He’s the man who films the dying, dead, destruction and riveting propaganda this network spews out. He follows people like the President of France and the US Secretary of State, along with Saudi ministers, the White Helmets, and first follows indicating his social media was always about the war versus Assad. One early Tweep tweets about all the factions coming together as one now that Aleppo has fallen. I could dig deeper, but let’s move on.

Hassan Kattan is from Aleppo according to his social profiles. This rebel sympathizer began his social media efforts by following France 24 and the Saudi TV stations, and Shaam News Network in Damascus. This AMC operative just tweeted “We want freedom, we want to topple Assad” 8 hours ago. Here is the rough translation of a Facebook posting by him from November 24th:

“I swear our hearts tired blessings of God
A lot of pressure and reality hurts.
We lost a lot in this period of our friendly and loved us.
Personally I hate moments of weakness and hate across her.
We still have great confidence that e revolution will win. If we live or we die and that if we meet our God will not be afraid to ask him about what we did with our lives and what we have provided to our cause.!

Finally, if you trace down the network of people behind these CNN and BBC “sources” you always arrive at a dark destination. On the surface of these people and their accounts we find the fake idealism embracing the dead and destroyed in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria. Underneath, down the trail of collaborators and friends we find the AK 47s, the trenches and windows with snipers shooting at the real Syrian Army. There is no mistaking the “jihad” in the jihadist, in the revolutionary. I also find it ironic that Syria expert Vanessa Beeley talking with recently rescued citizens from East Aleppo revealed these White Helmet rescuers as phantoms, ghosts no trapped civilians there ever heard tell of.

Looking at the Twitter feed of an Aleppo named Fares Shehabi I find more credible news from freed Aleppo citizens. But CNN did not interview this Syrian official, unless I miss my guess. Shehabi, one of the most respected business and political figures in Syria, will probably end up being prime minister or president one day, so it’s puzzling nobody but Sputnik is talking with him since Reuters mentioned him in 2012.

On a final note, there is a common thread that runs through these “sources” histories. A man named Wadah Khanfar appears frequently. The President of Al Sharq Forum today was once the Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network. His presence in the social networks and media surrounding the AMC people brings to mind the scandal when WikiLeaks documents revealed Khanfar once unduly influencing Al Jazeera’s news coverage of the War in Iraq at the behest of U.S. embassy officials in Qatar. He subsequently resigned, but his role with elitists at the now notorious International Crisis Group as one of the Board of Trustees, is telling for me.

Khanfar is tweeting about executions to his 2.1 million followers too. Next I will follow the breadcrumbs from Aleppo to Kurdistan and the US interests there, as well as how the Davos elites tie in.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe.

December 15, 2016 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

CNN’s hostile treatment of Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard after revealing US arming, funding Terrorists in Syria

21st Century Wire | December 14, 2016

Recently, Democrat Hawaii Congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard, went on CNN’s “The Lead” hosted by Jake Tapper, to talk about Donald Trump’s foreign policy, and more importantly, to discuss the disturbing reality of US taxpayer support of armed militants and terrorists in places like Syria. Instead of adulation for doing the honorable thing, she received a hostile reaction from one of CNN’s many highly paid onscreen propagandists.

jake-tapper-cnnWhen asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper (photo, right) about US Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s recent visit to Trump Tower, she replied, “My goal in going there, in receiving the invitation to speak to President-elect Trump was to speak specifically about the situation in Syria, the dangerous consequences of escalating the regime change war that the United States is fuelling there along with countries like Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and Turkey are escalating that through a so-called no-fly zone or safe zone. And urging him to end our regime change war there to stop funding both directly and indirectly groups that are working with Al Qaeda and ISIS. And to stop funneling those dollars and weapons and other assistance through these others countries like Saudi Arabia who are directly supporting these terrorist groups who are supposed to be our enemy, who we’re supposed to be fighting to defeat.”

Visibly agitated by her answer, Tapper then asks Gabbard, herself an Iraq War veteran and a current member of the Hawaii National Guard, about her recent Bill introduced on the House floor last week entitled, the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” which proposes severe legal repercussions to any US officials or persons involved in the arming or funding, either directly or possibly indirectly, of terrorists overseas – including the US-backed “rebel” terrorists currently operating in Syria. What’s key is that Gabbard points out that this activity is funded by the US taxpayer. Not surprisingly, CNN has never reported this side of the clandestine issue before. Here’s how their fascinating conversation transpired:

TAPPER: And tell me about legislation. You have a bill that you introduced today that would address loopholes.

GABBARD: Yes.

TAPPER: You say have allowed American taxpayer dollars to fund terror groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria. Are you — are you suggesting that the U.S. government is funding these terrorist groups?

GABBARD: I’m not only suggesting it. This is — this is the reality that we’re living in.

TAPPER: Not directly, though.

GABBARD: Most Americans — you know, if you were — I were to go and provide money, weapons, or support or whatever to a group like Al Qaeda or ISIS, you would immediately be thrown in Jail. However, the U.S. government has been providing money, weapons, intel assistance and other types of support through the CIA, directly to these groups that are working with and are affiliated with Al Qaeda and ISIS.

TAPPER: So, you’re saying the CIA is giving money to groups in Syria, and those groups are working with Al-Nusra and ISIS.

GABBARD: There are — there have been numerous reports from The New York Times to the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets who have declared that these rebel groups have formed these battlefield alliances with Al Qaeda, that essentially is Al Qaeda groups are in charge of every single rebel group on the ground fighting in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government.

Tapper goes on to act stunned and befuddled, insinuating that Gabbard is “wrong” – as if Gabbard were somehow making up her accusations, as he becomes somewhat confused trying to manage CNN’s complicated contrived narrative. Tapper then insists that “Obviously, they (US-funded ‘rebel’ terrorists) are all fighting Assad.” Gabbard quickly calls out Tapper’s clear attempt at US State Dept propaganda talking points management Here’s the latter exchange:

TAPPER: And the U.S. government says they vet the groups that they give money to very, very closely. And that you’re wrong, there are not alliances between groups that the American taxpayers fund and these other groups. Obviously, they all are fighting Assad.

GABBARD: I beg to differ. Evidence has shown time and time again that that is not the case, that we are both directly and indirectly supporting these groups who are allied with or partnered with Al Qaeda and ISIS, in working to over throw the Syrian government of Assad. And we’ve also been providing that support through countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar to do that.

Gabbard’s brave new legislation might be the most important and explosive development regarding Syrian Foreign Policy in Washington, but instead of pursuing this discussion, CNN’s Tapper predictably tried to change the subject to Michael Flynn instead.

Watch this incredible exchange here:

21WIRE has reported previously on the possibility that CNN is serving as a media adjunct to either the Pentagon, NSA or the CIA (or all three). Judging by Jake Tapper’s offhanded comments and attempt to discredit Gabbard live on air, it only strengthens that probability.

21WIRE also reported previously how CNN has clearly chosen to only air coverage favorable to what the network has claimed to be “rebels” in Syria, when in reality – these were mostly terrorist fighting groups. CNN’s “star reporter” Clarissa Ward even went so far as to characterize terrorist suicide bombers in a sympathetic manner in her reports – clearly designed to give positive PR to terrorists groups like Al Nusra Front who have been occupying East Aleppo since 2012. Other actors in field seemingly employed by CNN who are operating in clear support of terrorists in East Aleppo include one Bilal Abdul Karim an apparent US asset promoting jihadist extremism, together with Ward, producing what are clearly staged reports, alongside CNN’s endless airing of unvetted, staged White Helmets imagery. 21WIRE have also recently revealed additional terrorist-links with the White Helmets, who are a US State Dept, British Foreign Office and EU-funded pseudo NGO – and passing it off to the viewing public as authentic video and photos supplied by nameless “Syrian activists”.

Throughout the west’s proxy war against Syria, CNN has only reported the rebel/terrorist perspective, shamelessly portraying militant terrorists as “moderate rebels” and freedom fighters, while systematically demonizing any Syrian or Russian who is defending the nation-state of Syria. This might explain Tapper’s near contempt for Gabbard’s accurate statements regarding US arming and funding of known terrorist groups in Syria.

2016 was the year that CNN was exposed as perhaps the most corrupt mainstream media outlet in the United States. A number of other leaked emails revealed an unprecedented level of media corruption and systematic partisan collusion between operatives at CNN and the Hillary Clinton Campaign – a naked violation of every fundamental principle of nonobjective press practices. In the leaked email exchanges, one could see gleeful Clinton campaign officials boasting about getting favorable news coverage from compliant mainstream media ‘journalists’ – with CNN being perhaps the worst offender. Clinton staffers even went so far as to circulate names of journalists who were deemed “friendly” to their candidate.

Among the notorious Wikileaks email dump was a CNN request to DNC staffers asking for questions to ask during a Wolf Blitzer interview with then GOP candidate Donald Trump.

In another email on April 28, CNN operative Jason Seher, a writer for Jake Tapper’s show “The Lead” on CNN, emailed DNC media coordinator Pablo Manriquez thanking him for working behind the scenes with CNN.

screen-shot-2016-12-13-at-19-39-39

In a separate conversation CNN’s Seher, then thanked DNC insider Martinez for ‘facilitating Luis coming on today, and bearing with us through a meelee of GOP nonsense and cancellations and all that. Any particular points he’ll want to make? We’re gonna stay Dem focused…’

Perhaps the worst CNN violation of press independence was when the network’s supposed “chief political analyst,” Gloria Borger, tried to get an interview with Clinton chief of staff John Podesta by assuring him of essentially softball questions.

“I know John will have an exalted place in the campaign, and would love to chat with him about HRC, in a general way, not in a gotcha way re HRC,” said Borger. “It would be about 10 mins, very general, about her as a person and a candidate.”

What most amazing about all of this, is that CNN executives refused to consider firing any of their personalities who have been implicated in open collusion with the Democratic party during one of the most crucial political contests in US history.

In another leak provided to The Intercept by the source known as Gucifer 2.0 Other CNN reporters discovered on the DNC’s ‘VIP List’ of media operatives counted on by the Clinton campaign included Kate Bouldan, Brianna Kielar, Jeff Zeleny, Sam Feist, David Chalian, John Berman, and Mark Preston.

The only person who lost their paid position with CNN was the now disgrace political operative, Donna Brazile, currently still holding onto her gifted position as interim Chairwoman of the DNC – who was also moonlight for extra cash as “contributor” for CNN. Brazile was also a Super Delegate for Hillary Clinton. Podesta Email dumps exposed the fact that Brazile, a CNN contributor was caught giving Hillary’s campaign debate questions in advance of CNN’s Town Hall debate event.

1-donna-brazile-cnn-leak

As a result, CNN’s reputation as a trustworthy media outlets has been held in question by most of the public.

When it comes to coverage of both the 2016 Election and the Syrian War, CNN has been on the wrong side of history – and should not be trusted to give accurate and fair reporting regarding serious and important issues.

December 14, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | 6 Comments

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