MEDIA SCOUNDRELS

GLENN GREENWALD—The most prolific activism demanding more Silicon Valley censorship is found in the nation’s largest news outlets: the media reporters of CNN, the “disinformation” unit of NBC News, and especially the tech reporters of The New York Times. That is where the most aggressive and sustained pro-internet-censorship campaigns are waged.

Due in part to a self-interested desire to re-establish their monopoly on discourse by crushing any independent or dissenting voices, and in part by a censorious and arrogant mindset which convinces them that only those of their worldview and pedigree have a right to be heard, they largely devote themselves to complaining that Facebook, Google and Twitter are not suppressing enough speech.

P. GREANVILLE—In one of his most scathing exposés Jimmy Dore indicts the legion of lavishly paid hypocrites in the mainstream media, all complicit in the persecution of Julian Assange, guilty of nothing else than committing real journalism.
“What is Julian Assange being prosecuted for?”—asks Jimmy. “For revealing war crimes of the United States. That’s what this is about. It’s not about Russia…or about Wikileaks emails with the Trump campaign” (all red herrings, anyhow, to deligitimize Wikileaks).

P. GREANVILLE—Let’s get something straight: As Jimmy and Glenn discuss in these video chats, the rise of Internet censorship was initiated by the Democrats and their media shills—in their effort to protect the corporate plutocracy they serve—and not so much by the social media owners themselves,  despite the latter’s well known libertarian positions. The corporate media—notes Glenn—have now literally a legion of trolls patrolling the Internet, their chief task being to call out, shame and denounce genuine progressive voices, wherever they may be found fighting in defense of peace, the rights of oppressed peoples such as Palestinians, or to expose the fake politics and news disseminated by the establishment journos engaged in silencing true dissenting speech. To repeat: This cynical plague exists in all mainstream media now, from the august corridors of the New York Times and CBS, NBC, etc., to CNN, MSNBC, NPR, VOX and the rest of the so-called “respectable media”. 

MoA—Did you ever wonder why ‘western’ mainstream media get stories about Russia and other foreign countries so wrong?

It is simple. They hire the most brainwashed, biased and cynical writers they can get for the job. Those who are corrupt enough to tell any lie required to support the world view of their editors and media owners. They are quite upfront about it.

THE ISTER—In 2003, Khodorkovsky was criminally prosecuted by Putin for tax evasion and fraud for which he ended up serving 10 years in prison. His protege Leonid Nevzlin was convicted of ordering multiple contract murders on Khodorkovsky’s behalf, and sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. Associate Platon Lebedev was also convicted and imprisoned. This wave of prosecution sent a message and gave Putin a strong position, which was used to negotiate a “grand bargain” with the remaining oligarchs: they retained most of their existing assets in return for alignment with Putin’s vertical rule of Russia. The era of financial gangsterism from the 1990s was over.