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

Ray McGovern — CIA: Mission Accomplished; Americans Believe What We Tell Them

At his first White House performance with other senior officials of the incoming Reagan administration, freshly appointed (but veteran covert action operative) intelligence chief William Casey told President Reagan and the others assembled:“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Hard to believe? Read below what an eye-witness has attested to:

“I am the source for this quote, which was indeed said by CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of the newly elected President Reagan with his new cabinet secretaries to report to him on what they had learned about their agencies in the first couple of weeks of the administration. The meeting was in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House, not far from the Cabinet Room. I was present at the meeting as Assistant to the Chief Domestic Policy Adviser to the President.

As he did to all the other secretaries of their departments and agencies, Reagan asked Casey what he saw as his goal as director for the CIA, to which he replied with this quote, which I recorded in my notes of the meeting as he said it. Shortly thereafter I told Senior White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, who was a close friend and colleague, who in turn made it public.” Barbara Honegger

There are hundreds of examples that could be adduced to show that the major corporate-owned media — whether by intimidation, misguided “patriotism,” or self-censorship — have made Casey’s dream come true....

Ray McGovern
CIA: Mission Accomplished; Americans Believe What We Tell Them

REUTERS IS NOW A UNIT OF US INFO-WAR COMMAND, REPORTERS AND INVESTORS REVOLT — John Helmer

Stephen Adler (lead image), the American chief executive of Reuters news agency, has ordered into publication three US Government-directed stories targeting the Russian oil company Rosneft — the first in mid-April, and two published over the past week. Adler’s operations support US coup plans in Venezuela and US sanctions against Rosneft and its chief executive, Igor Sechin.

The three publications — the first already corrected by the news agency; the second commissioned from a writer outside the company; the latest missing its byline or author’s name — have triggered dismay among Reuters’ reporters worldwide. A New York source claims Adler’s promotion of US Government-sourced propaganda violates the Reuters Trust Principles which have regulated the international news agency since 1941.

The first two Reuters principles Adler is accused of breaking are that “Reuters shall at no time pass into the hands of any one interest, group, or faction; [and] that the integrity, independence, and freedom from bias of Thomson Reuters shall at all times be fully preserved.”

Not just Reuters. All corporate media appear to be guilty of betrayal of trust and have thereby forfeited their right to freedom of the press. Liberal democracy — not that this exists presently in the US — requires not only press freedom and freedom of speech, but also the use this freedom for inquiry as the basis or informed choice. Propaganda is antithetical to liberal democracy. Participation in information warfare is worse.

Dancing with Bears

REUTERS IS NOW A UNIT OF US INFO-WAR COMMAND, REPORTERS AND INVESTORS REVOLT
John Helmer

See also

Edward Curtain
The War Hoax Redux

RT — Fake news alert: CNN says Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido 'won election in January'

US media not even pretending anymore. Prepping the American public for military intervention?

RT

Fake news alert: CNN says Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido 'won election in January'

Is Russian ‘Meddling’ an Attack on America? — Paul Jay interviews Stephen Cohen

“The claim that Russia attacked America during the 2016 presidential election is both exceedingly dangerous and a complete falsehood,” says Stephen Cohen on Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay…

TRNN
Is Russian ‘Meddling’ an Attack on America?
Paul Jay interviews Stephen Cohen

See also

The arrest of Julian Assange was an act of revenge by the US government that strikes at the heart of journalism….

Asia Times
You have the right to always remain silent
Pepe Escobar

A recently declassified CIA document has revealed that members of the intelligence agencies of France, the United Kingdom and West Germany discussed how to establish “an anti-subversive organization similar to [the CIA’s Operation] Condor” in their own countries. Described by the CIA as “a cooperative effort by the intelligence/security services of several South American countries to combat terrorism and subversion,” Operation Condor was a campaign of state terrorism originally planned by the CIA that targeted leftists, suspected leftists and their “sympathizers” and resulted in the forced disappearances, torture and brutal murders of an estimated 60,000 people, as well as the political imprisonment of around half a million people. Around half of the estimated murders occurred in Argentina.

Mint Press News

CIA Docs Shows UK, France and West Germany Wanted to Bring “Operation Condor” To Europe

Whitney Webb

NBC — Russia's propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi GabbardExperts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.

Experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.

Here we go with the swiftboating or Tulsi. Are Americans this stupid?

Mark Ames comments.

NBC News

Russia's propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard. 

Robert Windrem and Ben Popken

Also

Wait for the birther "argument."

Samoa News
Tulsi Gabbard’s birthplace could create political fodder in national campaign

See also

We hardly knew ye.

The Hill
Sherrod Brown: Medicare for all not 'practical'
Nathaniel Wiexel

Zero Hedge — Twitter Bans Former Asst. Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts—NOT

UPDATE

False alarm!

Dear Readers:

It is all over the internet and international media that Twitter has suspended my account.
This is not the case.

I do not use social media.

I discovered that a Twitter account was operating in my name.

I requested that the account be taken down.

Paul Craig Roberts
“My” Suspended Twitter Account
I just checked — Account suspended (10:30 AM CST, 26 Oct).

"It can't happen here."

"Back in the USSR."

Zero Hedge
Twitter Bans Former Asst. Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts

Tyler Durden

Patrick Lawrence — The Battle for Our Minds

After reading The New York Times piece “The Plot to Subvert an Election” I put the paper down with a single question.

Why, after two years of allegations, indictments, and claims to proof of this, that, and the other did the newspaper of record—well, once the newspaper of record—see any need to publish such a piece? My answer is simple: The orthodox account of Russia-gate has not taken hold: It has failed in its effort to establish a consensus of certainty among Americans. My conclusion matches this observation: The orthodox narrative is never going to achieve this objective. There are too many holes in it. 

“The information age is actually a media age,” John Pilger, the noted British–Australian journalist, remarked during a symposium four years ago, when the Ukraine crisis was at its peak. “We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media—a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.” Pilger revisited the theme in a piece last week on Consortium News, arguing that once-tolerated, dissenting opinion has in recent years “regressed into a metaphoric underground.”

There are battlefields in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, but perhaps the most consequential battle now being fought is for our minds....

That's what propaganda is — a battle to control minds and controlling the narrative. Those who control the narrative control the agenda and, more importantly, the hidden agenda that is actually driving policy and strategy.

Of course, this is nothing new. What is different now is the medium, with the introduction of the Internet and social media.

Consortium News

The Battle for Our Minds
Patrick Lawrence

Raúl Ilargi Meijer — Treason? Get A Life!

Yeah, just keep ’em coming, right, so that when the last one falls flat on its face people will have already forgotten about it and instead focus on the new one. It’s been the modus operandi of the US MSM ever since Donald Trump emerged as an actual presidential candidate, and they haven’t let go.

They realize by now that it divides the nation, it costs them a large chunk of their potential readers and viewers, and creates chaos all around, but the bottom line is it makes them money. Because those people who fall into the echo chamber trap, tumble into it fast and furious, and will gladly pay to read yet another installment of how bad the man really is.
But it is getting out of hand, guys and gals, it is becoming a real and present danger to the -formerly- United States. The anti-Russia propaganda machine far predates Trump, but manufacturing an ever closer link between the two has proven to be a masterstroke of media genius.

That Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to the US and indeed the entire western world is a narrative taken straight out of Edward Bernays’ playbook. And it works like a charm. The problem is, it is also the biggest threat to peace anywhere on the globe that we have ever seen since WWII....

See, the idea is that you get yourself informed and then form your own opinion. Not that you let others pre-cook and pre-chew your opinions for you. Still, once you’re inside the deafening echo chamber, that’s what inevitably happens. Because there’s so much one-sided innuendo in there, your head aches and you just give up all resistance. Just to have a quiet moment.

And so very many Americans end up believing that indeed their president is guilty of treason. Because so many pundits claim that he is. But how many of them understand what treason really is, how serious an allegation it is? Is doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? Because all those others say he is, and they can’t all be wrong. And the echo chamber gives you a headache.

This is where I should say that somebody better do something about this, but it’s hard to see what. The divide has grown into a chasm. And that both sides are equally to blame for that doesn’t excuse either side’s wilful blindness. But yes, I hear you, it makes them money.

Still, if a US president can no longer talk to another president without being accused of treason, you’re in a scary predicament.

The Automatic Earth
Treason? Get A Life!
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Publius Tacitus — America's Russia Derangement Syndrome

Things to keep in mind as the world prepares for the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
America's Russia Derangement Syndrome

Publius Tacitus

Caitlin Johnstone — Five Things That Would Make The CIA/CNN Russia Narrative More Believable

Rallying the world to cut off Russia from the world stage and cripple its economy has been been a goal of the US power establishment since the collapse of the Soviet Union, so there’s no reason to believe that even the people who are making the claims against Russia actually believe them. The goal is crippling Russia to handicap China, and ultimately to shore up global hegemony for the US-centralized empire by preventing the rise of any rival superpowers. The sociopathic alliance of plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies who control that empire are willing to threaten nuclear confrontation in order to ensure their continued dominance. All of their actions against Russia since 2016 have had everything to do with establishing long-term planetary dominance and nothing whatsoever to do with election meddling.

Those five things [analyzed above in the article] would need to happen before I’d be willing to jump aboard the “Russia! Russia!” train. Until then I’ll just keep pointing to the total lack of evidence and how very, very far the CIA/CNN Russia narrative is from credibility.

Questioning the narrative and find it wanting.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Five Things That Would Make The CIA/CNN Russia Narrative More Believable
Caitlin Johnstone

Also by the same author

I have said it before, and I will say it again, and I will keep saying it and saying it until it becomes mainstream conventional wisdom: it is the US intelligence community’s job to lie to you....

As we learned in the lead up to the Iraq invasion, whenever you see all mass media outlets converge upon a single narrative, it’s time to crank your skepticism levels up to eleven....

The social engineers are so adept that self-identified progressives can be made to cheer for the FBI, self-identified nationalists can be made to cheer for neoconservative regime change agendas against Iran, and self-identified liberals can literally be made to fear a movement away from the possibility of nuclear holocaust....

Since cold wars per definition depend on non-military maneuverings, a much greater emphasis is necessarily placed on psyops and mass media propaganda than in a conventional hot war. Remain skeptical of everything you hear about Russia at all times, because I will say it again: it is the US intelligence community’s job to lie to you....

Two Big “Russia! Russia!” Stories Released Days Before Trump-Putin Summit

See also

Backing up Caitlin Johnstone's claims based on skepticism and suspicion with authority. Must-read.

With Friday’s indictments of Russian intelligence officers, Ray McGovern and Bill Binney have written an open letter to President Trump making clear that the “evidence” behind the indictments is as fraudulent as the intelligence alleging WMD in Iraq. It is being published exclusively here ahead of the Trump-Putin summit on Monday.

Consortium News
Memo to the President Ahead of Monday’s Summit
Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, former chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and briefer for the President’s Daily Brief one-on-one from 1981-1985, and William Binney, retired 36 year NSA veteran, formerly technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting, and developer of many of the collection systems still used by NSA

See also

Mueller could not have picked a more auspicious date if he weren’t an ignoramus on the history of autocracy and democracy, European and American. For it is one day later, on July 14, when every year France celebrates the start of the French Revolution. The reason for the celebration is the end of abuse of power by kings and pretenders to state authority, and their replacement by the democratic rule of law. That revolution, like the annual celebration, isn’t quite over.

What Mueller did this year was to issue what was called, before July 14, 1789, a lettre de cachet – a letter with the royal signet or seal. In the French practice, this was a combination of indictment, conviction, and order for arrest, confiscation of property, and punishment of an individual, who had no right in law to know the charge against him; prove the evidence; appeal the sentence.

The Mueller indictment of twelve officers of the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff) is a fresh US-Government style lettre de cachet. It names the men accused, their crimes, and the punishment. The penalties include “upon conviction [the twelve] shall forfeit to the United States any property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of such violation, and any personal property that was used or intended to be used to commit or to facilitate the commission of such offense.”

Mueller has neither the power nor the intention of trying the accused, or the particulars of his lettre, in an American court of law. This is why on July 13 he intended to violate the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, first introduced in Philadelphia on June 8, 1789, just a month before the lettre de cachet lost its power in Paris. The Fifth Amendment says noone shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”...

Dances with Bears
Robert Mueller Replaces Us Constitution With Royal Lettre De Cachet – Counter-Intelligence Operation As Due Process
John Helmer

See also

The timing of the announcement was clearly intended to embarrass Trump as he was meeting the Queen and to undermine his upcoming meeting with Putin on July 16. The indictments may also have been meant to embarrass Russia two days before the World Cup final to be held in Moscow....

“In this indictment there is detail after detail whose only source could be intelligence, yet you don’t use intelligence in documents like this because if these defendants decide to challenge this in court, it opens the U.S. to having to expose sources and methods,” [former CIA officer Larry] Johnson said.

If the U.S. invoked the states secret privilege so that classified evidence could not be revealed in court a conviction before a civilian jury would be jeopardized.

Such a trial is extremely unlikely however. That makes the indictment essentially a political and not a legal document because it is almost inconceivable that the U.S. government will have to present any evidence in court to back up its charges. This is simply because of the extreme unlikelihood that arrests of Russians living in Russia will ever be made....

In both the IRA case and Friday’s indictments, the extremely remote possibility of convictions were not what Mueller was apparently after, but rather the public perception of Russia’s guilt resulting from fevered media coverage of what are after all only accusations, presented as though it is established fact. Once that impression is settled into the public consciousness, Mueller’s mission would appear to be accomplished....

It is not only allies of Trump, as the Times thinks, who believe the timing of the indictments, indeed the entire Russia-gate scandal, is intended to prevent Trump from pursuing detente with nuclear-armed Russia. Trump said of the indictments that, “I think that really hurts our country and it really hurts our relationship with Russia. I think that we would have a chance to have a very good relationship with Russia and a very good chance — a very good relationship with President Putin.”

There certainly appear to be powerful forces in the U.S. that want to stop that....

Consortium News

Clinging to Collusion: Why Evidence Will Probably Never Be Produced in the Indictments of ‘Russian Agents’

Joe Lauria | editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London, and other newspapers

See also

NOTE: There will likely be various amendments made to this article over the next 24 hours.

Disobedient Media
Mueller’s Latest Indictment Contradicts Evidence In The Public Domain

Adam Carter

See also

This is the sort of political climate that the Trump administration has been forced to deal with for almost two years – a non-stop full court rush from the Democrats.

And now, when there is a chance for the smallest breakthrough in US-Russia relations, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, rolls out charges against 12 Russian military officials, thereby severely polluting the atmosphere for the Putin-Trump summit.

Clearly, something has got to give one way or the other. The fate of relations between the world’s two premier nuclear powers can no longer be held hostage to poor-sport Democrats who simply do not know how to lose an election with grace.

Strategic Culture Foundation
US Deep State Hits Putin-Trump Summit with Preemptive Strike as Russiagate Fizzles Out

Robert Bridge

The story is "developing." In the absence of evidence, it looks like disinformation and pysops.

Moon of Alabama — This Washington Post Headline Is Fake News

This is particularly significant because it is well-known that most people are influence by headlines.

Headlines are therefore used to convey the intended message that shapes the propaganda narrative.

"The medium is the message." — Marshall McLuhan

Moon of Alabama
This Washington Post Headline Is Fake News

b

The Saker — Media Brainwashing Operation In Progress

39 second clip.

Where did this talking point originate and propagate? Not by chance.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Media Brainwashing Operation In Progress
The Saker

also

As BI notes, these are all owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which over the last few days has seemingly required dozens of new anchors on its roughly 200 local TV stations in the US to read the dark message about "members of the media [who] use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think'," concluding that "This is extremely dangerous to a democracy."

Zero Hedge
"This Is Extremely Dangerous To Our Democracy"

Tyler Durden

also

Business Insider
'Sinclair is far superior to CNN': Trump is defending the broadcaster that told stations across the US to read a script criticizing the media
Michal Kranz

Intel Today — Spooks & The Media — How The Spooks Take Over The News

America’s top spies no longer retire. Instead, they sign very lucrative TV News contracts. Former CIA Director John Brennan has just been hired as a paid contributor by NBC and MSNBC. The downside of this new trend is obvious. These spies are not in the business of reporting the truth....

Well, at least they are in the open and what they say can be discounted. Butost of the "journalists" on the payroll of the intelligence services are undercover.

Intel Today
Spooks & The Media — How The Spooks Take Over The News

L

Putting Trumpgate and Russiagate to bed - links

Deep state plot outed.

Consortium News

The Scary Void Inside Russia-gate

Stephen F. Cohen

The Foundering Russia-gate ‘Scandal’

Robert Parry

Protecting the Shaky Russia-gate Narrative

Robert Parry

Russia-gate’s Litany of Corrections

Robert Parry

Sucking Liberals into a New Cold War

William Blum

Russia-gate’s Reach into Journalism

Dennis J. Bernstein

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Fake News, Sedition and Public Apathy

Your Trump Dossier Cheat Sheet
Publius Tacitus

Irrussianality
The latest ‘existential threat’

Crackpot theory no. 9: Assume the worstPaul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

AntiWar
The Enemy Within: It’s called the “intelligence community”

Justin Raimondo

Zero Hedge

WSJ Exposes The Real Election Meddling... At The FBI

Grassley Fires Off Scorching Letter To DOJ After Anti-Trump Texts Reveal Burner Phone, "Insurance Policy"

Ex-FBI Assistant Director: Strzok Fabricated Information And "Belongs In Leavenworth"

FBI Edits To Clinton Exoneration Go Far Beyond What Was Previously Known; Comey, McCabe, Strzok Implicated

Putin Blasts American Establishment's "Russian Spy Hysteria"

New Russian Hacker Claims Putin Ordered Theft Of Clinton's Email, After First One Refused FBI Bribe To Lie

Tyler Durden

Russia Feed
Vladimir Putin: Russiagate “invented by those aiming to de-legitimize Trump”

Vlad

Putin: Russian collusion witch hunt undermines US president and weakens American nation

Russia makes a convenient enemy to blame for the West’s failures

veniamin Popov

The Duran

EXPOSED: FBI agents plotting an “insurance policy” should Trump win election

WSJ drops truth bomb! FBI collusion as agency “interfered in an American presidential election”

EPIC: Trey Gowdy destroys corrupt DOJ, FBI Trump-Russia collusion investigation (Video)

The man who gave fake “Trump dossier” to John McCain speaks out

Alex Christoforou

Strategic Culture Foundation

Deconstructing the Almighty Russian Hackers Myth

Patrick Armstrong

Why America’s Law Enforcement Empire Resembles Secret Police in a Dictatorship

Phillip Giraldi

The Daily Caller
Democrats Mobilize Against Rod Rosenstein As Inspector General Investigation Zeroes In On FBI

Peter Hasson

Russia Insider
CNN & MSNBC Attempt Coverup of Their Bogus Russia-Gate Story
Mike (Mish) Shedlock

The Intercept

The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages and Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened

Glenn Greenwald

Related

Fort Russ
VICE comes out swinging at Fort Russ News, here's what we think

Joachim Flores

Lobe Log
Donald Trump’s First Year Sets Record for U.S. Special Ops

Nick Turse

Sputnik International

Moscow Faces Information Confrontation Aimed to 'Strangle' Russia - Kremlin

Glenn Greenwald — The U.S. Media Yesterday Suffered its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages: Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened

Just a tip of the iceberg. We're all "shocked, shocked, shocked" that the US media would do such a thing.

As I tell my many friends who know I watch this stuff, if you can't be sure what is true and what is not, don't believe any of it.

The Intercept
The U.S. Media Yesterday Suffered its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages: Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened
Glenn Greenwald

See also

Having been on the receiving end of three "fake news" stories in the past week, betwee the ABC Flynn debacle, the Bloomberg Deutsche Bank subpoena, and now CNN, Trump demanded that CNN fire "those responsible," and commented that an ABC reporter who was suspended for a separate erroneous report should be fired as well.…

However, despite Trump's demands a CNN spokesperson said there will not be disciplinary action against the reporter involved, because the reporter used multiple verified sources, following CNN's editorial process.…

Just how does one "verify" a falsity? Oh wait, this is the US media after all.


Zero Hedge
Trump Lashes Out At "Fake News" CNN For "Vicious And Purposeful" Mistake, Demands Terminations

Tyler Durden

Edward S. Herman — Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017

It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of “fake news.” These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.

An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred news into question.…

Controlling the narrative.

Monthly Review
Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017
Edward S. Herman

Edward Samuel Herman (April 7, 1925 – November 11, 2017) was professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania and a media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy. He also taught at Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He is probably best known for developing the propaganda model of media criticism with Noam Chomsky. Wikipedia

See also

Recent revelations have simple, credible explanations that are overshadowed by conspiracy theories and hype.

Bloomberg View
Simpler Explanations Are Usually Correct. Even on Russia.
Leonid Bershidsky

Robert Parry — Learning to Love McCarthyism

The New York Times has finally detected some modern-day McCarthyism, but not in the anti-Russia hysteria that the newspaper has fueled for several years amid the smearing of American skeptics as “useful idiots” and the like. No, the Times editors are accusing a Long Island Republican of McCarthyism for linking his Democratic rival to “New York City special interest groups.” As the Times laments, “It’s the old guilt by association.”

Yet, the Times sees no McCarthyism in the frenzy of Russia-bashing and guilt by association for any American who can be linked even indirectly to any Russian who might have some ill-defined links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Monday, in the same edition that expressed editorial outrage over that Long Island political ad’s McCarthyism, the Times ran two front-page articles under the headline: “A Complex Paper Trail: Blurring Kremlin’s Ties to Key U.S. Businesses.”

The two subheads read: “Shipping Firm Links Commerce Chief to Putin ‘Cronies’” and “Millions in Facebook Shares Rooted in Russian Cash.” The latter story, which meshes nicely with the current U.S. political pressure on Facebook and Twitter to get in line behind the New Cold War against Russia, cites investments by Russian Yuri Milner that date back to the start of the decade.

Buried in the story’s “jump” is the acknowledgement that Milner’s “companies sold those holdings several years ago.” But such is the anti-Russia madness gripping the Establishment of Washington and New York that any contact with any Russian constitutes a scandal worthy of front-page coverage. On Monday, The Washington Post published a page-one articleentitled, “9 in Trump’s orbit had contacts with Russians.”

The anti-Russian madness has reached such extremes that even when you say something that’s obviously true – but that RT, the Russian television network, also reported – you are attacked for spreading “Russian propaganda.”...

This is way beyond only McCarthyism. Once the US media realized that Rupert Murdoch's tabloid "news" business plan was a goldmine, the race to the bottom began. Now it is cesspool of bottom feeders.

Parry relates the history of the US government and other governments that greatly offset anything that "the Russians" might have been able to mount in the US to influence US politics and the 2016 election.

Indeed, one argument for believing that Putin and the Kremlin might have “meddled” in last year’s U.S. election is that they could have felt it was time to give the United States a taste of its own medicine.

I admit to having that thought myself. "The Russians" spent in the thousands, for example, while the US dropped 5 billion into Ukraine alone in the lead up to the coup that unseated a democratically elected president. Let's get some perspective here.

In addition, just who "the Russians" were has not been satisfactorily established based on evidence, let alone any direct connection to the Russian intel services or the Kremlin as the puppet master. Rather, the flimsiest evidence is being adduced, making a mockery of the process.

Moreover, those that "doth protest too much" don't seem to realize that they are cooperating with the trolls, whoever they are and whatever their purpose, in showing up the US as a deeply divided banana republic.

All this in addition to the McCarthyism, which is bad enough.

Most importantly, this isn't even to mention the intimidation being used to impose de facto censorship of alternative media and social media, which is what McCarthyism is about and why it is anti-American, while masquerading as patriotism. In the long run this is the most serious problem since it threatens the foundation of liberal representative democracy in free thought and free expression.

Consortium News
Learning to Love McCarthyism

Robert Parry

Paul Robinson — Basic scientific method

Professor Robinson considers Russiagate in the light of applying scientific method and finds the methodology wanting.

Irrussianality
Basic scientific method
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Pam and Russ Martens — Russia-Trump Saga: Both Murdoch Empire and NYT Have Soiled Hands

Mostly about the NYT.

What the New York Times continuously ignores is that the American people are disgusted with Washington’s revolving door and good-ole-boy mentality. When Special Counsels are appointed to investigate matters that are critical to the public interest, Americans don’t want that individual to come buried under either the perception, or the fact, of conflicts. Taking the New York Times word that Mueller’s work is “precise” and “methodical” and that he is “highly respected” is just not cutting it. Americans are demanding that they get transparency and conflict-free investigations as well as leaders in Washington who reflect the honesty and decency of average Americans.…

All of this should remind us that a powerful media outlet engaging in bad reporting and bad editorial calls can have critical consequences for this nation and our democracy. The problem is not just the Murdoch empire but the New York Times as well.

Wall Street On Parade
Russia-Trump Saga: Both Murdoch Empire and NYT Have Soiled Hands
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