Fox News may be screwed

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 18, 2015 8:49 am

WEDNESDAY, JUN 17, 2015 04:29 PM CDT
Fox News as we know it may be screwed: Roger Ailes’ stunning rebuke could spell the end
With Rupert Murdoch stepping aside, Roger Ailes will now report to Murdoch's Fox-hating sons

Fox News as we know it may be screwed: Roger Ailes' stunning rebuke could spell the end
Roger Ailes (Credit: Reuters/Fred Prouser)

After reports surfaced that Rupert Murdoch planned to step down as head of media giant 21st Century Fox, many were left to wonder where the shakeup would leave Fox News Channel and its longtime head, Roger Ailes.

CNBC broke the news last week that the billionaire CEO of 21st Century Fox was to step down as head of the media conglomerate, leaving the management to his two sons, Lachlan and James. It seemed like a bad omen for the right-wing network: Murdoch’s sons reportedly detest it.

But Ailes, the evil genius behind Fox News, was said to be left unaffected by the change, somehow managing to continue to report to Murdoch directly despite his impending departure.

Well, who said that? Fox News, of course:

Rupert Murdoch would continue to serve as executive chairman, according to Stuart Varney, host of Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.” Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes will continue to run the news network, reporting directly to Rupert Murdoch, according to Fox News Channel.

Nope. Not true. Not happening. Just more Fox fiction.

“Roger will report to Lachlan and James but will continue his unique and long-standing relationship with Rupert,” 21st Century Fox spokesperson Nathaniel Brown said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter

Ailes will not actually get any special arrangement to continue reporting directly to Rupert. Instead, Ailes’ new boss will be an environmentalist.

Ailes biographer and veteran Fox News watcher Gabriel Sherman describes a scene at Fox last Thursday that reminds me of the infamous on-air Karl Rove meltdown after getting word from Megyn Kelly that Mitt Romney had lost Ohio and the 2012 election:

According to a well-placed source, Ailes directed Fox Business executive Bill Shine to tell anchor Stuart Varney to read the statement on air. “Ailes told Shine to write the announcement of the move for Varney to say,” the source said. “In it, Ailes inserted language that he would report to Rupert.”

That’s the Roger Ailes way, just make stuff up to feed to your anchors who enthusiastically repeat the baseless claims on-air. News.

Well, it finally appears to be blowing back in Ailes’ face now. Sherman writes of the impact of Ailes’ “demotion“:

For much of the past 15 years, Roger Ailes has operated with virtual impunity inside Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Nothing, it seemed, could induce Murdoch to rebuke Ailes publicly, even if Ailes forced Murdoch to choose between him and his sons. Such was Ailes’s power that he has been able to run a right-wing political operation under the auspices of a news channel.

This week, for the first time, there are signs that this remarkable era may be entering its twilight. Yesterday, 21st Century Fox announced that Ailes would be reporting to Lachlan and James Murdoch. For Ailes, it was a stinging smack-down and effectively a demotion.

[...]

No one I spoke to in the hours after the news broke could remember a time when Ailes has been so publicly diminished. “History was made,” a longtime Ailes associate told me. “It is terrible for Roger,” said another. “It is a public contradiction. Roger takes these things personally. Worse, it shows that Rupert did not give him a heads-up of the management change in advance. That alone was a slight to his ego.”

Ailes is set to begin reporting to 42 year-old James and 43 year-old Lachlan Murdoch on July 1.



Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud

ARTICLE01.09.104:15 PM ET
The first shot—really a nuclear device—was fired today on The New York Times’ Web site by British public-relations executive Matthew Freud, Murdoch’s son-in-law. Freud’s on-the-record quote, for a front-page profile of the 69-year-old Ailes, who launched and runs News Corp.’s most profitable division, is stunning in its condemnation—a frontal attack on Ailes and an apparent attempt to force News Corp.’s founder to choose between blood and money, between his progeny and his most-prized executive.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Apr 28, 2017 12:16 am

CNN: Second Law Enforcement Agency Joins Federal Investigation Of Fox News

ByESME CRIBBPublishedAPRIL 27, 2017, 6:23 PM EDT

A second law enforcement agency has joined the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation into Fox News, according to a CNN report published Thursday.

Financial crimes experts from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service — which investigates mail and wire fraud and identity theft cases — are involved in the federal investigation into the network, CNN reported, citing four unnamed sources connected to the investigation.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have taken an interest in whether Fox structured sexual harassment settlements worth millions of dollars in settlements so that the network would not have to inform investors. The Southern District of New York launched a grand jury investigation, the New York Times reported in February.

Investigators from both the USPIS and the Justice Department have been conducting interviews in recent weeks — including with some former Fox staffers — to obtain more information about the network’s managers and business practices, the sources said.

Read CNN’s full story here.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/c ... ent-agency


Exclusive: Federal probe of Fox News expands

by Brian Stelter @brianstelter
April 27, 2017: 6:15 PM ET


Fox News still under grand jury probe
The U.S. Justice Department's investigation of Fox News has widened to include a second law enforcement agency.
Financial crimes experts from the United States Postal Inspection Service are now involved, according to four sources connected to the investigation.
Mail fraud and wire fraud cases are part of the USPIS purview.
Investigators from both the USPIS and the Justice Department have been conducting interviews in recent weeks -- including with some former Fox staffers -- to obtain more information about the network's managers and business practices, the sources said.
The existence of the federal investigation was revealed in February. At the time Fox News and its parent company 21st Century Fox said they had not been subpoenaed, but a spokeswoman said, "we have been in communication with the U.S. Attorney's office for months — we have and will continue to cooperate on all inquiries with any interested authorities."
Contacted about this story, the Justice Department and the USPIS had no comment. 21st Century Fox also declined to comment.
In February the investigation was reported to be focusing on settlements made with women who alleged sexual harassment by former Fox News boss Roger Ailes, and questions about whether Fox had a duty to inform shareholders about the settlement payments.
The investigators have been asking "how the shareholder money was spent; who knew; and who should have known," one of the sources said.
But, CNNMoney has learned, the settlement payments are not the only thing they are examining.
Investigators have been probing possible misconduct by Fox News personnel and asking questions about the overall environment at the network.
Investigators have also been asking questions about mysterious confidants of Ailes -- people who were known inside Fox as "friends of Roger."
Ailes, through Fox News, employed a number of longtime friends as consultants, for purposes that remain unknown. One of the consultants earned $10,000 a month by submitting a monthly invoice to Fox.
When Ailes was forced out of Fox News last July, some of the consultants were also dismissed.
"Longtime friends of Roger's dating back to the '70s are beginning to exit the building," a source told CNNMoney in August.
Some of the people interviewed by investigators have been asked about these "friends of Roger" and what they did behind the scenes at Fox.
While the Justice Department has not commented on the investigation, it is clear, according to the sources connected to it, that Ailes and settlement payments are only one part of the probe.
The sources asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The probe began under the Obama administration. Attorney Judd Burstein, who represents some of Ailes' accusers, said in February that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York was conducting the investigation.
That office was led by U.S. attorney Preet Bharara until March, when President Trump fired him after he refused to resign. Dozens of other U.S. attorneys who were Obama appointees were asked to resign at the same time.
Bharara's departure has stirred speculation about whether the Trump administration's Justice Department will follow through on any findings involving Fox, Trump's favorite news network.
When asked by CNNMoney this week if he could discuss the Fox probe, Bharara said, "I'm not talking about any investigations that may or may not" have taken place.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/27/media/f ... index.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 02, 2017 1:23 pm

Fox News Co-President Bill Shine Out, Suzanne Scott to Head Programming
http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/fox-new ... 202404927/


Diana Falzone of Fox News Files Discrimination Lawsuit
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/busi ... wsuit.html



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHKmuXR00UM
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 18, 2017 8:45 am

good bye Roger

Rest in what you created
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 1:57 pm

After Twitter rant, Trump pushes Fox News story with unnamed source
Updated: MAY 30, 2017 — 1:17 PM EDT
May 29 - 5:36 PM

After slamming news reports based on unnamed sources, President Trump shared a Fox News story on Tuesday about his son-in-law, Jared Kushner (left) that is based around a single, unnamed source.


by Rob Tornoe, Staff Writer @RobTornoe | rtornoe@philly.com
President Trump says he doesn’t like stories with anonymous sources … except when he does.

On Tuesday morning, Trump retweeted a Fox News report that cites a single, unnamed source that contradicts a Washington Post story about White House aide Jared Kushner attempting to set up back-channel communications with the Russians.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/polit ... ource.html


Fox News is collapsing
By Oliver Willis |
MAY 28, 2017
Fox News Channel has suffered multiple recent setbacks, most notably losing the ratings race to its competitors. But the network created this situation for itself, and it deserves to reap what it has sown.

CBS
Fox News Channel is a failed state.
Fox News should be in a great place right now: Republicans control the House and Senate, and the vulgarian that Fox incubated for years and transformed into a political figure now inhabits the White House.
Yet, Fox has never been in such a horrible spot in its entire history. Roger Ailes, its recently deceased founder, was unmasked as a serial sexual predator and forced out. And Bill O’Reilly, the keystone in their prime-time network, was chased off the air under similar circumstances, not even allowed a farewell episode on his own show.
At the same time, its remaining most visible host, Sean Hannity, has somehow taken his already error-riddled and dishonest program deeper into the gutter by promoting conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party having people killed while ranting about said conspiracies on Twitter, late into the night.
And Hannity, making his already vile show even worse, continued hyping that despicable story even after Fox itself had retracted the report (which rarely happens, as they have practically no journalistic standards).
In addition to other women suing Fox for enabling a culture of sexual harassment, Fox is also being sued by a former anchor and others for systematically promoting and enabling racial discrimination, in a behind-the-scenes case of Fox again mimicking the venom and bile they put on air.
And most distressingly for Fox, their ratings stink.
For the first time in 17 years, Fox came in third behind MSNBC and CNN in the key 25-54 demographic all three networks lust after.
In addition to the above mentioned black marks against Fox’s brand that are hurting the ratings, their role as a pro-Trump propaganda outlet is becoming even more glaring as his presidency is engulfed in scandal.
Fox came into its own between 9/11 and George W. Bush’s re-election, when it also operated as Republican propaganda. But for at least some of that time, Bush was actually popular (though largely through the halo of people rallying around the flag after the terrorist attack and as we went to war). Trump, on the other hand, lost the popular vote and has never had the support of a majority of voters.
That is a tough package to sell, even to an audience base of mostly conservatives, but doubly so when it has become plainly obvious that he is incapable of handling even the basic minutia of the day-to-day job of being president.
Yet on Fox, they have to create an artificial reality, prioritizing issues that don’t matter while de-emphasizing the ones that do, in an attempt to ensure that Trump is seen in the best light.
But this isn’t the media environment of the past. The Fox bubble cannot keep out alternative media and social media, where friends and family are exposed to and sharing the reality of the Trump presidency and the backlash it entails. Confronted with these discordant images, Fox’s credibility has to take something of a hit.
The disconnection from reality is even more noticeable as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow draws in larger audiences, largely based on her reportorial deconstruction of the Trump administration’s duplicity and mendacity, and on her reputation for honesty and trustworthiness — something to which Fox as a whole could never lay claim.
And without Roger Ailes, Fox has no singular ego running things at the top, though even Ailes’ judgment during his last few years was out of step with his audience. He preferred candidates like New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, because even though Fox had built up Trump, Ailes did not appear to realize until it was too late that his living embodiment of every Fox News crackpot conspiracy and ethnic slur was truly what Republican voters wanted in a standard-bearer.
Network founder Rupert Murdoch has his sons James and Lachlan running Fox, but besides plugging in one right-wing host when they’ve lost another, they don’t appear to have the same sort of driving passion that took Fox News to the commanding position it once held.
The network could find a way back to life, but for now is marching on like a zombified echo of its glory days. It is a failed state, ripe for a hostile takeover or a complete collapse.
Considering the damage the network has done to American culture and the effect it has had on the lives of billions around the world for the worse, thanks to Republicans emulating and appeasing it, the best bet would be to root for collapse.

http://shareblue.com/fox-news-is-collapsing/


Fox & Friends attempts to smear anti-bullying efforts, claims anti-Muslim bullying isn't happening

Pete Hegseth: "Give me evidence that mass bullying is occurring in these schools"


Fox & Friends attempted to smear an anti-bullying effort at a San Diego school district and falsely claimed that anti-Muslim bullying is "really not that big to justify use of this policy." The district is being sued for creating a program similar to one protecting LGBTQ students and those of Latino and Native American descent in an attempt to decrease bullying of Muslim students. While co-host Pete Hegseth questioned whether there was "evidence" that bullying is happening, studies show that Muslim students report bullying at twice the rate of their non-Muslim peers, are bullied even by their teachers, and attend school amid an atmosphere of increasing violence against members of their religion.

Hegseth also claimed the school district was attempting to "insert Islam" into public schools in an attempt to "gam[e] the field" and later co-host Brian Kilmeade claimed that "we have to really address this" because "by 2050, they say Islam will be the number one religion in America." One on-screen banner flashed during the segment wondered if this anti-bulling measure is "Islamic indoctrination?" Fox News has a history of anti-Muslim rhetoric, including Hegseth himself who has previously attacked the Minneapolis mayor for giving her state of the city address in a mosque and has called a Muslim congressman "radical." From the May 30 edition of Fox News' Fox and Friends:




PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): The Bible and Christianity was long ago stripped from our public schools -- rightly or wrongly -- but to insert Islam seems like they are gaming the field here.

[...]

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): By the way, we have to really address this because, by 2050, they say Islam will be the number one religion in America

HEGSETH: Not in America. In the world by 2050, but it will double in America by 2050. I mean, this is going be something we're going to face more and more. And a secular purpose, it was a great point. Bullying is always the gateway for inserting these type of things. Give me evidence that mass bullying is occurring in these schools.

JESSE WEBER: Well, here's the problem. They say that there's rampant Islamophobia in this school district, but there are reports that it's really not that big to justify use of this policy.
https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017 ... ing/216701
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 2:52 pm

I think I'll just make this the Faux News and World Nut Daily thread

since there is no difference


WorldNetDaily

Since California-based conservative writer Joseph Farah founded it in 1997, WorldNetDaily, now simply known as WND, has emerged as a leading online platform for conspiracy theorists, Tea Party activists and End Times prophets. The site, particularly its reporter Jerome Corsi, championed discredited “birther” claims about President Obama’s birth certificate, birthplace, parents, sexuality and marriage. At one point, WND worked with Donald Trump to spread the false allegations. Often, WND will try to present conspiracy theories by saying that they are only “asking the question”—a tactic also embraced by Trump—and will source its “reporting” to website commenters. WND publishes columns from far-right activists such as Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Pat Boone, Chuck Norris, Larry Klayman, Linda Harvey and Erik Rush.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizat ... dnetdaily/


WorldNetDaily Names Trump 'Man Of The Year,' Compares Him To Founding Fathers
READ MORE
Trump To Speak At Event Honoring Birther Publisher Joseph Farah
READ MORE
WorldNetDaily Catches Obama's 'Demonic Spirit' In Kenya
READ MORE
Conservative Pundit: Millions Will Flee America, Demand Secession Over Gay Marriage
READ MORE

MAY 15, 2017 4:10 PM

Trump Official Warned That ‘Satanic’ Elites Run The World, ‘Islamic Invasion’ Creating ‘Mongrel Culture’
MAY 11, 2017 4:21 PM

Anti-Vaccine Site Mocks ‘Muslim Measles’
APRIL 14, 2017 12:08 PM

John Guandolo: Start ‘Locking Up’ CAIR Officials
APRIL 11, 2017 4:58 PM

David Kupelian: God Intervened To Prevent Millions Of Americans From Going ‘Completely Mad’ Under President Hillary Clinton
MARCH 9, 2017 3:24 PM

Far-Right Pundit Urges Trump To Prosecute Obama For Treason
MARCH 1, 2017 12:55 PM

Linda Harvey: ‘Pro-Gay Messages’ In Schools ‘Resemble The Grooming A Pedophile Does Before Molesting A Child’
MARCH 1, 2017 12:00 PM

Joseph Farah: Put Trump’s Face On Mount Rushmore
FEBRUARY 7, 2017 5:02 PM

Right Wing Bonus Tracks – 2/7/17
FEBRUARY 6, 2017 12:35 PM

Jesse Lee Peterson: If There Were No Black People In America, We Wouldn’t Have As Many Murders And Riots
FEBRUARY 2, 2017 11:45 AM

Jerome Corsi: From Trump Conspiracy Theorist to Trump’s Conspiracy Theorist
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizat ... dnetdaily/


Where right-wing lies are born: The wingnut Web, WorldNetDaily and how conservative nonsense infects America
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/02/where_r ... s_america/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 4:16 pm

WORLDNET DAILY CONTINUES TO PUMP OUT OUTRAGEOUS PROPAGANDA


Leah Nelson
For years, an extreme-right online “news company” called WorldNetDaily has been pumping out staggering vol- umes of baseless conspiracy theories, end-of-the-world predictions, and “birther” attacks on President Obama. But its truly defining moment may have come with the fairy-tale claim that soy- beans cause homosexuality.

WorldNetDaily (WND) describes itself as “an independent news company dedicated to uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing the role of the free press as a guardian of liberty.” The online newspaper, which this year celebrated its 15th year in operation, is one of the “very few sources” martial artist and action film hero Chuck Norris (who happens to be a columnist) trusts for news and an operation that megachurch pastor Greg Laurie (also a columnist) says does “a service to God and Country.”

WND is the brainchild of Joseph Farah, a self-described “radical” and longtime antigovernment propagandist and apologist for the Confederacy who believes “cultural Marxists” are plotting “to transform our political system, to change the way we think, to attack our values, to demean our faith in God, to reduce that shining city on the hill to the status of a drab public-housing project.”

Together with a coterie of antigovernment “Patriots,” anti-gay activists, white nationalists, Muslim-bashers, conspiracy theorists, end-times prophets and ultraconservative hardliners, Farah — who did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article — has built WND into a modest media empire including a book imprint, an online subscription-only “intelligence resource,” and a glossy, full-color monthly magazine. At press time, Alexa, which ranks websites, said WND was the 1,832nd most popular website in the world and the 423rd in the U.S. — just above the site for Nickelodeon and a few notches below Victoria’s Secret.

WND’s point of view is best described as a cross between the now-defunct supermarket tabloid Weekly World News, which was famous for reporting on Elvis sightings, and The New American, a monthly magazine published by the far-right, conspiracist John Birch Society. In its 15 years online, it has introduced readers to a smorgasbord of bizarre ideas, specializing in anti-gay, anti-Muslim, and anti-liberal propaganda; antigovernment conspiracy theories; and end-times prophecy.

It featured a six-part series claiming (falsely) that soybean consumption causes homosexuality and promoted Scott Lively’s vile opus The Pink Swastika, which says that gays were behind the Holocaust. It has identified the first “leftist” as Satan, and declared that Muslims have a “20-point plan for conquering the United States by 2020.” It has warned of secret plans to create a North American Union, advised readers to invest all their assets in gold, and promoted myriad, if conflicting, theories about when and how the world will end.

Its most enduring claim, by far, is that President Obama is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president because he supposedly is not a “natural-born” U.S. citizen.

WND’s stable of writers includes “birther” conspiracist Jerome Corsi; Bob Unruh, a former Associated Press reporter who once sued his fifth-grade daughter’s school after it forbade her to distribute promotional materials for his wife’s “vacation bible school”; black neo-secessionist Walter E. Williams, who in a 2002 WND column wrote that the Civil War was an unconstitutional exercise of “federal abuse and usurpation;” and a panoply of other far-right and ultraconservative voices.

The online paper is also a launching pad for a new generation of extremists. Kevin DeAnna, founder of the white nationalist student group Youth for Western Civilization, was recently hired as marketing coordinator. DeAnna, 29, also has written articles for WND — including one that asserted that Earth Day falls on April 22 in order to honor Lenin’s birthday. Another young pundit who benefits from WND’s patronage is Jason “Molotov” Mitchell, 33, a self-declared “Christian Supremacist” who wants his co-religionists to reject “effeminized American Christianity” and start “advancing the Kingdom on earth.”

Farah shares those sentiments. “I don’t think the Scriptures teach us to passively wait for God to take care of the world. We are taught to occupy until he comes,” he wrote in his 2003 book, Taking America Back. “Don’t you think He wants us to reestablish the promises of America — one nation under God born of a creed?”

Despite — or perhaps because of — all this, WND has had unnerving success at injecting its agenda into the public sphere. Especially since the election of America’s first black president sent the far right into paroxysms of anxiety, this far-right supermarket tabloid of the Internet has become a force to be reckoned with.

From Left to Right

Joseph Francis Farah, 57, of Centreville, Va., is a former liberal activist who as a high school student in 1971 was arrested at a massive Washington, D.C., May Day anti-war demonstration, voted for George McGovern and Jimmy Carter (twice), and says he once volunteered to serve as a bodyguard for anti-war activist Jane Fonda. In the 1980s, while working his way up the journalism food chain to become editor of the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner, he became a devoted fan of Ronald Reagan, to whom his 2007 book, Stop the Presses, is dedicated.

He also found God and cultivated what he describes as a “Christian worldview.” He claims that becoming a journalist was his response to the question, “What would Jesus do?” and says that his chief influences are Watergate muckrakers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; Matt Drudge of “The Drudge Report”; Ronald Reagan; and a book called Marx & Satan, which improbably claims that the author of The Communist Manifesto belonged to a Satanic cult.

Farah became the subject of national headlines in 1990, when he was hired as executive editor of California’s conservative Sacramento Union, whose new owners hoped that fresh blood would help turn the struggling 139-year-old paper around. Instead, during Farah’s 15 months at its helm, the Union’s circulation dropped by more that 25% as he dragged it sharply to the right.

Under his direction, pro-choice advocates were described as “pro-abortion” and environmentalists were reportedly called “eco-fruities.” The word “gay” was reportedly forbidden, replaced by “homosexual” — and once, in a column by the late David Chilton (who elsewhere wrote that “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under … the rule of God’s law.”), with “sodomite.” Farah also convinced rising conservative radio star Rush Limbaugh (who had left Sacramento a few years earlier to take his show national) to write a daily column, and ran it on the paper’s front page.

Journalist Daniel Carson described the Union as “a mouthpiece for the fundamentalist Christian right, preoccupied with abortion, homosexuals and creationism.”

“[E]ach day seems to bring a bizarre new episode,” he wrote in 1990. “Farah altered a news story to call the National Organization for Women a ‘radical feminist group.’ A front-page story speculated about whether the confrontation in the Persian Gulf is the political beginning of Armageddon.”

Editors, managers and writers reportedly left in droves. “The feeling is it’s not really an objective newspaper anymore,” a former Union reporter told The Washington Post in 1990. “We didn’t go into journalism to work for some slanted publication.”

In October 1991, Farah resigned. Twenty-seven months later, the Union — which was at the time the oldest daily paper west of the Mississippi — closed its doors for good.

But Farah kept on writing. That same year, he founded the Western Center for Journalism (WCJ), a non-profit whose purpose was “to encourage more philosophical diversity in the news media.” In 1994, WCJ was hit with a $2 million libel suit for promoting a “report” suggesting that White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster had been the victim of foul play, rather than suicide. (The suit was later dismissed.) Farah also contributed occasional op-eds to respectable outlets like the Los Angeles Times, and ran a series of “watchdog” publications focused on liberal media and culture.

In May 1997, together with his wife, Elizabeth, Farah founded WorldNetDaily as a project of WCJ. In 1999, he used $4.5 million in seed money from unnamed investors and incorporated WND as an independent for-profit company. It quickly became one of the most popular “news” sites on the Web.

Taking Sides

Farah makes a lot of noise about WND’s independence from political and partisan causes. “I’ve been a newsman my whole adult life” and “I believe the proper role of a newsman is to seek the truth without fear or favor,” he wrote in Stop the Presses. “Unlike many of my colleagues in the press, I have avoided political parties, organizations, and associations that could compromise my integrity.”

As is so often the case, Farah’s version of reality is unique.

According to research compiled by the Institute for First Amendment Studies, as of 1998, Farah was a member of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a highly secretive group that lobbies for hardline conservative positions. At that time, CNP’s membership roster included many conservative heavyweights, among them Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Jerry Falwell, Oliver North, Constitution Party co-founder Howard Phillips, and R.J. Rushdoony, father of Christian Reconstructionism. (Reconstructionism is an ultraconservative take on Christianity whose proponents seek to impose strict “biblical law” on the United States and have promoted the death penalty for “practicing homosexuals,” adulterers, and “incorrigible” children).

Farah has spoken at numerous political events. He gave the keynote address at a 2004 homeschooling conference run by a religious-right organization called the Alliance for Separation of School and State. He was scheduled to be a featured guest at a 2007 conference run by Vision Forum Ministries, an ultraconservative outfit whose director Doug Phillips is the son of Constitution Party co-founder Howard Phillips. In a 1997 book available on the Vision Forum website, the younger Phillips described Robert Lewis Dabney (a Confederate chaplain who called blacks a “sordid, alien taint” marked by “lying, theft, drunkenness, laziness, waste”) as “a man of extraordinary principle whose character remained unblemished throughout a long and distinguished career.”

In 2010, Farah boycotted the Conservative Political Action Conference, the right’s most important annual shindig, because it included an LGBT Republican group. He held his own conservative conference instead. Its lineup was a “Who’s Who” of far-right luminaries including U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Victoria Jackson, former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), anti-gay hate group leader and Christian Reconstructionist theologian Gary DeMar, and R.C. Sproul Jr., a mover-and-shaker in the theocratic Christian “patriarchy” movement and a prominent advocate of homeschooling.

WND’s board members — who in addition to Farah and his wife Elizabeth include Wayne Johnson, Norman Book, James Clark, and Richard Botkin — are also politically involved.

Johnson, who has been on WND’s board since 1999, is a Sacramento political consultant whose firm, according to TheRawStory, coordinated the campaign for California’s Proposition 8, which sought to outlaw same-sex marriage in that state. Until June 2002, he was a board member of the Chalcedon Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist outfit and anti-gay hate group.

Book, who joined the board in 2008, is WND’s executive vice president of finance and technology. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, he co-founded The Stanford Review, which according to his LinkedIn profile was a conservative student weekly meant to “add balance to Stanford’s stifling liberal atmosphere.”

Clark, a board member since 1999, was difficult to track down. Based on the address he listed on WND’s tax form, he appears to be a recently departed lobbyist for the American Bankers Association (ABA). According to his LinkedIn profile, he served as ABA liaison to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a controversial and highly secretive group of far-right state legislators and business lobbyists that writes and pushes model bills. One of them was the pro-gun “Stand Your Ground” law that authorities cited as their reason for not immediately recommending charges against George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in February.

Least noteworthy is Botkin, a Sacramento-area financial advisor and former Marine who has been on the board since 1999 and is an occasional contributor to conservative candidates. According to ConWebWatch, he worked with Farah in 2004 during a short-lived effort to revive the Sacramento Union as a magazine. His book about the Vietnam War was published by WND.

From 2000 to 2002, the board also included Robert Beale, an MIT grad who made his money in computers, served as the Minnesota campaign manager for televangelist Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential bid, and eventually came to sympathize with the radical antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement. In 2008, Beale was convicted of tax evasion, conspiracy, and fleeing authorites, charges he attempted to evade first by hiding from the law and then by conspiring to intimidate the judge — who, he said, God had commanded him to “destroy” — by filing fraudulent liens and issuing fake “arrest warrants” against her.

God, Guns and Armageddon

Like most well-trafficked websites, WND makes money through selling ad space and sending E-mails tempting subscribers with “special offers” from third parties.

In a May 2012 E-mail “from the desk of Joseph Farah,” the WND editor personally endorsed an offer from “the Millionaire Patriot” who was, he said, giving away “lifetime gun training memberships” to the first 500 subscribers to respond to his offer. The Millionaire Patriot is Ignatious Piazza, owner of Nevada’s Front Sight Firearms Training Institute and an accused con man. In 2007, Piazza settled for $8 million dollars a class action lawsuit brought by previous subscribers to his membership scheme. The plaintiffs alleged that he was running a Ponzi scheme, had misrepresented the value of memberships, and had diverted money “for his own personal use and benefit, including his Hollywood career.”

None of this was mentioned in WND’s E-mail to subscribers. Instead, Farah wrote that he “can personally vouch for Dr. Piazza and his Front Sight Training Institute” and urged readers “to prepare for what may be coming in the next four years! NOW is the time to get armed and trained.”

In 2010, subscribers received an E-mail hawking a book titled How to Survive the Collapse of Civilization, which warned that terrorists might attack the U.S. power grid with an electromagnetic pulse device that “could throw America into the dark ages in a split second.” The next year, a message titled “Gun Control Imminent — Stock Up Now!” warned that the president was “secretly conspiring to strip American Citizens of the right to bear arms” and promised “Burnin Hot Deals” from USA Ammo (motto: “Ammunition with Attitude”).

And, in 2011, WND shilled for a publication titled “The Antichrist Identity” that claimed President Obama is a crypto-Communist “apostle” of the “New World Order” who is setting up the planet for a takeover by “Jewish Masonic” elites who will reduce the population by 5.5 billion and “enslave all of mankind under the thumb of a Jewish master race led by a world messiah of Jewish ancestry who is to rule from Jerusalem.”

That “The Antichrist Identity” also scoffed at the idea that Obama was not born in the United States — a conspiracy WND has been tirelessly pushing for years — apparently did not bother the marketing team that approved the promotional E-mail.

Truth (or even internally consistent conspiracy theories) is not WND’s strong suit. But then, objectivity and consistency are not Farah’s goals. As he spelled out quite explicitly in Taking America Back, what he really wants is to foment a “revolution” — ideally, bloodless — that would eradicate most of the federal government, push LGBT people back into the closet and prayer back into the classroom, and “return” America to its supposed roots in biblical law.

The federal government, Farah wrote in Taking America Back, has “no lawful power outside its limited jurisdiction” and can only “impose its will on local communities and in the various states … through force of arms.” If Washington won’t “yield the power it has usurped from the states and from sovereign, self-governing individuals like you and me,” then “[i]t’s time to reconsider the idea of secession.”

The Civil War was really a “second war of independence” — and, “the motivations of many in the Confederacy were … a desire to live up to the promises of the U.S. Constitution, to test the principle of a voluntary union, to promote self-government and the rights of states.”

Farah’s own formula for revolution is simple: Turn on, tune in, and drop out. “Find a good reliable source of news — like WorldNetDaily.com — and be informed.” Buy guns — “more than you think you need.” (He notes these are for self-defense and to “preserve freedom.”) And above all, withdraw your children from “government schools,” those “indoctrination centers” and “brainwashing hubs” run by “statists who seek to steal our children and make a mockery of the family.”

“There is no neutral ground in the spiritual warfare consuming this universe,” he advises readers in the final sentences of Taking America Back. “Now stand up and join me in taking America back.”

Crazy For Sale

WorldNetDaily, after a ‘thorough’ vetting by its ‘review board,’ offers up a cornucopia of reading. Fasten your seat belts!

Like every online publication, WorldNetDaily has to pay the bills. One of the ways the far-right “news” source raises money is through the WND Superstore, where faithful readers can buy “Unique Products for Discerning Minds” — such as the NRA-endorsed Second Amendment Range Pack, which can hold, among other things, four pistols and 36 magazines, and which comes with the Second Amendment printed inside its front pouch.

Because WND hopes you will consider it “your personal library consultant,” also on offer at the superstore are 830 books on “history, theology, philosophy, political science, education, natural science, society, and family,” each one “thoroughly examined” by WND’s “review board” to “enlighten and empower you in your personal quest to protect your family, engage the culture, speak out against injustice, and fight for what is right.” In keeping with WND’s daily content, it proffers a conspiracist version of reality in which communists, liberals, Muslims, and atheists — sometimes in cahoots with time-traveling demons, other times acting on their own volition — lurk around every corner, secretly plotting to destroy the world.

The Intelligence Report doesn’t have the staff (or the patience) to read every single book on WND’s list, but we did check out quite a few of the more interesting titles. In the capsule reviews below, you’ll learn the “real” reason Earth Day is celebrated on April 22; discover that demons, masquerading as aliens, are abducting human females; and see that a secretive cabal of global elites plans to enslave humanity and implement a “New World Order.” No matter what flavor of crazy you prefer, there’s something here for everyone — even the kids.

Enjoy!

ATLAS SHRUGGED
Ayn Rand | Signet, 1957

No far-right library is complete without this classic from screenwriter and “objectivist philosopher” Ayn Rand, an anticommunist activist and rabid atheist once described as a “gateway drug to the Right,” whose 1957 magnum opus ranked as the second-most-influential book in America (the Bible was most influential) in a 1991 poll.

Today, with help from the likes of Rush Limbaugh (who frequently refers to Rand on his show and once called her a “brilliant writer and novelist”); Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan (a Tea Party hero who has said that Rand is the reason he entered politics and who — ironically, given Rand’s characterization of faith as “a sign of psychological weakness” and of Christianity’s central teachings as “monstrous” — claims to give copies of Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents); and Muslim-hating blogger Pam Geller (who named her blog Atlas Shrugs after the book), this ultra-libertarian classic – which sneers at religion, champions selfishness, and advocates the abolition of nearly all government services and private philanthropies — is enjoying a renaissance on the American far right.

Part manifesto, part romance novel (in one scene, the heroine, wearing a diamond bracelet, displays “the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained”), Atlas Shrugged portrays a dystopian near-future in which capitalists go on strike to protest government regulations, vowing to return only “[w]hen the looters’ state collapses … like the mystic-ridden nations of the Orient.” At that time, “[w]ith the sign of the dollar as our symbol … we will move to reclaim this country once more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its meaning, its splendor.”

CORRUPTING THE IMAGE: ANGELS, ALIENS, AND THE ANTICHRIST REVEALED
Douglas Hamp | Defender Publishing, 2011

Since man was created approximately 6,000 years ago, he has been stalked by Satan, who is intent on destroying God’s work and replacing it with his own.

In antediluvian times, Nephilim — the half-demonic offspring of fallen angels and their human wives — roamed the earth. Today, Hamp says, Satan has a new and infinitely more insidious plan to destroy God’s creation. “The fact that beings whom we have identified as demons are manifesting in the sky is undeniable,” he writes. “As the many abductees have testified, the ‘aliens’” — who, according to Hamp, are actually demons disguised as aliens — “are using their sperm and eggs to create a new race (post human). The demons are mixing their seed with the seed of men.” Scientists also are mingling human DNA with that of other species, while propaganda from Hollywood, the New Age movement, and Darwinists desensitizes mankind to Satan’s unnatural work.

When the Antichrist — likely a Mason — comes, most will believe that the Rapture is an alien abduction. Those who stay true will be rewarded in heaven. Those who fail will burn. In Corrupting the Image, Hamp teaches readers how to protect themselves — before it’s too late.

ECO-TYRANNY: HOW THE LEFT’S GREEN AGENDA WILL DISMANTLE AMERICA
Brian Sussman | WND Books, 2012

“Each time you hear an eco-activist or representative of an environmental organization speak, know this: he or she is knowingly pushing the message of Marx and deviously hoping to see the United States changed.” These are the words of Brian Sussman, a former TV meteorologist who believes that climate change is a myth manufactured by Communists “hell-bent on transforming society into a colossal, highly regulated, redistributive commune void of inalienable rights.”

According to Sussman, Earth Day is on April 22 in celebration of Lenin’s birthday, Bill Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development was a “seditious cabal of anti-American operatives working at the behest of the United Nations,” and “smart meters” and “smart grids” — technology designed to help lower utility bills and prevent brownouts — are actually a way for “Big Brother” to “control your life.” Environmentalists belong to a religion called “biocentrism,” whose earth-worshipping adherents celebrate rites such as buying hybrid vehicles, becoming vegans, “[a]nd for the exceptionally devout,” having abortions “to fight global warming.”

To combat this madness, Sussman writes, we need leaders who will “immediately abolish” the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Clean Air Act, and most environmental regulations.

“There are no more excuses. There is little time. We need majorities in Congress to accomplish this great work,” he declares. “We must restore and preserve our nation as originally founded if we are to have anything of value to leave to our posterity. It will certainly take much sacrifice and determination, but with God’s help, it can be done.”

THE ESSENTIAL SECOND AMENDMENT GUIDE
Wayne LaPierre | WND Books, 2009

The Second Amendment is “the first right among equals, because it is the one we turn to when all else fails,” says National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre in his introduction to The Essential Second Amendment Guide.

LaPierre, who once referred to federal agents as “jackbooted government thugs,” and has warned that President Obama’s failure to push gun control during his first term is part of “a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intention to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term,” has no doubt that the day may come that citizens will face a government attack on their freedom. The threat may also come from the anti-gun “puppet masters” at the U.N., who have long harbored plans to confiscate our guns and “reprogram” us.

Fortunately, “a determined people who have the means to maintain prolonged war against a modern army can battle it to a standstill.” Well, then, pass the ammunition!

THE FEDERALIST PAPERS IN MODERN LANGUAGE
Mary E. Webster | Merril Press, 1999

Mary Webster is a mystery novelist and American Sign Language interpreter who enjoys quilting, painting, “polymer clay caning,” and TV’s Dr. Phil. She’s also a fourth-cousin-five-times-removed of Noah and Daniel Webster — a credential she apparently believes crucial in qualifying her to write this mind-numbing book, purportedly a modern English “translation” of these 18th-century essays, which were originally produced by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay for the purpose of promoting the U.S. Constitution.

Webster, who describes herself as “the quintessential citizen editor,” believes that other countries are jealous of the United States. “[N]o matter what the United States does, much of the world will always hate us,” she wrote in a 2005 commentary after watching an episode of Dr. Phil that reminded her of the Papers. “We don’t have to do something negative to elicit these feelings against us. As long as the US exists, other nations will hate us.”

THE FLIPSIDE OF FEMINISM: WHAT CONSERVATIVE WOMEN KNOW — AND MEN CAN’T SAY
Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schlafly | WND Books, 2011

These days, everyone’s talking about the “war against women.” Suzanne Venker and her aunt Phyllis Schlafly (founder of the ultraconservative Eagle Forum) know who’s behind it: Feminists — who are also, as it happens, behind a war on men, capitalism, and human nature itself.

“When women usurp men’s role in society, as they do now, it messes up the order of things,” Venker and Schlafly proclaim. What’s more, “[f]eminism is a branch of socialism … which draws on a sociopolitical movement that attempts to create a stateless society in which policy decisions are pursued in the (supposed) best interests of society.” In pursuit of its radical agenda, the “female left” has destroyed the institution of marriage, emasculated men, and created a generation of neurotic children.

It’s not too late to reverse the trend, but to do so, “[w]e must stop talking about women’s rights, women’s needs, women’s problems, and progress for women.” Women must return to the home, stop trying to “make fathers and husbands irrelevant,” and — most importantly — recognize that the only people they are victims of are the feminists themselves.

THE HARBINGER: THE ANCIENT MYSTERY THAT HOLDS THE SECRET OF AMERICA’S FUTURE
Jonathan Cahn | FrontLine, 2012

America is suffering from “a strangely intolerant tolerance” “for everything opposed to God,” in which “[c]hildren [are] taught of sexual immorality in public schools while the Word of God [is] banned.”

That’s why Lehman Brothers collapsed exactly seven “biblical years” after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center — or so says author Jonathan Cahn, a Messianic Jew who is “known for opening up the deep mysteries of Scripture and for teachings of prophetic import.”

To learn the details of how “Paleo-Hebrew engravings” foretell America’s fate and how the county can redeem itself, read The Harbinger today!

HELP! MOM! HOLLYWOOD’S IN MY HAMPER!
Katherine DeBrecht | World Ahead Publishing, 2006

Sisters Janie and Sam plan to use their babysitting money to buy new bikes — until Hollywood stars show up and tell them to spend it on new clothes and luxuries. Soon, the girls are up to their elbows in onion-scented perfume and ballots for Congresswoman Clunkton of the Liberaland Socialist Party. They even consider a switch to Toenailology, religion of the stars! Can common sense prevail, or will Hollywood brainwash the girls forever?

HELP! MOM! THE 9TH CIRCUIT NABBED THE NATIVITY! (OR, HOW THE LIBERALS STOLE CHRISTMAS)
Katherine DeBrecht | World Ahead Publishing, 2006

“Christmas may seem like a wonderful celebration to you, but not to us liberals!” says Senator Weary. “To us, it represents a religion with values and morals. Surely your teacher taught you that values and morals interfere with the way we liberals like to run things.” With that pronouncement, it looks like there’ll be no Christmas Pageant for Miss Bardin’s third grade class this year — until mysterious Justice Thompson shows up to save the day!

HELP! MOM! THERE ARE LIBERALS UNDER MY BED!
Katherine DeBrecht | World Ahead Publishing, 2005

Tommy and Lou want a swing set. They know they’ll be “better people” if they earn the money themselves, so they set up a lemonade stand. Everything’s going great for the two young capitalists – until liberals show up demanding a share of earnings, force the boys to take down their picture of Jesus, and try to nationalize the stand. To find out how the boys get out of this mess, read the book Grover Norquist calls “ingenious” for its insight into “the threat that taxes pose to the American Dream.”

THE LATE GREAT USA: NAFTA, THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION, AND THE THREAT OF A COMING MERGER WITH MEXICO AND CANADA
Jerome Corsi | WND Books, 2007

Though he’s best known as chief propagandist of the anti-Obama “birther” movement, WND Senior Writer Jerome Corsi is a man of many interests. One of these is the so-called “North American Union,” a classic antigovernment conspiracy theory outlining a supposed plan to merge Canada, Mexico, and the United States into a single country. National currencies will be replaced by the “Amero”; immigrants will flood unchecked over our (former) borders; and a “NAFTA Superhighway” catering to corporate globalist powers will be constructed across our formerly independent country.

A “shadow government” is poised to take power — by means of “an executive branch coup d’etat,” if necessary — so Americans seeking to save their country from doom must act now. “At stake is nothing less than the continuance of an economically strong and politically sovereign United States that we cherish for ourselves, for our children, and for generations to come.”

MARX & SATAN
Richard Wurmbrand | Crossway Books, 1986

A slim volume can pack a powerful punch, and Richard Wurmbrand’s 143-page, Marx and Satan is no exception. Described by WND founder Joseph Farah as “a book that changed my life and worldview,” Marx and Satan draws on poetry Marx wrote as a young man to prove that the author of Das Kapital “received the rights of initiation” of a “secret Satanist church” and became the Devil’s “elect servant.”

According to Wurmbrand, a Jewish convert to Christianity who was imprisoned and tortured in Romania, Lenin was also “dominated by Satanist ideology.” So were Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Kim Il-Sung, and former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

“Marxism is not an ordinary sinful human ideology. It is Satanic in its manner of sinning,” Wurmbrand’s book concludes. “Marxism is a church. … [I]ts god is not named in its popular literature. But, as seen by the proofs given in this book, Satan is obviously its god.”

Obviously.

TIME TRAVELERS OF THE BIBLE: HOW HEBREW PROPHETS SHATTERED THE BARRIERS OF TIME-SPACE
Gary Stearman | Defender, 2011

In the late 1960s, while piloting a routine flight from Dallas to Lubbock, Texas, Gary Stearman encountered a UFO, which “probed” him with “waves of energy” and “opened [his] mind to the absolute reality of beings who have what appears to be a technology that’s eons ahead of ours.”

In Time Travelers of the Bible, Stearman reveals that the beings he mistook for aliens were, in fact, divine in origin – angels or demons (he’s not sure which) who became momentarily visible through a transdimensional portal that must have opened just as he was flying by.

Such entities have traveled between dimensions for millennia, Stearman says. Intent on destroying God’s plan, demonic “Sons of God” have for millennia attempted to “tilt the minds of human leaders toward the cause of Satan,” at times even taking human brides to produce half-demonic offspring, including the Greek gods Zeus and Apollo. The Flood wiped out the first generation of their spawn, Stearman says, but now — as prophesied by time travelers like Adam, Moses, Jesus and John — they’re back and gaining strength.

When the Tribulation comes, God’s chosen will be taken to Heaven (which is actually a cube-shaped “mobile city” from a parallel universe, “capable of navigating time-space in the dimensions between heaven and earth”). Those who remain will be ruled by Satan and his minions, who even now wait in Hades, a cavernous realm beneath the earth’s surface which is accessible only to shamans and occultists capable of “popping through” the “dimensional door in time-space” that protects coal miners and others whose work takes them beneath the earth’s surface from accidental encounters with the underworld.

Confused? You won’t be after reading Stearman’s book, which, according to prophecy expert Thomas Horn, “is not just a key, but the key to understanding the elusive scientific and supernatural wisdom surrounding a Grand Universal Theory of Everything that just happens to be located at a pivotal ‘center of the symmetry of time’ at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.”

THE TRUE STORY OF THE BILDERBERG GROUP (North American Union Edition)
Daniel Estulin | TrineDay, 2009

If a shadowy cabal of the world’s most powerful people were well on its way to establishing a New World Order in which “world citizens” would be subject to “total enslavement” through mind-control and orchestrated chaos, wouldn’t you want to know about it? Thanks to the courageous work of “investigative journalist” Daniel Estulin, a self-declared “non-conformist” who compares himself to Galileo and says he’s “the vehicle of the collective psyche of a society whose natural instinct spells freedom,” you can.

The Bilderberg Group, a secretive organization whose fluctuating membership includes some of the world’s most powerful men and women, has long been a target of antigovernment conspiracy theorists across the globe. According to Estulin, its agents have attained nearly total control of the U.S. government. They decide who will sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, they run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and they have “made a secret commitment to surrender irrevocably to the United Nations the means of protecting [America’s] national sovereignty,” in part by confiscating all privately owned weapons and interning dissidents like himself in “Guantanamo-like concentration camps.”

Estulin, who claims that familial ties to the KGB have given him privileged access to intelligence agencies across the globe, says he was introduced to these terrible secrets in 1992 by a former KGB/MI5 double agent nicknamed “Vladimir.” Drawing on alleged leaks from an international network of unnamed “conscientious objectors” within the Bilderberg Group and its various offshoots, articles from Spotlight and American Free Press (both founded by notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Willis Carto, a detail Estulin glosses over with an oblique note that the papers are “of dubious agendas”), and his own “research,” Estulin warns against complacency and urges his readers to think for themselves.

“I am attempting to rip the mask off the New World Order and show it for what it is,” he writes. “There are many sources and documents in this book which can corroborate at least a good number of the facts, and which will leave, I hope, an intelligent reader wondering if there is more to all of this than might seem plausible.”

YOU CAN LEAD AN ATHEIST TO EVIDENCE, BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE HIM THINK
Ray Comfort | WND Books, 2009

Evolution is a “brainless and unproven theory that comes from the imaginations of sinful men” and “any evolutionary believer (especially an atheist) speaking on behalf of science is like Jeffrey Dahmer speaking on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America.” So says Ray Comfort in You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can’t Make Him Think, released the same year that Comfort partnered with teen heartthrob-turned-Christian nationalist Kirk Cameron to produce a 150th anniversary edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species with a 50-page creationist introduction.

In a 2006 video featuring Cameron, Comfort used the morphology of the “modern banana” to demonstrate exactly the kind of irrefutable evidence of God’s existence that this book is full of. “Notice how gracefully it sits over the human hand. Notice it has a point at the end for ease of entry. It’s just the right shape for the human mouth. … It’s even curved toward the face to make the whole process so much easier. Seriously, Kirk, the whole of Creation testifies to the genius of God.”

Chock-full of arguments like these (for instance, the winning, “Either no one created everything out of nothing, or Someone — an intelligent, omnipotent, eternal First Cause — created everything out of nothing. Which makes more sense?”) — plus a few digs at the Catholic Church for good measure — You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence will delight your Christian friends and confound your atheist ones (assuming you can tolerate those people!). Run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore to pick up a copy today!
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate ... propaganda
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 4:47 pm

WND EXCLUSIVE
MYSTERY VIRUS FOUND WHERE ILLEGAL-ALIEN KIDS SENT
'There are all kinds of diseases in the rest of the world, and we don't want them in this country'
Published: 10/08/2014 at 8:17 PM

Image

By Paul Bremmer

Enterovirus D68 has killed five U.S. children and infected hundreds more in the past month and a half, doctors confirm, and some believe there may be a connection between the sudden outbreak and the throngs of unaccompanied, illegal-alien children now being housed across the country.
http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/mystery-viru ... KTqHgr3.99
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 6:29 pm

THE TED OFFENSIVE
WHAT WOULD DR. KING SAY ABOUT BLACK CULTURE?
Exclusive: Ted Nugent points to African-Americans' 'self-inflicted destructo-derby'
http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/what-would-d ... 8P7feSE.99


The biggest, dumbest wingnut site on the Web
And boy, WorldNetDaily sure is upset at us

Image
The biggest, dumbest wingnut site on the Web
Joseph Farah
When my colleague Justin Elliott explained how WorldNetDaily invented the “Obama spent $2 million fighting birther lawsuits” claim (short version: $2 million is what the Obama campaign paid a law firm in total, and in WND’s imagination the only thing a presidential campaign needs a law firm for is hiding birth certificates), WND’s founder got mad and called him names. (All of this was right after they published Jack Cashill’s embarrassing Photoshop follies.)

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Posts: 32090
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 6:36 pm

another right wing crappola site

JUDICIAL WATCH



Rick Wiles: ‘Murderous Islamic Thugs’ Are Sitting On Hillary Clinton’s Lap
By Brian Tashman | June 2, 2015 5:10 pm
On yesterday’s edition of “Trunews,” Christopher Farrell of Judicial Watch spoke to host Rick Wiles about his group’s claim that the U.S. compound in Benghazi was “arming Al Qaeda” and coordinating arms shipments to Islamic terrorists in Syria, which raises questions as to why then Islamic terrorists attacked the compound in 2012.

Wiles said that there would have been “calls for the arrest of Barack Obama” had people realized that he was secretly sending arms to terrorists (which he wasn’t).






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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizat ... ial-watch/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 31, 2017 7:39 am


THE ROT WITHIN RIGHT-WING MEDIA IS BIGGER THAN FOX NEWS


Image


After O’Reilly’s downfall, a conservative columnist speaks out about the right’s moral failure.

BY JAMES WARREN, CHIEF MEDIA WRITER, POYNTER.ORG
APRIL 24, 2017 10:30 AM

As the Bill O'Reilly affair underscores, what writer Maureen Orth tagged the Celebrity-Industrial Complex includes lots of journalists, including ones on the right.

"Roger Ailes is out at Fox News. Bill O’Reilly is out at Fox News. Michael Flynn is out at the White House. Those three names — the head of the most powerful cable news network, the highest-rated cable news personality, and the national-security adviser — represent a stunning wave of resignations and terminations," attorney-journalist David French just wrote in The National Review.

"But this isn’t scalp-taking, it’s scalp-giving. Time and again prominent conservative personalities have failed to uphold basic standards of morality or even decency. Time and again the conservative public has rallied around them, seeking to protect their own against the wrath of a vengeful left. Time and again the defense has proved unsustainable as the sheer weight of the facts buries the accused."

For sure, such flaws cut many ideological ways, all the more so in a media universe in which being provocative can be more important than being right or vaguely precise. Celebrity can trump talent (and ethical weakness). I asked Tennessee-based French Sunday night why the right was different from the left.

"Ever since the Clinton administration and the continued Democratic embrace of the Clinton machine more broadly, I've had a low view of the left's respect for civility, decency and integrity when those values conflicted with short-term political victories. I used to think that the right, for all its flaws, was different. With notable exceptions (like my own National Review colleagues and a number of others who've maintained their respect for vital religious and cultural values in the face of strong headwinds), I no longer do. Perhaps I was naive."

So French is notable in chiding the right from the right, and writing how "the pattern is repeating itself with the younger generation of conservative celebrities."

In our email chat, he elaborated, "The bottom line is that it is incredibly difficult to maintain your support for essential, core values when maintaining those values may mean surrendering power/control in the short-term. Many, many people on both sides of the aisle fail that test."

And this addendum from his opus: "The sharp rise and meteoric fall of both Tomi Lauren and Milo Yiannopoulos were driven by much the same dynamic that sustained O’Reilly for years, even in the face of previous sexual-harassment complaints — Lahren and Yiannopoulos were 'fighters' who 'tell it like it is.'"

So is anything to come of O'Reilly's fall? Or is it some media equivalent of the United Airlines mess, where the competitive landscape probably assures the airlines continue to operate with great success, packing in the consumer (with knees jammed to their chests in economy)?

"O’Reilly’s fall can be an important act of public hygiene, but only if it represents the beginning of the end of a conservative culture that makes us behave like the cultural enemies we purport to despise. Otherwise conservatives will hand the left more scalps, forfeit more public trust and ultimately lose because of their single-minded quest to win."

A Trump-inspired Sunday newspaper bonus

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle ran ads from Doug Derwin, a Silicon Valley investor who wants Elon Musk to end his cozy friendship with Trump. His full-page ads, "called on the Tesla and SpaceX leaders to 'stand up against Trump,' citing the fact that the new president is a 'disaster for the fight against climate change.'” (Recode) Don't worry, TV sales guys and gals, "Derwin has also promised to run critical television ads in the coming days."


Moral question of the day

"Who is responsible when a competitive eater dies?" (Eater)

How could Twitter make real money?

Bruce Judson, a digital author-marketer, writes in TechCrunch, "Here’s a proposal to radically change the economics of Twitter: Charge businesses that exceed a set number of followers (perhaps 250,000) a monthly fee based on their total number of followers. To provide a sense of scale, here are the follower counts for a cross-section of well-known brands: @TeslaMotors 1.4 million, @Verizon 1.7 million, @Pepsi 3.1 million, @CocaCola 3.4 million, @McDonalds 3.4 million, @Intel 4.7 million, @Marvel 4.9 million, @GoogleChrome 6.1 million, @SamsungMobile 12.1 million (and) @Google 17.6 million."

Suppose, he says, that "Twitter collected an average annual fee of $600,000 from 2,000 businesses. This would represent increased annual revenues of $1.2 billion."

C'est la vie

"Macron, Le Pen in French runoff as establishment crashes out." (Bloomberg)

"Emmanuel Macron vows to be 'president for all of France' after first round win." (The Guardian)

"Historic defeat for establishment." (Breitbart)

"Who is Emmanuel Macron and why is he running as an independent?" (The Telegraph)

Tech and Trump's executive order on travel

There are 162 tech companies that signed a so-called amicus brief for a federal appeal to the Virginia-based 4th Circuit, contending that Trump's travel ban executive order was unlawful. The same group and Pandora "have filed basically the same amicus brief in the appeal in the 9th Circuit (which is the appeal of the decision in Hawaii that a smaller group had filed an amicus brief on as well).

"As with last time, people are going to come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories over this, but the fact is this is an issue that matters to many, many people who work at these companies, and the companies have committed to speaking out about it," according to TechDirt, one of those companies on the appeal.

The benefits of reading a story to the end

"President Trump nears the 100-day mark of his administration as the least popular chief executive in modern times, a president whose voters remain largely satisfied with his performance, but one whose base of support has not expanded since he took the oath of office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll." (The Washington Post) And way, way down in the story, notes longtime political analyst Michael Barone, comes this:

"The new survey finds 46 percent saying they voted for Clinton and 43 percent for Trump, similar to her two-point national vote margin. Asked how they would vote if the election were held today, 43 say they would support Trump and 40 percent say Clinton."

Remnick on Trump's first 100 days

From David Remnick's New Yorker take on Trump's early days: "Trump appears to strut through the world forever studying his own image. He thinks out loud, and is incapable of reflection. He is unserious, unfocused, and, at times, it seems, unhinged. Journalists are invited to the Oval Office to ask about infrastructure; he turns the subject to how Bill O’Reilly, late of Fox News, is a 'good person,' blameless, like him, in matters of sexual harassment. A reporter asks about the missile attack on Syria; he feeds her a self-satisfied description of how he informed his Chinese guests at Mar-a-Lago of the strike over 'the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen.'"

"Little about this presidency remains a secret for long. The reporters who cover the White House say that, despite their persistent concerns about Trump’s attempts to marginalize the media, they are flooded with information. Everyone leaks on everyone else. Rather than demand discipline around him, Trump sits back and watches the results on cable news. His Administration is not so much a team of rivals as it is a new form of reality entertainment: 'The Circular Firing Squad.'"


A libertarian's take on the first 100 days

After reading Remnick on Sunday, I asked Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason.com and Reason.tv, for his take. "While the first 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency have been far less eventful than he bragged they would be, they have also been far less cataclysmic than 100 Days of Sodom, too. The fact is that his worst tendencies — banning Muslims, for instance, have been smacked down by American institutions that restrain autocrats. Even his one overt act of military violence — his widely praised yet pointless and ineffective missile attack on a Syrian airbase — has all the earmarks of a one-off rather than a new campaign in the Middle East."

"In short, he hasn't accomplished anything significant, which is the point. The center has held and mere anarchy is still slouching somewhere off on the horizon. There have been worse presidential debuts."

Like who?

"Bill Clinton! Opened with Don't Ask, Don't Tell and was so bad his first two years he elected a GOP majority in 1994!"

The morning babble

100 Day Trump analyses were rampant, as a Pavlovian press impulse can't be resisted, even as Trump preemptively downplays the marker. "A plurality-based president," Ron Brownstein called him on CNN's New Day, while Fox & Friends saw the polling to be a glass three-quarters full. He will end the arbitrary demarcation "on a high note," especially as he plans to build the wall.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough seemed interested, if confused, on whether Trump watches CNN or not, according to an interview with The Associated Press. Trump said, "I don't watch CNN anymore," after saying he did in the same session.

The consensus Mika Brzezinski-Mark Halperin-John Heilemann analysis: he does. Yeah, don't figure he'd yank himself off his de facto cable ventilator. Meanwhile, there was a good chat with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt on co-authoring a big Sunday tale on FBI Director James Comey's campaign fumbling.

A slice of sportscaster surprise

The Chicago Cubs radio broadcasters were surprised Saturday during a game in Cincinnati when a very, very loud cheer when up in the 8th inning after a Cubs batter struck out. The Cubs were far ahead. What was the deal? They only learned later that because it was the 10th strikeout of an opposing hitter, anybody with a ticket stub got free pizza at a local establishment.

Want Van Jones at your commencement?

A prime vehicle for TV pundits to cash in is underscored by the sad saga of Northeastern Illinois University, a financially struggling state school in Chicago, which got some local attention with word that its board said no way to a $30,000 graduation speech fee for longtime Barack Obama friend and aide Valerie Jarrett. The Chicago Sun-Times now reports that getting her to speak (they'll now paid travel, her fat fee will be donated by someone else) results from Christie Miller, a school official, contacting Jim Oliver of Gotham Artists, a New York talent agency and speakers bureau.

“We had a LGBT activist last year so we don’t want that this year. But a diverse speaker to highlight leadership, motivation, etc. would be ideal,” she wrote.

Oliver sent a list of clients and Miller then sought “further info on fee and availability for Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett and Erin Brockovich.”

"Jones, a CNN commentator, would have cost $55,000, according to Oliver. Brockovich, the environmental activist portrayed by Julia Roberts in the movie that bears her name, would have charged $24,000." Here's the relevant email. (Poynter)


As reporter Dan Mihalopoulos elaborated for me Sunday evening, Jones would have received first-class travel expenses. Heaven forbid any of our higher-profile media populists should ride in economy.

Bannon, Seinfeld and Breitbart

Out this morning is a very solid Connie Bruck New Yorker profile of Steve Bannon's Hollywood years, which raises doubts about the much reported riches he's accumulated by having a profit participation in Seinfeld syndication. It also details his segue from a lower-profile, small-impact entertainment career than has been suggested into running Breitbart News.The similarities between Bannon and his future patron, Trump, clearly include a combative, even mean-spirited temperament. But it also involved this: "Trump, too, was a brash huckster who despised the elite that had always spurned him."

And if you had any doubt about the fears that power can instill, it's notable how many folks would either not talk to reporter Bruck or simply not discuss anything for attribution.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/ ... n-fox-news


For the Far-Right, the Real Victims of the Trayvon Martin Case are White People
By Brian Tashman | April 9, 2012 4:15 pm
White conservative commentators have looked into the Trayvon Martin case and many have seem to concluded that the real victim is not Martin, but white people who are now that targets of racism from black people, President Obama in particular.

Sandy Rios of the American Family Association last week on her radio show claimed that whites are the new victims of racism:



I said the other day, I just hate this phrase, ‘I have black friends.’ I know that it’s true; I know that black men are singled out and it is horrific, and I know that blacks have suffered tremendous racism. But I think now it’s getting to be where many whites are feeling more the victim now with the press going the way that it is and things going the way they are, so it’s stirring up lots of trouble.
Channeling Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, who said President Obama “poured gasoline on the racialist fires” by using the Martin shooting to “gin up the black vote,” Roger Hedgecock in WorldNetDaily compares Obama to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and accuses him of inciting racism against whites:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/for- ... te-people/


Right-Wing Group: LGBT-Inclusive Schools Are ‘Abusive Of Children’
By Brian Tashman | May 13, 2015 12:05 pm
When he’s not bravely stopping terrorist attacks, warning of a nonexistent ISIS base in Mexico or coming up with new Benghazi conspiracy theories, Tom Fitton of the conservative group Judicial Watch is fighting LGBT nondiscrimination measures in public schools.

Fitton spoke to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on yesterday’s edition of “Washington Watch” about the Fairfax County, Virginia, school board’s recent decision to add protections for gender identity to its nondiscrimination policy, a move which triggered a right-wing backlash, one joined by Fitton.

“I don’t know about you and I’m sure parents out there listening here agree, they don’t want their children in classrooms where kids are being messed with by having teachers call a child by the wrong gender,” Fitton said. “It’s abusive of the children. Assuming they have a true psychological issue, body dysphoria or dysmorphia, whatever you’d like to call it, as a result the whole school gets changed and everything gets turned up on its head, it’s an abuse of the child and an abuse of the other children who are being confused and traumatized by having this confusion enter their classrooms.”

Perkins added that the policy “borderlines on insanity if it has not already crossed over the border.”

“Where are the rights of those children and those parents who want their children not to be threatened and traumatized by these children who are being misused and abused by these adults who have another agenda?” Fitton asked.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/righ ... -children/



Fox’s Seth Rich Conspiracy Has Collapsed, But Right-Wing Pundits Keep Pushing It
By Brian Tashman | May 19, 2017 10:18 am

Earlier this week, a private investigator named Rod Wheeler—whose last big case was promoting a hoax about a national underground network of lesbian gangs—announced that he had evidence that the late Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered last year in Washington, D.C., was in contact with WikiLeaks and transferred them over 40,000 DNC emails. That year WikiLeaks released hacked emails from DNC employees.

Fox’s local Washington, D.C. affiliate ran the story with an interview with Wheeler, despite the fact that Rich’s family had asked him not to speak with the media and rejected his findings as not credible.

Wheeler said that he didn’t actually see any emails or even Rich’s computer, but simply heard about this bombshell evidence from an anonymous federal investigator.

Then Wheeler admitted that he never spoke to the investigator.

“I only got that [information] from the reporter at Fox News,” Wheeler said in an interview with CNN.

The FBI similarly rejected Wheeler’s claims, with one law enforcement official telling NBC News that Rich’s laptop “never contained any emails related to WikiLeaks.”

He eventually “backtracked” in an interview with Fox DC, stating that his previous statements were a “miscommunication.” (Rich’s family has called on Fox to retract the original story).

Even as the story collapsed, conspiracy theorists ran with it—especially Fox News, where hosts like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs trumpeted Wheeler’s work as proof that Russia was not behind the DNC hack and that the Democratic Party is complicit in murder.

As we’ve noted, Wheeler is both a vocal Trump supporter and a Fox News analyst and his “investigation” was paid for by a fellow Fox News pundit.

Days after Wheeler conceded that he had absolutely no evidence to back up his story, conservative outlets are still obsessed with it.

Last night, Hannity hosted Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, and the two pushed the baseless claim that Rich was murdered over his purported links with WikiLeaks. Hannity never found the time to mention that Wheeler, who was his guest on Tuesday, had retracted.

Alex Jones of InfoWars was similarly confident of the merits of Wheeler’s since-recanted account.

Jones, the far-right broadcaster notorious for pushing dozens of bizarre conspiracy theories, initially suggested that Wheeler “got in the laptop” that Rich was using.

Yesterday Jones interviewed radio host Doug Hagmann, who also falsely claimed that Wheeler had evidence that Rich was in touch with WikiLeaks.



Jones declared that “we have federal investigators and others saying they’ve seen the emails,” and Hagmann cited Wheeler’s hoax story as proof that Russia never hacked the DNC: “There was no hacking. It was merely a transfer of data from, in my professional opinion from what I’ve seen, the DNC staffer, Seth Rich, he took that information from the DNC and given it, via his connections, his contacts, to [Julian] Assange.”

“The FBI has and the D.C. police have the forensic evidence to tie WikiLeaks to Seth Rich,” Hagmann claimed.

At no point did either Jones or Hagmann mention that Wheeler retracted his remarks, but Hagmann did find the time to hail Wheeler as “a great investigator” and attack Wheeler’s critics as the “enemies of the truth.”

“Rod Wheeler did speak with a federal source who said, ‘I had eyes on the computer, I can verify as a matter of fact that this was connected to WikiLeaks,’” he said.

Actually, Wheeler told Newsweek that he did not speak with the investigator: “In a message to Newsweek on Tuesday, Wheeler said the Fox News report was misleading and that his information was secondhand from that ‘federal investigator.’ ‘I’ve never, ever seen Seth Rich’s computer, nor have I talked with the federal investigator,’ he wrote in a message.”

None of this, it seems, will make it on to InfoWars.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/foxs ... ushing-it/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 31, 2017 9:09 am

FAIR AND BALANCED?
How Fox News Made My Dad Crazy
A new film produced by Golden Globe-winning actor Matthew Modine fires shots at Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the right-wing media machine.

JEN YAMATO
07.31.15 5:15 AM ET
In a new documentary unveiled this week at Michael Moore’s film festival, one filmmaker takes aim at the “vast right-wing conspiracy” Hillary once put on blast. The Brainwashing Of My Dad also warns of how generations of Americans have been tricked into an angry cult-like devotion to a new conservative lord and savior: Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
Her case study? Her own dad.
Jen Senko first noticed the change in her father sometime during the 1980s when he picked her up from the bus station for a visit home. On the road they passed a Hooters. That’s when the once-gentle Kennedy Democrat and family man started railing against the “feminazis” for protesting the chicken ’n’ cleavage-slingin’ chain.
“I said, ‘Maybe the feminists have a point,’” Senko recalls in her feature-length documentary The Brainwashing Of My Dad, an attempt to understand how the evolution of right-wing media transformed her loving parent into a hostile and isolated fanatic.

His reaction was shocking and extreme, wildly out of character. “He was so mad he threatened to pull the car over and let me hitchhike home,” she says.
It was just the beginning of a sharp change in character that, ex-hippie Senko eventually realized, coincided with her father’s increasing idolatry of the radical right-wing-media and his “hero”: talk radio lion Rush Limbaugh.

Armed with a camera, she began chronicling her father’s rants and antagonistic emails so aggressive his own wife learned to stop talking politics at home. (Years later Senko’s mother slyly deprogrammed the remote controls, weaning her husband off of Fox News.) While actor Matthew Modine (who produced with Adam Rackoff) narrates much of the film, Senko frequently turns the camera on herself and interviews fellow exasperated family members to try to understand what happened.
It began when the filmmaker’s father took a new job that required long commutes and he started listening to right-wing talk shows on the radio on his drives. They turned out to be merely the gateway drug. As Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel took off and ushered in a new era of 24-hour news cycles and rabid punditry, Senko’s dad became more obsessed. He started sleeping in another room, leaving his wife in their bedroom, so he could watch Fox News all night.
Over the years it got worse, particularly in the ’90s. That’s when “it got really bad,” she told The Daily Beast via phone from Michigan, where her film’s first public screening at Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival sold out, prompting a second screening this Saturday. “His entire life became consumed by the agendas that were inundating him on the radio, the television, and through the mail. He joined every radical right Republican organization he could,” Senko said. “Like the NRA—he had never fired a gun in his life! He never hunted, he wasn’t a sportsman. He just got totally bamboozled and signed onboard with everything. It was scary.”

As Senko dove deeper into the mesmerizing and addictive effect that talk radio, Fox News, and radical right blogs had on her father, she started turning to experts to understand how American media had become so sharply unbalanced over the past four decades.
Assembled in Senko’s film are a lineup of media critics and talking heads including Noam Chomsky, CNN’s Reese Schonfeld, progressive talk radio host Thom Hartmann, media critic Jeff Cohen, Media Matters founder David Brock, and Republican political consultant Frank Luntz.
As a result, The Brainwashing Of My Dad isn’t just about one family slowly losing a loved one to ugly political extremism. It’s also a densely packed, sometimes overstuffed examination of how shrewd strategists engineered a long-term takeover of the media on behalf of the GOP, arguing that right-wing think tanks, advocacy groups, and media outlets together achieved what the left has always refused, or been unable, to do: manipulate the minds of America.

With decades of ground to cover, Senko nails some choice sound bites from her interviewees. Luntz, the spin doctor who helped Newt Gingrich twist estate tax into “death tax” and the Bush administration turn global warming into “climate change,” unabashedly reveals how he polls plebes for keywords that frighten them the most and points out how Fox News anchors use hand gestures to subliminally connect with their viewers.
Throughout the film Senko weaves in Skype interviews with people like her, regular folk who “lost” loved ones to right-wing hysteria that tore their family apart. One woman recounts how a heated exchange led to her fanatical uncle pointing a gun at her, before unloading his pistol into the floor. Limbaugh—Senko’s father’s favorite—is singled out for his well-documented history of perpetuating falsehoods to prey on fears over nicotine use, Obama, Muslims, national security, and far sillier claims.
What’s more alarming than his blustery rhetoric, according to the film, is that Limbaugh’s rise to power and influence not only took him into the hearts and homes of millions but also made him and talk radio hosts like him the news source of choice for Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. “Imagine that you’re a Supreme Court justice deciding on things like war and peace, civil liberties, gay marriage, and your window into the world is Rush Limbaugh’s three-hour monologue,” says media critic Jeff Cohen. “That’s pretty damn scary.”
Limbaugh’s fringe-to-mainstream journey coincided with the rise of a larger force in conservative media: Fox News. FNC head Roger Ailes gets plenty of flak, too. (Reps for Limbaugh and Fox News did not respond to The Daily Beast’s requests for comment.) Reese Schonfeld, co-founder of CNN, recalls how Ailes helped birth what we now know as the modern right-wing media. “He didn’t know much about news,” Schonfeld assesses. “I’m not sure he knows much about news now—but he knows television, and he’s a great propagandist.”

Pundits outline how stories built on alarmist language and misinformation start at the bottom, picked up from the Internet or uncorroborated reports, before Ailes throws it into the day’s Fox news agenda at his morning meetings. “They air the stories and start to bang the drums that the mainstream media is censoring and won’t report to try to pressure and guilt the mainstream media into following their lead,” blasts Media Matters’ Brock. “The existence of Fox News and having that conservative propaganda stick—and false and wrong approach to journalism out there—has a toxic effect on the rest of journalism, to the extent that other journalists follow the Fox lead.”
Those brightly colored sets and disorienting camera movements? They’re designed to throw the audience off-kilter, the film argues, so that the anchor du jour can be a centering force, the voice of authority setting you on solid ground. Cohen recalls being in the green room at Fox News, watching a clearly skewed story airing on the monitors as producers, staff, and other contributors watched. “Someone said, ‘Wow, that was really fair and balanced!’ and the whole room erupted in laughter,” he remembers.
Senko says the problem is only right-wing media are using these kinds of tricks. “Centrists and liberals and progressives have to wake up and smell the fucking coffee,” she told me. “We’ve all sort of been polite. Liberals, progressives, we want to be fair—but it’s not about being fair, it’s about being objective. So I really hope to make people aware of this. Oh my God, it’s the media, stupid.”
Her hope is that the film, which screened as a work in progress, gets in front of audiences in time to make a difference in the 2016 presidential election. Senko, incidentally, calls herself a Progressive and is throwing her weight behind Bernie Sanders. “I’m tired of seeing Democrats allowing themselves to be slapped in the face, allowing and adopting the language that people like Frank Luntz came up with for the Republicans,” she said. “Just being aware is a huge step. It’s going to change conversations.”
To that end, Senko’s film takes a fiercely unapologetic stance; at one point, she invokes a quote by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels in an archival montage of conservative news anchors linking WMDs to Iraq. “Goebbels actually did look at American advertising to get ideas for propaganda, so there’s a tie-in there,” she said. “I guess it’ll rock some boats, but I feel like it’s accurate and I stand by it.”
Senko says she reached out to Limbaugh to participate in the film “several times” but got no response. With Ailes, she didn’t bother asking. “We knew we wouldn’t have a shot with [Ailes] because he’s very secretive and he’s somewhat paranoid,” she admitted. “I really didn’t want to bring his attention too much to the film, because it’s actually a little bit scary. I didn’t want to go, ‘Hey! Over here!’”
Now that the film’s out in the world, she’s been bolstered by initial reactions but is still bracing for a right-wing backlash. “I feel like I’m waving a flag in front of a bull. I’m scared. I am a little scared.”
As for Senko and her now-elderly dad, they’re back on good terms these days. She hopes sharing their story gets more families like hers talking over the dinner table, bleeds over into the election, and injects a healthy dose of skepticism into the lives of the Limbaugh-worshiping dittoheads and Fox News addicts of the world.
“Maybe groups will decide they want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Maybe there will just be a common knowledge among people that saw the movie and the next time somebody says something [citing right-wing media] they’ll say, ‘They lie. They make stuff up,’” Senko muses. “A lot of times people are intimidated and don’t want to get into a confrontation. Maybe people will fact-check their media more. Maybe the people who watch Fox News will be a little bit ashamed and think, ‘Maybe it is a little closed-minded of me to have one source.’”
“There are so many possibilities that I hope for.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... -dad-crazy
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 31, 2017 10:37 am

Sean Hannity Is Still Bringing Up The Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory


Rick Scuteri/FR157181 AP
By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published MAY 31, 2017 8:44 AM

Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday night updated his viewers on his baseless conspiracy theory about the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich even though he has promised not to talk about Rich anymore.

He began by reiterating his pledge not to talk about Rich for the time being before telling his audience that he’s still digging and complaining that he’s been called a conspiracy theorist.

“I have to start tonight on a personal note of something that happened last week. Now, I was asked by the family of the DNC staffer that was killed in July to pull back covering the story of the death because their son and their family was hurting,” he said on his show. “Now out of respect for the family’s wishes, well, I decided for the time being not to discuss it unless there were further developments.”

“But I also promised you, my audience, my loyal audience, that I will not stop investigating. I will not stop asking questions,” he continued. “And at a very high level, the bottom line here is the family wants the truth and I think the country deserves the truth, because this impacts so much of what the narrative in this country is now about, which is the left and their conspiracy theory. Now I can report, I am making progress. We will have a lot more coming probably sooner than later.”

He then complained that he has been labeled a conspiracy theorist “because I dare to ask questions” and claimed that liberals are trying to get his show cancelled by going after his advertisers. Several companies have pulled ads from the show following his relentless coverage of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, though USAA has said it will again begin airing ads on “Hannity.”

Hannity’s update Tuesday night followed a very similar update last week during which he said he would stop talking about Seth Rich for the time being.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/h ... h-progress
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 01, 2017 3:22 pm

Fox News uses Planned Parenthood's annual report as an excuse to dredge up every lie they could
May 31, 2017 4:27 PM EDT ››› JULIE TULBERT

Planned Parenthood recently released its annual report detailing the number of people who use its comprehensive services, as well as how much support it receives from the federal government in the form of reimbursements for non-abortion care. America’s Newsroom host Shannon Bream and guest Mercedes Schlapp, a Fox contributor, used the release of the report to advance debunked myths circulating in right-wing media about Planned Parenthood.

In the May 31 segment on Planned Parenthood’s annual report, Bream mentioned that federal money could be redirected from Planned Parenthood to federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), which “don’t do abortions but handle 20 times the patients that Planned Parenthood does.” Schlapp, a GOP strategist, agreed, stating that taxpayer money should not go to Planned Parenthood when FQHCs “provide more and better comprehensive services for women.” In reality, FQHCs cannot adequately replace the services that Planned Parenthood clinics currently provide.

As the annual report details, millions of people use Planned Parenthood as their essential care provider, including for contraceptive services which are often not provided by all FQHCs. Previously, the Guttmacher Institute had reported that the contraceptive services provided by Planned Parenthood clinics are more accessible than those offered by FQHCs. In addition, Guttmacher also found that FQHCs will not be able to handle the influx of patients seeking contraceptive services if Planned Parenthood is defunded as “it would mean taking on an additional two million contraceptive clients currently served by Planned Parenthood.”

Bream and Schlapp’s argument is based on the idea that taxpayers do not want to fund Planned Parenthood because some clinics in this network provide abortions. But under the Hyde Amendment, taxpayer money does not go to abortion, even though Fox news has frequently pushed this myth in the past. The Hyde Amendment prohibits federal Medicaid dollars from paying for abortion, except in extremely limited circumstances (creating substantial burdens on low-income women who are forced to pay for abortions out-of-pocket).

Bream also brought up the discredited videos from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) showing deceptively edited conversations with Planned Parenthood officials and other abortion providers. Since the videos were released, Bream has often given the group’s misinformation a platform. In the May 31 segment, Bream misleadingly referred to the CMP videos as prompting charges of Planned Parenthood affiliates. In reality, Planned Parenthood has been repeatedly cleared of any wrongdoing. Instead, CMP founder David Daleiden has been frequently embroiled in legal disputes for his part in the CMP videos, and he might be charged with contempt for the recent release of videos barred by an injunction.

Since Planned Parenthood released this year’s report, the claims Bream and Schlapp pushed have been circulating on other right-wing media outlets as well. This conservative echo chamber ignores basic truths about the services Planned Parenthood provides, especially for its low-income clients. During the America’s Newsroom segment, guest Leslie Marshall, a Fox contributor and syndicated radio host, attempted to clarify the importance of Planned Parenthood, but seems to have been somewhat deterred by a disfunctioning ear piece.

By treating Planned Parenthood's annual report as if it contained evidence of illicit activities, Fox News furthered a specious narrative that has real consequences for people's access to reproductive health care.

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/ ... uld/216722
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Fox News may be screwed

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jun 07, 2017 10:21 am

How Russian Propaganda Spread From a Parody Website to Fox News
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ANDREW ROSSBACK JUNE 7, 2017
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Born in the shadowy reaches of the internet, most fake news stories prove impossible to trace to their origin. But researchers at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, excavated the root of one such fake story, involving an incident in the Black Sea in which a Russian warplane repeatedly buzzed a United States Navy destroyer, the Donald Cook.

Like much fake news, the story was based on a kernel of truth. The brief, tense confrontation happened on April 12, 2014, and the Pentagon issued a statement. Then in April, three years later, the story resurfaced, completely twisted, on one of Russia’s main state-run TV news programs.

The new version gloated that the warplane had deployed an electronic weapon to disable all operating systems aboard the Cook. That was false, but it soon spread, showing that even with all the global attention on combating fake news, it could still circulate with alarming speed and ease.

The Original Parody
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In the days after the incident in the Black Sea, a Russian writer named Dmitri Sedov wrote an opinion piece, apparently meant to be satirical, that imagined the incident as an electronic warfare attack and described the panicked reaction of one crew member.
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The piece was framed as a letter from an American sailor onboard named Johnny to his beloved Mary. It betrays its dubious origins through strangely stilted language and the rather Soviet-style sentiments it contains.

“We thrice cried ‘hip-hip hurrah’ and prepared to show the Russians what awaits them if they raise their hand for the second half of Ukraine,” he wrote.

He also described a drunk officer crying aloud, “Those — Russian Khibiny!” Khibiny being the name of the Russian electronic warfare weapon that can disable radar.

Facebook
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In an apparent attempt to drive traffic to the satirical piece, a series of posts meant to look like a letter from the crew member went up on Facebook in English and Russian, with a link to the original. The researchers found them by using a string of uncommon words that crop up in the article, including “Aegis,” “mysticism” and “shame.”

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Given its vast global reach, Facebook can be a useful tool to spread news forgeries. A Facebook spokesperson pointed to the company’s recent efforts to stop the spread of misinformation.

Russian TV

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On April 15, 2017, the state-controlled Rossiya-1 broadcast a news report on the program “Vesti” about the 2014 incident, saying that as the plane approached the Cook, “it switched on the equipment, and powerful radio-electronic waves deactivated the whole ship’s systems.”

The main source? The Facebook post from the crew member, which quoted almost verbatim from the original satirical article in Russian. The date was no coincidence. April 15 is Electronic Warfare Specialists’ Day in Russia, one of many such dates set aside to laud specific military services, a leftover from Soviet times.

When a similar description of an electronic warfare attack emerged in the Russian media soon after the original incident, however, the manufacturer of the electronic warfare weapons itself announced that the report was false.

The company, known by its acronym, KRET, published an article in February 2015 saying that the Khibiny system was not installed on the particular plane and that while it can neutralize enemy radar, the article that said it completely shut down the American destroyer “is nothing but a newspaper hoax.”

But the denial didn’t stop “Vesti” from running the story. Instead, “Vesti” tried to add other sourcing to it by quoting a supposed statement by Frank Gorenc, the former commander of the United States Air Force in Europe, saying that the Russian weapon used against the Cook could paralyze American electronic equipment on missiles, aircraft and ships.

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The Pentagon later told a tabloid that picked up the story that the general had never issued such a statement. The Russian state television and radio company that broadcasts “Vesti” did not respond to questions about the story.

The Sun, The Daily Star and others

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Once the story had been on such a prominent Russian news program, news organizations and websites around the world quoted it. Some voiced more skepticism than others.

On April 19, two British tabloids, The Sun and The Daily Star, used sensational headlines to suggest that Russia possessed an “electronic bomb” capable of paralyzing the entire American Navy.

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The Sun at least hinted at problems with the story, calling it a “bizarre propaganda report” and quoting the Pentagon denying that General Gorenc had commented. Another tabloid, The Daily Express, later posted an article suggesting World War III might be at hand.

FoxNews.com
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FoxNews.com soon picked up The Sun’s version of the story. Refet Kaplan, the managing editor of FoxNews.com, said the story was considered “not as a serious report on Russia’s military capability, but as another example of Russian media hyperbole.” That was not set out in the headline or the article, other than an oblique reference to the original as “propaganda.”

After The New York Times asked about the article, it was deleted from the FoxNews.com website.
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From there the story was shared widely on social media and alternative media, especially outlets that focus on anti-American and antiglobalist sentiment, and those that specialize in conspiracy theories.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ganda.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
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