JEFF J. BROWN—Why do you need to stop depending on Western mainstream media and its tsunami Big Lie Propaganda Machine (BLPM), and start getting the real truth from all the aforementioned journalists and writers? Media Lens explains, by dissecting how supposedly “liberal” outlets like BBC and the Guardian work hand in glove with their governments and spy agencies to symphonically coordinate their projectile vomit onto the unsuspecting public.
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Glenn Greenwald: Jeff Bezos’ Blackmail Attempt by National Enquirer is Deeply Ironic
23 minutes readGLENN GREENWALD—If the surveillance powers of the NSA, FBI or other agencies were used to obtain incriminating information about Bezos due to their view of him as a political enemy – and, again, there is no evidence this has happened – it certainly would not be the first time. Those agencies have a long and shameful history of doing exactly that, which is why the Democratic adoration for those agencies, and the recent bipartisan further empowerment of them, was so disturbing.
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HALYNA MOKRUSHYNA—One of the new forms of intimidation of journalists and citizens who do not agree with the ‘official’ version of what is happening is Ukraine is the public exposure of their personal data by anonymous denunciators using the snitch Ukrainian website with the telling name ‘Myrotvorets‘, which translates as ‘Peacekeeper’ from Ukrainian. The website lists the names of journalists, Ukrainian citizens and foreign citizens accused of holding anti-Ukrainian and ‘pro-Russian’ views, foreigners who joined the military forces of the non-recognized ‘peoples republics’ of Donetsk and Lugansk, names of Russian volunteers assisting the republics or fighting on their side, and people who have entered Crimea through the territory of Russia instead of Ukraine.
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Modernization has been a dream of China’s for a century. After the Great Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government joined most developing countries in treating modernization as its goal. China’s achievements on this path, such as its fast GDP growth, have amazed the world. However, the price has been extremely high, including environmental problems, an increasing gap between the rich and the poor, and growing disenchantment with growth within the populace as a whole. Is there any alternative to the current form of modernization? “Constructive postmodern thinking proposes such an alternative.”81 Kang Ouyang, a leading Marxist scholar in China and vice president of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, has explored the positive and negative sides of modernization. For him the negative includes: treating economic growth as the ultimate goal; neglecting ecology, the value of tradition, and aesthetic wisdom as complements to scientific knowledge; rejection of the positive role that religion can play in human life; and overemphasis on individuality at the expense of community.
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US media trying to drum up a new ‘Cold War’
10 minutes readDAVE LINDORFF—So far, most Americans seem unfazed by the war-mongering of the US media and the increasingly aggressive national security team around President Trump. Polls show, in fact, that a majority of Americans do not agree with the Trump decision to pull out of the long-standing Reagan-era INF Treaty between the US and Russia banning the stationing of intermediate-range nuclear missiles near each other’s borders, which by definition would pose a threat of a rapid first strike.
Never mentioned by the main US corporate media is the reality that Russia’s military budget, currently $66 billion, is a drop in the bucket compared to the US budget of $717 billion, or that Russia’s military budget actually fell 20% last year, while the US military budget continues to grow even bigger. Also not mentioned is that China, the world’s number two military spender, has a budget of only $174 billion, which is smaller than just the budget for the US Veterans Administration, which is currently $198 billion.