Telesur page takedown: Facebook becoming ‘US govt’s censorship vehicle’

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Telesur page takedown: Facebook becoming ‘US govt’s censorship vehicle’

© Telesur / Instagram

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he decision by Facebook to delete left-leaning Latin American news network Telesur’s English language page with no explanation has only added to concerns over censorship and US government interference on the platform.

Having been deleted on Facebook earlier this year, Telesur had been “even more careful” with its posts and broke “absolutely none” of Facebook’s terms, former director of Telesur, Pablo Vivanco, told RT.

Vivanco believes there is no justification for the social media giant to have removed the page once again, stressing that on Telesur, there was “always a process to ensure accuracy and journalistic ethics.”

While Facebook admitted that it was a mistake the last time it took down Telesur’s page, there are fears the incidents are links in a chain of tightening government censorship of dissenting voices.

Speaking to RT, James Petras, Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University and an expert on Latin America said that the US government — which did not recognize the recent re-election of president Nicolás Maduro as legitimate and has placed fresh economic sanctions on the country — is engaged in “an attempt to overthrow the [Venezuelan] government” and that targeting uncooperative media was one way in which they were doing it.

Washington, Petras said, is using social media platforms like Facebook to “isolate” the country and Facebook is willingly trying to “ingratiate” itself with US authorities. “The US is at war now with Iran, Russia, China, the EU and Venezuela and any dissident voices, so as the authoritarian position of the US increases, Facebook and other media are under increasing pressure to abide by the line that comes out of Washington,” Petras said.

He also predicted that more censorship from Facebook was likely in the future and that it would be directly correlated with US warmaking and economic sanctions around the world. “They want to create a global opinion that abides by US policy,”he said.

Telesur’s Head of Web, Tatiana Rojas, told RT that the outlet was one of the only news sources reporting “from a different perspective than US mainstream media” on recent events in Venezuela, including the recent assassination attempt against Maduro.

Rojas said that while she hoped it was a mistake on Facebook’s part, there are reasons to be worried that the platform will become “a place where plurality is not going to be allowed anymore” and where alternative perspectives will not be given space.

Vivanco said that “hysteria” around Russiagate had enabled further censorship and that there were now well-founded reasons to indicate that Facebook is “collaborating” deliberately with Washington to target certain kinds of content.

He said that reason why so many people are suspicious of “fake news” today is because there is “a generalized concern among people that they are being lied to about what is really happening in the world” and that this could explain the rise in outlets giving an alternative perspective on world events.

“There appears to be a concerted effort to shut down voices that will challenge the way people are told they should see the world,” he said.

source: https://www.rt.com/news/435961-telesur-facebook-ban-us-censorship/

Part2
Facebook vanishes Venezuela-based left-leaning news network again

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro interviewed at Telesur studios in Caracas, Venezuela © Xinhua / Global Look Press

Telesur claims its page was abruptly taken offline on Monday. Facebook provided the vague explanation that the page had violated its terms of use, but did not elaborate further.

“This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting down of pages that don't fit a mainstream narrative,” the network declared.

While it is unclear whether there is any connection, Journalist Max Blumenthal has called it “deeply disturbing” that the removal comes after Facebook partnered up with the Digital Forensic Lab, an offshoot of the Atlantic Council, a neo-liberal think tank set up in 1961 to promote Western ideology around the world.

 

Facebook teamed up with the Digital Forensic Lab as part of its ongoing mission to police news and views on its platform. In a blog post announcing the partnership, the DFL said that it would strive to “expose and explain falsehood online,” and weed out the West’s favorite bogeymen – the ‘Russian bots.’

The apparent censorship of Telesur comes less than a week after the social media giant deleted the page of Venezualanalysis, an outlet that offered leftist commentary on Latin American affairs. Though Facebook reinstated the page, Venezualanalysis received no apology or explanation for its removal.

“We cannot help but feel that the removal of our page is related to an attempt to stifle the alternative and progressive perspectives that we feature on Venezuela,” the team explained, adding that they felt Facebook is clamping down on independent or anti-mainstream journalism “in the wake of Russia-gate.”

In the US, most accusations of bias leveled at Facebook have come from the right of the political spectrum. There, Republicans argue that Facebook – and other Silicon Valley tech giants – suppresses conservative content.

Most recently, Infowars' Alex Jones was kicked off several online platforms, including Facebook. That decision was cheered by many in the US, including Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who demanded even more censorship in the name of “saving democracy.”

Jones’ social-media excommunication was celebrated by a large swathe of the mainstream media in the US, including CNN, who ran multiple hit-pieces on Jones in the months before the ban, and by Vox, who immediately after the ban began pushing for the investigation of “extreme creators” on YouTube.

Telesur is based in Venezuela, and gets most of its funding from the Venezuelan government. It also receives funding from the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia.

Telesur’s supporters and free-speech advocates argue that the network gives viewers access to viewpoints from outside the mainstream, and it has been defended by journalists, activists and academics including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Danny Glover.

The network has broadcast worldwide in Spanish since 2005, and in English since 2014. Its now-vanished Facebook page had almost 400,000 likes.

Subscribe to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won’t tell you.

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Freedom Rider: Social Media’s Danger to the Black Left

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Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Social Media’s Danger to the Black Left
Freedom Rider: Social Media’s Danger to the Black Left

“The move against Alex Jones will be used to defend further censoring of left wing voices.”


[dropcap]O[/dropcap]f course Black Agenda Report (as The Greanville Post and similar genuine left sites) utilizes social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to communicate with readers. Any individual or organization who needs to connect with large groups of people does so as well. But our adversaries know that too and have embarked on unprecedented efforts to diminish black and left voices or silence them altogether. The change was announced quite publicly in November 2016 when the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post  presented the infamous Propornot list. This anonymous group claimed that some 200 sites, including Black Agenda Report, were susceptible to Russian propaganda, hence the propaganda or not label.

Now the attack is a bit more subtle but quite effective. Individuals and groups find themselves “ghost banned,” unable to post on social media platforms but never given a reason why. YouTube subscribers find themselves unsubscribed. YouTube channels are demonetized and unable to earn revenue if they cover left leaning political issues. The search engine reach of organizations like Black Agenda Report have been diminished on Google.

“Police invented a persona, Bob Smith, who was able to ‘friend’ individuals with a fake story of activism.”

There is also an old school frontal assault reminiscent of the FBI’s infamous Counter Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO. The police department in Memphis, Tennessee used Facebook to spy on Black Lives Matter activists. They even invented a persona, Bob Smith, who was able to “friend” individuals with a fake story of activism and then monitor their movements, plans and announcements. Any event that attracted a black audience was targeted, private information was collected and shared with law enforcement across the country, public utilities and private corporations such as Fedex.

The benefits of social media are obvious. But left activists must rethink how or even whether to use platforms which are both useful and dangerous. We may find new comrades and associates on Facebook and Twitter but we can also find the Bob Smiths of the world. We must remember that mass movements existed long before the invention of the world wide web. The internet was in its infancy when the Million Man March took place in 1995. Somehow more than 1 million people knew they were to be in Washington on a specific date and time. We don’t have to relegate ourselves to a problematic enterprise in order to make ourselves known and heard.

“The internet was in its infancy when the Million Man March took place in 1995.”

It is time to take a serious look at our dependence on Facebook, which Julian Assange called, “The most appalling spy machine ever invented.” Every serious activist should take a look at how they contact other people. It isn’t necessary to give up social media altogether but it is essential to have phone numbers, email and written addresses for anyone we may wish to contact. Old fashioned address books gathering dust need to be resurrected.

The system that we critique so assiduously is quite serious about limiting our effectiveness when it can’t do away with our organizations altogether. An accusation of being a Russian bot or a fake news site is enough to consign one to social media oblivion and the inability to communicate at all.

In short, they are coming after us and they will use many ruses to do it. Right wing pundit Alex Jones was recently kicked off of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for violations of terms of service. There is nothing new about Jones antics. He has been violating those terms for years without consequence. The sudden concern for what he has done for years is highly suspect. Some observers believe that he is in fact a United States intelligence asset.

“Old fashioned address books gathering dust need to be resurrected.”

There is no reason for anyone on the left to cheer Jones being censored. The move against him will be used to defend further censoring of left wing voices. There will always be Alex Jones like characters on social media. His absence helps no one except the intelligence apparatus who will find new ways to use our words and activities against us.

We are living in an era when every person on the planet is under surveillance, regardless of their ideology or political activity.  The National Security Agency (NSA) has records of every email and every phone call made in the country. The Boston Globe recently revealed the existence of a program called Quiet Skies , which has the power to put any air traveler under direct, physical surveillance from federal air marshals. Behavior such as “Reversing or changing direction and/or stopping in transit in an airport, boarding last, or observing the boarding gate from afar,” can guarantee that a traveler will unknowingly be accompanied by an air marshal on their next flight.

“Every person on the planet is under surveillance, regardless of their ideology or political activity.”

Social media is dangerous precisely because we use it voluntarily. We voluntarily provide personal information to strangers at Facebook, which is seen as harmless and even benign. But Facebook recently decided that planned demonstrations against white supremacists in Washington were created on orders from the Kremlin and removed their information  from the site which everyone uses to promote their activity.

The dystopian world of the novel 1984 is here but in an even worse way than Orwell imagined. In his imagination Big Brother interposed himself into the lives of ordinary people. But in 2018 the people are giving their enemies information that may be used to harm them. Humans are loathe to go backwards but that is what we must start considering. We may well have to time travel to the days of rotary phones and pieces of paper. Otherwise we are giving our enemies ammunition that they will surely use.

 


About the author
 Black Agenda report's Senior Editor and Columnist Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly at the Black Agenda Report. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley (at) BlackAgendaReport.com. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. 


 



Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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Social Media Hostility to Speech and Press Freedoms

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Facebook has also attacked some rightwing groups—in the "hyper nationalist" camp in Europe, but that is probably only temporary, or a pretense to "impartiality". In time, they will be pissing off millions of people, and that's something they'll have to reckon with sooner or later. They feel invincible right now, of course.


[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n cahoots with US dark forces, Facebook wants truth-telling on vital world and national issues censored, content diverging from the official narrative suppressed. Twitter, YouTube and other major social media operate the same way. Google transformed itself from search engine to gatekeeper, featuring media scoundrel disinformation while re-ranking alternative sources of news, information and analysis.

After targeting Infowars.com for alleged “hate speech,” Twitter banished Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity’s Peter Van Buren and its executive director Daniel McAdams.

It's the billionaire's rule against all, except the puny minority within their charmed circle...and the goons that serve them.

Antiwar.com’s editorial director Scott Horton was banished for allegedly using improper language against journalist Jonathan Katz.

On August 9, Infowars said a deep state “electronic lynch mob (is) targeting software running” its website, accusing tech giants of being behind the “de-platforming” attack.  Venezuela Analysis (VA), the leading English language source of news and information on the Bolivarian Republic, was targeted – its Facebook page suspended to suppress truth-telling, falsely labeling it propaganda.

A VA statement said the following:

On Thursday, its FB page “was arbitrarily ‘unpublished’ ” – on phony claims about violating FB terms and conditions.

VA was targeted solely for “publish(ing) important pieces which challenge the corporate mainstream media narrative on Venezuela” – truth-telling, countering media scoundrel disinformation on the country.

FB allied with the Atlantic Council (AC) – a neocon infested enemy of world peace and stability think tank, promoting NATO’s killing machine, America’s military, industrial, security, major media complex, and Ziofascist Israel. FB hooked up with the AC’s imperial geopolitical agenda to censor material falsely called “foreign interference” – AC to help in so-called “fact-checking,” wanting truth-telling on vital issues suppressed.
VA “is the only independent English language website covering news and analysis on Venezuela from a progressive perspective, & which platforms leftist grassroots voices from within Venezuela” – featuring journalism the way it’s supposed to be, an antidote to mainstream rubbish.

FB remains silent about its abhorrent action, too ashamed to admit its alliance with US dark forces, enemies of peace, equity, justice, and truth-telling on vital issues. Neocon Senator Chris Murphy called for greater censorship to “sav(e) (America’s fantasy) democracy.”

FB allied with the Atlantic Council (AC) – a neocon infested enemy of world peace and stability think tank, promoting NATO’s killing machine, America’s military, industrial, security, major media complex, and Ziofascist Israel.

FB hooked up with the AC’s imperial geopolitical agenda to censor material falsely called “foreign interference” – AC to help in so-called “fact-checking,” wanting truth-telling on vital issues suppressed.

Former Obama regime official Graham Brookie heads AC’s so-called Digital Forensic Research Lab, an initiative for countering vital truths.

It’s involved in FB actions against targeted websites and other so-called “suspicious pages” considered foreign interference. According to FB’s chief security official Alex Stamos, the company will collect and submit so-called suspicious online material to AC for fact-checking – code language for intended censorship.

FB donated an undisclosed substantial amount to AC’s Digital Forensic Research Lab for the initiative, partly outsourcing its own dirty work while pretending to be politically neutral.

Censorship is the new normal in America – speech, media and academic freedoms threatened.

What’s going on is all about controlling the narrative, wanting dissenting views suppressed – the hallmark of totalitarian rule.

Will congressional thought control legislation affirm it – on the phony pretext of protecting national security?

 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Screen Shot 2016-02-19 at 10.13.00 AMSTEPHEN LENDMAN was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. In 1956, he received a BA from Harvard University. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a marketing research analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient. His new site is at http://stephenlendman.org

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On Mass Media and its Perceived Prerogatives

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working to defeat the Big Lie in all its forms

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[dropcap]J[/dropcap]ulian Assange has taken from the political elites their de facto right to conceal their actions from the public they claim to serve. But if we can learn anything from WikiLeaks is that a veil of secrecy many times concealS self-interest taken to a criminal degree.  

Many journalists and researchers have shown us in the past that political and business elites prefer not to discuss policy with the rabble. Even as elections are many times represented as a rather weak (or limited) form of democracy, political elites demand to control them nonetheless. Quoting Hillary Clinton addressing the Israeli press in 2006:

“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake. And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win”. (1)

Nothing out of the ordinary for the already notorious Democrat behind the infamous “we came, we saw, he died”, referring to Gaddafi’s murder, or “can´t we just drone this guy?”, referring to Assange.

prop-america_under_communism_cold_war_propaganda

American propaganda is not only pervasive but utterly false and hypocritical, mostly based on manufactured fears.

For some politicians, democracy, or a fair trial, is not for everyone. This disdain for democratic values is deeply rooted in Western societies, as Noam Chomsky and Michael Parenti, to mention just two noted scholars, have extensively covered throughout their work, even figures as central to modern liberal journalism as Walter Lippmann regarded the masses as “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders”, meaning regular citizens should be “spectators”, not “participants”, whose only duty is to show up every couple of years to ratify decisions made elsewhere.

If information empowers, WikiLeaks should be recognized as a democratic tool, redistributing power in times when it is obscenely concentrated. This is extremely disturbing for the subservient corporate media, as we can easily observe in the reaction of many of its [putative] journalists:

“Bravo, Ecuador. This isn’t about silencing Assange and suppressing his operation. It’s about preventing the Ecuadorean embassy from doubling as headquarters for a Putin-Assange campaign to discredit Clinton”. (A Chicago Tribune editorial celebrating Ecuador’s President Correa cutting off Assange’s internet, 10/19/16).




[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he negative association of Putin with Trump has been helpful in condemning Assange, who by himself is often considered a positive influence in Western politics (especially when attacking the Republican Party). The fabrication of a plan between Russia and WikiLeaks to influence American elections is, of course, not only patently ludicrous given the advanced state of putrefaction of American democracy itself, hardly a damsel whose virtue is in peril, never as exemplary as propagandists would have us believe, but simply an excuse for pseudo journalists and the punditocracy to ignore the contents of the leaks and drive the public’s attention toward Putin and Russia, as in those golden days when many things could be associated with the “Red Scare”.

Thus, as they speculate about how deep Putin’s nose is inserted in US politics and all the similarities between him and past mythological demons threatening America, these characters look away from the reality of the decomposing political system they still cling to.

Their task has been made simpler by the obnoxious nature of Clinton’s adversary. With his racist and misogynistic rhetoric, Trump stands as the easy-to-hate billionaire/villain, and yet he isn’t pushing for a no-fly zone over Syria, an innocent sounding notion that could easily escalate into something truly catastrophic.

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut corporate media, being a tool of the corporate ruling class which also controls the military and all major banking and commercial entities in the nation and around the globe, rarely speak against military intervention, especially when framed as ‘humanitarian’, the latest p.r. label concocted by the spin doctors to disguise naked imperial aggression.

Going to war, expanding imperial domains and influence, promoting Wall Street interests, all that while selling the narrative of the ‘enemies of freedom’ is exactly what the American establishment demands of its presidents. As an extension of those interests, corporate media—as previously noted—also demands to be the sole apparatus in charge of shaping public opinion in the direction of which candidates to choose from, and what qualities such people should exhibit. Unsurprisingly, transmitting a truthful portrait of Hillary Clinton is off-limits, as it would seriously question her political legitimacy.

This explains ridiculous claims as that from CNN host Chris Cuomo in regard to Wikileaks, stating that, “…remember, it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us”.

WikiLeaks has in fact managed to redirect some attention to HRC’s longstanding dirty ways to do politics, with its known costs to third world ‘regimes’ and overall peace, as well as her predilection for Wall Street sponsors. Trump does not necessarily represent anything substantively different, but the illusion of choice is fundamental in our capitalist democracies. As former UK Ambassador turned human rights activist Craig Murray puts it:

“You will not get a clear analysis of these issues from the mainstream media. That is because they are of course part of the money/power nexus in which Clinton is intimately connected, and they expect Clinton to win. I think their fear of Trump is exaggerated. He and Clinton are two plutocrat candidates in a system laughingly labelled democracy. They move in the same social and financial circles”. (2)

That may explain the haste by some media to celebrate Rafael Correa for unplugging Assange’s internet connection recently, a mere gesture that “does not prevent the WikiLeaks organization from carrying out its journalistic activities”, as the Ecuadorian government emphasized.

This attitude towards Assange and WikiLeaks is shared by international media, with Ecuador’s press also expressing frustration and suggesting the inconvenience of standing against the American political establishment.

Examples of this subservient spirit abound in the media: “…unless the Ecuadorian government is voluntarily inserting itself in this global chessboard that has inflamed the conflict between US and Russia, and threatens [to] seriously distort US elections, letting Assange continue with his plan is going to sink Ecuadorian foreign policy… it’s –literally- a diplomatic suicide”. (3)

Standing against the de facto powers of the Western world is sure to provoke this kind of reaction, but the real distortion of US elections came before (way before) WikiLeaks, that’s exactly one of the many functions of corporate media: to misrepresent its profoundly worthless and highly compromised leaders for easier public consumption.

What Ecuador is doing is protecting a very important source of information that is reminding the world about the importance of political transparency, as it would (presumably) do with any journalist living inside its territory.

Notes:

  1. Kurson, Ken. 2006 Audio Emerges of Hillary Clinton Proposing Rigging Palestine Election. (Observer, 10/28/16) [http://observer.com/2016/10/2006-audio-emerges-of-hillary-clinton-proposing-rigging-palestine-election/]
  2. Murray, Craig. Boring or Annoying Things We Have to Know. (Craig Murray, 29/10/16) [https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/10/boring-annoying-things-know/]
  3. Jaramillo, Grace. ¿En qué estamos metidos? (El Comercio, Ecuador, 09/14/16) [http://www.elcomercio.com/opinion/opinion-gracejaramillo-julianassange-londres-diplomacia.html]

 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 danielespinosacrop

Associate Editor Daniel Espinosa Winder (34) lives in Caraz, a small city in the Andes of Peru. He graduated in Communication Sciences in Lima and started researching mainstream media and more specifically, propaganda. His writings are a often a critique of the role of mass media in our society. Daniel also serves as Editorial Director for TGP's Spanish Language edition. 


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SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS: Media’s disgusting lies on Ukraine reach a new high

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SOURCE: LUV News

A Word from the Editor
Given the investment of the United States in this big lie, it’s quite possible we’re looking at another mystery like 9/11.

The Western media pattern of outrageous lies on the Malaysian airliner tragedy has reached a new high, confirming once again that the “Free Press” is little more than a propaganda mechanism, an adjunct to the American empire. But, bad as it has been in the past, in the second decade of the 21st century the media noise is consistently reaching the  level of Nuremberg-class criminality, as almost the totality of the big media structure—from owners to top execs and top personnel— serves as a conscious accomplice in the fostering of illegitimate wars.

If you encounter any of these big media celebrities,  let alone any of the tycoons who own these filthy mills of disinformation, do us a favor: please at least spit in their eye! Or throw a drink in their faces. Or piss in their soups. I know I would given half a chance.

Why our anger?  Because this is hardly new. Behind the tall walls of privilege and platoons of security, these gilded bastards have concocted and carried out with complete impunity one crime after another, from fleecing the American public and maintaining the exploitation of billions around the world, to the sheer manufacture of wars of convenience for their pocketbooks. The passive accomplice to their work, and victim, has been the massively ignorant and intellectually lazy American public. In the event, US democracy—its remnants that is—has practically collapsed.

The mainstream media have done this over and over again (see James Patton below) for decades, probably over a century, whenever it suited the interests of the US ruling elites and their subsidiaries and cronies around the world. It’s clear by now that capitalism and genuine democracy are inherently antagonists. And it’s also fairly safe to say that there is no real “clean” Western journalism when it comes to any important matter. Clean, impartial, scrupulous professional journalism as far as the corporate practitioners is concerned, is an illusion in today’s world. Only citizen journalism, and people’s media, count. They are our only hope. We must support them for our own good. —Patrice Greanville

As Heard on Facebook /LUV News

James Patton 22 July 00:47

They pulled babies out of incubators!
The completely shameless hypocrisy of ‘world’ ‘leaders’ is utterly breath-taking, is it not?

But then, all the major Western press is controlled by a handful of large corporations and everyone is singing off the same elite-controlled song sheet.

Will enough people ever wake up to this sham to effect a revolution?

TEST – Can you spot the odd one out? (Bonus points if you can add to this list!)

  • Remember the Maine! (= Spanish / American war)
  • The Germans sank the Lusitania! (= increased involvement in WWI)
  • Attack on the Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin! (= ramping up the war on North Vietnam)
  • Reds on our doorstep! (= Military aid to Contras in Nicaragua )
  • Assad used sarin gas! (= an attempt to bomb Syria)
  • Putin terror attack on civilian airliner! (= ramping up war in Ukraine)
  • Jilli Jen

    “In a devastating twist to emerge over the weekend it now seems that the Malaysian civilian airliner downed over Ukraine was most probably brought down as a result of sabotage by the US-backed Kiev regime.

    The purpose of this audacious act of mass murder – in which 298 lives were lost – was carried out with the intention of framing the Russian government. Washington, the chief sponsor of the Kiev regime, must have known about the plot, if not being fully complicit in it.

    The key to this dramatic twist is the identification of incriminating audio tapes over the weekend as fake – tapes that were created initially to implicate Moscow, as part of a massive black operation involving the destruction of the civilian airliner and all those onboard.

    Within hours of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashing into a wheat field in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine last Thursday, Western governments and media have gradually stoked a frenzy of accusations that Moscow had a hand in the disaster.”

    http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/downed-airliner-fake-audio-tape-shows-us-backed-hit-to-frame-russia-by-finian-cunningham/

    Jodda Mitchell

    Are you talking about the one that’s ‘for intelligent people only’? 🙂

    Branford Perry
    There’s a page on FB with 100,000 morons already rooting for Hillary!

    Jodda Mitchell

    It was Putin’s missile?

    Listening to the endless propaganda all weekend about the Malaysian passenger jet shot down over Ukraine, I heard the Ukrainian government account through mainstream press about a hundred times. They cite conversations they claim are between Ukrainians who are ethnic Russians and Russian intelligence agents, taking credit for downing the plane. I suspected these were faked from the start because they are exactly the words one would need to finger an enemy, and human beings don’t have such concisely-damning conversations, one after another, using only the minimal words needed for self condemnation.

    In essence, the first recording claims responsibility for shooting down the plane, the second is an oops, passenger plane comment intended to indicate that rebels shot down the plane and only realized afterward that it was not a Ukrainian military aircraft. The words are exactly the evidence one would want as a prosecutor taking a murderer to trial.

    Saturday I heard an ex FBI agent on CNN say these recordings the Ukrainian government is putting forth as evidence that the plane was shot down by ethnic Russians or Russians, are in stereo, and in all the decades of covert work he’s done, he’s never heard of a covert recording that showed up in stereo. Maybe the Ukrainians have pushed the propaganda just a little bit too far by making this recording too excellent for reality.

    The Russians say that one of the recordings is not manufactured, of an actual conversation, but about an earlier Ukrainian military plane shot down in the region. I have not heard any US mass media source citing this. Paul Craig Roberts says that one of the recordings may actually have been made the day before the plane was shot down.

    http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/21-07-2014/128108-malaysian_airliner-0/

    Anyhow, the entire corporate media are blaming Eastern Ukrainian ethnic Russians, and Russia/Putin for the disaster without putting forth a shred of hard evidence to support this. Here is the official Russian response– entirely ignored by Western “journalists,” who claim to give a balanced report.

    http://english.pravda.ru/russia/kremlin/18-07-2014/128078-russian_defense_ministry_boeing-0/

    Every once in awhile the rat-faced Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk shows up on all TV news channels to plead for nations of the world “to support the Ukrainian government to bring to justice those bastards who committed this international crime.” This from the State Department’s choice to run Ukraine after a US-supported violent overthrow of the elected government– a guy who works closely with neonazis and shows open hatred for ethnic Russians.

    Another “smoking gun” the mainstream press put out, over and over again, is video of a Russian air defense system headed for Russia, missing one missile. One has to take the word of the Ukrainian government that it’s headed for Russia, and that this happened after the shoot down of the plane, and that it’s not one of their air defense units (corporate media do not make it clear, but it is true that Ukraine uses the same Russian made air defense systems, and Russian intelligence claims Ukraine had such weapons systems in the area within striking range of the passenger plane shot down).

    From the start I thought the Ukrainian government would be the ones to benefit from shooting down innocents, while allowing that the rebels might have done it, after Ukraine directed the aircraft to fly over the spot where several military aircraft had been shot down. Yatsenyuk needs this disaster to rally support for wiping out his dissidents. CNN propagandist Fareed Zakaria yesterday invited the Russian-hating Zbigniew Brzezinski as his guest to proclaim that Putin was behind the downing of the plane which was “taken down by his thugs.”

    Pepe Escobar has done masterful work in showing, step by step, a viewpoint that corporate media are suppressing, following (and this report, by Roger Annis is also excellent, showing that the Ukrainian government is slaughtering rebels even as the plane crash story distracts the masses, and this report by journalist Robert Parry indicating that Ukrainian troops may have done the dirty deed)
    Jack Revolutionist