From Laura D'Olimpio

Our society's obsession with reality television, gossip and drama may explain why we have entered a post-truth age, in which the emotions and sensations evoked matter more than the facts. An age in which larger than life, egoistical personalities count for more than intelligence or wisdom. An age in which we seek to be entertained rather than informed.

This appetite for infotainment and excessive emotional displays seems further propelled by Web 2.0 and the advent of social media, which duly feeds our constant cravings.

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Gus:

So are we seeking to be entertained rather than be informed?  What is entertainment and what is information?

Are rituals of the Catholic Church information or entertainment? A bit of both I would suggest. The next question is: is the information correct or fake news?

At this stage I would propose that to believe that our ancestors committed a crime against god about 6000 years ago, and that god was so disppointed with his best creation, the humans (apart from angels), he had to wipe them out with biblical floods and then 2000 years ago he had to send his son to be crucified by the humans so that the slate of the original crime could be wiped clean — is a bit of a stretch — especially for Lucy", our 3 million year old ancestor, all this in a 13.8 billion year old universe made of billion galaxies made of billions stars each, each star with their little planets zipping around — a universe that is expanding and that is made of little bits from atoms to protrons, and other trons and quarks and bosons and mesons... in a time sauce.

No, I can scratch my head, the guy nailed to a cross does not make sense one iota... So I will place this in the fake news basket and switch channels...

The wisdom of ages, my old age, is to enjoy life as much as possible, without destroying something that could annoy the neighbours or the next generations... Knowledge, imagination, entertainment is the combo of wisdom. All of these can be subjected to fakedom, especially knowledge: use with care. 

 

 

From ERIC ZUESSE

 

How ‘News’ Media Lie

 

 

I happened to be reading at Huffington Post on March 6th their truthful top-of-homepage news-report:

«Trump Forced To Water Down Executive Order On Immigration: The new order leaves out many of the most forceful points from the original one».  

And I saw there also a March 3rd headline regarding a news-event that I happened to have researched in depth (as will be summarized below), this headline being:

«Syria Rebels Want Trump To Know They’re The Ones Fighting ISIS: The Free Syrian Army is hopeful for more support despite the president’s praise of Bashar Assad».

That was from HuffPo’s reporter, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, who writes:

Speaking from Geneva after the latest round of internationally sponsored talks between the opposition and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Maj. Issam Al Reis, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, cited its push against ISIS in northern Syria, in collaboration with Turkish forces, and the rebels’ resistance against ISIS advances in the south as evidence that it’s ready for the U.S. to step up. …

«The regime is not fighting ISIS», Al Reis, a former officer in Assad’s army, said. He noted that Assad’s forces, which rely heavily on Russian jets and pro-Iran fighters, had captured and then lost Palmyra to ISIS before.

Analysts say Assad’s coalition has focused most of its attacks on the Free Syrian Army, which is relatively moderate and which the West considers an acceptable alternative to the regime, rather than on ISIS and the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, which the U.S. and a host of other nations are committed to defeating.

 

 

Here are the facts, which I had reported and documented at the end of 2016, headlining «How Obama Overrode Kerry’s Agreements with Russia». I documented there that on September 17th, Obama’s forces had bombed the Syrian Army at Deir ez Zor, which brought to an end the U.S. participation in the peace-negotiations on Syria, "the sabotaging-event, which naturally caused Putin to instruct [Russia’s Foreign Minister] Lavrov to terminate all discussions with [Secretary of State] Kerry, because it displayed Obama’s unwavering determination to defeat Russia».

Back on December 11th, I had headlined what had led up to this sabotaging-event: «Obama & Erdogan Move ISIS from Iraq to Syria, to Weaken Assad», and I documented — based on reliable reporting in many countries, including a Turkish government site which even acknowledged — that Obama was working with Erdogan to leave an escape-route for Iraq’s ISIS terrorists in Mosul to relocate safely into Syria — to the key city of Palmyra via Deir ez Zor — and so retake Palmyra from Syrian government forces. This required first that Syrian government forces be ousted from Deir ez Zor which would be en-route to Palmyra. And this — Obama’s cooperation with Erdogan in their joint effort to overthrow Assad — is what actually had «lost Palmyra to ISIS,» as the (U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-Turkey created) ‘Free Syrian Army’ source that Huffington Post was quoted on March 3rd accusing against Assad. It wasn’t any failure by Assad’s forces; it was instead the success of the U.S.-Turkish operation — the operation that included Obama’s bombing Syria’s army at Deir ez Zor (which then was promptly retaken by ISIS). It’s not because «Assad’s coalition has focused most of its attacks on the Free Syrian Army». Assad’s forces were at Deir ez Zor, and in Palmyra, after having retaken both cities from ISIS — and now, because of Obama and Erdogan, ISIS again controlled both Syrian cities. HuffPo’s reporters are required to use anti-Russian — and this also includes anti-Syrian — sources for their ‘reporting’ (or propaganda). The solidly documented truth is that Obama and Erdogan were aiming to oust Assad; they were assisting ISIS in both Deir ez Zor and Palmyra (and actually all along the route from Mosul to Palmyra).

Furthermore, as I also had reported (and in this recent in-depth article documented extensively), «Russia now runs the peace process to end Syria's War», and that war has actually been between the U.S. aristocracy versus Russia, and not only (nor even mainly) between Bashar al-Assad versus ‘the rebels’, who are almost totally controlled by Al Qaeda, which in Syria (under the name «Al Nusra») is financed heavily by the Sauds who own Saudi Arabia, and by the Thanis who own Qatar, and armed largely by the U.S. government, and have freely brought new jihadist recruits into Syria mainly through Turkey.

Using liars as sources is routine in the press, but it’s done because the people who control those ‘news’media want their public to believe those lies; it’s not to be blamed only on the reporters and ‘news’-editors whom they hire. The ‘reporters’ and editors are merely doing their job. (That’s how they keep their jobs.)

As a mere blogger, Erik Wemple, headlined on 30 November 2016, «Lifelong Beltway media guy Jim VandeHei calls media a ‘scam’» and he linked to the euphemistic admission of this, by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen themselves, that «Media is broken — and too often a scam». They were promising to provide an alternative, as they promised their readers (soft-peddling the harsh reality): «content they can trust — delivered way, way more efficiently. No bias. No nonsense». They think they can deliver it and make a profit doing so. That would be a novelty. It would certainly be a terrific thing to achieve, just as a perpetual-motion machine would be, but perhaps just as likely — which is to say: not. (And, of course, ‘non-profit’ and government ‘news’media are just as much controlled by the aristocracy, which controls the government. Anyone who trusts the ‘news’media has to be a person of faith, because only on that basis can it be trusted.)

read more:

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/03/07/how-news-media-lie.html

RT NY

RT Paris

NY Berlin

 

Eine der irritierendsten WikiLeaks-Enthüllungen besteht sicher darin, dass die CIA Cyberangriffe "unter falscher Flagge" durchführen und etwa Russland oder auch andere Länder als Täter hinstellen kann. 

In Bezug auf die UMBRAGE Gruppe der CIA, die auf den Fernzugriff auf Geräte spezialisiert ist, meint die Wiki-Leaks-Quelle, dass sie "eine umfangreiche Bibliothek betreibt und kontinuierlich erweitert.

In dieser Bibliothek werden auch Techniken erfasst, die aus Malware gestohlen wurden". Die Malware kann dabei auch aus anderen Ländern, wie zum Beispiel Russland, stammen. Werden die Enthüllungen in den US-Mainstreammedien deswegen so runtergespielt?

READ MORE:

https://deutsch.rt.com/international/47465-cia-kann-unter-falscher-flagg...

For some years now, people have been able to write any rubbish about Russia in the Western press and suffer hardly any consequences. This irresponsible approach has led to a feeding frenzy since Donald Trump won last fall's race for the White House.

Two years ago this week, Vladimir Putin died. On Twitter, at least.

And the false reports reached the pages of various news outlets, including web giant Yahoo. What made this 'fake news' more remarkable was how it was primarily spread by the so-called 'expert community.'

Others had different takes. Perhaps he’d been ousted in a palace coup? Or had a stroke? But my favorite made up report came from The Daily Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent, who insisted Putin was in Switzerland attending the birth of a new child. The idea of Putin going on secret paternity leave was deliciously preposterous.

All this hysteria served to distract from more pertinent, applicable, valid and authentic issues. Such as perhaps how obsessing so much over one political figure explains why contemporary analysis of "Putin's Russia" is so diabolical? Not to mention the fact that the head of state vanishing into the ether for over a week, without much explanation, might suggest a weakness in the Kremlin’s system. One which doesn’t augur well for the future transition when the President inevitably shuffles off into retirement.

You see, in the circus that is today's Western coverage of Russia, such serious topics are rarely discussed. Because everybody is wedded to sensationalism and looking to make their mark through hysteria. And this problem has multiplied since Trump won the US Presidential election.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/380539-trump-won-us-election-russia/

The US media is “losing its mind” over a totally common and transparent practice, RT’s head of communications has said, commenting on disclosed details of Michael Flynn’s paid appearance at a conference in Moscow which was never a secret in the first place.

“This isn’t just a standard practice, this is a standard practice that is entirely transparent. It’s commonplace not just in the United States, but in Washington, DC, in particular,” Anna Belkina, said, adding there are scores of agencies in the US that specialize in connecting public figures with events such as the international conference hosted by RT in Moscow in December 2015.

The email exchange and attached documents, obtained by the House Oversight Committee and shared with the US media, include details of RT’s negotiations with Flynn’s speakers bureau — Leading Authorities— over the fee for his appearance.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/381072-flynn-rt-payment-conference/

 

RT America has been awarded one Silver Medal and two Bronze Medals at the annual New York Festivals International Television & Film Awards.

Question more, win more!

READ MORE: RT beats BBC, CNN with 18 nominations in prestigious New York Festivals finals

RT America obtained three wins Tuesday evening at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, not from gambling, but from the grand jury of the 2017 New York Festivals International Television & Film Awards.

A Silver World Medal for Direction: Promotion/Open & IDs went to the RT America program “The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann.”

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/386157-rt-america-ny-festivals-medals/

 

Read from top...

 

 

RT has bagged nine medals at this year's New York Festivals awards for the world’s best TV and film work. The channel's series of special reports from Libya and a documentary on the water crisis in India received top prizes.

The RT network was nominated in 18 categories of the prestigious international television and film competition, and received awards in half of them – two gold, four silver and three bronze.

"Winning at international competitions has become a good tradition for us,” said RT's editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/386256-new-york-festivals-rt-awarded/

See alos:

a photo that proves... nothing... except US paranoia and lunatic tendencies.

 

 

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed Democratic Congressman David Cicilline, who claimed on Carlson’s show that RT is simply a “Russian propaganda" machine.

The confrontation starts off as Cicilline says the US should “hold them [the Russian government] to account and sanction them,” so that “Russia understands that America isn’t going to allow that.”

 

Host Tucker Carlson interrupted to ask: “Not to allow what exactly?”

Cicilline stumbles with his response, repeating instead a familiar refrain among politicians in the United States:“Russian RT propaganda” is to blame.

Carlson continues to press Cicilline: “You said RT is a problem. RT is a cable network. It’s a very left-wing one by the way. I don’t watch it, but… RT is a part of the American press corps. Do you think we should ban RT? What are you saying exactly?”

Cicilline does not give a direct answer, saying instead that “the Russian government, led by Vladimir Putin, engaged in a very sophisticated effort to undermine the election of Hillary Clinton.”

He then dwelled a little on the claim that “RT promoted propaganda, fake stories, that were then retweeted on the internet,” going on to slam the channel as “not a news organization.” The lawmaker, though, did not voice any facts to back up his allegations. Fox News’s Carlson seemed to disagree on this, too.  

“Ed Schultz works there! Larry King works there!”  

The show’s host then tried to fish out any answer from Carlson, asking: so should RT be banned if it’s such a problem?  

“It's not a question of should be allowed,” Cicilline says, adding, “They facilitated the release of stolen emails.” To this, Carlson retorts, “Well, so did the New York Times.”

Cicilline reluctantly agrees that “Russian propaganda can exist, but what we can do is protect our democracy from it,” prompting the question from Carlson: ‘How, exactly?’  

“We can punish the Russians for what they did,” Cicilline responds. “For having a cable network?” Carlson wonders, also asking what role Larry King, one of RT’s “lead anchors,” plays in “the Russian propaganda,” as put by Cicilline.

“I have no idea. I don’t know about Larry King’s show,” the senator says.  

In the end, both Carlson and Cicilline admit that Russia stories are quite exhausting, but Cicilline points out that“You wanna talk about Russia, because it's salacious and people watch your show because of it.”'

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/396302-carlson-cicilline-fox-russia/

 

read from top...

 

 

The Daily Mail, the very symbol of journalistic integrity in Britain, has scored a major coup – it has revealed the location of RT’s UK office. We haven’t been able to confirm the number of investigative journalists involved in finding the address – presumably by googling it.

The biggest surprise to dedicated Daily Mail readers will be that RT is not operating from a hollowed-out volcano on a super villain’s tropical island, but actually from a gray, aging (cold) skyscraper.

The Daily Mail article, jumping wholeheartedly upon the now-speeding anti-Russia bandwagon in Britain, carries the breathless headline: “Putin’s lying machine: Revealed, how Russia’s spewing out ruthless propaganda from a Moscow-funded TV station – right next to Westminster.”

 

But surely the real headline is in the opening line: “The 16th floor of Millbank Tower, and Vladimir Putin is pumping out truth — of the Russian kind.”

The man himself is in London, writing stories about Universal Credit and Grenfell Tower. Now that is a story! Does he want tea?

Maybe he was using some of the “state-of-the-art equipment [which] allows for slick, sophisticated graphics that mimic the output of respectable international news broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN and France 24.” By state-of-the-art, we assume that means it uses electricity.

Doesn’t "state-of-the-art" sound sinister though, especially when you’re just “mimicking” other broadcasters. It will be news to the people (yes, real, educated, independently-thinking people) who work at RT UK that their stories are just mimics. The interviews they’re taking are just mimics. The editor who is shouting at them to meet a deadline is just an angry mimic.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/uk/409939-daily-mail-rtuk-kremlin/

 

 

 

Read from top...

Meanwhile:

Russian State Duma on Wednesday passed in the third and final reading the bill require mass-media outlets operating in the country but funded from abroad to register as foreign agents.

The motion was prepared by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and the heads of all four parliamentary caucuses. It was drafted as a suite of amendments to the bill, allowing for websites of banned or extremist organizations to be blocked without requiring approval from the courts.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/politics/409908-russian-foreign-agents-media-law/

The CEO of the American agency that governs international broadcasting has made a powerful, if blatantly false, sales pitch for his fight against ‘Russian disinformation’… right after saying “any lie will do” for the Kremlin.

John Lansing, the CEO of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which supervises Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, among others, raised the alarm over Washington’s favorite shadowboxing opponent – ‘fake news’ allegedly spread by the Kremlin – at a recent House Committee on Appropriations hearing.

He is worried his agency isn’t getting enough government money to fight “Russian disinformation.”

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/464002-usagm-disinformation-budget-lie/

 

 

Read from top.

RT has been fined £200,000 by the media regulator for breaching impartiality rules.

The Kremlin-funded news channel, formerly known as Russia Today, was found to have breached the British broadcasting code on seven occasions in the six weeks following last year’s Salisbury novichok poisoning. Despite the fine it will be allowed to retain its licence and continue broadcasting in the UK.

“Taken together, these breaches represented serious and repeated failures of compliance with our rules,” said Ofcom. “We were particularly concerned by the frequency of RT’s rule-breaking over a relatively short period of time.”

The serious breaches of the code meant the regulator had a number of ways of punishing the Russian broadcaster, including revoking the channel’s licence to broadcast in the UK. Instead, the regulator concluded it was more just to impose a substantial fine and require RT to broadcast a summary of the findings, in a form and on dates to be determined by Ofcom.

Ofcom said this was fair since “we have not recorded any further breaches of our due impartiality rules against RT to date”.

The channel will not have to pay the fine and broadcast Ofcom’s ruling immediately, since it is challenging the initial ruling through a judicial review. The case is expected to reach the courts by the end of the year.

Politicians had raised concerns about the tone of RT’s output in the aftermath of the Salisbury incident, although Ofcom has previously said this did not influence its decision to put the station under additional monitoring following the poisoning.

In total, Ofcom investigated 10 RT programmes broadcast between March and May last year, concluding that seven of them breached rules on due impartiality regarding matters of political controversy.

Two of the breaches related to programmes hosted by the former MP George Galloway, a regular presenter on the channel, who cast doubt on the link between the Salisbury poisonings and Russia. He has since lost another job at TalkRadio, after he was the subject of a negative Ofcom ruling at that broadcaster on unrelated matters.

Other RT breaches include incidents in which presenters failed to challenge interviewees over contentious topics and instead appeared to agree with their guest, and programmes and reports about the conflict in Syria that took a resolutely pro-Russian viewpoint without representing alternative views.

RT has previously argued it did not breach rules of due impartiality, partly since its viewers expect to see a pro-Russian viewpoint when they tune in to the station.

Despite the substantial media attention given to RT’s output, its British station has a relatively small reach of 332,000 viewers a week despite being available to most households on Freeview, less than pay-TV channels such as Horror Channel +1, Kerrang TV, and Total Country.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jul/26/rt-fined-breaching-imparti...

 

WHEN WAS THE TIME YOU SAW THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, including The Guardian, PRESENT THE OTHER POINTS OF VIEW that could be contrary to the government dictums? SAY NEVER and you would be right... Congrats to RT (Russia Today) for balancing the fake-news of MI6 on the Skripal affair with real alternatives.

 

Read from top.

The Russians are coming — and this time they’re looking to recruit US journalists who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus.

RT America, a newsgathering unit of Moscow-based media company RT, is looking to beef up its US staffing ahead of the 2020 election, a flurry of recent job postings shows. Formerly called Russia Today, it’s the same stateside operation that was accused by intelligence agencies of spreading misinformation in the US prior to the 2016 election.

In September 2017, RT was forced by the Justice Department to register as a foreign agent of the Russian government. At the time, RT representatives disputed the Justice Department’s findings but said they agreed to register to avoid charges.

Currently, the company is posting on journalism job boards under the name RT — without disclosing its Russian roots or its alleged ties to Vladimir Putin’s government.

One source who responded to an ad was called from a number in Moscow by a person identified as Igor Ogorodnev, the Web editor-in-chief in the US.

Ogorodnev told our source that he was interested in stories that can investigate the “rumor” that COVID-19 deaths are being exaggerated by US media outlets.

“No anti-Trump coverage,” Ogorodnev told our source. “We’re not The Washington Post.”

The source said Ogorodnev would only communicate via the encrypted WhatsApp messaging app.

Media Ink contacted Ogorodnev via WhatsApp on Wednesday and placed a conventional call on Thursday. Ogorodnev asked if he could call back on the secure WhatsApp line to “save money.”

He called moments later and said he had already checked out Media Ink’s stories. He said the recruitment drive is “an expansion and an upgrade.”

We asked him about the reports that RT is a propaganda outlet backed by the Russian government. As he comprehended that Media Ink was writing a story about RT rather than applying for a job, he said, “I cannot give you a quote. I hope you understand.”

He then sent an e-mail address, again via WhatsApp, for a press contact.

“Recruitment at RT is an ongoing activity, as with any global news organisation,” RT reps said in a Friday statement. “We look for the best talent to contribute to our network, and invite applications for all roles open.”

Some former RT reporters have accused the organization of spreading misinformation. The British government’s Ofcom has said that RT had breached its rules of impartiality and on at least one occasion broadcast “materially misleading” content.

 

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2020/05/07/rt-america-recruiting-us-journalists-ahead-of-2020-election/

 

 

Read from top. As we know "the Western media is always impartial and never publish misleading material"... except on a few occasions. Sorry. The list of these few occasions is too long to place here, but read this site from 2005 and you shall count more than 35,000 articles — all exposing how the western media (and the western governments) have been bullshitting us. Good luck to the new recruits at RT.

Bellingcat, the UK-based enablers of Western narratives in Syria and Ukraine now fueling US race riots, selectively translated a satirical post from Russian social media shared by RT’s editor-in-chief to get her “canceled.”

On Sunday, Margarita Simonyan shared a Telegram post by Dmitry Steshin, a war correspondent for the newspaper KP, which purported to give “advice” to rioters in the US on how to make their uprising more “successful” along the lines of the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine.

Given that the post was entirely in Russian, it was obvious that the real objective of Steshin – and Simonyan – was to comment on the Maidan uprising in Kiev and the ensuing war in Ukraine. Not so, declared the self-proclaimed experts on “open-source” intelligence. Bellingcat selectively translated a handful of sentences from Steshin’s post and accused Simonyan of – what else? –  racism.

“Bellingcat accusing me of racism for a repost that used the Russian word for a black person is as baseless as me accusing Bellingcat of racism for calling me Russian, and not Armenian (I am both),” Simonyan said in response to the accusations.

Your ‘exposé’ is multiplying the stupidity in the world.

RT also responded to Bellingcat on Twitter, pointing out that they “missed the point” of the Telegram post, which was not aimed at black protesters in 2020, but satirized the 2014 Ukrainian unrest.

Indeed, Simonyan’s post starts with “good advice to black people of Minnesota from a journalist who covered seven Maidans and color revolutions” – referring to US-backed astroturfed protests that often escalated into riots for the purpose of regime change. Being in Russian, though, the advice was clearly not meant for Minnesotans.

While Steshin’s post might have used rough language, “humor norms vary by country. More so in countries not dealing with [the] burden of once being such enthusiastic African slave traders,” RT noted in a retort to Bellingcat.

Russia has no history of African slavery and has treated fairly the people of African heritage who ended up living there voluntarily, from the great-grandfather of the famous 19th century poet Aleksandr Pushkin to Chernobyl liquidator Igor Khiryak, to use a more modern example. 

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/490443-bellingcat-telegram-simonyan-racism/

 

Read from top.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=229&v=SQQwBfux9i0&feature=emb_logo

 

It appears that YouTube has already disconnected this link so go there first:

 

https://www.rt.com/news/501527-rt-trump-deepfake-reaction/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=229&v=SQQwBfux9i0&feature=em...

 

 

 

 

RT exposed in leaked video: Watch how evil 'Kremlin propaganda bullhorn' REALLY works...

 

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We at YD are amazed that they (we — Western media) haven't blamed Russia — no, I mean Putin — for this news item:

 

The mystery of why an entire village lost its broadband every morning at 7am was solved when engineers discovered an old television was to blame.

An unnamed householder in Aberhosan, Powys, was unaware the old set would emit a signal which would interfere with the entire village's broadband.

After 18 months engineers began an investigation after a cable replacement programme failed to fix the issue.

The embarrassed householder promised not to use the television again.

The village now has a stable broadband signal.

Openreach engineers were baffled by the continuous problem and it wasn't until they used a monitoring device that they found the fault.

The householder would switch their TV set on at 7am every morning - and electrical interference emitted by their second-hand television was affecting the broadband signal.

The owner, who does not want to be identified, was "mortified" to find out their old TV was causing the problem, according to Openreach.

"They immediately agreed to switch it off and not use it again," said engineer Michael Jones.

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-54239180

 

We are convinced that the TV was a 1976 Russian made Юность 401 with a 2019 secret connection to the Kremlin to test a new weapon system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMjPzXLC5k

 

Read from top.

 

And in case you haven't got the message:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyo7zeLNPJg&pp=QAA%3D

RT Arabic's website emerged as the most-visited Arabic language news site in September, leaving its major competitors far behind and topping five out of seven metrics for online traffic, SimilarWeb analytics show.

The website received over 29.5 million visits last month – nearly 8 million more than the next best, the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera network.

RT Arabic took a solid lead among Arabic-language news websites in terms of total monthly visits in April this year, and has steadily widened the gap since then. In September, it also topped the ranking in terms of unique visitors, crossing the 7.5 million mark, the statistics show. This is some 400,000 more than the website of the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel.

Moreover, RT Arabic has the largest estimated audience, with some 7.1 million returning readers, the analytics indicate.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/502974-rt-arabic-engagement-stats/

 

 

Our portals would not cope with such adulating visitations...

 

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The call to order from Moscow came at 2 p.m. on Oct. 23, 2020, per video call. That Friday, RT DE, the German-language arm of the Russian state-funded television channel RT, had a news story on its website: "China and Germany Are Becoming Superpowers.” According to the report, Vladimir Putin had said as much during a video conference. A photo of the Russian president was at the top of the story. Putin was further quoted as saying that the absolute dominance of the U.S. was passé.

The powers-that-be in Moscow were not happy. Not because they thought the story was inaccurate, but because it only appeared online 20 hours after Putin had made his remarks.

So they called the staff of the German branch of the broadcaster to voice their displeasure. "They really ripped into us,” say call participants. They were told that such a thing should never happen again, they say. Important statements from Putin needed to appear on the website much faster, they were told.

RT DE, which had been called RT Deutsch until November, has been disseminating Kremlin-financed propaganda in Germany since 2014. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which has been keeping an eye on the platform, says the outlet is seeking to weaken trust in democratic institutions. The agency says there are close links between the station and those seeking to undermine the democratic order in Germany in addition to conspiracy theorists. And it considers the news disseminated by RT DE to be part of a disinformation campaign orchestrated by the Russian state.

Internal documents from the media platform that DER SPIEGEL has seen show the extent to which German staff are required to follow instructions from Moscow, and how political those instructions are.

RT DE is part of a Russian media network that also includes the video news agency Ruptly and the production company Redfish. The platform publishes articles, photos and videos on its own website, on YouTube and via other social networks.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/rt-germany-berlin-fears-growing-influence-of-russian-propaganda-platform-a-b62cb977-fc1a-4d66-8c7c-9859d8d00315

 

Read from top.

 

 

One could read this article from a different angle, such as Der Spiegel becoming worried it's losing influence to a Russian State media. Der Spiegel has been anti-Russia and anti-Putin, possibly since Putin came into power 21 years ago (amazing how time flies). Though we know that RT is funded entirely by the Russian government, it has many serious Western journalists on board who would not see the light of day in the biased Western "liberal" media... And this could be what Der Spiegel is worried about. Some of Spiegel's article are shit and can be countered — by fair and reasoned arguments whether these arguments appear on RT, or on ten million rolls of toilet paper. Der Spiegel is pro-Washington, while it should be truly independent and gauge arguments properly. 

YouTube blocks videos & hands strikes to RT’s English & German channels over alleged Covid-19 disinformation

 

RT’s English YouTube channel was issued a strike by the service over alleged Covid-19 disinformation, temporarily restricting its ability to launch live broadcasts. RT in Germany faced similar sanctions.

On Friday, four videos on RT’s main English-language channel were made inaccessible for viewers for what YouTube said were violations of its policies on “medical misinformation” and “spam, deceptive practices and scams.”

In its notification letter, the platform didn’t specify what exact content in those clips went against its regulations. RT has addressed YouTube for clarification, but hasn’t gotten a response yet.

According to YouTube’s rules, the blocking of four clips on a channel amounts to a “strike.” As a penalty, RT’s English channel will be barred from organizing live broadcasts for the next seven days.

None of the blacklisted clips were newly uploaded.They remained on RT’s channel for weeks and even months, garnering numerous views and likes from the audience.

One of them was an interview with renowned Russian virologist and World Health Organization expert on influenza Dmitry Lvov, who made a name for himself by researching the most dangerous viruses in the former Soviet Union and abroad. In the clip from early March, Lvov spoke to RT’s journalist, Anton Krasovsky, about the dangers and possible origins of the current coronavirus pandemic.

Another blocked video was an episode of the Wayne Dupree Show, hosted by the black American journalist of the same name. It was dedicated to January’s inauguration of US President Joe Biden, in which Biden called on supporters to skip the event due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

The other two clips were news broadcasts from rallies against coronavirus restrictions in London and Birmingham without commentary.

Meanwhile, the head of RT in Germany, Dinara Toktosunova, confirmed that RT DE also got a strike on YouTube. The video in question, a livestream from October 2020, showed an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne, Australia. There was no explanation from YouTube as to which specific moment of the footage triggered the sanctions. As the second strike for the page, it carries a harsher penalty. The German channel won’t be able to upload videos and stage live broadcasts for two weeks now, according to Toktosunova.

The platform’s rules state that “three strikes in the same 90-day period will result in your channel being permanently removed from YouTube.”

The latest action against RT follows another episode of social media clampdown on the news outlet.

In late March, the RT Arabic channel on YouTube, which is one of the most popular news sources in that language, was blocked entirely over copyright infringement claims by a US-based firm. However, its operations swiftly resumed after the hugely popular service was unblocked a few hours later. YouTube claimed the ban was “unintentional.”

Last year, RT’s Twitter account was marked as Russian state-affiliated media, which means the tweets by the account won’t be promoted or suggested for further reading by the social media giant.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/521983-rt-youtube-block-strike/

 

 

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White Man’s Media: Legacy media in the US and UK frames and conditions our thinking and actions.

 

BY John Menadue

 

Most political colonies have come to an end. But a colonial mind set continues in the media .That colonial media mind set in turn promotes a ‘colonisation of the mind’.

The US Department of Defence maintains, in its own words ‘full spectrum dominance’ throughout the world.  Legacy media in the US and the UK has the same dominance . It frames and  influences how we think and particularly how governments act.

US legacy media – CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Fox News  and western news agencies- in association with drivers of US power and privilege, the military, business, think-tanks and security agencies  exert dangerous and destructive influence that has contributed to the killing of millions of people.  Add to that the way legacy media has helped excuse the way in which the US has attempted and often successfully, to overthrow numerous governments around the world.  The ‘indispensable state’ regards it as quite natural that US hegemony should be enforced everywhere.

Just as the British East India Company effectively ran Britain and its empire, so the US military and business complex, along with its elite supporters particularly in the media supports western hegemony.  No US president, and certainly no Australian Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition is prepared to challenge the US Imperium.

Australian media tugs the forelock to the Imperium. A person from Mars who reads and listens to Australian media would conclude that we are an island parked off New York or London.

Our media is dominated by the domestic events and issues of interest to UK and US readers – the latest antics of the British Royal family, Donald Trump, the Governor of New York or vaccination rates in Alabama.

Much worse the ‘world view’ we get in Australia is a view of the world as seen from London, New York and Washington

Most of the news we get in Australia about China, Indonesia, India and Vietnam is via western news agencies. These media snapshots  are usually about the exotic and dangerous- a coup here, a flood there. Not surprisingly we remain ignorant and fearful of Asia.

Our ‘colonial’ media structure was laid down long ago.  It remains today.

We talk glibly about our future in Asia, but we are stuck in a US and UK media cul de sac.

With the active encouragement of our media, we have been drawn into countless US military disasters not just for the US but overwhelmingly for the people that are attacked.  On top of that, we had the war on terror.  Now we have the vilification of China, perhaps even a war.

It is not that Chinese behaviour and its human rights record has worsened. What has changed and what is feared is the growing power and influence of China.  That is seen as a threat to US  full-spectrum dominance.  That fear of China is reflected in our legacy media in the US and the UK spewing out an endless daily campaign of anti-China stories. And other media follow.

Led by the US, our media showed no interest in ‘democracy’ in Hong Kong throughout over a century of British rule.  But now that Hong Kong is properly recognised as part of China, the US government, supported by its media, suddenly became concerned about democracy and independence for Hong Kong. They encouraged the 2019 insurrection.

The US has rained death, destruction and displacement on tens of millions of Muslims in the Middle East over the last twenty years.  Now the US media shows a remarkable and belated concern about the persecution of Muslims in China. The US record, like Australia’s treatment of indigenous people, is a blemish for all time. But who seems to care? Certainly not our own media which wastes no opportunity to attack China. We cherry-pick human rights abuses that suit our agenda.

The association of legacy media with the powerful is everywhere. As  Alex Lo wrote in August ‘It has long been known that the Department of Defense in the US and other governments such as the CIA, not only support film and cable production in Hollywood but also actively intervene and manipulate their content.’

And in June, Lo described how a long list of former US security chiefs e.g. John Brennan and James Clapper, joined US media – NBC, MSNBC and CNN.

Australian security heads have been leading the demonisation of China with help from the Five Eyes.  But we get a double whammy when our derivative media draws heavily on US legacy media that in turn is heavily influenced by former US security chiefs with their ‘expert opinions’.

But Australian media does not have a problem just being dominated by legacy US and UK media .  We have a particular problem. Its name is  Rupert Murdoch, an American citizen who owns two-thirds of Australia’s metropolitan dailies and more.

News Corp was a key supporter of the Iraq War-the Murdoch War. Of the 173 Murdoch papers worldwide only one, The Hobart Mercury opposed the war. Murdoch told us in 2003 ‘ I think Bush acted very morally, very correctly. US troops will soon be welcomed as liberators’. His Foreign Editor on The Australian Greg Sheridan could not contain himself. ‘The bold eagle of American power is aloft, high above the humble earth. For as it soars and sweeps it sees victory, power and opportunity’. He is still in his job. Murdoch prefers loyalty to competence in all those around him, including his family.

Even some of the legacy media apologised for their support of the illegal war in Iraq. But never Rupert Murdoch or for that matter John Howard.

News Corp in Australia for over a decade has also led the campaign of denial on climate change.

The US military/business/security complex exercises destructive and pervasive power.  Legacy media supplies a favourable frame for that complex

Our derivative media ties us to the white legacy media of the North Atlantic. It frames our view of the world

This is the first article in a series on White Man’s Media which we will be running over the next 2 to 3 weeks. Articles in the series can be found here.

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/white-mans-media-how-legacy-media-in-us-and-uk-frames-and-conditions-our-thinking-and-actions/

 

Yes, yes, yes!!!! but doesn't that feel good to be pampered by good news? Did I say "good news"? I meant to say info/news that is totally irrelevant to my well-being, but because the NEWS/NUZ is usually about someone else's catastrophe, it makes me feel safe and smug — and moralistically superior... And god created planet earth in six days. Fantastic! All I have to do is to believe to get redeem points against my original sin and bob's my non binary uncle.

But my subversive self tends to gravitate to other news outlets (see from top) which thank god (he does not exist — but we can thank Him anyhow, can't we?) are available on the internet... until...

 

Haven't we been on this subject since... since... since.... APRIL 2005?... WOW! How times fly... With nearly 17,000 read...(16,919 actually) and not a single impact on the Mass Media de Mediocre Mierda... Zilch!... And we're still fighting the same bloody zombie 2005 issues, from idiots in Kanbra to those in Whhhhhhashington (too many bloody h's) passing through Russia, Germany, France, and via China — where the social climate is always set at a pure heavenly happiness maximum digit. 

 

Yes we need our brain conditioner to get the feeling we belong to something... And for us, we can relate better to the Kardashians's butts than to Einstein's gobbledegook...