By BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“People no longer believe the fake “news” and bogus narratives issued by the ruling class and its corporate and military misinformation specialists.”

President Obama traveled to Berlin last week to browbeat Europeans on why they should continue to play junior partners in Washington’s quest for full spectrum global domination, but kept returning to his post-election obsession: the existential threat posed by “fake news” on social media. It was as if the realization had just dawned on the lame duck president, that his own powers to create “facts” and manufacture “news” out of thin air would soon be gone. Without the Clintons in the White House to continue the neoliberal project, history might conclude that the First Black President’s only enduring legacy was…that he was the first Black president.

“Now, Barack, this is the way you do it…”

It’s a question of who gets to decide what’s “fake” or not. Obama fears that what he calls “fake” news begets fake history, which begets the fall of western civilization as the rulers would like people to imagine it. Fake news is a grave danger “in an age where there’s so much active misinformation and its packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television,” according to Obama [3]. “If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect,” he told the Germans.

It was a magic kind of moment. The legendarily cool and collected Obama had just let out the secret: the ruling class, which he so faithfully serves, has lost control of the social and political narrative, without which it cannot “protect” its wealth, privilege and power.

“When the people come to believe that the president’s narrative is a bunch of ‘propaganda,’ then future Obamas will no longer be able to protect the Lords of Capital from the pitchforkers.”

Was the world’s most powerful individual (until January 20) in despair over Facebook’s failure to erase three or four fictitious, yet ultimately inconsequential, stories from its pages? Of course not. Obama’s problem — and capitalism’s crisis– is that people no longer believe the fake “news” and bogus narratives issued by the ruling class and its corporate and military misinformation specialists. “If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, and particularly in an age of social media when so many people are getting their information in sound bites and off their phones, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems,” said Obama.

This is the man that told the nation’s assembled bankers, a year after the Greet Meltdown of 2008, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” When the people come to believe that the president and the corporate media’s narrative — that the system can be fixed with a little tinkering — is a bunch of “propaganda,” rather than “serious argument,” then future Obamas will no longer be able to protect the Lords of Capital from the pitchforkers.

Losing control of the narrative is what happened after Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Missouri, when Black youth stopped listening to Obama’s fictitious sermon that racism is not endemic in America, a fake history that candidate Obama had successfully dispensed in his “A More Perfect Union” speech in Philadelphia, in 2008.

Obama’s targeted handful of phony social media articles generally favored Donald Trump. But the biggest “fake news” of the recent campaign, promulgated by virtually the entirety of the ruling class ensconced in Hillary Clinton’s Supersized Tent, was that the Russians were scheming to despoil and disrupt the U.S. elections — crimes Americans commit all by themselves every cycle through massive voter purges and other racist conspiracies. To Clinton and Obama’s horror, this McCarthyite deluge of fake anti-Russian news failed to sway the very “Middle Americans” that were thought to be the most belligerent, warlike constituency of all.

“The root of the crisis of credibility, which is really a systemic crisis of legitimacy, lies in the inability of late stage capitalism to offer anything that will stem the steady decline in the mass of people’s living standards and economic security.”

The Big Tent — Wall Street, the national security establishment, and their media – have lost all credibility with the public, and Obama was still shaken by the realization when he traveled to Berlin. Donald Trump and his crowd’s credibility – their ability to weave a believable narrative – was nonexistent from the start among half the country, and will shrink even more over time.

The root of the crisis of credibility, which is really a systemic crisis of legitimacy, lies in the inability of late stage capitalism to offer anything that will stem the steady decline in the mass of people’s living standards and economic security. So deep is the decay, every amelioration of public pain would require the dismantling of capitalist structures of power, which is unacceptable to the rulers.

On the most basic level, the U.S. does not have universal health care because capital has entrenched itself in all aspects of health care delivery. The rulers cannot provide affordable housing because Wall Street has financialized the nation’s land and dwellings. Good jobs at living wages are impossible, as long as corporations are empowered to maintain their carefully crafted international supply chain for manufactured goods – the foundation of corporate globalization. Black America cannot break free of the Mass Black Incarceration State until Black people eject the police, as presently constituted, from their communities, which will also require ejecting the corporate collaborators of the Black Misleadership Class from positions of power. There can be no peace — and no peace “dividend” for Americans – while predatory corporations and cartels dictate U.S. foreign policy. The cycle of decline and repression will continue until corporate power is broken and the banks are nationalized.

The rulers offer nothing, because the system is no longer capable of providing relief to the working and “superfluous” classes (that means most Black folks). They can only spin tales of fantasy and distraction – fake stories and phony narratives.

American “Exceptionalism” is “Manifest Destiny” with Native American genocide and Black slavery blotted out. It is the falsest narrative of all, tailored for imperial conquest and an “end of history” — meaning, the end of everyone’s narrative except the imperialist.  

NOTES
Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/obama_false_narratives_fake_news

Links

[1] http://blackagendareport.com/obama_false_narratives_fake_news

[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/political-economy/capitalism

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/world/europe/obama-angela-merkel-donald-trump.html?_r=0

[4] mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

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By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com

Washington Post pushes campaign to censor alternative media

ABOVE: Putin demonised.  The mainstream media as Washington’s propaganda organ. But they don’t do fake news. 

While the Post piece doesn’t link directly to the propornot site – because doing so would’ve exposed its laughably amateurish “methodology” for all to see – Timberg does mention their list of online Boris Badenovs, including not only Antiwar.com but also the Drudge Report, WikiLeaks, David Stockman’s Contra Corner, the Ron Paul Institute, LewRockwell.com, Counterpunch, Zero Hedge, Naked Capitalism, Truthdig, Truthout, and a host of others. These sites, according to the Post, not only promoted a barrage of “fake news” with the aim of defeating Mrs. Clinton, but they did so at the behest of a “centrally-directed” (per propornot) intelligence operation undertaken by the Russians. So what did this “fake news” consist of? Timberg “reports”:

“Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery – including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human ‘trolls,’ and networks of websites and social-media accounts – echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.”

Never mind that it was Hillary Clinton herself who heightened international tensions by threatening military retaliation against the Russians for supposedly unleashing via WikiLeaks a flood of embarrassing emails. In a speech touted as outlining her foreign policy platform, she railed:

“You’ve seen reports. Russia’s hacked into a lot of things. China’s hacked into a lot of things. Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems. So, we’ve got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us.

“As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses.”

According to the “experts” at propornot – granted anonymity by Timberg due to alleged fear of “Russian hackers” – to so much as note this clear threat is to brand oneself as a “Russian agent of influence.”

Americans getting their TV news.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nd what about Mrs. Clinton’s health problems – was reporting on this driven by Russian spies embedded in the alternative media? Or was it occasioned by this video, which saw her falling to the ground after leaving the 9/11 ceremony early? Are the folks at propornot and their fans at the Washington Post saying the amateur videographer who took that footage is a Russian secret agent? Were the television networks and other outlets that showed the footage “useful idiots,” to employ a favorite cold war smear revived by propornot? Given their criteria for labeling people agents of the Kremlin, the answer to these questions has to be yes – and now we are falling down the rabbit hole, in a free-fall descent into lunacy.

Propornot’s “criteria” for inclusion on their blacklist is actually an ideological litmus test: if you hold certain views, you’re in the pay of the Kremlin, or else an “unwitting agent” – as former CIA head Mike Morrell said of Trump. If you say anything at all positive about Russia or Putin – or a long list of entities, like China or “radical political parties in the US or Europe” (does this include the GOP?) – it’s a dead giveaway. We’re told to “investigate this by searching for mentions of, for example, ‘russia’, on their site by Googling for ‘site:whateversite.com Russia’, and seeing what comes up.”

If only Sherlock Holmes had had Google at his disposal, those detective stories would’ve been a lot shorter!

The propornot site is filled with complex graphs, and the text is riddled with “scientific”-sounding phrases, but when you get right down to it their “methodology” boils down to this: if you don’t fit within a very narrow range of allowable opinion, either falling off the left edge or the right edge, you’re either a paid Russian troll or else you’re being “manipulated” by forces you don’t understand and don’t want to understand.

Did you cheer on Brexit? You’re Putin’s pawn!

Are you worried about “World War III, nuclear devastation, etc.” instead of being content in the knowledge that their preferred policy – unmitigated hostility toward Russia — would “just result in a Cold War 2 and Russia’s eventual peaceful defeat, like the last time”? Well, then, clearly you’re either on Putin’s payroll, or else you’d like to be.

Other proscribed opinions include: “gold standard nuttery and attacks on the US dollar,” believing “the mainstream media can’t be trusted,” and “anti-‘globalism.’” And to underscore their complete lack of self-awareness, we’re told that additional warning signs of Putinism are “hyperbolic alarmism” and “generally ridiculous over-the-top assertions.”

In their world, it isn’t hyperbolic alarmism to point to ramshackle Russia, with a GDP equal to Spain’s* and a declining military budget that pales before our own, as an existential threat to the West. And if you’re a reporter for the Washington Post, which has destroyed what reputation it had by effectively becoming the house organ of the Democratic National Committee, generally ridiculous overt-the-top assertions, such as those proffered by propornot, are “news.”

The Post piece also cites an article published on the “War On The Rocks” web site (which is exactly what it sounds like). The authors, a triumvirate of neocons, aver that they’ve been “tracking” “Russian propaganda” efforts since 2014, and they’ve concluded that the Grand Goal of the Russkies is to “Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions” – as if this process isn’t occurring naturally due to the depredations of a corrupt and arrogant political class.

Another insidious theme of Russian “active measures” as identified by these geniuses is “Stoking fears over the national debt, attacking institutions such as the Federal Reserve, and attempts to discredit Western financial experts and business leaders.” So we mustn’t talk about the national debt – because to do so brands one as a cog in Putin’s propaganda machine. Gee, based on these criteria, we can only conclude that every vaguely conservative politician running for office in the last decade or so is part of the Vast Russian Conspiracy, not to mention numerous economists.

And that’s not all – not by a long shot. Here’s a list of more Forbidden Topics we’re not supposed to discuss, except maybe in whispers in the privacy of our own homes: “Police brutality, racial tensions, protests, anti-government standoffs, online privacy concerns, and alleged government misconduct are all emphasized [by the Vast Russian Conspiracists – ed.] to magnify their scale and leveraged to undermine the fabric of society.” After all, Russia Today is “emphasizing” these issues – so mum’s the word!

Yes, these people are serious – but why should anyone take them seriously? Why is the Washington Post “reporting” this nonsense – and putting it on the front page, no less? In short, what’s the purpose of this virulent propaganda campaign? After all, Hillary Clinton has been defeated, along with her campaign theme of “A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin.” What does a continuation of this losing mantra hope to accomplish?

The folks at propornot are explicit about their goal: they want the government to step in. They want to close down these “agents of influence.” In their own words, they want the FBI and the Department of Justice to launch “formal investigations” of the sites on their blacklist on the grounds that “the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business.” They accuse the proprietors of the listed web sites – including us, by the way – of having “violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and other related laws.”

Oh, but they say they want to “avoid McCarthyism”! They just want to shut us down and shut us up.

These people are authoritarians, plain and simple: under the guise of fighting authoritarianism, they seek to ban dissenting views, jail the dissenters, and impose a narrow range of permissible debate on the public discourse. They are dangerous, and they need to be outed and publicly shamed.

To be included on their list of “subversives” is really a badge of honor, and one we here at Antiwar.com wear proudly.

A Special Note: When the War Party takes out after you, you know you’re doing something right. And we’ve been doing it since 1995, in spite of the smears, and the howls of outrage coming from all the Usual Suspects. But we can’t continue to do it – not even for a minute – without your support.
—JR

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

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Along with Counterpunch, The Saker, Antiwar.com, Paul Craig Roberts, The Greanville Post and 194 other dissenting sites

OpEdNews Included On List of Russian Propaganda Sites Promoted By Washington Post

By Donn Marten

In a dark turn towards an era of neo-McCarthyism the Washington Post is promoting a murky organization’s blacklist of alternative media sites with the implied intent being that any criticism of U.S. foreign policy towards Russia will be dealt with harshly. In may be a badge of honor to some but terrifying to others, OpEdNews has made the cut and is being accused of being an outlet for Kremlin propaganda.

::::::::

The Washington Post is promoting a murky group’s calls for a government crackdown on political dissent under the pretense of crushing Russian influence in the alternative media. In a widely circulated Thanksgiving Day column, the WAPO gave legitimacy to a chilling effort to stifle critics of U.S. foreign policy as well as foes of Hillary Clinton. The story included an advance copy of what can only be referred to as a neo-McCarthyist blacklist of alternative media outlets that have been singled out for political persecution and harassment.

Many liberals and progressives have cheered the establishment’s attack on “fake news” and the so-called “alt-right” but soon may find themselves hoisted upon their own petards. To groups like PropOrNot it matters little whether one is a right-winger or a left-winger because ANY deviation from the official state media propaganda machine is strictly taboo.

Included on the list of 200 + websites tabbed out as megaphones for Putin’s propaganda is our very own OpEdNews. The blacklist was provided to the WAPO by a shadowy entity that calls itself PropOrNot which the paper identifies as “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds” although the WAPO goes to great lengths to provide few actual details.

According to the WAPO piece entitled “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say”:

Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.

The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.

PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.

Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.

The list indeed has many sites that feature dubious content and traffic in conspiracy theories but OEN is lumped in without any explanation as to why it would be included. There are also many libertarian and conservative websites listed including the hugely popular Drudge Report, Infowars, Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com, Lew Rockwell.com and the Ron Paul Institute.

In addition to OpEdNews, other progressive websites that have been critical of U.S. foreign policy — especially in regard to the 2014 overthrow of the legitimate government in Ukraine by American backed neo-Nazi elements — were included. Most notably, Robert Parry’s outstanding Consortium News, the personal website of frequent OEN columnist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, RINF.com, Truthdig.com, the Black Agenda Report, [The Greanville Post], ThisCantBeHappening.net and Information Clearinghouse among others. Wikileaks is also on the list which comes as no surprise given the shrill accusations from Democrats that the whistleblower organization was acting on Putin’s behalf to swing the election to Donald Trump.

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ollowing an acrimonious election season which still isn’t over, many liberals and progressives have cheered the establishment’s attack on “fake news” and the so-called “alt-right” but soon may find themselves hoisted upon their own petards. To groups like PropOrNot it matters little whether one is a right-winger or a left-winger because ANY deviation from the official state media propaganda machine is strictly taboo.

That a diverse collection of writers such as the OEN community is being officially targeted as agents of a foreign power should scare the hell out of regular contributors. This radical escalation in the war on dissent should also serve as a call to arms that there are more important matters than partisan politics and hewing to dogmatic ideology. The Washington Post’s promotion of a return to the dark days of McCarthyism represents an existential threat to not only liberal and progressive ideals but to free speech itself.

The WAPO piece quotes PropOrNot‘s “executive director” but goes to lengths to protect his identity.

“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. .”.”. It worked.”

While blaming the Russians for Trump’s election has become a knee-jerk response for the establishment types, it’s inexplicable that OpEdNews [and similar leftwing sites] would be included on the list because let’s face it, OEN hasn’t exactly been a bastion of pro-Trump sentiment. However, OEN has consistently been a critic of interventionist foreign policy and especially when it comes to Ukraine. It’s pretty damned hard to find honest reporting on Ukraine [Syria, Libya, etc.] but many at OEN have done their part to circumvent the lies that are routinely spewed out by Big Media.

The malevolent nature of this secretive organization is expressed by this terrifying part of their expressed mission via the PropOrNot website:

Also, the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business. We strongly suspect that some of the individuals involved have violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws, but determining that is up to the FBI and the DOJ.

The rounding up and prosecution of people on trumped up charges is not exactly a hallmark of a society that values freedom and diversity and through this expression of sentiment it is clear that PropOrNot has little use for traditional American values.

A quick review of the organization’s website is scarce on details as to the identity of that ” nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds” that was touted by the WAPO.

BUT

There is a link to this: “Russia and the Menace of Unreality” by Peter Pomerantsev who is treated as the penultimate authority on the alleged Putin efforts to destabilize the U.S. via social media and sowing disinformation. Right around the time that Putin thwarted furious neocon efforts to force President Barack Obama’s hand by attacking Syria over the still unresolved Sarin gas attacks on civilians in Ghouta, this guy Pomerantsev partnered with notorious neocon propagandist Michael Weiss to publish a paper that has enormous currency within high official circles entitled “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money” which was published by The Interpreter.

Now here’s what is really interesting. The Interpreter is the house organ of a think tank called The Institute of Modern Russia (IMR) which happens to headed up by Pavel Khodorkovsky, the son of Mikhael Khodorkovsky one of the Russian oligarchs who grew wealthy during the Boris Yeltsin era and an arch-enemy of Vladimir Putin.

So a lot of this Kremlin fifth column hysteria may be getting funded (at least indirectly) by Putin foes who are taking advantage of our corrupt domestic media as well as on-the-take politicians and the neocons who a were big part of Hillary’s government in waiting.

What would be totally ironic is if the same group that is now threatening alternative media writers with being hauled in front of tribunals as agents of a foreign power is in essence acting on behalf of one itself albeit a post-Putin government in exile.

It’s just a wild-assed conspiracy theory of mine but hey, they are the ones posting the guy’s articles not me and one must ask cui bono? Perhaps someone who is a far better researcher than I could do a bit of digging into the alliance between Russian foes of Putin and American neocon/neoliberal regime changers of the type that specialize in color revolutions.

Whoever is behind PropOrNot is a menace to us all as well as an affront to all that is still decent in this country – like free speech and free association. The key is to fight these vile bastards tooth, fang and claw because the survival of what remains of a free and open society depends on it.

As is the case with any shady group with nefarious motivations the best disinfectant is sunlight and it’s this humble author’s hope that PropOrNot‘s assault on free speech will motivate a diverse and skilled number of people to engage in some serious investigative journalism to expose who exactly is behind these fascists and where they are getting their money from.

While PropOrNot may be shrouded in secrecy, a little bit of accountability from the charlatans at the Washington Post would also help so any website on the blacklist should seriously consider giving their attorneys a ring or at the very least getting in touch with the WAPO’s ombudsman.

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Paul Craig Roberts

PROUDLY CROSSPOSTING WITH PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS. And with 198 other websites not afraid to tell the truth about the state of our world and Western democracy.

Russian news services are under attack from the EU and Western presstitutes as purveyors of “fake news.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/moscow-accused-of-propagating-fake-news-eu-resolution-on-russian-propaganda/5558835  Abiding by its Washington master’s orders, the EU actually passed a resolution against Russian media for not following Washington’s line. Russian President Putin said that the resolution is a “visible sign of degradation of Western society’s idea of democracy.”

As George Orwell predicted, telling the truth is now regarded by Western “democratic” governments as a hostile act. A brand new website, propornot.com, has just made its appearance condemning a list of 200 Internet websites that provide news and views at variance with the presstitute media that serves the governments’ agendas. http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html Does propornot.com’s funding come from the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros?

I am proud to say that paulcraigroberts.org is on the list. (So is The Greanville Post)

What we see here is the West adopting Zionist Israel’s way of dealing with critics. Anyone who objects to Israel’s cruel and inhuman treatment of Palestinians is demonized as “anti-semitic.” In the West those who disagree with the murderous and reckless policies of public officials are demonized as “Russian agents.” The president-elect of the United States himself has been designated a “Russian agent.”

“The effort to discredit truthtellers shows that Western governments and their presstitutes are intolerant of truth and diverse opinion and are committed to forcing people to accept self-serving government lies as truth…Clearly, Western governments and Western media have no respect for truth, so how can the West possibly be democratic?”

This scheme to redefine truthtellers as propagandists has backfired. The effort to discredit truthtellers has instead produced a catalogue of websites where reliable information can be found, and readers are flocking to the sites on the list. Moreover, the effort to discredit truthtellers shows that Western governments and their presstitutes are intolerant of truth and diverse opinion and are committed to forcing people to accept self-serving government lies as truth.

Clearly, Western governments and Western media have no respect for truth, so how can the West possibly be democratic?

The presstitute Washington Post played its assigned role in the claim promoted by Washington that the alternative media consists of Russian agents. Craig Timberg, who appears devoid of integrity or intelligence, and perhaps both, is the WaPo stooge who reported the fake news that “two teams of independent researchers”—none of whom are identified—found that the Russians exploited my gullibility, that of CounterPunch, Professor Michel Chossudosky of Global Researh, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo and that of 194 other websites to help “an insurgent candidate” (Trump) “claim the White House.”

Note the term applied to Trump—“insurgent candidate.” That tells you all you need to know.

You can read here what passes as “reliable reporting” in the presstitute Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html

See also: http://www.alternet.org/media/washington-post-promotes-shadowy-website-accuses-200-publications-russian-propaganda-plants

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, which somehow escaped inclusion in The 200, unloads on Timberg and the Washington Post here: https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/

Western governments are running out of excuses. Since the Clinton regime, the accumulation of war crimes committed by Western governments exceed those of Nazi Germany. Millions of Muslims have been slaughtered, dislocated, and dispossessed in seven countries. Not a single Western war criminal has been held accountable.

The despicable Washington Post is a prime apologist for these war criminals. The entire Western print and TV media is so heavily implicated in the worst war crimes in human history that, if justice ever happens, the presstitutes will stand in the dock with the Clintons, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Obama and their neocon operatives or handlers as the case may be.

 Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

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Dispatches from Eric Zuesse

The most important news-story since the U.S. Presidential election has been the blockbuster by Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton at The Intercept, headlining at 1:17 on the afternoon of November 26th, “Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group”.

They reported that:   THE WASHINGTON POST on Thursday [Thanksgiving] night promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg — headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” — cites a report by an anonymous website calling itself PropOrNot, which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”…