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An extensive independent investigation revealed the rampant use of “automation, coordinated inauthentic behavior and cyborgs” to position anti-government hashtags on Twitter, with some accounts tweeting hundreds of thousands of times per day and generating billions of daily impressions. The Venezuelan opposition has consistently looked to fire up social media ahead of potential flashpoints, while, on the other hand, official or pro-government accounts have routinely been shut down by Western social media giants, including seven Venezuelan government accounts being suspended by Twitter just recently.

CODEPINK’s co-founder Medea Benjamin was forcibly escorted out of the Hudson Institute Sept. 19, after disrupting warhawk Brian Hook, U.S. Special Envoy to Iran and head of Trump’s Iran Action Group. Her protest against Hook’s belligerent speech and the administration’s harsh sanctions struck a chord with people in Iran. #PeacewithIran #Iran CODEPINK has been bombarded via email and Instagram with messages from ordinary Iranians expressing their thanks and echoing the call for peace. “The messages from Iranians keep pouring in and are so beautiful,” said Benjamin. “People in both countries want to live in peace. We have to stop the Trump administration from dragging us into another unjustified, unwinnable, catastrophic conflict.”

ERIC ZUESSE—If a nation’s sole reason for producing weapons is in order to protect the public — a public purpose — then there is no reason for the government to lie so as to demonize foreign leaders such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Salvador Allende, Viktor Yanukovych, and Nicolas Maduro. And this has nothing whatsoever to do with how bad (or good) the demonized leader actually is.Why does the US government demonize those people, while simultaneously serving (if not actually installing) barbaric dictators such as King Saud, Augusto Pinochet, Castillo Armas, and the Shah? The publicly stated reasons are always ‘humanitarian’ (when not ‘national defense’ — and often, as in 2003 Iraq — both at once).

WILLIAM BOARDMAN—Posing as a journalist, Martha Raddatz ratchets up the Trump administration’s scare campaign based on nothing more than fear tactics. She’s so busy trying to scare us, she doesn’t even get the geography right. The alleged attack didn’t happen in the Persian Gulf. The four ships that were supposedly attacked were in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of the UAE. Almost all the rest of what Raddatz reports as “fact” comes from government press releases.And that’s not the most shameful part for Raddatz and ABC News. Worse than botching facts large and small is the willingness of such mainstream media players to team up with elements of the US government seeking war with Iran at almost any cost.