ABC fact checking is a ‘black box’
Who are the fact checkers, what are their qualifications and how do they decide what is true or false?
Maryanne Demasi, reports | April 22, 2024
Australia’s public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), proudly announced in 2022 that it had partnered with the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), an international alliance of major news corporations and Big Tech firms, to counter the growing threat of “fake news.”
It was part of sweeping reforms in the media to deliver ‘trusted’ news to global audiences and protect the public from the harms of misinformation and disinformation online.
Spearheaded by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), partners include Reuters, Associated Press, Financial Times, The Washington Post, and ABC Australia, along with social media and tech giants – Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft (LinkedIn) and Google (YouTube) to name a few.
When ABC announced its new alliance with TNI, Justin Stevens, ABC News Director said, “We’re pleased to join the Trusted News Initiative and, in the process, provide Australian audiences with a deeper and better-informed view of our region and the world.”
Justin Stevens appointed ABC News Director in April 2022
During the pandemic, the alliance promised to focus on preventing “the spread of harmful vaccine disinformation,” and “the growing number of conspiracy theories,” targeting online memes that featured anti-vaccine messaging or posts that downplayed the risk of covid-19.
But critics have grown increasingly uneasy about the alliance. They say governments are being protected by journalists, instead of being held to account for their pandemic policies and they’re concerned the alliance has shaped public discourse by controlling people’s access to information and censoring content that diverges from the status quo.
Weaponising fact checking
Deploying fact-checkers is one way that TNI members control the dissemination of public information. When they label a statement ‘false’, ‘wrong’, or ‘misleading’, it’s used by social media platforms to legitimise the censorship of that content by deprioritising, hiding, demonetising, or suppressing it.
Debunking content is time consuming and costly. Fact-checkers are invariably junior journalists or intern researchers, with little to no understanding of complex scientific issues or public health policies, and often appeal to governments for the ‘truth’.
When the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration opposed government enforced lockdowns, fact checkers ran hit pieces on the authors – the notable academics were then shadow-banned, censored and deplatformed from social media.
In the case of the ABC, its original in-house fact checking unit was axed in 2016 because of Federal budget cuts, but was revamped the following year when the ABC teamed up with RMIT University in Melbourne to form the RMIT ABC Fact Check and RMIT FactLab departments.
The ABC paid more than $670,000 to RMIT between 2020 – 2023 as part of its joint fact-checking venture but they quickly gained a reputation for being flawed. For example, concerns about the suppression of the lab leak theory were labelled as “false” even though they were true.
ABC’s fact checkers were also accused of being biased by SkyNews because they had used their influence to censor disfavoured political views in the Voice to Parliament referendum.
Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick grilled ABC’s Managing Director David Anderson at a Senate Estimates hearing about the network’s dodgy fact-checking practices last year.
“Who is fact-checking the fact-checkers?” asked Senator Rennick.
“You’ve made some outrageous claims on these fact-checks that aren’t correct, and you haven’t actually backed them up with any facts,” added Rennick, accusing the ABC of bias for predominantly fact-checking politically conservative voices in the media.
Sources say these controversies have prompted the ABC to cut ties with RMIT whose contract ends in June 2024.
New fact-checkers, same problems?
An ABC spokesperson said the network is now building its own internal fact-checking team, called “ABC NEWS Verify,” which appears to have similarities to the “BBC Verify” initiative.
“ABC NEWS Verify will be our centre of excellence for scrutinising and verifying information in online communities,” said the spokesperson outlining the various tasks of fact checkers. “Establishing a dedicated team will enhance and focus our efforts, creating a hub for verification best practice.”
I asked the ABC if it had any internal policy document outlining the criteria its fact-checkers would use to deem content as ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ but the spokesperson responded saying “no it doesn’t.”
Andrew Lowenthal, an expert in digital rights and a Twitter Files journalist, said the ABC’s failure to explain how it intends on fact-checking claims was “seriously ridiculous.”
“That the ABC is seeking to decide what is misinformation without laying out any criteria demonstrates just how farcical and political ‘fact-checking’ has become,” said Lowenthal.
“Without transparent and publicly available criteria the program will quickly turn into a partisan advocacy initiative,” he added.
Andrew Lowenthal, Twitter Files journalist
Lowenthal’s Twitter Files investigation confirmed the Australian government was monitoring Covid-related speech of its citizens and requesting that posts were flagged and censored if they deemed them to be misinformation.
“In that investigation, the government’s Department of Home Affairs was relying on Yahoo! News and USA Today, among others, to justify their take down requests or they’d hire journalists without scientific credentials. We need dialogue, not diktats, to determine what is true,” said Lowenthal.
Senator Rennick agreed, saying the ABC’s process lacks transparency. “Who are these people that claim to be the fact-checkers in the first place and what are their credentials? Sounds to me like it’s a black box,” said Rennick.
“Often when fact checkers come out with their reports, they don’t give the other person they’re fact checking, a right-of-reply. Also, they rarely disclose the conflicts of interest of the so-called ‘experts’ they use to fact check claims,” he added.
Michael Shellenberger, author, journalist and founder of Public, has written extensively on the “censorship industrial complex.”
“That’s what the trusted news initiative [TNI] was all about…a strategy to use fact checking initiatives to demand censorship by social media platforms,” said Shellenberger.
Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko (HarperCollins 2021) and Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins 2020)
“They can pretend that’s not what it’s about, but the fact that the news media are participating in this, is grotesque. It’s a complete destruction of whatever reputation and integrity they used to have,” he added.
“Organisations like BBC and ABC… they used to have reputations for independence and integrity, but they’ve now decided to destroy their entire reputation on the mantle of them being the deciders of the truth. The Central Committee. That’s totalitarianism that’s not free speech.”
The ABC says its new ABC NEWS Verify will have no connection to TNI.
Impartiality and credibility?
TNI’s broad principles of working in lockstep towards a single narrative, has meant that legacy media operate largely as a mouthpiece for government propaganda, offering little critique of public health policies…and ABC has been no exception.
During the pandemic, the broadcaster repeatedly came under fire after its medical commentator Dr Norman Swan made countless calls for harsher lockdowns, mask mandates and covid boosters – policies that strongly aligned with the government but had little scientific backing.
Swan’s commentary rarely provided an impartial perspective and he was eventually called out for failing to publicly disclose his financial interest in seeking government contracts related to covid-19.
In addition, Ita Buttrose, who was ABC Chair until last month, was seen fronting Pfizer’s advertising campaigns for covid products. ABC defended Buttrose saying, “Given she was not involved in editorial decisions, there was no conflict of interest.”
Ita Buttrose, former ABC Chair, March 2019 – March 2024
The ABC denies its alliance with TNI has impacted its editorial independence but Shellenberger says the entire purpose of joining TNI is to ensure they become the single source of truth.
“They’ve stopped doing real reporting, and they’re just out there wanting to be paid to regurgitate and act like publicists for the government. It’s grotesque. It’s not journalism, it’s propaganda,” said Shellenberger.
Resisting the tyranny
Some journalists have been resisting what they perceive to be ‘tyranny’ in legacy media and the widespread suppression of free speech.
In June 2021, a group of around 30 journalists rallied together to denounce TNI’s “censorship and fearmongering” and accused the alliance of subjecting the public to a distorted view of the truth.
The group known as ‘Holding the Line: Journalists Against Covid Censorship’ shared concerns that reporters were being reprimanded by their superiors and freelancers were being blacklisted from jobs for not following the “one official narrative.”
Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr has filed a lawsuit against TNI alleging that legacy media organisations and Big Tech have worked to “collectively censor online news” about covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election.
The lawsuit states:
“By their own admission, members of the “Trusted News Initiative” (“TNI”) have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics.”
A group of 138 scholars, public intellectuals, and journalists from across the political spectrum have since published The Westminster Declaration.
In essence, it’s a free speech manifesto urging governments to dismantle the “censorship industrial complex” which has seen government agencies and Big Tech companies work together to censor free speech.
In Australia, the journalist’s union MEAA has called on ABC’s newly appointed Chair Kim Williams to “restore the reputation of the national broadcaster by addressing concerns about the impact of external pressures on editorial decision making.”
Kim Williams, current Chair, ABC Network Australia
Williams, who took over from Buttrose last month, has warned his journalists that “activism” is not welcome at the ABC and that if they fail to observe impartiality guidelines, they should consider leaving the network.
Will the ABC course-correct with Williams at the helm? Now that trust in legacy media is at historical lows, the ABC’s partnership with TNI does little to assuage fears that the network has passed the point of no return.
NB: I was a TV presenter/producer at ABC TV (2006-2016) and wrote about my experiences with censorship at the network here and here.
ANALYSIS: HOW THE UK AND US MEDIA DEHUMANISE PALESTINIANS
BY CLAIRE LAUTERBACH AND NAMIR SHABIBI | DECLASSIFIED UK | NOVEMBER 22, 2023
Nazis. Beneath animals.
This is a small sample of what Palestinians have been called by commentators speaking to Western media outlets in the last month of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – examples of the bestiary of zoological terms natural to a coloniser’s view of the colonised.
Political philosopher Frantz Fanon wrote during France’s colonial war in Algeria of “hordes of vital statistics”, “hysterical masses”, “faces bereft of all humanity”, and “children who seem to belong to nobody”.
These are all terms that could describe how western media covers the suffering of Palestinians — “a tide of humanity… a teeming mass of Gazans”, as the BBC put it (15 October). This is all sharply in focus since Hamas’ October offensive, and Israel’s genocidal razing of the Gaza strip.
We analysed the front page coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza by five major US and UK news media — the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Times, and the BBC (the news landing page at 7am daily) between 7-26 October.
Over these three weeks following Hamas’ offensive, the mechanics of the Western press’ dehumanisation of Palestinians in death and life are revealed as clinical and routine.
Israelis are murdered, Palestinians die
The dehumanisation process begins (or ends) with questioning who counts in death, and how the killer and the victim are portrayed.
In the UK-US mainstream media, Israelis die actively. They are either killed or murdered by Hamas, or “after a surprise Palestinian attack”. “The Palestinians” stands in for “Hamas” for sloppy or ideological editors, for example in the Guardian on 8 October.
Palestinian civilians, by contrast, die passively – and yet it is they who have done most of the dying since 7 October; over ten times the number of Israelis killed.
Gazans aren’t killed by Israeli forces or Israeli government policies. They “dehydrate to death as clean water runs out” (Guardian, 18 October) while Israeli airstrikes “continue to pound the Palestinian territory”.
On 9 October, the BBC ran with “700 people have been killed on the Israeli side with more than 400 also dead in Gaza”, presumably succumbing to shock or an act of God.
On 8 November, the Times of London noted: “Israelis marked a month since Hamas killed 1,400 people and kidnapped 240, starting a war in which 10,300 Palestinians are said to have died”, which is of course qualified.
Palestinian deaths are natural, undifferentiated. This is only possible because the media treat Israel’s blockade of Gaza as wholly logical, proportionate and even restrained.
Violations of international law
Collective punishment, which is essentially what Israel is doing by striking civilian “targets” and totally blockading the “open prison” (in former prime minister David Cameron’s words), is also illegal. This is the view of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, UN human rights chief Volker Türk and Human Rights Watch, among others.
When UN chief António Guterres noted Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestine and called for an end to the siege, Israel’s UN representative demanded he resign. At least one of Guterres’ colleagues, the head of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, Craig Mokhiber, resigned of his own accord, protesting Israel’s “genocide unfolding before our eyes” in Palestine.
However, in none of the three weeks’ of front-page headlines and lead paragraphs for the five UK-US media analysed for this article are Israel’s serial violations of international law mentioned.
The exclusion of this important context on Israel’s crimes is important. As journalists we’re trained to account for the fact that most people don’t read beyond the headlines or first paragraphs.
Off the front page, some media published separate analysis pieces, such as the New York Times’ “Israel, Gaza and the laws of war” (12 October). This unsurprisingly goes nowhere near calling Israel’s crimes what they are: crimes.
Despite discussing at length how civilians cannot be targeted or disproportionately harmed for military purposes, the closest the New York Times gets to criticising the action of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is quoting the opinion of an expert on siege law.
This was that Israel’s siege is “an unusually clear-cut example of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, which is considered a violation of international humanitarian law, a crime against humanity and a war crime” (emphasis added).
A swift qualifier follows: “Jurisdiction over some war crimes would depend on whether the conflict is considered inter-state.” So some crimes are not a crime as long as Palestine or Palestinians don’t exist, as Israeli prime minister Golda Meir asserted over 50 years ago, repeated by current Israeli politicians.
By contrast, Hamas’ actions are, to the same cited expert, “not close calls”.
Preventable deaths
Moving on from, or ignoring completely, both the illegality of Israel’s total siege of Gaza, the UK-US media portray the starvation and preventable deaths resulting directly from it in almost entirely passive, naturalistic language.
For example, the Washington Post’s print version front page: “Civilian harm in Gaza looms over Biden’s visit; Rising human toll from attacks could threaten Israel’s global backing” (harm arising of course from Israel’s battering).
On 13 October, from the New York Times : “300,000 homeless in battered Gaza as food runs low” (because Israel is blocking food from entering Gaza). It continues: “Hospitals overwhelmed and fuel scarce” (because Israel is blocking medical supplies and fuel from reaching Gaza) “as Israel strikes back at Hamas.”
That’s fine then – the reader should feel at ease since Israel’s crushing of hospitals is merely an act of “self-defence”.
The Israeli military is not much a fan of Gazan hospitals – it regularly bombs them. It ordered 23 hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate on 13 October, and seems to have been picking them off, with patients inside, ever since.
When Israel might have gone too far, as it did in almost certainly bombing Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on 17 October, most outlets covered the strike by repeating both Israel’s and Hamas’ “he said-she said” accusations against the other.
Nevertheless, the New York Times gave the IDF’s denial more weight with “Hamas fails to make case that Israel struck hospital” (23 October, emphasis added), which is a catchier headline than “We don’t know, and don’t want to work it out ourselves”.
Meanwhile, the Times ran with “Strike kills up to 500 in Gaza”, swiftly adding that “Israel denies responsibility and blames jihadis”, with no comment from a Palestinian voice.
Mirroring the discrepancy between how Palestinians have died (passively, often with no mention of Israeli actions) and Israelis have died (actively, directly attributed to Hamas or “Palestinian” actions) is how the media describes child victims of both sides.
Discussing a prisoner exchange, a Washington Post columnist described Israel’s “children hostages” while referring to Palestinian children as “young people”. Under Military Order 1591, the Israeli government can hold minors as young as 12 without trial and potentially indefinitely in “administrative detention”, UNICEF reports.
When Gazan civilian deaths from siege and strikes against civilian infrastructure are shown as authorless natural disasters rather than as war crimes, any access Gazans get to essential goods becomes “aid” or “relief”, and every tiny amount allowed to reach them is an act of Israeli mercy.
For example, the New York Times (19 October): “Deal lays groundwork for aid to reach desperate Gazans”. Or the Washington Post (12 October): “Closed borders, falling bombs choke Gaza; thousands injured as supplies wane”, adding “humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens” (due to Israeli siege, let’s not forget).
Also in the Washington Post is the incredible headline (16 October) “As Palestinian death toll rises, aid stuck in Egypt”, as if it couldn’t physically fit through the door, which ignores the fact that Israel prevented aid from entering Israel via Rafah, demanding proof it would not be diverted to Hamas.
The numbers
Having reduced Palestinians to numbers, the work then becomes to cast doubt on these numbers.
When Israel’s flattening of Gaza began raising international alarm, Biden said he didn’t trust that “Palestinians” (or the Hamas government, since to him the distinction is irrelevant) “are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
His statement was the latest in a time-honoured tradition of US administrations disputing the number of deaths wreaked by their allies abroad, from Suharto’s Indonesia, to Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s and Saudi Arabia today, as historian Bradely Simpson notes.
No one seriously disputes the Gazan Ministry of Health’s numbers as too high. If anything, they are likely a serious undercount given how many bodies are trapped under rubble.
Nevertheless, the attribution of figures to the “Gaza Ministry of Health” is now almost always prefaced by “Hamas-government” or followed by “controlled by Hamas”. This would seem an odd waste of words, considering that everyone from the UN to the US State Department cites Gazan health ministry casualty data, and Gaza’s government is run by Hamas.
Dead Palestinians are simply irrelevant for some media. The first mention of Palestinian deaths in Times headlines occurred 11 days after Hamas’ assault: “Strike kills up to 500 in Gaza”. It had by then run several front page pieces about specific, named Israeli victims, including an in-depth profile (with portrait) of a kibbutz family horrifically killed by the Hamas-led offensive [or not].
Unsurprisingly, on 12 October, the Telegraph published the number of Israelis killed in factors of “9/11s” in a striking infographic which didn’t even bother to include an estimate of Palestinian deaths.
Double standards
Once a people are truly dehumanised, it becomes logical – necessary, even – to apply a wholly different standard of (in)decency to them.
UK-US media report Palestinian deaths passively, as if through apparent acts of God, often couching the deaths in language suggesting that they were mostly Hamas or Hamas-adjacent, or at least that they inconveniently stood in missiles’ way.
For still-breathing Palestinians, it is not enough to have somehow escaped being killed by the almost 6,000 bombs Israel launched in its first six days punishing the densely populated territory. This is more than the US, not usually known for its restraint, deployed in any single year of its war in Afghanistan.
A living Palestinian must justify his or her continued aliveness by disavowing Hamas. A viral example of this can be seen in BBC Newsnight’s interview of the head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot.
Presenter Kirsty Wark barely flinched upon hearing Zomlot describe in detail how members of his family had been killed by Israeli strikes in the previous days before repeatedly demanding Zomlot condemn Hamas’ actions.
To reverse this, in other words, to ask every Israeli who had lost a family member in this conflict to first begin by condemning Israel’s murders and collective punishment of civilian Gazans would be rightly seen as outrageous. Unsurprisingly, we have not seen any examples of such in the Western press.
The UK-US press also tells us that to support Palestinians is to support Hamas, in case anyone doubted the conflation.
The BBC declared London’s peaceful pro-Palestine protesters as providing “backing for Hamas.” It later retracted its “poorly phrased” comments.
Sky News did no better in using images of peaceful protesters bearing Palestinian flags to accompany its discussion of efforts by the London Metropolitan Police to “tackle extremism”.
These “slips” pale in comparison with the virulently offensive terms guests on BBC programmes have called Palestinians, completely unchallenged by their hosts.
For example, BBC Arabic hosted former Israeli intelligence veteran-turned academic, Mordechai Kedar who refused to recognise popular Israeli racism towards Palestinians, claiming that bestial comparisons of Palestinians are “denigrating to animals.”
Tellingly, the BBC Arabic host neither ejected Kedar from the interview, nor did she admonish him and demand an apology. Instead, the host pivoted away from Kedar’s genocidal language with the comment “that’s your opinion”.
Platforming Israeli justifications
UK-US media have also taken to running pieces platforming Israeli justifications for the IDF’s actions when the staggering number of dead Gazan civilians was becoming harder to write around.
“How Israelis justify scale of airstrikes” ran the New York version front page of the New York Times on 26 October. It was later rewritten as “Israel’s strikes on Gaza are some of the most intense this century”.
It is unthinkable that a Western newspaper would carry a piece platforming in the same benign-to-neutral terms Palestinian rage, or worse, justifications for Hamas’ crimes.
Another trend is to normalise Israel’s actions by focusing not on its costs in Gazan lives, but its intentions which, of course, are shown as benign. (Note: intentions don’t matter in the laws of war.)
Three days into Israel’s illegal total blockade of Gaza, the BBC asked: “Could an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza meet its aims?” (14 October). Charitably characterising Netanyahu as “risk-averse” (for Israelis, not Palestinians), the New York Times ran with “All-out war is untried ground”, comforting readers that “limited strikes in past were safe politically”.
Dissenting voices: harder to hear
Journalists at the BBC and Agence France Presse (AFP) who have been critical of their agencies’ bias against Palestinian lives and minimisation of Israeli war crimes told Declassified that there is no space to discuss editorial concerns.
Palestinian commentators have seen their segments edited out of mainstream news programmes. Palestinian Americans report their events are being cancelled while they’re called Hamas supporters.
Meanwhile, a senior editor at US publication Newsweek called for Gaza to be flattened to resemble a parking lot, apparently without censure.
Elsewhere in the media ecosystem, an official of the UK’s communications regulator OFCOM, Fadzai Madzingira, was suspended for a social media post criticising UK support for “ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians” and “this vile colonial alliance”.
None of these points – that Israel may be committing genocide, that it continues to ethnically cleanse Palestinian land or that Israel was founded as a colonial project which still uses settler outposts to consolidate territorial control – is outside of reasonable analysis of historical facts.
It’s looking an awful lot like the beginning (or end, depending on your starting point) of a genocide.
The IDF has instructed all Palestinians to flee south of the Wadi Gaza area “for their safety” from Israeli strikes. Some were struck as they were evacuating, and Palestinians are still being shelled by the IDF in southern refuge areas.
Soldiers plant Israeli flags on Gazan beaches, while Israel’s intelligence agency floats the idea of permanently expelling Gazans to Egyptian Sinai as a preferred solution. Netanyahu invokes a Bible passage where God orders the Israelites “to put to death men and women, children and infants” of a rival kingdom.
Still, the New York Times uncritically presents Netanyahu as “seeking [a] permanent end to threat but not a reoccupation” (13 October).
That last bastion of dissent, gallows humour, is also at grave risk. Michael Eisen, editor of science journal eLife, was sacked for posting on Twitter an article from humour site the Onion, with the headline “Dying Gazans criticized for not using last words to condemn Hamas”.
The Guardian’s cartoonist Steve Bell’s contract was not renewed after his sketch of Netanyahu preparing to operate on his own stomach with an outline of Gaza was deemed too reminiscent of the “pound of flesh” anti-semitic trope.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post published a cartoon of a Hamas official with Gazan children and women strapped to him saying “How dare Israel attack civilians”. It’s since been deleted following racism complaints.
Yet the cartoonist is still drawing for mainstream media. Last week he published another cartoon in the Las Vegas Review showing a (fat, black) woman with a Black Lives Matter t-shirt holding up a sign saying “Terrorist Lives Matter: Blame Israel, Support Hamas”.
How dare Israel attack civilians indeed.
Claire Lauterbach is an independent investigative journalist and producer. She is the former Head of Investigations at Privacy International where she investigated the use and abuse of surveillance and military technologies, and a former Senior Investigator at Global Witness. Claire previously investigated war crimes in Goma, DR Congo for Human Rights Watch.
Namir Shabibi is an independent investigative journalist, visiting lecturer in Geopolitics at the University of Westminster, and PhD candidate researching covert paramilitary action in the ‘War on Terror’. He is a former International Committee of the Red Cross delegate investigating breaches of the Geneva Conventions in Darfur and Guantanamo Bay.
Joe Biden’s Washington Post op-ed shows the US never learns its lessons
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 20, 2023
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has recently published an op-ed. Appropriately released through the Washington Post, it is, of course, really the equivalent of a regime policy declaration – a laying down of the party line, if you wish. As such, the text deserves attention, never mind that it is impossible that America’s leader, clearly challenged by worsening senescence, has written it himself. This is, to borrow a phrase from the Russia-watching crowd, America’s “collective Biden” speaking.
Translated from official jargon and scrubbed of empty rhetoric and euphemisms, the long proclamation makes only two substantial points about what the US and its “allies” (really clients and vassals) must do: Continue waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and continue backing Israel in its genocidal war against the Palestinians (no, it is not a “war against Hamas,” that’s a side effect).
In that sense, there is nothing surprising, or hopeful, in collective Biden’s announcement: It took them more words this time, but this Democratic administration of neocons is simply repeating the equally tone-deaf slogan of a former Republican president representing a past gaggle of neocons: Stay the course, as George W. Bush put it succinctly during the Iraq disaster. Deja Vue all over again, in the words of America’s greatest philosopher.
But the details of the text still merit scrutiny. Let’s pick out a few highlights:
Hamas is repeatedly denounced as carrying out “pure, unadulterated evil” and such. Every fair observer would reserve such terms by now for what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. But let’s set that aside for now and let’s also set aside that we now know that substantial numbers of Israelis were killed by Israeli forces. Let’s instead focus on Hamas. Is such language factual? The rational answer to that question is not a matter of opinion, and it has to be “no”: In reality, the empirical record shows that Hamas is a resistance organization engaged in a legally and ethically justified struggle against massive national oppression. It has attacked military targets, which is legitimate, as well as committed terrorist crimes. But if any political and armed organization that does both engage in legitimate violence and terrorist crimes is carrying out “pure evil,” then almost every halfway powerful state in this world has done just that or is doing it even now. Clearly, we are dealing with an absurd statement here.
Usually, the cause of such absurdities is strategic dishonesty. That holds here as well. For the Biden administration is transparently pursuing two aims with this Orwellian abuse of terminology: First, make Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians appear, if not justified, then at least so “understandable” or “inevitable” that we stop objecting to them (and, if we are Americans, vote for Democrats, even while they support these perfectly avoidable crimes).
Secondly, prepare the ground for the proposal, following further down in the proclamation, to entirely eliminate Hamas from any post-assault settlement and, instead, “ultimately” make a “revived Palestinian Authority” rule both the West Bank and Gaza, while work on some lasting settlement continues.
This proposal is wrapped in deceptive and revoltingly cynical rhetoric: If Joe Biden has a broken heart over the slaughtered children of Gaza, then Andrew Jackson must have cried while signing the Indian Removal Act. If Biden wants a two-state solution, then why is he allowing and helping one of the “two states” to wipe out the other? If he has “counselled” Israeli leaders to refrain from excessive violence, then why has he not backed up his kind words with using his massive leverage and stopping the flow of arms, money, information, and diplomatic cover to help their genocidal attack? If Biden is worried about antisemitism spreading, why does he allow far-right Zionists to claim that their policies, which lead to deaths of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian children, are somehow “Jewish”?
Hypocrisy like that may still fool some Americans, namely those who really believe that the adequate answer to the umpteenth mass shooting at home is “thoughts and prayers.” But a US president and those writing and thinking for him would be well-advised not to embarrass themselves further before everyone else, at home and abroad.
The real policy proposal, meanwhile, is nothing else but an attempt to return to the post-Oslo Accords system on even worse terms. That means, creating a situation in which urgent, vital Palestinian needs and crystal-clear Palestinian rights will, once again, be de facto suspended in an endless dishonest “process,” which really only serves as a screen and stalling device for Israel, while the latter settles occupied land, practices the internationally recognized crime of apartheid, and conducts the occasional massacre.
But the proclamation addresses more than the Middle East. Turning on Russia, the collective Biden personalizes the issue, in bad old neocon style. Instead of any attempt at a rational – albeit critical, even hostile – approach to Moscow’s actions and interests, we find the usual daft insults: Russian President Vladimir Putin is juxtaposed with Hamas, as if he were a one-man “terrorist organization.” (Never mind that Hamas is not, actually, a terrorist organization, although it also engages in terrorist acts; see above.)
The war in Ukraine is reduced to Putin’s personal “drive for conquest,” as if there has been no history of two decades of American provocations by reckless over-expansion, bad faith, and refusal to negotiate serious issues of international security in earnest and constructively. In that regard, Russia is receiving the same rhetorical treatment as the Palestinians: When it fights, we are forbidden to notice all the very real reasons it was given to do so.
And finally, both “Putin” – read: Russia – and Hamas stand accused of two things: Wanting to “wipe a neighboring democracy off the map” and taking us to a new, vile international order, where the strong abuse the weak and might makes right.
Newsflash: Actually, neither Israel nor Ukraine are democracies. In Israel’s case, the claim is vitiated by the simple fact that its government exerts de facto control over millions of Palestinians, all of whom face discrimination and the vast majority of whom do not have a vote, or, for that matter any ordinary civil and human rights. Ukraine, meanwhile, has Vladimir Zelensky, Washington’s darling in decline, who started dismantling the country’s brittle democratic structures – for what they were worth – in 2021, well before the war, and clings to power by cooperating with a violent far-right, eliminating the political opposition, streamlining the media, and delaying elections. Again, these are not matters of opinion but facts.
Secondly, Hamas is not trying to wipe out Israel, despite endless claims to the contrary. In the past, it has repeatedly signaled a willingness to compromise and accept a two-state solution. Claiming Hamas wants the total destruction of Israel is akin to using one idiotic quote from former US President Ronald Reagan to “prove” that he wanted to erase the whole Soviet Union. Hamas also simply does not have the capacity – not by a very far stretch – to do so.
Likewise, Russia is not trying to abolish Ukraine. As its compromise proposals of late 2021 clearly showed, its key aim is a neutral Ukraine that is not used as a proxy by the West. It is true that Russia, by now, claims some Ukrainian territory. Depending on how long the war continues, it may end up claiming and taking even more. You may very well object to that. Yet it is not the same as a will to exterminate a whole state or, for that matter, its population.
Finally, regarding the warning that Hamas, Russia, and who knows who else (China? India? Brazil? Simply everyone who won’t do as told by Washington?) are hellbent on dragging us all into new dark ages of ultra-cynical realpolitik and brute force, guess what: That is precisely where we are now. And have been for the last quarter of a century, under the benevolent aegis of the USA. Don’t believe it? Ask Gaza.
In sum, all we can really learn from this letter from on-high is that the Biden administration has understood nothing and is determined to learn even less. If, in the words of the declaration, the world is ever supposed to have even a slight chance of seeing “more hope, more freedom, less rage, less grievance, and less war,” then we first need to see much less of Joe Biden and everything and everyone he stands for.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
The media’s Nord Stream lies just keep coming
Why do billionaires and governments scramble to control the media? Because the power over our minds is the greatest power there is.
BY JONATHAN COOK | NOVEMBER 14, 2023
Want to understand why the media we consume is either owned by billionaires or under the thumb of government? The latest developments in the story about who was behind the explosions that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that brought Russian gas to Europe provide the answer.
Although largely forgotten now, the blasts in the Baltic Sea in September 2022 had huge and lasting repercussions. The explosion was an act both of unprecedented industrial sabotage and of unparalleled environmental terrorism, releasing untold quantities of the most potent of the greenhouse gases, methane, into the atmosphere.
The blowing up of the pipelines plunged Europe into a prolonged energy crisis, tipping its economies deeper into a recession from which they are yet to recover. Europe was forced to turn to the United States and buy much more expensive liquified gas. And one of the long-term effects will be to accelerate the de-industrialisation of Europe, especially Germany.
There can be almost no one in Europe who did not suffer personal financial harm, in most cases significant harm, from the explosions.
The question that needed urgently answering at the time of the blasts was one no media organisation was in a hurry to investigate: Who did it?
In unison, the media simply recited the White House’s extraordinary claim that Russia had sabotaged its own pipelines.
That required an unprecedented suspension of disbelief. It meant that Moscow had chosen to strip itself both of the lucrative income stream the gas pipelines generated, and of the political and diplomatic leverage it enjoyed over European states from its control of their energy supplies. This was at a time, remember, when the Kremlin, embattled in its war in Ukraine, needed all the diplomatic influence it could muster.
The need to breathe credibility into the laughably improbable “Russia did it” story was so urgent at the time because there was was only one other serious culprit in the frame. No media outlet, of course, mentioned it.
The United States had both the motive and the means.
US officials from Biden down had repeatedly threatened that Washington would intervene to make sure the Nord Stream pipelines could not operate. The administration was expressly against European energy dependency on Russia. Another gain from the pipelines’ destruction was that a more economically vulnerable Europe would be forced to lean even more heavily on the US as a guarantor of its security, a useful chokehold on Europe when Washington was preparing for prolonged confrontations with both Russia and China.
As for the means, only a handful of states had the divers and technical resources enabling them to pull off the extremely difficult feat of successfully planting and detonating explosives on the sea floor undetected.
Had we known then what is gradually becoming clear now, even from establishment media reporting – that the US was, at the very least, intimately involved – there would have been uproar.
It would have been clear that the US was a rogue, terrorist state, that it was willing to burn its allies for geostrategic gain, and that there was no limit to the crimes it was prepared to commit.
Every time Europeans had to pay substantially more for their heating bills, or filling up their car, or paying for the weekly shop, they would have known that the cause was gangster-like criminality by the Biden administration.
Which is precisely why the establishment media were so very careful for the first months after the explosions not to implicate the Biden administration in any way, even if it meant ignoring the mass of evidence staring them in the face.
It is why they ignored the incendiary report by legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh – who has broken some of the most important stories of the last half century – detailing exactly how the US carried out the operation. When his account was occasionally referenced by the media, it was solely to ridicule it.
It is why, when it became obvious that the “Russia did it” claim was unsupportable, the media literally jumped ship: credulously reporting that a small group of “maverick” Ukrainians – unknown to President Volodymyr Zelensky, of course – had rented a yacht and carried off one of the most daring and difficult deep-sea stunts ever recorded.
It is why, later, the media treated it as entirely unremarkable – and certainly not worthy of comment – that new evidence suggested the Biden administration was warned of this maverick Ukrainian operation against the whole of Europe. It apparently knew what was about to happen but did precisely nothing to stop it.
And it is why the latest reporting from the Washington Post changes the impossible-to-believe “maverick” Ukrainian operation into one that implicates the very top of the Ukrainian military. Still, the paper and the rest of the media steadfastly refuse to join the dots and follow the implications contained in their own reporting.
The central character in the new drama, Roman Chervinsky, belongs to Ukraine’s special operations forces. He supposedly oversaw the small, six-man team that rented a yacht and then carried out the James Bond-style attack.
The ingenuous Post claims that his training and operational experience meant he was “well suited to help carry out a covert mission meant to obscure Ukraine’s responsibility”. It lists his resistance activities against Russia. None indicate that he had the slightest experience allowing him to mastermind a highly challenging, extremely dangerous, technically complex attack deep in the waters of the Baltic Sea.
If the Ukrainian military really was behind the explosions – rather than the US – all the indications are that the Biden administration and Pentagon must have been intimately involved in the planning and execution.
Not least, it is extremely unlikely that the Ukrainian military had the technical capability to carry out by itself such an operation successfully and undiscovered.
And given that, even before the war, the Ukrainian military had fallen almost completely under US military operational control, the idea that Ukraine’s senior command would have been able to, or dared, execute this complex and risky venture without involving the US beggars belief.
Politically, it would have been quite extraordinary for Ukrainian leaders to imagine they could unilaterally decide to shut down energy supplies to Europe without consulting first with the US, especially when Ukraine’s entire war effort was being paid for and overseen by Washington and Europe.
And of course, Ukrainian leaders would have been only too aware that the US was bound to quickly work out who was behind the attack.
It would be telling indeed that, in such circumstances, the Biden administration would apparently choose to reward Ukraine with more money and arms for its act of industrial sabotage against Europe rather than punish it in any way.
It would be equally astonishing that the three states supposedly investigating the attack – Germany, Sweden and Denmark – would not also soon figure out for themselves that Ukraine was culpable. Why would they decide to cover up Ukraine’s attack on Europe’s economy rather than expose it – unless they were worried about upsetting the US?
And of course, there is the elephant in the room: the Washington Post’s earlier reporting indicated that the US had prior knowledge that Ukraine was planning the attack. That is even more likely if the pipeline blast was signed off by Ukrainian military commanders rather than a group of Ukrainian “mavericks”.
The Washington Post’s new story repeats the line that the Biden administration was forewarned of the attack. Now, however, the Post casually reports that, after expressing opposition, “US officials believed the attack had been called off. But it turned out only to have been postponed to three months later, using a different point of departure than originally planned”.
The Washington Post simply accepts the word of US officials that the most powerful country on the planet fell asleep at the wheel. The CIA and Biden administration apparently knew the Ukrainian military was keen to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines and plunge Europe into an energy crisis and economic recession. But US officials were blindsided when the same small Ukrainian operational team changed locations and timings.
On this account, US intelligence fell for the simplest of bait and switches when the stakes were about as high as could be imagined. And the Washington Post and other media outlets report all of this with a faux-seriousness.
Either way, the US is deeply implicated in the attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure and the undermining of its economy.
Even if the establishment media reporting is right and Ukraine blew up Nord Stream, the Biden administration must have given the green light, overseen the operational planning and assisted in the implementation and subsequent cover-up.
Then again, if as seems far more likely, Hersh is right, then there was no middle man – the US carried out the attack on its own. It needed a fall guy. When Russia no longer fitted the bill, Ukraine became the sacrificial offering.
A year on, these muffled implications from the media’s own reporting barely raise an eyebrow.
The establishment media has played precisely the role expected of it: neutering public outrage. Its regimented acceptance of the initial, preposterous claim of Russian responsibility. Its drip-feed, uncritical reporting of other, equally improbable possibilities. Its studious refusal to join the all-too-visible dots. Its continuing incuriousness about its own story and what Ukraine’s involvement would entail.
The media has failed by every yardstick of what journalism is supposed to be there for, what it is supposed to do. And that is because the establishment media is not there to dig out the truth, it is not there to hold power to account. Ultimately, when the stakes are high – and they get no higher than the Nord Stream attack – it is there to spin narratives convenient to those in power, because the media itself is embedded in those same networks of power.
Why do billionaires rush to own media corporations, even when the outlets are loss-making? Why are governments so keen to let billionaires take charge of the chief means by which we gain information and communicate between ourselves. Because the power to tell stories, the power over our minds is the greatest power there is.
Biden’s ‘age’ is now becoming an issue
Leave it to The Washington Post to come up with a ridiculous euphemism designed to conceal the real story
BY BILL RICE, JR. | SEPTEMBER 19, 2023
The spin-producing talents of our nation’s most prominent mainstream media “journalists” leave me dumbfounded.
The Washington Post would be at the top of the list of “news” organizations that excel in covering up real news and, when its editors feel they have to run an embarrassing story, concocting outlandish euphemisms to conceal the real story.
The Post just published a big story stating that President Biden’s “age” is making many political leaders wonder if he should not run for re-election.
This long story never once mentioned the words “dementia” or “cognitive decline,” proving once again that the press knows which giant elephants it can’t mention in a news article – especially if this elephant is a Democrat donkey.
A few excerpts from the article should give readers a greater appreciation of the talents of the Post’s wordsmiths.
Here’s the lede paragraph:
“A growing number of polls are showing voters concerned about President Biden’s age and energy … Prominent commentators have ruminated on whether he should drop out of the presidential race.”
“… Parts of the Democratic Party (now) fret about whether the man who helped oust Donald Trump from the White House may not have the vitality, at 80, to successfully prevent a return …”
“Supporters and critics alike suggested that Biden’s prospects may hinge on whether he can find a way to overcome a persistent and growing feeling in the electorate that his advanced age is his defining characteristic.”
Deep into the story, we get one sentence where Post editors come as close as they as they can to broaching the real truth:
“When asked what word came to mind when they thought of Biden, more than a quarter of (poll) respondents mentioned age, with another 15 percent using words like “slow” or “confused.”
Readers could also read between the lines with this passage:
“Biden’s gait can be stiff, and his physical and verbal stumbles have at times given his critics material. “
My comment: Biden’s verbal stumbles don’t happen only “at times;” they happen every single day, every time he opens his mouth and tries to read the teleprompter remarks written for him by aides.
While The Post frames this story with the question of whether Biden will step down because of his “age,” increasing numbers of Americans now understand the real story is the growing realization that our national “watchdog” press corp is completely captured.
An army of pack-thinking journalist clones are basically acknowledging their most important job is the daily effort to protect the person who was selected to implement their favorite country-destroying causes.
Clear-thinking adults now know the press corps will always eschew important journalism if said stories embarrass them or might lessen the likelihood key items from their agenda are brought to fruition.
The Washington Post has hundreds of journalists, including a platoon of journalists who cover only the White House and the president. Each of these journalists and editors have multiple sources in the White House and probably shoot the bull with these White House aides over drinks after work.
For four years, they’ve known Biden has textbook dementia, which was obvious three years ago, but has gotten worse every week since.
If they wanted to, these alleged journalists could have “broken” the “Biden has dementia” story years ago, including anecdotes that would make even the most loyal Democrat proclaim, “Good God.”
I’m a freelance journalist in Troy, Alabama and I know from common sense that 50 White House staffers must be working 24-7 to produce the cue cards, teleprompter speeches and recruiting Easter Bunny interns, all of whom are working feverishly to get the leader of the free world through another day without the Mother of All “gaffes” playing out for the world to see.
None of this would matter if this was our retired grandfather battling this affliction, but this happens to be a man who can start World War III and signs “emergency orders” that affect hundreds of millions of citizens.
Needless to say, if Donald Trump had been experiencing the same cognitive decline while he was president, this alarming mental condition would have – correctly – been exposed in one week.
If it was exposed, this would mean all those Biden “critics” referenced in the Post article … had been right all along. It would mean that everyone would know that America’s news-gathering journalists actually exist to conceal important news.
And more people are starting to reach this conclusion as well: If 98 percent of the most-important journalists in the world are concealing obvious truths about the president’s dementia, what else have they been concealing or refusing to investigate?
The answer: Everything important.
The Washington Post could also detonate all the Covid lies and cover-ups … in about two weeks – if its editors wanted to do this and were given permission to do so from their controllers.
They could have easily broken the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden influence peddling scandals … years ago.
The real story is the public is never going to get any real stories from this batch of sycophants and professional propaganda writers.
If some rogue journalists stunned us and decided to practice important investigative journalism, their editors and publishers wouldn’t let them because this would prove this news organization spiked important stories for years.
People might say, “Wow. This expose is great … but why did it take you three years to figure this out or authorize these investigations?”
The fear of publishers is the public would belatedly learn the most important lesson – that all those wacko and dangerous critics were … right all along.
Not only were all the experts wrong – not only were all the key narratives fiction – plenty of journalists must have suspected this; they simply knew they weren’t allowed to prove this.
As we can see from this article, there’s now no denying President Biden has major mental issues (even though the story never mentions “mental issues.”) It’s a coin toss whether “Joe Biden” can make it through the primaries, much less four years of a second term.
Even with mail-in ballots and rigged elections, the Powers That Be are no doubt wondering if Biden’s dementia will cost the Democrats four more years in the White House.
From Climate Change initiatives to central bank digital currency to the WHO treaty to future mRNA vaccines (and to cover-up past crimes against humanity), it’s imperative their guy remain in the White House.
Gavin Newsom, an awful governor of a state that’s coming apart at the seams, seems to be the betting favorite as the best politico Democrats can find to fill in for their current leading man … who will exit stage left not because of dementia … but because of “age.”
Apparently, this is the only story they’ve got and they’re going to stick to it.
For the last four years, disinformation has become a buzz word of our times. Biden himself (reading from his teleprompter) said this, and so has everyone who works for the federal government.
The Washington Post says it too. But most of the world doesn’t understand the key way the most important disinformation is spread. What we have is Disinformation by Omission. Don’t talk about all those giant pachyderms in the room. Don’t tell your readers our Emperor has no Brain.
When “don’t investigate this” might no longer work, society’s elite communicators simply spun another narrative – The poor man is simply getting up there in age and is beginning to lose some of his previous “vitality.”
They even spin the poll questions. This particular story was picked up by msm.com, which included one of its requisite reader polls at the end of the article:
“How concerned are you about the age of President Biden?”
I don’t answer narrative-manipulating poll questions and I’m not really concerned about Biden’s “age.” For that matter, I’m no longer worked up about his dementia, which I detected four years ago. Plus, I’ve known for years that “Joe Biden” isn’t making the big decisions.
The question that should have been asked is this:
How concerned are you that our nation’s leading “news” organizations are completely captured?
My answer: Pretty damn concerned.
“You Don’t Listen to the Press . . . I’m Telling You”: Post Columnist Strikes Out at Those Questioning Prior False Claims
By Jonathan Turley | September 1, 2023
I recently wrote how the Washington Post issued a statement that declared that the newspaper was “standing by” columnist Philip Bump on his proven false claims on subjects ranging from Lafayette Park to Russian collusion. Bump’s prior claims have not only been conclusively shown to be false but other major media outlets have now rejected those claims. However, the Post claimed this week that they are in fact true in response to one of my earlier columns.
Now, Miranda Devine at the New York Post has written about a meltdown by Bump in a podcast interview with Noam Dworman, owner of New York’s own Comedy Cellar. Dworman had asked Bump to explain some of his claims and Bump offered one of the most vivid examples of the new media and it is chilling. After declaring that “I’m gonna lose my mind,” he stormed out of the interview after refusing to address the contradictions and dubious claims in his prior columns.
Dworman’s podcast interview stands as one of the most revealing and vivid examples of how the media has changed in the age of rage. Bump moves quickly from the conversational to crazed when simply asked about the basis for his claims in the Washington Post.
Dworman was asking about the mounting evidence and contradictions in the Biden corruption scandal. Some of us have said that there is evidence of obvious corruption and influence peddling, but more investigation is needed to establish any basis for impeachment or criminal charges involving President Biden. Bump, however, will have none of it. The Post writer (who demanded investigations of a wide array of Republicans on false stories with little evidence) is vehement that there is nothing to see here . . . and the public just has to take his word for it.
Dworman remains polite and pushes Bump to simply engage him in explaining some of the countervailing evidence. Bump responds “I just I’m gonna lose my mind. I’m gonna lose my mind.”
As the interview shuts down, Dworman asks “is there nothing we can talk about … half the country believes this stuff.”
Bump: “I know, because half the country doesn’t actually dig into the issues.”
Dworman: “Here’s your chance to disabuse people. They don’t read the Washington Post.”
Bump will have nothing of it as Dworman continues to try to get him to explain his controversial writings: “There’s just no point, because all you want to do is you want to have me here as the putative expert so that you can present me with things that have been debunked multiple times that I’ve written about.”
Dworman: “What’s been debunked?”
Bump: “These, these claims. I’ve written about this, this argument about his dad calling him. I’ve written about this. Did you read what I wrote?”
Dworman: “It’s not debunked. Neither of us were there.”
Bump: “Well, I debunked it in the standpoint that I’ve already addressed this and presented the counterarguments to it.”
Of course, Bump has been repeatedly shown to have pushed false claims and then refused to admit to his errors. Moreover, he has repeatedly been criticized for not honestly presenting the counterarguments.
Dworman makes another valiant effort: “I have two issues here. One is Joe Biden’s behavior and one is the issue of the press. The press actually bothers me more than Joe Biden.”
Bump, however, has all but left the building: “Because you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen, and you continue to insist upon things that are, you know, parsing of language. And it’s just, it’s this is why I keep saying it’s silly.” He then says that he is leaving.
Dworman responded “Well, it’s a shame because this is a good conversation.”
Bump: “It’s not a good conversation, because you refuse to listen to what I’m saying to you. You asked me on to present evidence. I keep telling you.”
However, what he “keeps telling” Dworman and the public is to just accept his conclusions and not question his support and analysis.
Bump then walks out with a statement that captures perfectly the new media. He first attacks independent journalist Matt Taibbi and says that he has “an agenda.”
Dworman delivers a haymaker in response and states “You have no agenda.”
That is when Bump delivers his exit line that foreshadowed the Post statement on my column: “I do have an agenda … My agenda is to do my best to try and present accurate information to the public. And I have an institution behind me to hold me to account when I don’t do that, which I think is an important consideration.”
Indeed, the Post would then stand entirely behind Bump and claim that all of his false statements were true. Even when other media have acknowledged that these claims were false, the Post insists that they remain true. Thus, the Post is now saying that the following are true despite findings by inspector generals and special counsels to the contrary: (1) Bill Barr did order the clearing of Lafayette Park for the Trump photo op, (2) Barr also lied when he denied the use of tear gas by federal personnel in Lafayette Park, (3) there was never any spying on the Trump campaign by the FBI, (4) Hunter Biden’s laptop was seeded with Russian disinformation, and (5) the Clinton campaign was not behind false Russian collusion claims. It is all now deemed true by the Post. It appears that, if “Democracy dies in darkness,” journalism more often dies in the light of day.
After all, the problem is not that they are false but that people just “don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen.”
The Washington Post Calls For Reducing Free Speech To Improve Democracy
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 28, 2023
In very post-2016 fashion, The Washington Post last week published an article implying democracy might require curbs on freedom of speech. This unsettling approach suggests concerns around “misinformation” on social networks supersede freedom of speech, a move that has elicited intense debate and, rightly so; criticism.
In what appears to be a shift in public discourse towards further censorship, the widely-read Washington Post article critiqued Elon Musk’s reinstatement of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform, X, previously known as Twitter.
The article suggested that the proliferation of what it calls “political misinformation” disturbs democracy, sparking concern amongst proponents of free speech.
The perspective is reflected in the reporting by The Washington Post journalists Naomi Nix and Sarah Ellison. However, their piece lacks critical analysis of the ambiguity surrounding the term “misinformation” and fails to address the consequential question of how to moderate content in situations where politicians’ statements are arguably false or misleading.
The article’s glaring omission of any mention of the First Amendment – a core pillar of American democracy fostering media freedoms – also raised eyebrows amidst media and legal circles.
The Washington Post reporters worryingly suggest the retreat of social media companies from combating online falsehoods could impact the 2024 presidential election. They fault Musk, along with Facebook and YouTube, for taking a step back from reining in what they call misleading claims and conspiracy theories.
Nix and Ellison also critique X for permitting Tucker Carlson’s President Trump interview, which they deem as a platform for Trump to reiterate his allegations about the 2020 election. They contend that social media should only host political content if its accuracy can be proven, posing an unrealistic expectation that conceals underlying issues of censorship under the pretext of curbing “misleading” or “hateful” speech.
Russia has no plan to ruin Western unity, Kremlin tells WaPo
RT | April 21, 2023
The Washington Post says it has obtained secret Russian documents detailing a plan to bring anti-establishment political parties together in Germany in an effort to sow discord in the West. The Kremlin has responded that it does not interfere in the domestic affairs of other nations.
The purported Russian documents, largely dated from July to November last year, were obtained by an unidentified European intelligence service, the US news outlet said on Friday. It did not explain how it gained access, but it also interviewed some German politicians for the story.
The article said Moscow’s plan was “part of a hidden front in Russia’s war against Ukraine” and an attempt “to undermine Western unity.” The Soviet Union harnessed anti-war sentiment in the same way, an anonymous German security official told the Post.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the alleged Russian plan “100% fake.” He told the Post : “We never interfered before and now we really don’t have time for this.”
The strategy, as described in the article, involves “marrying” Germany’s far-left Die Linke with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Sahra Wagenknecht, an MP from Die Linke, would have a chance of winning the chancellorship with such backing, the plan suggests.
The Post spoke to Wagenknecht’s former husband, Ralph Niemeyer, who assessed her electoral chances as high. He claimed that Russian officials told him that such an outcome would be in Moscow’s interest.
But Wagenknecht would never accept any support from Moscow, Niemeyer added, and the idea of a union with AfD did not sit well with her either. The politician herself told the Post that there would not be “any cooperation or alliance” between her “and elements of the AfD in any form.”
The Post claimed that the effort was led by Sergey Kirienko, the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, along with unnamed “political strategists” tasked with executing it. The documents do not show any attempts by the Russian government to communicate the strategy to German politicians or potential allies, the report said.
The article cited instances of Die Linke and AfD holding protests against Berlin’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict and the damage caused by anti-Russian sanctions to the national economy. Members of AfD interviewed by the newspaper said being on the same side of the issue was the result of an intersection of values rather than any Russian influence campaign.
Washington Post’s disinformation on Egypt causes confusion over Pentagon document leaks
By Ahmed Adel |April 13, 2023
The Washington Post, citing leaked US intelligence documents, created a frenzy in the media by suggesting that Egypt was planning to secretly send up to 40,000 missiles to Russia. This claim could be separate from the other leaked US intelligence documents as the report was not only denied by Cairo and Moscow, but White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also said he had no information about this.
Russian Presidential Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that what appeared to be an Egyptian plan to “secretly” supply thousands of missiles to Russia were like other fake news related to the state of the Russian military and the war in Ukraine.
In fact, the claims are ridiculous considering that Russia does not need missile supplies, whether from Egypt or any other country, because as far as Russia’s own military-technological development is concerned, it does not need assistance and help. Rather, the disinformation spread by the Washington Post is a clear example of demagogy to try and cause greater problems.
The broadcasting of such news aims to drag Egypt into global conflicts and incite hostility without reason. This could be because Cairo has announced its intentions to join BRICS, something which deeply concerns Washington. In this way, the Washington Post is conjuring disinformation in a vain attempt to deter Cairo from deepening its ties with Moscow.
For their part, a senior Egyptian official denied supplying Russia with 40,000 rockets for use against Ukraine and described the Washington Post report as “informational tampering that has no basis in truth.” He added that Egypt follows a balanced foreign policy determined by peace, stability, and development.
Kirby told reporters on April 11 that Washington has “seen no indication that Egypt is providing lethal weaponry capabilities to Russia”, adding that the Arab counrty is a “significant security partner” and that the relationship between the two goes back decades.
With official denials from Cairo and Moscow, with Washington indicating that it has no information, it appears that this is likely a fake news story by the Washington Post, perhaps in an attempt to create doubts over the authenticity of the leak reports. The supposed document that discusses Egypt is being reported as part of a trove of leaked Pentagon reports. However, there is no evidence for this.
The batch of recently leaked documents have been circulating on social media channels for weeks, possibly months, even if it was only exposed days ago. Many of the leaked documents included secret information on the war in Ukraine, such as scepticism on the success of the expected Ukrainian spring offensive, while other documents appear to show sensitive analyses of US allies, including Israel and South Korea.
Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher said on April 10 that the documents could pose “a very serious risk to national security” and lead to the spread of disinformation. It appears that the spread of disinformation already began with the claim that Cairo is supplying 40,000 missiles to Russia.
The Washington Post reported that, according to leaked US intelligence documents, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi approved of the production but ordered officials to keep it a secret “to avoid problems with the West”. Yet, no other media agency or social media account has seen the documents, and thus all this information comes from this single dubious source.
Although Egypt has avoided taking sides in the war, Cairo and Moscow have a long and fruitful relationship expanding many decades, including in economy, energy, and security.
In one example, Egypt became the world’s largest importer of wheat in 2021 after imports reached $4.53 billion, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Egypt mostly imported its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, but since the war, Cairo is also turning to India to secure alternative supplies. None-the-less, Russia is still one of its most important suppliers.
It is recalled that Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on January 31 that wheat imports are a cornerstone in Cairo-Moscow relations, adding that trade between the two countries hit $6 billion in 2022.
More importantly, the Russian Central Bank added the Egyptian pound to its official exchange rate list in January. According to Cairo-based economist Hanan Ramses: “Using the ruble for settlement away from US currency will help ease pressure on demand for the greenback in Egypt. This is better for Egypt’s international trade.” She added that “Egypt may become Russia’s gateway to African markets in the long run.”
Given that Egypt is an African entry point for Russia, in addition to Russia being an important source of wheat for Egypt, it is very evident that the Washington Post is attempting to disrupt this relationship. What is surprising though is that Kirby expressed his lack of knowledge on the claim, suggesting that even this disinformation campaign is one step too far for the State Department as they attempt to woo Egypt away from Russia.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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On The Transgender Agenda
Lies are Unbekoming | May 12, 2016
I’ve been following Jennifer Bilek’s reporting on the Transgender Agenda for the last year.
In my opinion, she is doing the best investigative journalism, in the world, on the top-down nature of this society deforming “input” and “normalization”.
What we don’t understand is the scale of money behind this push, and the individuals controlling this weaponized capital. These are questions that go to the heart of Jennifer’s work. … continue
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Aletho News- STEVE KIRSCH: THE COVID JAB AND VACCINES IN GENERAL
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- Calling out UK for its brazen protection of pro-occupation forces
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza, invasion in central Gaza, carpet bombing in north – Day 217
- Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center
- Fighter jets, attack drones hammer Rafah; catastrophe looms – Day 217
- What it’s like to be used as a human shield by the Israeli army
- Detailed study finds 99% of pro-Palestine protests at US universities are peaceful
- VIDEO: Armenian Christians under siege by Israel
- Ex-Israeli special forces agent says he went ‘undercover’ at UCLA protest encampment
- The mainstream media distorted our anti-Vietnam War protests 50 years ago. They’re following the same strategy today
- Pete McCloskey, longtime supporter of Palestinians and USS Liberty veterans, has passed away
- Israel will kill Palestinians just fine without US heavy payload weapons; humanitarian crisis spirals – Day 216
- Richie Allen
- The Richie Allen Show Returns Tomorrow Wednesday April 24th
- Call Richie Today Monday March 11th From 4.30pm
- Connect To The Richie Allen Show WhatsApp Today
- NHS Asks Patients To Choose From 12 Genders, 10 sexual Preferences & 159 Religions
- The Richie Allen Show Moves To A New Time Slot From Monday Nov 20th
- Starmer Will Sack Shadow Ministers Who Vote For Gaza Ceasefire
- AI Tool Can Predict Heart Attacks Years In Advance
- Nepal Bans TikTok To Preserve Social Harmony
- Bloke Appointed Boss Of Womb Health Charity
- WHO – “Gaza’s Biggest Hospital Becoming A Cemetery”
- No Tricks Zone
- New Paper: Global Warming Leading To HIMALAYAN COOLING, Preventing Glacial Melt!
- DNA Evidence Reveals Domestic Cats, Dogs, African Wildcats, Frogs Lived In The Arctic 9000 Years Ago
- -80°C: Antarctic Vostok Station Records “Extreme Winter Cold”…Not Even Winter Yet!
- The German E-Vehicle Nightmare, 2024 Q1 Sales Plummet 14%… “Graveyard” For Unsold Cars
- Newly Discovered 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Reveal How Much Higher Sea Levels Used To Be
- Germany’s Economic Bloodbath Worsens As Green Revolution Causes Economy To Bleed To Death
- Water Vapor Absorbs 84 Times More Radiation Than CO2 … Clouds Drove 89% Of 1982-2018 Warming
- The 97% Consensus Claim Is In Fact 97% Bogus
- Post-1980s Increases In Shortwave Radiation Explains Europe’s Warming Trends Far Better Than CO2
- “A Thing Where Every Part Of Your Life Just Confirms What It Is That You Want To Believe”
Aletho News 
