Corporate Media's War Bias

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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby Joao » Tue Feb 24, 2015 7:12 pm

conniption » Tue Feb 24, 2015 3:07 pm wrote:As I watch our media's unrelenting push toward More War, More War, More War, ISIS, ISIS, ISIS, Russia, Russia, Russia... I see the same faces being interviewed on the (mostly Fox) cable news networks: Donald 9/11 Rumsfeld is, of course, making the rounds. Rudy Giuliani is grabbing headlines, and your usual McCain, Bolton, Ollie North, etc....the same ones, THE SAME PEOPLE, who pushed us into the war in Iraq!!! It must be a very tight, war profiteering, group of crooks and liars. Brings to mind this quote from Pilger's article posted above:

A quote from John Pilger's article here:
Why must we live in this state of perpetual war?

The immediate answer lies in the United States, where a secret and unreported coup has taken place. A group known as the Project for a New American Century, (conniption: my link) the inspiration of Dick Cheney (conniption: my link) and others, came to power with the administration of George W Bush. Once known in Washington as the “crazies”, this extreme sect believes in what the US Space Command calls “full spectrum dominance”.

Under both Bush and Obama, a19th-century imperial mentality has infused all departments of state. Raw militarism is ascendant; diplomacy is redundant. Nations and governments are judged as useful or expendable: to be bribed or threatened or “sanctioned”.


On 31 July, the National Defense Panel in Washington published a remarkable document that called for the United States to prepare to fight six major wars simultaneously. At the top of the list were Russia and China – nuclear powers.

Isn't it time, war profiteering be made illegal...again.
I'm pretty sure, if there were no profits to be made from war, wars would cease to exist.

Emmanuel Goldstein wrote:The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby coffin_dodger » Sat Feb 28, 2015 8:44 am

Sir John Sawers, ex-MI6 chief, warns of Russia 'danger' 28 February 2015 BBC News

Russia has become a danger to Britain and the country must be prepared to take steps to defend itself and its allies, the former head of MI6 says.

Sir John Sawers, who recently retired after five years as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Russia poses a "state to state threat".

Sir John said dealing with such threats would require more defence spending.

But he called on issues with Russia to be addressed by "increased dialogue".

He said he was disappointed how, after the end of the Cold War, Russia's and Europe's paths had failed to converge.

Russia's threat was "not necessarily directly to the UK but to countries around its periphery".

"[Russia] keep on reminding us that they have nuclear weapons," he said.

"The one level in which Russia and America are equals is at the nuclear level.

"Now we don't want to have a repeat of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 where we got to the brink of nuclear war.

"We need to be able to address this through increased dialogue."

cont - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31669195


So much going on this agitprop piece I don't know where to begin. The BBC is an acknowledged master of political mouthpieceism for the UK System and it really shows here.

Sir John said dealing with such threats would require more defence spending.


Ok, so we have to spend more as a nation on essential war equipment. Nice bit of doublespeak right there. We need more offensive capabilty.

Russia's threat was "not necessarily directly to the UK but to countries around its periphery".


Ah, so it's not actually a threat to us, per se, but we have to think of those poor foreigners in distant lands that may need our assistance to kill Russians.

"The one level in which Russia and America are equals is at the nuclear level.


So, a nice little snippet of double-bind rolled on top of cognitive dissonance there, because in reality, we can spend all the money in the world on 'conventional' arms and they are actually completely redundant should it come to a proper 'hot' war of annihilation (which all wars between nations devolve to, given a cascading of out-of-control events that war propogates).

But he called on issues with Russia to be addressed by "increased dialogue".


So we need to speak to them about this? Rather than increase our 'defensive' capability of stockpiling weapons of horror to kill them with? I think you're getting confused, Sir John.

"We need to be able to address this through increased dialogue."


Yeah, you already said that, Sir John. It's confusing, isn't it? Maybe you're confused. In the same statement you say that we should be talking to them (about regime change, no doubt) and also that war is unthinkable, but that we should be arming ourselves to the teeth to kill them if necessary - because they probably want to kill all of us. But we know where that leads, eh, Sir John - nuclear armaggedon.

Makes us all afraid, right? That's exactly where he wants us.

Oh, and incidentally, guess who Sir John works for, now that he's not even a part of the government that he is making statements for - Partner and Chairman of Macro Advisory Partners, who provide strategic advice and insights to investors and governments - and guess what, he's also, from wiki - a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) and he was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to national security.

No skin in this game, eh?. Sir John.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby conniption » Mon Oct 05, 2015 4:34 am

I suppose we can classify NPR as "Corporate Media" ...

RT
(embedded links & more imgs at link)

US Media World: "Wag the dog" is not a movie, it's reality


Derek Monroe
Derek Monroe is a writer/reporter and consultant based in Illinois, USA. He has reported on international and US foreign policy issues from Latin America, Poland, Japan, Iraq, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and India. His work appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Alternet, Truthout and Ohmynews, and has been published in over 20 countries.

Published time: 4 Oct, 2015

Image
© Gary Hershorn / Reuters

On the morning of Oct 3, people in the western hemisphere awoke to news of the US bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which resulted in the death of 22 people including 12 staff of Medicine Sans Frontiers, a French NGO.

National Public Radio (NPR), America's premiere radio organization, announced that the US military "may" have bombed the Afghan hospital and the resulting casualties "may" have resulted in collateral damage. This despite the fact that it had already been confirmed on the ground by foreign media. There was also the UN official's declaration that if the attack was intentional it will be regarded as a war crime.

The careful recitation of Pentagon's talking points signifies something bigger than it appears at first glance. Suddenly, reports of civilian casualties and confirmed "unconfirmed" reports of Russian airstrikes on US allied "Free Syrian Army" dominated the US airwaves. Strangely enough, missing are the reports coming out Syria and Turkey about the massive wave of dislocation caused by the Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaeda, some of which were equipped courtesy of US taxpayers and facilitated by strategic choices made by the Pentagon.

According to the recent congressional hearings that were buried as quickly as they came out, the $500 million spent on the FSA are as missing as the army it was supposed to train. However, a few weeks back there was a very prescriptive narrative of unfolding events at Palmyra, Syria where the lamentations over the destruction of Roman ruins took precedent over its population and the carnage visited upon them. There was virtually no mention of the concentration of IS forces three days before the attack and the US-backed coalition's premeditated refusal to bomb it.

Palmyra would have been saved, and the devastation that followed avoided. The striking contrast with Libya's Benghazi air attack that stopped Gaddafi's armor a few years earlier was not lost on people who followed the situation as it developed. It appears the West has already decided genocidal and ruthless IS a better alternative than the authoritarian and brutal Assad regime, which happened to be Russia's ally. However, looking at the US media coverage one enters a world of parallel reality where the perception ruled by misinformation and contextual omission is everything.

Just as Putin listed his intention to fight IS, the storm of critical coverage erupted into blaming Russia for the current situation in Syria. This is the world where the Arab Spring, both Iraq wars, Libya, Afghanistan and even 9/11 never happened. As the mainstream commercial media pontificates on the meaning of the America's loss of supremacy in the region, the US public, i.e. non-commercial media, including the NPR, went into analyzing the news to arrive at the forgone conclusion that one country's anti-terrorist action is another one's aggressive and civilian-casualties-filled intervention.

In this mold, the modus operandi is based on inviting guests from thought farms that include a wide variety of outfits from Brookings to the Orwellian-sounding Foundation for Defense of Democracies (ex-CIA director R. James Woolsey's project). Add the amazing unity of thought to the mix of preconceived notions and you have a product worth selling. The NPR is especially good at this as the list of its invited guests come from institutions that almost all have at one point received or receive funding from Ford, Gates, Rockefeller foundations, as well as front and interest groups representing in many cases corporations that have business interests in the region.

Naturally, none of that is always disclosed to the listeners. Ironically, more often than not the "experts" are the very people who worked at the administrations of Bill Clinton, George H.W Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama and who in many cases rooted for Afghani and Iraqi adventurism from the beginning. Furthermore, it is even more ironic that these are the same "arbiters of truth" now as they were then. The supposed analysis based on new and improved "curveball" testimonies is next presented in form of a legal-like case before the jury of watchers/listeners as each side is supposed to present its own conclusions while not letting the facts get in a way of good story.

Last week, the NPR-affiliated and Boston-based WBUR's On Point program featured two experts who more less agreed on Russian culpability in Syria without offering any tangible outcome beyond the tired rhetoric of “Assad must go and the situation will work itself out politically afterwards." The idea of political settlement, i.e. negotiations with terrorists whose Islamofascist Caliphate precludes existence of civilized order, is not only absurd; it is a slap in the face to the American families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks. It is also a cynical ploy to deflect any responsibility for genocidal carnage that would result in Assad's fall as the zero-sum game scenario would undoubtedly unfold due to the wishes of our State Dept. planners and strategists.

When I called the On Point program several times in the past and presented my views contrary to their "expert" presentation, I was always put on long hold and subsequently disconnected. The next time around, however, I was able to call in and present my view under an alias, stating that contrary to the presented narrative the issue in Syria did not start with quelling of the demonstration in Daraa in 2011, as presented, but around 2005 when the US decided on policy for regime change. I quoted several WikiLeaks documents to prove the point. The producer who took the call instructed me to leave out this info as not to challenge the guests and instead pose a question that can be answered within a framework of the program. I went ahead and quoted the documents anyway and as it happens the response was nonsense.

The style of non-confrontation, while keeping the integrity of the presented narrative, is a hallmark of NPR as in the end the brand is more important than the substance it is made of. Ironically, despite many challenges in spinning and manipulating the facts, the methodology of inviting people who discredited themselves in the past (Iraq, Afghanistan, WMDs) and were wrong then and now is alive and well. It is grotesque to the point of being unbelievable.

On Sept 28, WBUR's "Here and Now" host Robyn Young in outrage and disbelief over Russia's establishment of an intelligence office in Baghdad. She reacted by announcing on the air that this should not have happened as: "I thought Iraq was ours..." The segment has since been removed and replaced with a different interview, making it sound like something from the Soviet Union's playbook. And overall this is the organization that asks its listening public for contributions.

According to the last available report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (F.A.I.R) from 2004, over 80 percent of NPR reporting staff came from news companies such as New York Times, Washington Post and Wall St Journal. This cultural characteristic is reflected in a very narrow expertise based on previous conditioning and it ushered the new era of generalist "excellence". That means a skill set that is good enough at everything and excellent at nothing. The cultural and organizational bias that was transplanted with migration of the corporate mindset is now permeating the NPR as it has been assimilated into prevailing Washingtonian elitist worldview on economy, society and politics.

Thus listening to the stuff produced by NPR in the Beltway, New York and Boston produces a sensation of complete disconnect to what Americans are feeling and expect in their news, resulting into migration to the internet based platforms. Increasingly they want the unvarnished truth. Instead the revolving door of NPR CEOs that hailed from corporate sector, New York Times, Voice of America (government funded propaganda) and the latest in commercial television is indicative of NPR's split personality and reduction of its abilities and capabilities to a mere propaganda tool.

The business of propaganda masquerading as news is lucrative, especially when one doing it is on the inside track. According to the last IRS fiscal year disclosure (ending 9/30/2014), NPR's CEO makes more than the US president with overall compensation listed at $756,575. Other "stars" of the NPR universe are also well paid, including its flagship morning program's Steve Inskeep at $405,818, Michelle Norris at $349,177, Robert Siegel at $409,689 and Scott Simon, who is able to pull a cool $389,609. All are working the 40-hour week as listed on the IRS disclosure form to which most of contributing listeners can relate to although on quite a different pay scale, to say the least.

The money has been a honey trail of the NPR game since its visibly less well-off listening public is regularly harassed by its affiliated stations for money. In Chicago, begging for money is getting increasingly aggressive and grotesque making, it sound like some type of on the air BINGO game punctuated with pledges and featuring prizes big and small. This forced begging and humiliation of the presenters and reporters "pitching-in" to this sorry spectacle of desperation is truly sad. It resembles a relationship between McDonalds and its franchisees while the dollar menu of ideas is being constantly updated for a higher price bracket that will be picked up by corporate donors. Slogans such as $5 Friday bring carnival idiot-like qualities to the game called listener and increasingly corporate supported radio which is probably not surprising given NPR's largest donation given by the fortune created by the Happy Meal.

The self-sustained propaganda machine of pyramid proportions has its up and downs as it was caught with its pants down last year in yet another scandal. This raises more than just the question of transparency, but NPR's real purpose. Why is the web of influencers and influenced not disclosed? Why doesn't it mention personal relationships of its staff with the establishment it is supposed to cover and not serve?

During the Iraq invasion, for example, its chief reporter in Baghdad was Anne Garrels, who also happened to be a spouse of a CIA operative. In 2007, the NPR came under criticism after Garrels used information that was obtained by torture for her story. During the interview with her interpreter/translator, it was even stated that the Iraqi authorities suspected her to work for the CIA.

However, the most blatant conflict of interest that is tolerated comes in shape of NPR analyst Cokie Roberts. In the 1980s, she covered Guatemala during a period of widespread human rights violations by the US-supported military junta. During an interview with Diana Ortiz, a nun who worked with the poor and was subsequently kidnapped, raped and tortured, Roberts contested the nun's version of events that took place. Ortiz alleged that an American was among her tormentors and later her version of events prevailed in court in a lawsuit against a Guatemalan general she held responsible for her treatment.

Roberts also came out strongly in favor of the Trans Pacific Partnership, despite the fact that it will hurt many working families in the US. It was later revealed that Patton Boggs, Washington DC based lobbying and law firm run by her brother Tom Boggs, was hired by the Guatemalan government to promote a positive image of the country. Ditto with the TPP, as Patton Boggs was one of the chief lobbying groups pushing for it. Ms Roberts goes on producing her 4-minute weekly segments for the NPR to this day as if nothing ever happened.

The bias in the NPR "reporting" goes beyond dollars and cents as it is infused with ideology as well. In 2012 in the wake of destruction by Hurricane Sandy, the NPR programming featured a "common sense" solution to the shortages of commodities such as gasoline that affected the stricken public. "Make gas $25 a gallon and the lines will automatically disappear" was the ex-cathedra view of its invited economic "experts" whose views resonate with increasingly elitist top NPR echelon.

At the same time radio stations that broadcast the mind numbing pseudo-science as often referred to on NPR's "Hidden Brain" segment, are increasingly employing unpaid interns for its everyday tasks. As only the rich can afford to be an unpaid intern in New York, Boston or Washington, the culture of elitism lives on and decides what is good for the unwashed listening masses.

On the economic front the NPR's corporate donor class also has influence on how the issues are covered when it comes to corporate scandals as well. The daily unrelenting push to make Volkswagen a daily pinata pales in comparison with coverage of economic issues that deserve not only a balanced and proportional coverage but basic fairness.

It is amazing that VW gets a bazooka treatment in both time and scope of reporting while the fraud perpetrated by GM - one of the NPR's biggest donors - in its ignition switch-gate was given very shy coverage regardless of the fact that it cost 124 lives. At the same time, the happy team at NPR's own "Planet Money" keeps on rolling in a framework of peddling corporate messaging to idiots, while its own questionable past and record doesn't seem to present any challenges going forward or even backward.

Nothing represents history of manipulation of the US media better than a quote from great American journalist A.J. Liebling stating that: "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

Americans are increasingly looking for answers and explanations outside of the North American mainstream media mirage that has only served itself to their detriment. As for National Propaganda Radio, as many have derisively come to call the NPR, it needs to look to no further than Norway in 2017 as it ends the FM broadcasting.

Silence is better than the lies.

NPR in Washington declined a request for an interview regarding its programming.

WBUR in Boston did not return repeated requests for an interview about its programming.


The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby Luther Blissett » Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:01 pm

Without a doubt.
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
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.

Postby IanEye » Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:35 pm

WBUR is a terrible radio station.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby The Consul » Mon Oct 05, 2015 4:16 pm

One looks at the path taken by Coke -ie Roberts vs. that of Dr. Nick Begich. Of course, Coke-ie gets the pre$s. Probably her reward all these years for betraying her father.
" Morals is the butter for those who have no bread."
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby conniption » Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:16 pm

CrossTalk: Bullhorns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_0s4uiNaiA
RT
Published on Feb 1, 2016

According to US Secretary of State John Kerry this station is a bullhorn of propaganda. I like to think of ourselves as bullhorns for an alternative narrative and giving voice to those often marginalized by the Western mainstream. On this edition of CrossTalk we discuss media coverage of some important stories impacting our world. CrossTalking with Mark Sleboda, Dmitry Babich, and Rory Suchet.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby conniption » Wed Aug 24, 2016 7:36 am

RT

Provoking nuclear war by media – John Pilger


Journalist, film-maker and author, John Pilger is one of two to win British journalism’s highest award twice. For his documentary films, he has won an Emmy and a British Academy Award, a BAFTA. Among numerous other awards, he has won a Royal Television Society Best Documentary Award. His epic 1979 Cambodia Year Zero is ranked by the British Film Institute as one of the ten most important documentaries of the 20th century.

Published time: 23 Aug, 2016

Image
© Christof Stache / AFP

The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually “condemned ethnic cleansing”, opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590-page judgement on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified Nato’s illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.

Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented “international tribunal”. Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by US officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed.

Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all. He was the prototype demon, vilified by the western media as the “butcher of the Balkans” who was responsible for “genocide”, especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against “this new Hitler”.

Read more
Radovan Karadzic deserves punishment - but what about the Neocons?


David Scheffer, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], declared that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59” may have been murdered by Milocevic’s forces.

This was the justification for Nato’s bombing, led by Bill Clinton and Blair, that killed hundreds of civilians in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and television studios and destroyed Serbia’s economic infrastructure. It was blatantly ideological; at a notorious “peace conference” in Rambouillet in France, Milosevic was confronted by Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, who was to achieve infamy with her remark that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were “worth it”.

Albright delivered an “offer” to Milosevic that no national leader could accept. Unless he agreed to the foreign military occupation of his country, with the occupying forces “outside the legal process”, and to the imposition of a neo-liberal “free market”, Serbia would be bombed. This was contained in an “Appendix B”, which the media failed to read or suppressed. The aim was to crush Europe’s last independent “socialist” state.

Once Nato began bombing, there was a stampede of Kosovar refugees “fleeing a holocaust”. When it was over, international police teams descended on Kosovo to exhume the victims. The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines”. The final count of the dead in Kosovo was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the pro-Nato Kosovo Liberation Front. There was no genocide. The Nato attack was both a fraud and a war crime.

All but a fraction of America’s vaunted “precision guided” missiles hit not military but civilian targets, including the news studios of Radio Television Serbia in Belgrade. Sixteen people were killed, including cameramen, producers and a make-up artist. Blair described the dead, profanely, as part of Serbia’s “command and control”.

In 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, revealed that she had been pressured not to investigate Nato’s crimes.

Read more
Silencing America as it prepares for war


This was the model for Washington’s subsequent invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and, by stealth, Syria. All qualify as “paramount crimes” under the Nuremberg standard; all depended on media propaganda. While tabloid journalism played its traditional part, it was serious, credible, often liberal journalism that was the most effective – the evangelical promotion of Blair and his wars by the Guardian, the incessant lies about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the Observer and the New York Times, and the unerring drumbeat of government propaganda by the BBC in the silence of its omissions.

At the height of the bombing, the BBC’s Kirsty Wark interviewed General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander. The Serbian city of Nis had just been sprayed with American cluster bombs, killing women, old people and children in an open market and a hospital. Wark asked not a single question about this, or about any other civilian deaths.

Others were more brazen. In February 2003, the day after Blair and Bush had set fire to Iraq, the BBC’s political editor, Andrew Marr, stood in Downing Street and made what amounted to a victory speech. He excitedly told his viewers that Blair had “said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.” Today, with a million dead and a society in ruins, Marr’s BBC interviews are recommended by the US embassy in London.

Marr’s colleagues lined up to pronounce Blair “vindicated”. The BBC’s Washington correspondent, Matt Frei, said, “There’s no doubt that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially to the Middle East … is now increasingly tied up with military power.”

This obeisance to the United States and its collaborators as a benign force “bringing good” runs deep in western establishment journalism. It ensures that the present-day catastrophe in Syria is blamed exclusively on Bashar al-Assad, whom the West and Israel have long conspired to overthrow, not for any humanitarian concerns, but to consolidate Israel’s aggressive power in the region. The jihadist forces unleashed and armed by the US, Britain, France, Turkey and their “coalition” proxies serve this end. It is they who dispense the propaganda and videos that becomes news in the US and Europe, and provide access to journalists and guarantee a one-sided “coverage” of Syria.

The city of Aleppo is in the news. Most readers and viewers will be unaware that the majority of the population of Aleppo lives in the government-controlled western part of the city. That they suffer daily artillery bombardment from western-sponsored al-Qaida is not news. On 21 July, French and American bombers attacked a government village in Aleppo province, killing up to 125 civilians. This was reported on page 22 of the Guardian; there were no photographs.

Read more
Russia offers NATO an olive branch, but is reconciliation in NATO interests?


Having created and underwritten jihadism in Afghanistan in the 1980s as Operation Cyclone - a weapon to destroy the Soviet Union - the US is doing something similar in Syria. Like the Afghan Mujahideen, the Syrian “rebels” are America’s and Britain’s foot soldiers. Many fight for al-Qaida and its variants; some, like the Nusra Front, have rebranded themselves to comply with American sensitivities over 9/11. The CIA runs them, with difficulty, as it runs jihadists all over the world.

The immediate aim is to destroy the government in Damascus, which, according to the most credible poll (YouGov Siraj), the majority of Syrians support, or at least look to for protection, regardless of the barbarism in its shadows. The long-term aim is to deny Russia a key Middle Eastern ally as part of a Nato war of attrition against the Russian Federation that eventually destroys it.

The nuclear risk is obvious, though suppressed by the media across “the free world”. The editorial writers of the Washington Post, having promoted the fiction of WMD in Iraq, demand that Obama attack Syria. Hillary Clinton, who publicly rejoiced at her executioner’s role during the destruction of Libya, has repeatedly indicated that, as president, she will “go further” than Obama.

Gareth Porter, a journalist reporting from Washington, recently revealed the names of those likely to make up a Clinton cabinet, who plan an attack on Syria. All have belligerent cold war histories; the former CIA director, Leon Panetta, says that “the next president is gonna have to consider adding additional special forces on the ground”.

What is most remarkable about the war propaganda now in flood tide is its patent absurdity and familiarity. I have been looking through archive film from Washington in the 1950s when diplomats, civil servants and journalists were witch-hunted and ruined by Senator Joe McCarthy for challenging the lies and paranoia about the Soviet Union and China. Like a resurgent tumor, the anti-Russia cult has returned.

In Britain, the Guardian’s Luke Harding leads his newspaper’s Russia-haters in a stream of journalistic parodies that assign to Vladimir Putin every earthly iniquity. When the Panama Papers leak was published, the front page said Putin, and there was a picture of Putin; never mind that Putin was not mentioned anywhere in the leaks.

Like Milosevic, Putin is Demon Number One. It was Putin who shot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. Headline: “As far as I’m concerned, Putin killed my son.” No evidence required. It was Putin who was responsible for Washington’s documented (and paid for) overthrow of the elected government in Kiev in 2014. The subsequent terror campaign by fascist militias against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine was the result of Putin’s “aggression”. Preventing Crimea from becoming a Nato missile base and protecting the mostly Russian population who had voted in a referendum to rejoin Russia – from which Crimea had been annexed – were more examples of Putin’s “aggression”. Smear by media inevitably becomes war by media. If war with Russia breaks out, by design or by accident, journalists will bear much of the responsibility.

Read more
© Artem Zhitenev From Russia with Peace: Debunking the myth of ‘Russian aggression’


In the US, the anti-Russia campaign has been elevated to virtual reality. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, an economist with a Nobel Prize, has called Donald Trump the “Siberian Candidate” because Trump is Putin’s man, he says. Trump had dared to suggest, in a rare lucid moment, that war with Russia might be a bad idea. In fact, he has gone further and removed American arms shipments to Ukraine from the Republican platform. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia,” he said.

This is why America’s warmongering liberal establishment hates him. Trump’s racism and ranting demagoguery have nothing to do with it. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s record of racism and extremism can out-trump Trump’s any day. (This week is the 20th anniversary of the Clinton welfare “reform” that launched a war on African-Americans). As for Obama: while American police gun down his fellow African-Americans the great hope in the White House has done nothing to protect them, nothing to relieve their impoverishment, while running four rapacious wars and an assassination campaign without precedent.

The CIA has demanded Trump is not elected. Pentagon generals have demanded he is not elected. The pro-war New York Times - taking a breather from its relentless low-rent Putin smears - demands that he is not elected. Something is up. These tribunes of “perpetual war” are terrified that the multi-billion-dollar business of war by which the United States maintains its dominance will be undermined if Trump does a deal with Putin, then with China’s Xi Jinping. Their panic at the possibility of the world’s great power talking peace – however unlikely – would be the blackest farce were the issues not so dire.

“Trump would have loved Stalin!” bellowed Vice-President Joe Biden at a rally for Hillary Clinton. With Clinton nodding, he shouted, “We never bow. We never bend. We never kneel. We never yield. We own the finish line. That’s who we are. We are America!”

In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn has also excited hysteria from the war-makers in the Labour Party and from a media devoted to trashing him. Lord West, a former admiral and Labour minister, put it well. Corbyn was taking an “outrageous” anti-war position “because it gets the unthinking masses to vote for him”.

In a debate with leadership challenger Owen Smith, Corbyn was asked by the moderator: “How would you act on a violation by Vladimir Putin of a fellow Nato state?”

Corbyn replied: “You would want to avoid that happening in the first place. You would build up a good dialogue with Russia … We would try to introduce a de-militarisation of the borders between Russia, the Ukraine and the other countries on the border between Russia and Eastern Europe. What we cannot allow is a series of calamitous build-ups of troops on both sides which can only lead to great danger.”

Pressed to say if he would authorize war against Russia “if you had to”, Corbyn replied: “I don’t wish to go to war – what I want to do is achieve a world that we don’t need to go to war.”

The line of questioning owes much to the rise of Britain’s liberal war-makers. The Labour Party and the media have long offered them career opportunities. For a while the moral tsunami of the great crime of Iraq left them floundering, their inversions of the truth a temporary embarrassment. Regardless of Chilcot and the mountain of incriminating facts, Blair remains their inspiration, because he was a “winner”.

Dissenting journalism and scholarship have since been systematically banished or appropriated, and democratic ideas emptied and refilled with “identity politics” that confuse gender with feminism and public angst with liberation and willfully ignore the state violence and weapons profiteering that destroys countless lives in faraway places, like Yemen and Syria, and beckon nuclear war in Europe and across the world.

The stirring of people of all ages around the spectacular rise of Jeremy Corbyn counters this to some extent. His life has been spent illuminating the horror of war. The problem for Corbyn and his supporters is the Labour Party. In America, the problem for the thousands of followers of Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Party, not to mention their ultimate betrayal by their great white hope.

In the US, home of the great civil rights and anti-war movements, it is Black Lives Matter and the likes of Codepink that lay the roots of a modern version.

For only a movement that swells into every street and across borders and does not give up can stop the warmongers. Next year, it will be a century since Wilfred Owen wrote the following. Every journalist should read it and remember it.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

_______

JohnPilger.com - the films and journalism of John Pilger
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby conniption » Wed Aug 24, 2016 6:22 pm

off-guardian

Published on August 21, 2016
Comments 34
BBC, CNN, Guardian et al need to face the agenda they are being used to serve


by Catte

Image

After the recent revelation that almost every major news site has been promoting unverified video and eye-witness testimony originating in some of the most extreme, violent and debauched terrorist elements currently operating in Syria, we have to ask – is there any longer even a minimum of verification or investigative process required before news agencies and publications endorse a breaking story?

In the case of that notorious “Omran rescue vid”, for example, AP broke the story, but of the three journalists credited, one was in Beirut, one in Geneva and one in Moscow.

Image

None of them were in Aleppo, or even in Syria. Given what’s now transpired about the discredited and even criminal nature of the source, we need to ask – how did they get word of this event and how did they verify it? Did AP talk to ordinary people on the spot, and directly interview the witnesses? Did they get this video direct from the terrorist-supporting “Aleppo Media Center”, or via an intermediary? Did they know about the terrorist-connections of both the AMC and the “photo-journalist” Mahmoud Raslan, and just not inform their readers, or did they genuinely not know who their sources were?

These are important questions because the mere fact an event is reported in the mainstream press is enough to give it a sense of unquestionable reality for most people. They assume the reporters telling the story have been their on the ground and seen things for themselves. Even sophisticated media analysts, well aware of bias and narrative-manipulation, will still tend to believe implicitly that the events being reported have been witnessed and verified by the ones doing the reporting. Yet we know this is increasingly not the case.

continued... https://off-guardian.org/2016/08/21/bbc ... -to-serve/
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby Sounder » Wed Aug 24, 2016 7:21 pm

Neo-liberals do know how to shape a narrative, you gotta give them that. Still, the following provides good reason to never fall for the efforts of the hate breeders. All you haters out there are cogs in a losers game.

The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually “condemned ethnic cleansing”, opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590-page judgement on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified Nato’s illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.

Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented “international tribunal”. Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by US officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed.

Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all.
He was the prototype demon, vilified by the western media as the “butcher of the Balkans” who was responsible for “genocide”, especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against “this new Hitler”.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby conniption » Tue Sep 27, 2016 7:19 pm

off-guardian
(embedded links)

Published on September 24, 2016
Comments 23
Guardian sells space to war-profiteers to promote war


by Kit

Image

It seems like all I do these days is skim through the “about” pages of an endless list of NGOs with countless varieties of the same name, looking for the same half-a-dozen funds, endowments, organisations, slogans, mottos and buzzwords that always appear. It’s got to the point where it’s simply a matter of ticking off the items on a shopping list.

The National Endowment for Democracy…check.
The International Monetary Fund…check.
George Soros…check.

It’s always the same. It has come to the point where, if the “Our Partners” section of an organization with a vaguely benign-sounding name, along the lines of Middle East Fund for Democracy and Liberty or somethingorother, DIDN’T contain a reference to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation or the World Bank…I just wouldn’t be able to contain my shock.

Checking up on the sources and organisations behind this opinion piece on the Guardian yesterday morning (September 23rd) did not shock me, in the least.

It headlines:

Enough is enough. It’s time to protect aid workers


Before insisting, in the subhead:

Attacks on those who respond to global emergencies must be stopped – and the perpetrators must be held accountable


The article, written by Patricia McIlreavy, is long on generals but short on specifics. Long on problems, but short on solutions. It doesn’t discuss the war in Syria, except in the most simplistic terms. It doesn’t lay blame for any “attacks” at the feet of anyone specific, it just condemns attacks in general. The gaping maw of the unsaid echoes into infinity. Its final paragraph:

There comes a time when enough is enough, when even the most altruistic among us become angry. That time is now. World leaders must recognise and respect those who rush in to help when all others turn away, and provide humanitarians the protection they need and deserve.

Stop the attacks, and hold accountable those who seek to harm us. The time for talk is over.


It’s perfectly clear what she means, she just can’t actually say it. When she talks about “altruism” becoming anger, when she says the time for talk is over, she is talking about war. She is proposing that UN “peacekeepers” or NATO troops or a “coalition of the willing” or any and all of the above march into Syria and “protect” NGO employees…by attacking the Syrian government, and almost certainly coming into conflict with the Russian military.

But who is this author making this argument and what is the organisation she represents? What is the section of the Guardian which showcases such articles? And what is the foundation that “sponsored” this material in the Guardian?

Let us tackle these one at a time.

1. The Author’s Foundation

The author, the Guardian tells us, is Patricia McIlreavy, the vice-president of Humanitarian Policy and Practice at InterAction.

“What is InterAction?”, you ask?

Well…

InterAction is an alliance organization in Washington, D.C. of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Our 180-plus members work around the world. What unites us is a commitment to working with the world’s poor and vulnerable, and a belief that we can make the world a more peaceful, just and prosperous place – together.

InterAction serves as a convener, thought leader and voice of our community. Because we want real, long-term change, we work smarter: We mobilize our members to think and act collectively, because we know more is possible that way. We also know that how we get there matters. So we set high standards. We insist on respecting human dignity. We work in partnerships.


Doesn’t that sound nice? Working in partnerships, protecting the vulnerable, human dignity. That’s all good stuff, right? Shame on you for thinking it’s nothing but empty marketing and PR sloganeering.

I mean, just because the author of the article used to work at USAID, and just because their CEO worked for the Obama and Clinton administrations and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and just because their President used to work for the World Bank and also worked for the Obama administration…wait a minute…

2. The Section

The Guardian’s “Global development professionals network” was first launched in 2012. It is subsidiary to their “Global Development website”, which was launched a year earlier. Their purpose, to quote their own description, is to provide:

A space for NGOs, aid workers and development professionals to share knowledge and expertise


It is, to read between the words of that sentence, a space for the Guardian to publish opinion pieces and press releases from US and UK government-backed NGOs, whilst taking no direct editorial responsibility for this blatant issuing of propaganda. It is much the same as the New East Network in this regard.

In case you were wondering where they get their funding for this:

Like the main Guardian global development website, the professional network is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as by a range of sponsors.


The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is on the list of predictable names I referenced at the beginning of this article. wherever there is creepy Orwellian propaganda pushing for odd social controls in the name of “justice” (be it common core education, or remote control contraception) you will find Bill and Melinda Gates. The foundation is also, of course, a corrupt tax dodge.

Now, you might be worried about the impartiality of a newspaper that is part-funded by the richest man that has ever existed, and other (unnamed) “sponsors”, but don’t be concerned because:

All our journalism remains independent of sponsorship and follows GNM’s published editorial code.


…and…

Any content produced by, or in partnership with our funding partners, will be clearly labelled.


So that’s alright then.

3. The Sponsor

Here we come to the worst part. The part that, only two years ago, would have shocked me. The article was apparently “supported by” a private corporation: Crown Agents, who describe themselves thus:

We are an international development company that partners with governments, aid agencies, NGOs and companies in nearly 100 countries. Taking on clients’ fundamental challenges, we make lasting change to the systems and organisations that are vital for people’s well-being and prosperity.

We bring an agile and resourceful approach to complex development issues.


Which, when translated from neo-liberal BS language into actual English, means they act as a bridgehead in allowing corporations to move into third world countries and make a fortune by buying up public assets from corrupt or incompetent governments. Take a look at their latest projects for proof. When they’re not helping the Americans privatize Pakistan’s state assets, they’re “facilitating” Ukraine’s joining of the WTO. Interestingly they also enjoyed a very large contract for “rebuilding” peace in Libya.

They are all over the so-called developing world, “boosting revenues”, “fighting corruption” and “reforming financial practices”. They do all this in cooperation with their partners at the US government, the UK government and certain (unnamed) “private foundations“.

To be very clear about this – Crown Agents is NOT an NGO. They are not a charity, or an aid organisation, or a barely-there disguise of some alphabet agency. They are a private business, they make money, they are FOR PROFIT.

The same company which made money off the aftermath of the Libyan war, is now sponsoring an article calling for war in Syria. It is an undeclared agenda, a classic conflict of interest, and totally disgusting. That it takes place in a supposedly “liberal paper”, with supposedly “progressive values”, in the name of charity and humanitarianism, is the height of modern hypocrisy.

The Guardian are selling space in their paper to for-profit companies, who publish pro-war opinion pieces, trying to incite public support for a war that will make them money.

That would have been shocking once upon a time.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby conniption » Tue Oct 11, 2016 11:19 pm

URGENT: MSM Syria Lies NEED TO BE EXPOSED...Before It's Too Late

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzEsDAoUvOI
corbettreport

Published on Oct 9, 2016

SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=20107

The world once again finds itself hurtling to the brink of war, and once again the establishment mouthpiece puppet propaganda media is leading the charge. This time around their lies defy description. In the sick world of the would-be warmongers, child beheading terrorist scum are now the heroes. The blood of the innocents that spill from here on in covers the hands of the mainstream media propagandists.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby Harvey » Wed Oct 12, 2016 8:58 am

Media Silence Over Deadly Sanctions: From Iraq To Syria

Media Lens, 10th October 2016
By David Cromwell, Editor

Awkward facts that erode the 'benign humanitarian' self-image of the West are routinely side-lined or buried by the corporate media. Consider, for example, the severe impact of sanctions imposed on Syria by the United States and the European Union.

An internal United Nations assessment, revealed on September 28 by Rania Khalek in The Intercept, makes clear that the sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and preventing vital aid, including medical supplies, from reaching those in dire need. Access has been denied for blood safety equipment, medicines, medical devices, food, fuel, water pumps and spare parts for power plants, amongst other items.

Khalek notes that the internal assessment, which was prepared for the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, describes:

'the U.S. and EU measures as "some of the most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed." Detailing a complex system of "unpredictable and time-consuming" financial restrictions and licensing requirements, the report finds that U.S. sanctions are exceptionally harsh "regarding provision of humanitarian aid."'


US sanctions on Syrian banks have made the transfer of funds into Syria 'nearly impossible'. This has had a two-fold effect:

1. Aid groups have been unable to pay local staff and suppliers which has delayed or prevented aid from reaching those in need.

2. An unofficial and unregulated financial network has proliferated, making it easier for ISIS and al Qaeda to divert funds undetected.


Khalek also reports that a leaked email from 'a key UN official' blamed US and EU sanctions for contributing to food shortages and weakened health care. In particular:

'sanctions had contributed to a doubling in fuel prices in 18 months and a 40 percent drop in wheat production since 2010, causing the price of wheat flour to soar by 300 percent and rice by 650 percent.'


The UN official cited sanctions as a 'principal factor' in the erosion of Syria's health care system. Khalek adds:

'Medicine-producing factories that haven't been completely destroyed by the fighting have been forced to close because of sanctions-related restrictions on raw materials and foreign currency'.


The US first imposed sanctions on Syria in 1979, after designating its government 'a State Sponsor of Terrorism'. Over time, further sanctions were added with more extreme restrictions imposed in 2011 after it was claimed the Syrian government had initiated violence against peaceful protesters (a claim that has been contested). In 2013, sanctions were eased, but only in areas that opposed President Assad. As Khalek notes:

'Around the same time, the CIA began directly shipping weapons to armed insurgents at a colossal cost of nearly $1 billion a year, effectively adding fuel to the conflict while U.S. sanctions obstructed emergency assistance to civilians caught in the crossfire.'


When Khalek challenged the US State Department about the devastating impact of sanctions on war-torn Syria, where 13 million people are dependent on humanitarian assessment, she was fed a statement 'which recycled talking points that justified sanctions against Iraq in [the] 1990s':

'U.S. sanctions against [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad], his backers, and the regime deprive these actors of resources that could be used to further the bloody campaign Assad continues to wage against his own people'.


The same specious propaganda arguments were used by the West, notably the United States and Britain, to 'justify' barbaric sanctions against Iraq from 1990 to 2003, following the first Gulf War. Leading politicians and officials in the West claimed that the sanctions were aimed at punishing and containing Saddam. But the victims were the Iraqi people themselves. In 1999, the United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that the mortality rate for children under five in Iraq had doubled. In all, half a million young Iraqi children died as a result. Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, infamously declared that 'the price is worth it'.

Given the terrible consequences in Iraq under the crippling UN embargo, the United States government is no doubt perfectly aware of the impact of sanctions on the Syrian people. Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, observes:

'Sanctions have a terrible effect on the people more than the regime and Washington knows this from Iraq. But there's pressure in Washington to do something and sanctions look like you're doing something.'


Hans von Sponeck, who resigned from his post as the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad in 2000, accused Washington and London of 'knowingly maintaining conditions of misery' in Iraq under sanctions. (Hans von Sponeck, 'A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq', Berghahn, 2006, p. 27). We are not supposed to believe that 'our' governments would do such a heinous thing. And, indeed, von Sponeck's book was essentially ignored by the western media. It has never been reviewed by any major UK newspaper, and has literally been mentioned only once (by Robert Fisk in the Independent).

As well as the current punitive sanctions on Syria, Khalek also notes that:

'in cities controlled by ISIS, the U.S. has employed some of the same tactics it condemns. For example, U.S.-backed ground forces laid siege to Manbij, a city in northern Syria not far from Aleppo that is home to tens of thousands of civilians. U.S. airstrikes pounded the city over the summer, killing up to 125 civilians in a single attack. The U.S. also used airstrikes to drive ISIS out of Kobane, Ramadi, and Fallujah, leaving behind flattened neighborhoods. In Fallujah, residents resorted to eating soup made from grass and 140 people reportedly died from lack of food and medicine during the siege.'


An honest media would report all this with headline coverage and include much critical analysis in editorials and opinion pieces. They would also ask searching questions of the British Prime Minister and other leading politicians. Needless to say, this has not happened. Indeed, our searches have revealed just one newspaper article covering the report's assessment that US and EU sanctions are contributing to the terrible suffering of the Syrian people. Patrick Cockburn reported in the Independent:

'the US and EU sanctions are imposing an economic siege on Syria as a whole which may be killing more Syrians than die of illness and malnutrition in the sieges which EU and US leaders have described as war crimes. Over half the country's public hospitals have been damaged or destroyed.'


We found nothing on the BBC News website.

Even when the Guardian trumpeted an 'exclusive' on September 30 (two days after Rania Khalek's piece in The Intercept) that more than 80% of UN aid convoys in Syria had been blocked or delayed, there was nothing about the crippling effect on aid by US and EU sanctions. There was a single passing mention to these sanctions, but only in the context of heaping blame on the official enemy Assad:

'the UN has awarded contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to individuals closely associated with Assad, including businesspeople whose companies are under US and EU sanctions.'


We asked Nick Hopkins, the author of the Guardian article, to explain why his 'exclusive' had ignored criticism of US and EU sanctions (here and here). He did not respond. Hopkins, a former BBC journalist, had also remained silent when we challenged him in 2011 about a propaganda piece on Iran. Likewise, he ignored us in 2013 when we challenged him to justify misinforming Guardian readers that merely 'tens of thousands' had died in Iraq following the 2003 invasion by US-led forces.

These are just a tiny sample of the myriad examples that reveal the Guardian's role as a liberal gatekeeper of acceptable views in the 'mainstream'. Bear this in mind the next time you see an online Guardian advert pleading:

'Producing in-depth, thoughtful, well-reported journalism is difficult and expensive – but supporting us isn't. If you value the Guardian's international coverage, please help to fund our journalism by becoming a supporter.'


Support journalism that regularly buries Western crimes? Smears Jeremy Corbyn and the public movement behind him? And promotes a 'liberal' view of climate-wrecking capitalism? No thanks.

http://www.medialens.org/...media-silence-over-deadly-sanctions-from-iraq-to-syria.html


Also worth reading:

http://www.medialens.org...the-great-iraq-war-fraud.html

http://www.medialens.org...the-great-libya-war-fraud.html
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby dada » Sun Oct 16, 2016 11:23 am

Thread bump. I don't think this should fall off the bottom of the front page so quickly.


Hans von Sponeck, who resigned from his post as the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad in 2000, accused Washington and London of 'knowingly maintaining conditions of misery' in Iraq under sanctions. (Hans von Sponeck, 'A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq', Berghahn, 2006, p. 27). We are not supposed to believe that 'our' governments would do such a heinous thing. And, indeed, von Sponeck's book was essentially ignored by the western media. It has never been reviewed by any major UK newspaper, and has literally been mentioned only once (by Robert Fisk in the Independent).

As well as the current punitive sanctions on Syria, Khalek also notes that:

'in cities controlled by ISIS, the U.S. has employed some of the same tactics it condemns. For example, U.S.-backed ground forces laid siege to Manbij, a city in northern Syria not far from Aleppo that is home to tens of thousands of civilians. U.S. airstrikes pounded the city over the summer, killing up to 125 civilians in a single attack. The U.S. also used airstrikes to drive ISIS out of Kobane, Ramadi, and Fallujah, leaving behind flattened neighborhoods. In Fallujah, residents resorted to eating soup made from grass and 140 people reportedly died from lack of food and medicine during the siege.'


An honest media would report all this with headline coverage and include much critical analysis in editorials and opinion pieces. They would also ask searching questions of the British Prime Minister and other leading politicians. Needless to say, this has not happened
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Corporate Media's War Bias

Postby Harvey » Sat Oct 22, 2016 7:31 pm

Blanket Corporate Media Corruption

Craig Murray, 22 Oct, 2016


It is disconcerting to be praised by a website whose next article warns of a “plague of sodomites”. Sometimes truth-telling is a difficult act because truth is a simple matter of fact; who might seek to exploit that truth is a different question. I almost certainly have little in common with the anti-gay people who chose to commend me.

It is however incumbent on those who know truth to reveal it to the best of their ability, particularly if it contradicts an untruth being put about widely. The lie that WikiLeaks is acting as an agent of the Russian state is one that needs to be countered. Wikileaks is much more important than a mere state propaganda organisation, and needs to be protected.

Political lying is a sad fact of modern life, but some lies are more dangerous than others. Hillary Clinton’s lies that the Podesta and Democratic National Congress email leaks are hacks by the Russian state, should be countered because they are untrue, and because their intention is to distract attention from her own corrupt abuse of power and money. But even more so because they recklessly feed in to a Russophobia which is starting to exceed Cold War levels in terms of open public abuse.

Clinton has made no secret of her view that Obama has not been forceful enough in his dealings in Syria, and within her immediate circle she has frequently referred to the Cuban missile crisis as the precedent for how she believes Russia must be faced down. It is her intention to restore US international prestige by such a confrontation with Putin in Syria early in her Presidency, and perhaps more to the point to restore the prestige of the office of POTUS and thus enhance her chances of getting her way with a probable Republican controlled senate and congress.

The problem with a game of nuclear armed chicken is we might all end up dead. The Americans do not read Putin well. As my readers know, I am in no way a fan of Putin. He believes he has a personal vocation to restore Russian greatness and has been ever more consumed by a religious devotion to the Orthodox Russian Church. It seems to me highly improbable Hillary can make him back down over Syria. I am no more a fan of Assad than I am a fan of Putin. Nevertheless to risk nuclear war over a desire to replace Assad with rival swarms of vicious disjointed Saudi and Al-Qaeda backed jihadist militias, scarcely seems sensible.

Is Trump any less dangerous? I don’t know. I simply fail to understand the cultural background from which he springs, and what I do understand, I dislike. Were I an American, I would have backed Bernie Sanders and I would now back Jill Stein.

It is worth noting that Hillary’s claim that 17 US Intelligence Agencies agree that Russia was the source of the leaks is plainly untrue. All they have said is that the leaks “are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed attacks.” Under extreme White House pressure to state that the Russians did it, that extremely weak statement was the only thing that the US Intelligence chiefs could cobble together. It is very plainly an admission there is no evidence that Russia did it, but the appalling corporate media have reported it as though it “proves” Hillary’s accusation of Russia is true.

Bill Binney is like myself a former recipient of the Sam Adams Award – the World’s foremost whistleblowing award. Bill was the senior NSA Director who actually oversaw the design of their current mass surveillance software, and Bill has been telling anybody who will listen exactly what I have been telling – that this material was not hacked from Russia. Bill believes – and nobody has better contacts or understanding of capability than Bill – that the material was leaked from within the US intelligence services.

I was in Washington last month to chair the presentation of the Sam Adams Award to heroic former ex-CIA agent and whistleblower John Kiriakou. There were on the platform with me a dozen or so former very senior and distinguished officers of the CIA, NSA, FBI and US Army. All now identify with the whistleblower community. There were speeches of tremendous power and insight about state abuse, from those who really know. But as usual, not one mainstream media outlet turned up to report an award whose previous winners and still active participants include Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

Similarly my statement of definite knowledge that Russia is not behind the Clinton leaks has caused enormous interest in the internet. One article alone about my visit to Assange has 174,000 Facebook likes. Across all internet media we calculate over 30 million people have read my information that Russia was not responsible for these leaks. There is no doubt whatsoever that I have direct access to the correct information.

Yet not one single mainstream media journalist has attempted to contact me.

Why do you think that might be?


https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/10/blanket-corporate-media-corruption/
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