Thursday 26th of December 2024
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propaganda, propaganda, propaganda, all is propaganda....

"US intelligence agencies believe that the American National Security Agency is attempting to influence public policy and public opinion in the West by directing American civilians to build relationships with influential US and Western individuals and then disseminate narratives that support the Pentagon objectives, obscuring the NSA’s role through layers of ostensibly independent actors."

“‘These influence operations are designed to be deliberately small scale, the overall goal being US [and] Western persons presenting these ideas, seemingly organic,’ a US official unauthorized to discuss the material told CNN. ‘The co-optee influence operations are built primarily on personal relationships … they build trust with them and then they can leverage that to covertly push the American Empire’s agenda.’”

“But the official stressed that the Western voices that eventually became mouthpieces for the Pentagon propaganda were almost certainly unaware of the role they were playing,” CNN adds.

 

THIS WAS "REVERSED BY GUS" FROM THE ARTICLE BELOW.....

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BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

 

CNN has a new article out titled “Newly declassified US intel claims Russia is laundering propaganda through unwitting Westerners,” and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect if you’ve been critically observing the western mass media over the last several years. An anonymous source making vague and unevidenced claims of an unverifiable nature about a longtime target of the US intelligence cartel, based solely on information provided by that same intelligence cartel.

CNN’s Kate Bo Lillis reports:

“US intelligence agencies believe that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is attempting to influence public policy and public opinion in the West by directing Russian civilians to build relationships with influential US and Western individuals and then disseminate narratives that support Kremlin objectives, obscuring the FSB’s role through layers of ostensibly independent actors.

“‘These influence operations are designed to be deliberately small scale, the overall goal being US [and] Western persons presenting these ideas, seemingly organic,’ a US official authorized to discuss the material told CNN. ‘The co-optee influence operations are built primarily on personal relationships … they build trust with them and then they can leverage that to covertly push the FSB’s agenda.’”

“But the official stressed that the Western voices that eventually became mouthpieces for Russian propaganda were almost certainly unaware of the role they were playing,” CNN adds.

As usual, there is no way to prove or disprove these extremely vague claims about “small scale” actions supposedly being orchestrated by a foreign intelligence agency to create mouthpieces for Russian propaganda who don’t know they’re mouthpieces for Russian propaganda. We’re meant to simply take the word of an anonymous US official citing unsubstantiated assertions by US intelligence agencies.

And it brings up a few questions.

Firstly, what precisely are we meant to do with this very vague information about this very broad supposed trend? It kind of seems like we’re meant to just generally feel more paranoid and suspicious about anyone who isn’t toeing the official western line on issues pertaining to Russia. Whose interests would that serve? Would it perhaps serve the information interests of the US empire, which the US intelligence cartel exists to promote?

Secondly, if the US intelligence cartel believes this very broad, vague threat exists, why not just tell us themselves? Why not just issue some public statements from named officials, instead of funneling it through the news media disguised as a news story? What a weird charade.

Third, and related to the second, why is CNN publishing a CIA press release and disguising it as a news story? “US intelligence agencies believe Russia is up to some shady shenanigans” is not a news story. It’s not a journalist’s job to report how the US intelligence cartel says its feelings feel about things, it’s a journalist’s job to report hard facts based on hard evidence. That’s what news reporting is. Saying the US intelligence cartel feels we should be more paranoid and suspicious about very subtle Russian influence concealed by layers of ostensibly independent actors and people who don’t know they’re actually Russian mouthpieces is just publishing state propaganda.

Fourth, and related to the third, would it not be more efficient and cost-effective at this point to simply publish all news media reporting directly out of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia? Why waste money paying stenographers like CNN’s Kate Bo Lillis to write CIA press releases dressed up as news reporting when you can just cut out the middleman and let the CIA spooks author and publish them by themselves? As an added bonus this would bring a lot more clarity to the situation and greatly improve media literacy, because westerners would no longer suffer from the delusion that they are reading actual news reporting from actual journalistic outlets.

Fifth, and related to the fourth, is it not funny how the western media pour so much more energy into reporting on Russian propaganda and influence operations than on western propaganda and influence operations, even though western propaganda and influence operations dwarf Russian ones by many orders of magnitude in terms of manipulating the way westerners think about the world? Almost as though that’s something the western media would prefer people didn’t think too hard about?

One of the craziest things happening in our world today is how westerners are being trained to overlook the massive amounts of western propaganda they’re inundated with day in and day out and focus instead on “Russian propaganda”, which has no meaningful existence in the west. In 2017 before RT was shut down in the UK, it accounted for 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience. A New York University study published earlier this year found that the supposed Russian Twitter influence campaign ahead of the 2016 election which dominated headlines for years had had “no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior”. An earlier study found that suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook’s news feed during that time amounted to “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content.” A study by Adelaide University found that despite headline after headline warning us about a massive wave of Russian bots manipulating online discourse after the invasion of Ukraine began last year, the overwhelming majority of fake accounts they examined (more than 90 percent) were pro-Ukraine accounts.

Contrast this microscopic smattering of influence with the fact that westerners are continually getting their news reporting from western propaganda outlets which openly publish CIA press releases disguised as news on a regular basis. These people are absolutely telling us the truth when they say we’re under constant bombardment by propaganda and influence operations — they’re just lying about who’s really doing it to us.

 

Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

 

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not a happy cookie....

The confrontation between Democrats and Republicans in the US could spiral into a full-blown civil war, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said.

Speaking to RT and TASS news agency on Saturday, Medvedev said there is “a colossal rift between the elites” in the US. “It’s a clash between the conservative Republican establishment and the liberal segment, represented by the Democratic Party, which has actually torn America apart.”

“America is currently in a state of internal strife. America is conflicting with itself,” Medvedev, who is currently the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, argued. “Moreover, in my view, this strife is irreconcilable in some aspects. Such domestic conflicts often end with a civil war.”

“I don’t know what will happen in the US, but the level of conflict right now is [high],” he said.

Medvedev noted the ongoing criminal prosecution of ex-President Donald Trump, who is seeking the Republican Party nomination to run against the incumbent, Joe Biden, in the 2024 presidential election. Medvedev claimed that the charges against Trump have been brought “not for the sake of justice, but to prevent Trump from participating in the new election.”

Asked whether there are similarities between the administration of Barack Obama and the Biden White House in terms of dealing with conflicts, Medvedev said there was more “pragmatism” during the Obama years. He added that Biden has been more “involved mentally, politically and economically” in Ukraine, which has “tied his hands.”

Biden’s resolve to support Kiev against Russia has made him “a hostage of Ukraine, which is very sad for both Ukraine and the US,” Medvedev said.

Trump is facing a litany of criminal charges, including for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. On Saturday, he was booked at a Georgia jail and released on bail, becoming the first US president to have a mugshot taken.

Trump insists that all allegations against him are a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/581899-us-in-conflict-with-itself/

 

 

 

Former US president Donald Trump turned himself in at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday. The frontrunner for the Republican presidential ticket faces criminal charges for allegedly trying to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump was booked, arrested, and then quickly released on a $200,000 bond that sets a number of conditions, including not using social media to target co-defendants and witnesses in the case.

After leaving jail, Trump once again dismissed the prosecution as a “travesty of justice.” 

The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, meanwhile, has released the former president’s mugshot.

https://www.rt.com/news/581773-trump-surrenders-atlanta-jail/

 

by Pierre-Alain Depauw

Former President Donald Trump surrendered and was incarcerated - only moments - by the Fulton County Sheriff's Office based on District Attorney Fani Willis' indictment.

Trump surrendered around 19:30 p.m. local time Thursday night.

Trump posted on his social media Social Truth :

«231,000,000,000 views, and still counting. The most EVER seen video on social media, more than double the Super Bowl! But please excuse me, I need to start preparing to travel to Atlanta, Georgia, where murders and other violent crimes have reached levels never seen before, to be ARRESTED by a district attorney in the radical left, Fani Willis, for A PERFECT PHONE CALL, and having the audacity to challenge a rigged and stolen ELECTION. THE PROOF IS IRREFUTABLE! ARREST TIME: 000:000 p.m.».

Footage showed Trump's plane landing in Atlanta en route to the jail shortly before 19:30 p.m. Aerial footage captured his motorcade transporting him to Fulton County Jail for his case to be processed, then minutes later filmed Trump's motorcade leaving the scene after the former president completed security clearance. 'use.

Trump and 18 others close to him were charged in a 98-page, 41-count indictment handed down last week by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia.

As reported Breitbart News :

«The indictment does not fundamentally relate to actions taken in Georgia, but outlines words spoken and actions taken by the Trump campaign in various other states in an attempt to sow doubt in the disputed 2020 presidential election.

The indictment targets several defendants simply for making statements claiming the 2020 election was stolen. He claims actions such as holding public hearings in Pennsylvania amounted to acts contributing to an unlawful conspiracy».

Other "acts" are seen as furthering the "conspiracy," including then-President Trump's tweets encouraging people to attend public hearings in which allegations of voting irregularities were made by attorneys and Trump witnesses.

Prosecutors had given Trump and his 18 co-defendants until Friday to surrender. Trump's surrender comes after several of his co-defendants have already visited there this week.

Trump was released on $200,000 bail, the highest amount among all of his co-defendants. Trump's release conditions are stricter than those of some of his other co-defendants.

Each of the defendants' bonding agreements contains a provision that they "must not do anything to intimidate any person they know to be a co-accused or witness in this case or to otherwise interfere with the administration of justice". However, the conditions imposed by Trump direct him not to utter any “direct or indirect threatagainst witnesses or co-defendants.

source: Media Press Info

 

 

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verbotene Befragung......

By Michael Shellenberger

From North America to Australia to Europe, elites seek censorship, privacy invasions, and the prosecution of wrongthink as “pre-crime”…

The leaders of nations, representatives of international organizations, and philanthropists say they are committed to creating free and open societies. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook has independent fact-checkers, is open to all perspectives, and doesn’t interfere in elections. And, in response to questions from a colleague at Public, a representative from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations insisted the philanthropy supported free speech.

“In response to your effort to conflate any attempt to address hate speech as a frontal assault on free speech itself,” the Soros spokesperson said, “perhaps the words of the UN Secretary-General will help in illuminating a crucial distinction: ‘Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech.’”

 

But these words are a thin veil covering an aggressive attack on freedom of speech around the world, from Australia to North America to Europe, where the Digital Services Act, which demands Internet companies “Address any risk they pose on society, including public health, physical and mental well-being,” goes into effect today.

A blockbuster new investigation by Australia’s Sky News discovered that Meta-Facebook has been paying activists to serve as neutral fact-checkers while, in reality, using their power to censor their political enemies.

The context is that this fall, Australians will vote in a special national election, the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, on whether to give special political powers to native peoples. Facebook is funding those in favor of the referendum to censor its opponents. “An audit of RMIT Voice fact checks showed the 17 Voice checks between May 3 and June 23 this year were all targeting anti-Voice opinions or views,” Sky News Found.

Meta allowed the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) to censor disfavored views even while “knowing it was a breach of the rules Zuckerberg established to distance himself from fact-checking responsibilities,” reported SkyNews.

The RMIT, which is a respected technical university like America’s MIT,  “used the powers Facebook has given it to throttle Sky News Australia’s Facebook page with false fact checks multiple times this year, breaching the Meta-endorsed IFCN Code of Principles and preventing millions of Australians from reading or watching Sky News Australia’s journalism.”

How did the fact-checkers abuse their powers? By smearing their political enemies as racists. 

“Fact-checkers employed by RMIT have led to numerous code breaches,” reports Sky News, “including one fact-checker using her social media account to label Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a fear-mongering racist for his views on the Voice.”

As for Soros’ Open Society Foundations, its spokesperson cleverly tucked a call for expanded censorship into her response to our queries.

After saying, “Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech,” the spokesperson said, “It means keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous, particularly incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence, which is prohibited under international law” [emphasis added].

“Keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous” is precisely the justification for censorship that politicians in Ireland and Scotland are making to be able to invade people’s homes and confiscate their phones and computers, as Irish reporter Ben Scallan described yesterday.

 

https://www.activistpost.com/2023/08/elite-crackdown-on-free-speech-worldwide-intensifies.html

 

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politicoganda.....

Why Only Suckers Trust America’s Major Media Any Longer

 

BY 

 

A typical example is Politico, which is owned by Germany’s Axel Springer, billionaires who back the marketing organization for U.S.-and-allied armaments-manufacturers: NATO. (These corporations sell virtually only to their own Government and to other Governments in NATO; so, they need to control their governments, which are their markets; and this means they need the voters in these ‘democracies’ to elect only politicians who back more spending on weapons for wars.)

Wikipedia’s article on Politico includes:

Acquisition by Axel Springer [edit]

In October 2021, the large German publishing and media firm Axel Springer SE announced that it had completed the acquisition of Politico for over $1 billion. The closing took place in late October 2021.[75][76][77] The new owners said they would add staff, and at some point, put the publication’s news content behind a paywall.[78][79][80]

Axel Springer’s Chief Executive Mathias Döpfner said that Politico staff would need to adhere to Axel Springer’s principles, including support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-market economy, and that staff who disagree with the principles “should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly”.[81] Axel Springer said that they would not require Politico employees to sign documents in support of a transatlantic alliance or Israel, though this policy is enforced at German newspaper Bild, another Axel Springer subsidiary.[82]

 

Here is Politico right now as this is written, on Sunday August 27th, and you can see there that the lead story, at the very top, is “What the History of Jesse Ventura and Jill Stein Means for Joe Biden: If Democrats anywhere would peel off for a third-party candidate, it might be in Minnesota.”

It’s 2,644 words long, the equivalent of 10 pages in an ordinary book; so, it’s a feature-length article — and yet it totally ignores that by far the highest net-approved of all candidates (or even likely or possible candidates) for America’s Presidency is and for months has been Robert F. Kennedy Jr, RFK Jr., at a net-favorability of +21%, and Joe Biden’s net-favorability is -14%. So: whereas a voting-contest between Trump versus Biden would be very close and certainly not yet at all predictable in its outcome (because they both have negative net-favorability ratings), a Trump versus RFK Jr. contest would easily place Kennedy into the White House.

Right now, Trump’s net-favorability rating is -4%, which is 10% better than Biden’s -14%; and, so, if the final election were to be held today between them, Trump would almost certainly win — but RFK, whose net-favorability is 25% above Trump’s, would trounce Trump and win in a landslide which would bring in a heavily Democratic-Party-led Congress. And yet, RFK Jr. is ignored in the Politico article, which simply assumesthat Biden will be the Democratic Party’s nominee.

RFK Jr. is strongly against continuing the war in Ukraine (he’s the only candidate in both Parties who is) — this war that has brought hundreds of billions of dollars of additional sales to NATO’s armaments-manufacturers; and, so their ‘news’-media are overwhelmingly campaigning against him and for Biden to win the Democratic Party’s nomination.

The lead article in today’s Politico is basically telling Democratic Party voters in each of America’s 50 states that if they vote for a third-party U.S. Presidential candidate instead of for Biden, then they will be voting only for a “spoiler” candidate who — like Ralph Nader did in the 2000 U.S. general election for the Presidency — will cause the Republican Party’s nominee (that was George W. Bush) to win. 

But there is another reason why voting for RFK Jr. instead of Biden in the primaries isn’t at all like having voted for Nader instead of Gore in 2000: Nader was running in the general election and not in any Democratic Party primary; and, so, he was running against both Gore and Bush, and NOT in an election which would determine whom would win the Democratic Party’s nomination. By contrast: RFK Jr. is running for the Democratic Party’s nomination. He is anything BUT a “spoiler” candidate. Yet Democratic Party and other neoconservative (i.e., Rhodesist) ‘news’-media pour contempt upon him.

At the present time in the U.S. Presidential contests, ONLY the Parties’ nominees are being chosen — NOT the winner in the general election. So: an intelligent Democrat at this stage knows that the issue is not choosing the President, but is instead choosing whom will represent the Party in the final contest against the Republican Party’s nominee (the general election). The billionaires who control Politico can’t accept a Trump v. RFK Jr. contest, but can accept a Trump v. Biden contest, because only RFK Jr. is a financial threat to them.

So: who owns Axel Springer? On 26 August 2019, Reuters headlined “KKR becomes Axel Springer’s biggest shareholder”, and reported that, “KKR KKR.N has become the biggest shareholder of German media group Axel Springer SPRGn.DE, paying 2.9 billion euros ($3.2 billion) for a 43.54% stake, the U.S. private equity firm said.” That dwarfs any other shareholder or likely combination of shareholders: KKR controls Axel Springer.

 

KKR is Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which long has been controlled by Henry Kravis and George Roberts. Kravis’s wife is Marie-Josée Drouin Kravis; and some years she has been a Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the group that controls NATO, which is the extremely private Bilderbergers, who meet annually to communicate with each other totally in private. Mathias Döpfner is a regular member of the Steering Committee, and he is the second-largest stockholder in Axel Springer and is the corporation’s CEO. In 2013, KKR hired former CIA Director David Petraeus as Chairman of its newely created Global Institute, and he also became a regular attendee at the Bilderberg meetings, along with Henry and Marie-Josée Drouin Kravis, as well as Mathias Döpfner, such as in 2014, but Petraeus is not listed as an attendee at the 2023 meeting. However, it did include many notables, such as Stacey Abrams, Paul M. Achleitner, Magdalena Andersson, Anne Applebaum, Jose Manuel Barroso, Ben van Beurden, Josep Borrell, Ana P. Botin, Albert Bourla, Borge Brende, Martin Brudermuller, Henry de Castries, Mette Fredericksen, Chrystia Freeland, Belen Garijo, Kenneth Griffin, Avril Haines, Alex Karp, Henry Kissinger, Dmytro Kuleba, Saana Marin, John Mickelthwait, Zanny Minton Beddoes, Satya Nadella, Gideon Rachman, Mark Rutte, John Sawers, Eric Schmidt, Radoslaw Sikorski, Jens Stoltenberg, and Peter Thiel. Many major corporate mergers and acquisitions are initiated at these meetings, and Governmental policies also are sometimes coordinated there. A typical attendee represents the interests of a number of billionaires, but some attendees represent only themselves.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

https://theduran.com/why-only-suckers-trust-americas-major-media-any-longer/

 

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southfront....

FROM THE CIA RUN WIKIPEDIA:

SouthFront (sometimes written South Front) is a multilingual website registered in Russia and based in Crimea.[1] It has been accused by multiple sources of being an outlet for disinformation and propaganda under the control of the Russian government. For this reason, it has been sanctioned by the US Treasury and banned by social media platforms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthFront

 

THE INFORMATION FROM SOUTHFRONT IS PROVIDED BY THE RUSSIAN STATE, BUT THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT IS TELLING PORKIES. THAT IT SPRUIKS NEWS FROM RUSSIA WITH A RUSSIAN VIEW IS NO MORE DISINFORMATION THAT WHAT APPEARS AS NEWS IN WAPO OR TNYT — AS PROVIDED BY THE AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION... 

ALTERNATIVE VIEWS SHOULD NOT BE CENSORED OR ELIMINATED BY DECREE. DOING SO SHOWS THAT THE SYSTEM IS AGAINST FREE SPEECH — THAT THE SYSTEM IS AGAINST ITSELF. WIKIPEDIA HAS BEEN REVEALED RECENTLY AS A CIA INFORMATION CHANNEL. THE CIA LIES....

 

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