Sputnik — Senior White House Officials Agree to Cut Huawei From Global Chip Supply – Report

Hybrid war with China intensifies.

Sputnik
Senior White House Officials Agree to Cut Huawei From Global Chip Supply – Report

Also at Sputnik

US Resorts to Bashing Chinese Government Over Own Coronavirus Failures

SouthFront — Finally! EU Blames ‘Kremlin Disinformation’ For Coronavirus Crisis

Russia all-powerful, conquering world without firing a shot. The must know something no one else does. (snark) Scapegoat much?

SouthFront
Finally! EU Blames ‘Kremlin Disinformation’ For Coronavirus Crisis

Caitlin Johnstone — The Official Bad Guy Of The Day: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Warning: This is a rant. But it is a pretty good one.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
The Official Bad Guy Of The Day: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Caitlin Johnstone

Narrative Management = Reality Management — Caitlin Johnstone

Press (media) freedom is not enough. A free press must also serve the function for which is the right to free expression, especially in a liberal democracy where freedom depends on an informed electorate rather than a manipulated one. Using media for narrative control is antithetical to liberal democracy.

This includes investigating sources rather than acting as a stenographer for propaganda fronts and intel disinformation plants.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Narrative Management = Reality Management
Caitlin Johnstone

See also

Russia Observer
A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST MAN
Patrick Armstrong

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'

Andrey Afanasyev — Information warfare: tools and methods

It's no secret that the US runs the organization BBG - Broadcasting Board of Governors - which is responsible for coordinating the international American media abroad, and in Russia. For instance, these are well-known media "Voice of America" and "Radio Liberty". Also, a new project "Present Time" has recently appeared and it is designed for a new audience in social networks.

However, it is worth paying attention to how these three media work. And mostly they work methodically and as a kind of entry points of information. The scheme is simple: firstly, a publication appears on one of three sites or in the social networks and accounts of these structures that are openly controlled by the US government and do not hide this fact, and then this information goes through the so-called opposition media to the national level as something already well-known and understandable . Being biased and nonobjective, the information is spread among Western journalists....

For example, let’s consider the arrest of Mr. Udaltsov, who participated in unauthorized rallies. Firstly, the information appeared on the website of Radio Liberty, and then it spread through “Novaya Gazeta” and “Echo of Moscow”. It took 30-40 minutes to do it, and the articles coincided totally with the original one.…

This is an extremely complicated hybrid threat. It is hard to prove this threat legally: you will be accused immediately of conspiracy. But it is possible to apply some kind of philological expertise in order to demonstrate it, for example, to demonstrate that there were several levels of this information attack....

On the one hand, it's clearly controlled by BBG, but it's getting harder and harder, and in the end, every message and information mutates, and it's even integrated into a number of national media. And it turns out that the mass consciousness gets inherently fake and anti-Russian information.

The echo chamber. Mirrors what the West is saying about Sputnik, RT, and social media "trolls."

The difference is that the US has a long history of this going back to the Cold War, whereas the Russian reaction is recent.

Katehon think tank. Geopolitics & Tradition
Andrey Afanasyev: Information warfare: tools and methods

Moon of Alabama — Syria - Killing Journos Enabled "Media Activist" Domination - Intended Effect?

As pointed out yesterday, a recent tweet series by Club des Cordeliers made some interesting observation about the #StandWithAleppo propaganda campaign:

The "Stand with Aleppo" campaign in the U.S. was started and is propelled by a Democratic party operative who is also CEO of a public relations company and "strategic affairs consultant" in Chicago, Becky Carroll.

The Cordeliere made some additional remarks on anti-Syria propaganda. These about the U.S. directed Information Warfare campaign from inside Syria. This leads me to the thoughts below about the U.S. waged Unconventional Warfare in Syria and how it may be responsible for the elimination of "neutral" journalists on the ground....

We have to see the killing and kidnapping of journalists as a (secret) part of the arsenal of the Unconventional Warfare and the U.S. created propaganda storm out of Syria.

The same applies to humanitarian Non-Government Organizations. Neither the United Nations, nor the Red Cross or any other neutral NGO had staff in east-Aleppo. Only the MI-6 propaganda outlet SOHR in Coventry provides numbers allegedly sourced from Syria. Only (U.S. trained) "media activists" on the Takfiri site report or tweet from inside east-Aleppo. Only these get interviewed. Only the U.S./UK created and directed "White Helmets" and the French government sponsored Takfiri "Aleppo Media Channel" produce pictures and videos from inside east-Aleppo. As this was the only available information source and sole available audio-visual material it was heavily used by news outlets around the world. It reflected solely the armed oppositions and its sponsors' views and warfare needs.

If one intends to give a maximum effect to the propaganda output of ones proxies in an Information Warfare operation, it makes great sense to eliminate all other potential sources of information from the wider warzone. Thus - the abduction and killing of neutral professional journalists is a conscious process that enables their replacement with ones own Information Warfare assets. I believe we have seen such a process in Syria....

Moon of Alabama

Syria - Killing Journos Enabled "Media Activist" Domination - Intended Effect?

b

See also

The sources for these reports are so-called ‘activists’. Who are they? As far as I know, there was not one single staff reporter for any Western news organisation in eastern Aleppo last week. Not one.

THIS is for the very good reason that they would have been kidnapped and probably murdered. The zone was ruled without mercy by heavily armed Osama Bin Laden sympathisers, who were bombarding the west of the city with powerful artillery (they frequently killed innocent civilians and struck hospitals, since you ask). That is why you never see pictures of armed males in eastern Aleppo, just beautifully composed photographs of handsome young unarmed men lifting wounded children from the rubble, with the light just right....

The Daily Mail
PETER HITCHENS: Amid the bombs of Aleppo, all you can hear are the lies

Dave Lefcourt — Why did it have to be this way?

Deve Lefcourt reviews some of US history and concludes:

We have a free press in name only. It's become an unofficial complicit enabler of the government, accepting the government's version of events so the people get from the MSM only what the government provides as its version of events. 

Only the alternative press, mostly internet sites like this one-named as one of the 200 providing "fake news"- can people get a broader version of events, many times questioning the "official" government version. 

If somehow alternative news sites are banned or as been suggested that Google or Facebook act as censors determining what is "fake news" then the Constitution will have been stood on its head, completely subverted and we will have become the dystopian world George Orwell wrote about in his novel, 1984. 

The US will have descended into absolute tyranny.

As to the question why did it have to be this way? Well we weren't vigilant. We took our freedoms for granted. We let it happen. The next question may very well be can the damage be corrected?

I suggest re-reading the Declaration of Independence. 

OpEdNews
Why did it have to be this way?

Dave Lefcourt

Joshua Frank — CounterPunch as Russian Propagandists: the Washington Post’s Shallow Smear

Of course, this leads one to speculate whether this blacklist campaign is a government operation or just an insignificant group of befuddled Democrats, angered that Trump knocked Hillary off her perch.

Counterpunch
CounterPunch as Russian Propagandists: the Washington Post’s Shallow Smear

Joshua Frank, managing editor of CounterPunch

Sputnik — Newsweek Journalist Claims US Intelligence Fed Him False Putin-Trump Conspiracy

Sputnik International
Newsweek Journalist Claims US Intelligence Fed Him False Putin-Trump Conspiracy

John Helmer — How The West Helped Invent Russia’s Election Fraud: Osce Whistleblower Exposes 1996 Whitewash

More disinformation from the West about Russia in the ongoing information war.

It get even worse.

The OSCE hasn’t just destroyed its credibility with its strange criteria for judging some Russian elections fair and others not. As the world considers Moscow’s charge of undue American influence on the organization, it’s worth pulling an OSCE “greatest hit” out of the memory hole. In the run up to the Kosovo war, the organization was used a front for the CIA to deliver communications equipment to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and to gather targeting information for an expected upcoming NATO bombing campaign.…

Dances with Bears
How The West Helped Invent Russia’s Election Fraud: Osce Whistleblower Exposes 1996 Whitewash
Mark Ames

Robert Parry — Getting Fooled on Iraq, Libya, Now Russia

On the heels of the British Chilcot report exposing falsehoods to justify invading Iraq in 2003, a new U.K. inquiry found similar misconduct in the 2011 “regime change” in Libya, but no lessons are learned amid the West’s new propaganda about Russia, writes Robert Parry.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Fool me over and over, I'm a moron. And I deserve what I get and don't get if I should know better.

Consortium News
Getting Fooled on Iraq, Libya, Now Russia

Robert Parry

Robert Parry — New York Times and the New McCarthyism

Traditional U.S. journalism and the American people are facing a crisis as the preeminent American newspaper, The New York Times, has fully lost its professional bearings, transforming itself into a neoconservative propaganda sheet eager for a New Cold War with Russia and imposing a New McCarthyism on public debate.

The crisis is particularly acute because another top national newspaper, The Washington Post, is also deeply inside the neocon camp.

Not like this anything new. The NYT was chief water carrier in propagandizing for the Iraq invasion based on WMD and mushroom clouds.

The news is always bent toward the Establishment view and the opposition demonized. It's just that it used to be somewhat subtle, while now it is getting blatant. And back when the government was influencing the news but no one suspected it based on "the big lie." Now it's clear when even intel chief James Clapper can lie under to Congress and get away with it largely because government is not expected to tell the truth. This also underlies the fury behind leaks and whistleblowers disclosures that show how untrustworthy government actually is.

As a result I no longer believe a word of it.

This is not only about international news. Bill Black has been documenting how slanted domestic news is, too.

Consortiums News
New York Times and the New McCarthyism

Robert Parry

TASS — Russian Justice Ministry source explains recognizing Levada-Center NGO a "foreign agent"

The source claims the non-commercial organization "had received most of its foreign financing from the United States"…

A Justice Ministry source told TASS that a random check carried out by the ministry’s Moscow branch had established that the Levada Center was financed by foreign sources and was involved in political activities in the territory of Russia in the interests of its foreign sponsors. The center prepares and distributes by means of modern information technologies their opinion on decisions passed by Russian bodies of state power and their policy and forms socio-political views and convictions.

"The inspection revealed that the Analytical Center of Yuri Levada …had received a large part of its funds from the United States, including a grant from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, which is curated by the U.S. Department of Defense," the source said.…

TASS
Russian Justice Ministry source explains recognizing Levada-Center NGO a "foreign agent"

Roger Stone — Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, And The New Mccarthyism

Roger Stone's side of the story. Totally at odds with the Clinton campaign and the media that support it.

Someone is making stuff up.

StoneColdTruth
Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, And The New Mccarthyism

Roger Stone

Andre Vltchek — Western Propaganda – So Simple But So Effective!

When some time ago Noam Chomsky and I met at MIT, in order to write a book “On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare” and to produce a film with the same title together, the topic we mainly aimed at discussing was that of the countless genocides the West has committed all over the world since the end of the WWII. The second topic was impunity

But no matter what atrocities we re-visited, our conversation kept slipping towards one crucial theme: the propaganda that has been manufactured in media centers like New York, Paris, London and other North American and European cities; the propaganda created in order to twist both the past and the present. Without such brainwashing and the almost total indoctrination of the Western general public and the ‘elites’ in all of the ‘client’ states, no imperialist and neo-colonialist policies would have become truly successful.

We spoke about US commercial advertising and its influence on German Nazi propaganda, and about Nazi propaganda influencing by return both the US and European propaganda-makers. Noam kept asking me about my childhood in socialist Czechoslovakia, and I explained to him, honestly, how indoctrinated I was as a teenager: not by the Communist dogmas, but by the BBC, the Voice of America and the Radio Free Europe – all of them relentlessly spreading the Western political and market gospel to all corners of the socialist world.

Both Noam and I have created dozens of essays on the topic, as well as several books. My latest one, basically written about all the corners of the world where the Empire is spreading destruction and followed by indoctrination, has more than 800 pages, and is called “Exposing Lies of the Empire”.

And I always feel that even this massive book just touches the tip of the iceberg, that it is only a beginning!

Western propaganda is actually a perfect apparatus! It is effective and it is almost fully ‘bulletproof’. It ‘works’! European empires have been refining it for many long centuries, and the European offspring – the United States – has elevated it to almost total perfection.

One precondition for its success is, of course, that the Western political and economic regime owns almost all the major media channels and distribution outlets of the world.

Diversity can never be tolerated. It could smash the idiocy! Once this prerequisite is completed, things get relatively relaxed and cozy for the demagogues in Washington, London and Paris.…

http://journal-neo.org/2016/08/20/western-propaganda-so-simple-but-so-effective-2/

New Eastern Outlook
Western Propaganda – So Simple But So Effective!

Andre Vltchek

Martin Armstrong — Congress Authorized Propaganda Against Americans

Martine Armstrong reminds us that it is now legal for the US government to lie not only to foreigners, as previously, but also to Americans domestically.

That's a curious view of freedom of the press.

Armstrong Economics

Congress Authorized Propaganda Against Americans
Martin Armstrong

Moon of Alabama — An Eyewitness Tells How The U.S. Ambassador Instigated "Revolution" In Syria

S. Rifai, also known as @THE_47th, is a Syrian "activist" from Homs. He was involved since early 2011 when the U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford (@fordrs58) fomented the "revolution" in Syria. He has since tweeted about the "revolution" and has shown lots of insider knowledge. Below S. Rifai corrects the U.S. propaganda record.…

"Eyewitness" is correct but too narrow. Rifai was an active participant in the revolution the US ambassador was fomenting in 2011 in Syria.

Moon of Alabama
An Eyewitness Tells How The U.S. Ambassador Instigated "Revolution" In Syria

More on propaganda.

Gallery: "Dramatic Rescue - Man With Kid Runs Towards Camera" - 43 (Staged) Pictures

Almanac France — The manipulative role of the western press in regime change

Two journalists, one from Venezuela and the other from Syria, revealed the manipulations of the Western media in two crises of the Middle East: that of Libya to overthrow the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi and that of Syria to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.…

Information war is a chief component of hybrid warfare.

Fort Russ
The manipulative role of the western press in regime change

Almanac France

Translated by Tom Winter

See also

Katehon
Hybrid Wars And Democratic Security

Andrew Korybko