Fact checking — Paul Robinson

The big news from Italy this week is the seizure by Turin police of a massive arsenal of weapons held by a neo-Nazi group. Among the weapons was a stonking-big air-to-air missile. Reporting the story, the BBC links the neo-Nazis to ‘Russian-backed separatist forces’ in Ukraine….

Naughty separatists. Despite all that talk of fighting ‘fascism’, it appears that they’re in bed with neo-Nazis. But then again, maybe not. For as Mark Ames points out on Twitter, there’s a problem with the BBC report. The official police statement says something very different. In fact, it says the following:…

Which for those of you who don’t speak Italian, translates as:

The investigations had begun about a year ago when the police headquarters in Turin, coordinated by the Central Directorate of Prevention Police, monitored some people linked to political movements of the ultra-right who had fought in the Ukrainian region of Donbass against the separatists.

So it turns out that they fought not ‘for the separatists’ but ‘against the separatists’....

But here’s the thing. It’s not just the BBC which makes that claim. CNN, for instance, reports that:

The stockpile was discovered by police who were investigating Italians ‘with extremist ideology’ who had fought alongside Russian-backed separatist forces in Donbass, eastern Ukraine, last July, according to the police statement.Similarly The Guardian writes that:

Police said that the discoveries stemmed from a previous investigation into Italians who took part in the Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

This is word for word what the Associated Press (AP) writes. And that perhaps explain why so many media outlets are repeating the same story. They’ve just copied it from AP without verifying it.

There is one exception, however. One media organization seems to have actually checked what the police statement said, telling us that:

The police say the groups had fought “against the separatists” in the Donbass region of Ukraine – the forces of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east of the country.
Who’s this? The answer – RT....

Irrussianality

Fact checking
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

See also

RT

Media link Italy neo-Nazi missile to ‘pro-Russian separatists’ despite police saying the OPPOSITE

Italian police seize MISSILE, guns and neo-Nazi material in raid on far-right militants

Bill Mitchell — More Brexit nonsense from the pro-European dreamers

What editorial control does the UK Guardian exercise on Op Ed pieces? Seemingly none if you read this article (December 24, 2018) – What Labour can learn about Brexit from California: think twice – written by some well-to-do American postgraduate working for DiEM25 in Athens. But when Thomas Fazi and I sought space to discuss our book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, 2017) – or when I have sought space to provide some balance to the usual neoliberal, pro-Europe bias, the result has been no response (yay or nay). We never received a response to our solicitation. Even if we ignore the obvious imbalance in experience and qualifications (track record) of the respective ‘authors’, it seems that the UK Guardian only wants a particular view to be published even if the quality of that view would make the piece unpublishable in any respectable outlet. Go figure. Anyway, I now have read the worst article for 2018. And, I thought that the Remain debate had reached the depths of idiocy but there is obviously scope for more if this Guardian attempt at commentary is anything to go by. And I know the Guardian journalists read this blog – so why not allow Thomas and I to formally respond to all this Remain nonsense?...

Maybe because the Guardian has become the voice of the UK neoliberal pseudo-left, much like the New York Times and the Washington Post are in the US? Can the deep state be far behind, too, providing anonymous sources off the record? Even the "news" is no longer actually news. What then of opinion pieces?

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
More Brexit nonsense from the pro-European dreamers

Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Daniel Margrain — For how long will corporate media vilify Mr Corbyn?

In 1978, the Australian social scientist, Alex Carey, pointed out that the twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: “the growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

In order to defend their business interests against the forces of democracy, the corporations that now dominate much of the domestic and global economies recognize the need to manipulate the public through media propaganda by manufacturing their consent, largely achieved through coordinated mass campaigns that combine sophisticated public relations techniques.

This is the context of the political and media establishment’s vilification of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and their plot to oust him....

If Donald Trump is any indication, "they" will attempt to block his rise to power and will try to oust him should he gain office.

Renegade Inc.
For how long will corporate media vilify Mr Corbyn?
Daniel Margrain

See also

At the very beginning of the of the Skripal incident, the security services blocked by D(SMA) notice any media mention of Pablo Miller and told the media not to look at Orbis and the Steele dossier on Trump, acting immediately to get out their message via trusties in the BBC and Guardian.…

We still have no idea of who attacked Sergei Skripal and why. But the fact that, right from the start, the government blocked the media from mentioning Pablo Miller, and put out denials that this has anything to do with Christopher Steele and Orbis, including lying that Miller had never been connected to Orbis, convinces me that this is the most promising direction in which to look.

It never seemed likely to me that the Russians had decided to assassinate an inactive spy who they let out of prison many years ago, over something that happened in Moscow over a decade ago. It seemed even less likely when Boris Johnson claimed intelligence showed this was the result of a decade long novichok programme involving training in secret assassination techniques. Why would they blow all that effort on old Skripal?

That the motive is the connection to the hottest issue in US politics today, and not something in Moscow a decade ago, always seemed to me much more probable. Having now reviewed matters and seen that the government actively tried to shut down this line of inquiry, makes it still more probable this is right.…

Steele, MI6 and the elements of the CIA which are out to get Trump, all would have a powerful motive to have the Skripal loose end tied.

Rule number one of real investigative journalism: look where they tell you not to look.

Craig Murray Blog

Where They Tell You Not to Look
Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee

TruePublica — The Guardian/Sky News Team Up To Promote Fake News About Fake News

On the 19th of April, The Guardian (International Edition) published an article making the assertion that two Twitter accounts were Russian propaganda operations or as they like to put it ‘trolls and bots’ to unleash disinformation on to social media in the wake of the Salisbury poisoning. 

The article is written by a rather unsuspecting and maybe, let’s be charitable here, nieve Heather Stewart, who went along with the government operative who fed this nonsense to her in the first place. Either that or she and The Guardian is deliberately distributing stories that are fake....

But there’s a problem with this.

The owners of both these Twitter accounts quickly stepped forward and on video too, remonstrating in no uncertain terms that they were, indeed are, in fact, real humans – and weren’t even Russian. They have defended themselves to prove they are definitely not software programs.

The Guardian should have taken this story down – its fake news, but they haven’t.
Ian of @Ian56789 even went on national TV, Sky News to be precise and he was quite definitely miffed about being called an automated Russian bot.…

TruePublica

The Guardian/Sky News Team Up To Promote Fake News About Fake News
TruePublica Editor

See also

Scott Ritter is arguably the most experienced American weapons inspector and in this interview with Dennis J. Bernstein he levels a frank assessment of U.S. government assertions about chemical weapons use.

Consortium News
Weapons Inspector Refutes U.S. Syria Chemical Claims
Dennis J. Bernstein interviews Scott Ritter

Also

Media Lens
Douma: Part 1 - Deception In Plain Sight

Douma: Part 2 - 'It Just Doesn't Ring True'

Editor

Paul Robinson — Farage, Bannon, Dugin, & Trumputinism

Professor Robinson trashes the BBC's John Sweeney.

Panorama has been running since 1953. It averages a little over 2 million viewers an episode. It pains me that so many Britons would be subjected to analysis like this without having the chance to hear anybody tell them what utter rot it is....

The BBC is state sponsored.

Irrussianality
Farage, Bannon, Dugin, & Trumputinism
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

John Andrews — Corporate Media: The Real Fake News Specialists

America has always had "yellow journalism," but the situation deteriorated seriously when corporate media, following Rupert Murdoch, adapted the tabloid model to generate revenue through infotainment. When "truthiness" replaced truth, propaganda was swift to follow. 

The success of this depends on public trust. The Big Lie is so outrageous that the public simply doesn't consider that their government could be lying to them on this scale. However, after several exposures public trust declines and the media becomes suspect even with they happen to be reporting the facts and telling the truth about them.

This problem with British propaganda is serious. Many people think that propaganda is something only the Russians do, or the Syrians, or the North Koreans, or any other nation we’re supposed to despise. It’s not something we would ever do. And that’s the main reason why British propaganda is so much more successful than less advanced countries: most of us instinctively trust and believe our corporate news providers; most never think for one second our news could be wrong or, horror of horrors, deliberately misleading propaganda. But that’s exactly what most of it is; any national newspaper can supply limitless examples every day of the week.

Dissident Voice
Corporate Media: The Real Fake News Specialists
John Andrews, British author and activist

John Helmer — The Empire’s Last Gasp – Anglo-American Journalism Chokes On Its Own Digital Model

For empires to rule, their agents must hang on to their monopoly of force, fraud and subversion, inside the home country as well as in its far flung dominions. Subversion means persuading people to believe what is true and good, when that’s false and bad for them. Propaganda, in short....

Dances with Bears

The Empire’s Last Gasp – Anglo-American Journalism Chokes On Its Own Digital Model

John Helmer

James Petras — The Financial Times: Megaphone for Mass Murder

The Financial Times editorial page carries a logo that proclaims: “Without fear and without favour”. Indeed the editors have shown no fear when it comes to. . . fabricating lies, promoting imperial wars decimating countries and impoverishing millions, whether in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and now Venezuela. The fearless “Lies of Our Times” have been at the forefront forging pretexts for inciting imperial armies to crush independent governments.…

Mouthpiece of bourgeois liberalism and its propaganda machine bent on imposing a neoliberal world order based on transnational corporate totalitarianism.

James Petras Website
The Financial Times: Megaphone for Mass Murder
James Petras | Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Natasha Hakim Zapata — Noam Chomsky and Over 100 Intellectuals Denounce ‘Savage’ Media Treatment of Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn

Neil Wilson posted on this today, too.

Truthdig
Noam Chomsky and Over 100 Intellectuals Denounce ‘Savage’ Media Treatment of Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn
Natasha Hakimi Zapata