The Guardian: ondanks een enorme misser (fake news) gaat men door met de valse beschuldigingen t.a.v. Assange......

Onlangs kwam The Guardian met het verhaal dat Paul Manafort contact zou hebben gehad met Julian Assange in de Ecuadoraanse ambassade in Londen. Een verhaal dat als onzin werd doorgeprikt met aantoonbare leugens in The Guardian. Zelfs reguliere mediaorganen twijfelden aan het artikel.

Blijkbaar vond The Guardian het gebrachte artikel daarna zelf ook dubieus, daar men de tekst heeft aangepast, zonder daar echter melding van te maken. In de aangepaste tekst wordt nu gesproken over anonieme, niet te controleren bronnen....... De schrijver van het Guardian propagandistische artikel, Luke Harding, stelde in het artikel dat Manafort meermaals werd gezien in de Ecuadoraanse ambassade en dat één keer 'zelfs met 2 Russen....'

Met het Guardian artikel toonde Harding zogenaamd aan dat Assange contacten had met de Russen en dat die na het hacken van de DNC server, de emails van Hillary Clinton zouden hebben doen toekomen aan WikiLeaks, ofwel één van 'de smoking guns' in het Russiagate sprookje..... Kortom de Russen en Assange zouden hebben samengespannen om Clinton haar presidentschap door de neus te boren.....

Uiteraard gebruiken ook de democraten in de VS het fantasie verhaal van Harding om te stellen dat Assange en Rusland de presidentsverkiezingen van hen hebben gestolen, terwijl echte deskundigen en ingewijden uitvoerig stellen, dat de emails werden gelekt vanuit het campagneteam van Clinton, waar de naam Seth Rich telkens weer opduikt...... 

Seth Rich was medewerker van het campagneteam, hij was zwaar gefrustreerd over de smerige spelletjes van Clinton en de top van haar campagneteam, om de voorverkiezing in 2016 van Bernie Sanders te stelen........ Sanders was de tweede belangrijke democratische kandidaat voor het presidentschap in de VS. Zelfs Obama gaf toe dat e.e.a door het campagneteam werd gelekt naar WikiLeaks....* 

Rich werd vermoord, kort nadat de mails waren gelekt naar WikiLeaks, volgens de politie ging het om een roofmoord, waarbij Rich vreemd genoeg niet werd beroofd en zelfs dure sieraden niet werden gestolen........ De poging om Sanders buiten spel te zetten is gelukt, zoals we al en paar jaar weten.

Manafort heeft ontkent dat hij zelfs maar één keer met Assange heeft gesproken en Assange heeft The Guardian gedreigd met een proces wegens laster...... De bedoeling in het hele Russiagate verhaal is dan ook Assange als spion neer te zetten, ofwel hij heeft geen recht op bescherming zoals dit het geval zou moeten zijn met (onderzoeks-) journalisten, waarbij WikiLeaks wordt weggezet als een staatsvijandig vehikel van de Russen...... Waarmee de democraten dan de schuld van het verlies van de verkiezingen in de schoenen schuiven van WikiLeaks, haar oprichter Assange en uiteraard de Russen.....**

Met artikelen als die van Harding in The Guardian moet de publieke opinie voorbereid worden op het uit de Ecuadoraanse ambassade zetten van Assange en de arrestatie van deze journalist, die zich met niets anders dan zijn werk bezighield, dit in sterke tegenstelling tot het overgrote deel van de journalisten, die voor de reguliere westerse (massa-) media werken.......

Deze media hebben i.p.v. Assange te steunen, een taak van onafhankelijke mediaorganen en hun journalisten, hem zwart gemaakt in de publieke opinie, waarbij zelfs werd gesteld dat Assange alleen de Ecuadoraanse ambassade in vluchtte, om publiciteit te genereren.... Gelukkig voor Assange werd ook die belachelijke claim doorgeprikt, toen per ongeluk stukken werden gepubliceerd waaruit bleek dat de VS een aanklacht heeft opgesteld voor Assange en op grond waarvan Assange een lange gevangenisstraf te wachten staat.......

The Guardian ging zelfs zover dat het een VN panel met experts belachelijk probeerde te maken, die stelden dat het totaal onwettelijk was dat Assange niet zonder gearresteerd te worden de ambassade zou kunnen verlaten.....

De schrijver van het artikel hieronder, Jonathan Cook, haalt ook Glenn Greenwald aan, waar het om de claim gaat dat Manafort Assange zou hebben bezocht. Deze stelt dat het onmogelijk is om ongezien de Ecuadoraanse ambassade binnen te komen, daar Londen propvol camera's hangt en de Ecuadoraanse ambassade, sinds Assange daar binnen vluchtte, van alle kanten in de gaten werd en wordt gehouden, niet alleen door camera's, de politie, maar ook door journalisten...... 

Als Manafort inderdaad in de ambassade zou zijn geweest, volgens The Guardian 3 keer, in 2013, 2015 en 2016, zouden daar zeker bewijzen voor zijn.......

Intussen is The Guardian gekomen met een volgens deze fake news brenger nog betere fundering van de (ongefundeerde) beschuldigingen aan het adres van Assange (en WikiLeaks) en zijn zogenaamde verbintenis met Rusland, ook nu weer geen enkel bewijs....... Assange zal en moet hangen en in dit geval door een mediaorgaan dat stelt onafhankelijk te zijn en haar berichtgeving dubbel zou checken..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Lees het artikel van Cook, eerder gepubliceerd op Creative Commons en door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media, waarin Cook verder nog aandacht besteedt aan het nep-journalistenforum Bellincat (daaronder nog een kort artikel en video van een interview van Aby Martin met Randy Credico aangaande de zaak Assange):

The Guardian Continues to Escalate Its Vilification of Julian Assange

The Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred of evidence. It did what it is designed to do.***

November 29, 2018 at 2:11 pm

Written by Common Dreams

(CD) — It is welcome that finally there has been a little pushback, including from leading journalists, to the Guardian’s long-running vilification of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.

Reporter Luke Harding’s latest article, claiming that Donald Trump’s disgraced former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly visited Assange in Ecuador’s embassy in London on three occasions, is so full of holes that even hardened opponents of Assange in the corporate media are struggling to stand by it.

Faced with the backlash, the Guardian quickly – and very quietly – rowed back its initial certainty that its story was based on verified facts. Instead, it amended the text, without acknowledging it had done so, to attribute the claims to unnamed, and uncheckable, “sources”.

The propaganda function of the piece is patent. It is intended to provide evidence for long-standing allegations that Assange conspired with Trump, and Trump’s supposed backers in the Kremlin, to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.

The Guardian’s latest story provides a supposedly stronger foundation for an existing narrative: that Assange and Wikileaks knowingly published emails hacked by Russia from the Democratic party’s servers. In truth, there is no public evidence that the emails were hacked, or that Russia was involved. Central actors have suggested instead that the emails were leaked from within the Democratic party.

Nonetheless, this unverified allegation has been aggressively exploited by the Democratic leadership because it shifts attention away both from its failure to mount an effective electoral challenge to Trump and from the damaging contents of the emails. These show that party bureaucrats sought to rig the primaries to make sure Clinton’s challenger for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, lost.

To underscore the intended effect of the Guardian’s new claims, Harding even throws in a casual and unsubstantiated reference to “Russians” joining Manafort in supposedly meeting Assange.

Manafort has denied the Guardian’s claims, while Assange has threatened to sue the Guardian for libel.

‘Responsible for Trump’

The emotional impact of the Guardian story is to suggest that Assange is responsible for four years or more of Trump rule. But more significantly, it bolsters the otherwise risible claim that Assange is not a publisher – and thereby entitled to the protections of a free press, as enjoyed by the Guardian or the New York Times – but the head of an organisation engaged in espionage for a foreign power.

The intention is to deeply discredit Assange, and by extension the Wikileaks organisation, in the eyes of right-thinking liberals. That, in turn, will make it much easier to silence Assange and the vital cause he represents: the use of new media to hold to account the old, corporate media and political elites through the imposition of far greater transparency.

The Guardian story will prepare public opinion for the moment when Ecuador’s rightwing government under President Lenin Moreno forces Assange out of the embassy, having already withdrawn most of his rights to use digital media.

It will soften opposition when the UK moves to arrest Assange on self-serving bail violation charges and extradites him to the US. And it will pave the way for the US legal system to lock Assange up for a very long time.

For the best part of a decade, any claims by Assange’s supporters that avoiding this fate was the reason Assange originally sought asylum in the embassy was ridiculed by corporate journalists, not least at the Guardian.

Even when a United Nations panel of experts in international law ruled in 2016 that Assange was being arbitrarily – and unlawfully – detained by the UK, Guardian writers led efforts to discredit the UN report. See here and here.

Now Assange and his supporters have been proved right once again. An administrative error this month revealed that the US justice department had secretly filed criminal charges against Assange.

Heavy surveillance

The problem for the Guardian, which should have been obvious to its editors from the outset, is that any visits by Manafort would be easily verifiable without relying on unnamed “sources”.

Glenn Greenwald is far from alone in noting that London is possibly the most surveilled city in the world, with CCTV cameras everywhere. The environs of the Ecuadorian embassy are monitored especially heavily, with continuous filming by the UK and Ecuadorian authorities and most likely by the US and other actors with an interest in Assange’s fate.

The idea that Manafort or “Russians” could have wandered into the embassy to meet Assange even once without their trail, entry and meeting being intimately scrutinised and recorded is simply preposterous.

According to Greenwald: “If Paul Manafort … visited Assange at the Embassy, there would be ample amounts of video and other photographic proof demonstrating that this happened. The Guardian provides none of that.”

Former British ambassador Craig Murray also points out the extensive security checks insisted on by the embassy to which any visitor to Assange must submit. Any visits by Manafort would have been logged.

In fact, the Guardian obtained the embassy’s logs in May, and has never made any mention of either Manafort or “Russians” being identified in them. It did not refer to the logs in its latest story.

Murray:

The problem with this latest fabrication is that [Ecuador’s President] Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these ‘Russians’ are in the visitor logs … What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort?Furthermore it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security – would not know the identity of these alleged ‘Russians’.

No fact-checking

It is worth noting it should be vitally important for a serious publication like the Guardian to ensure its claims are unassailably true – both because Assange’s personal fate rests on their veracity, and because, even more importantly, a fundamental right, the freedom of the press, is at stake.

Given this, one would have expected the Guardian’s editors to have insisted on the most stringent checks imaginable before going to press with Harding’s story. At a very minimum, they should have sought out a response from Assange and Manafort before publication. Neither precaution was taken.

I worked for the Guardian for a number of years, and know well the layers of checks that any highly sensitive story has to go through before publication. In that lengthy process, a variety of commissioning editors, lawyers, backbench editors and the editor herself, Kath Viner, would normally insist on cuts to anything that could not be rigorously defended and corroborated.

And yet this piece seems to have been casually waved through, given a green light even though its profound shortcomings were evident to a range of well-placed analysts and journalists from the outset.

That at the very least hints that the Guardian thought they had “insurance” on this story. And the only people who could have promised that kind of insurance are the security and intelligence services – presumably of Britain, the United States and / or Ecuador.

It appears the Guardian has simply taken this story, provided by spooks, at face value. Even if it later turns out that Manafort did visit Assange, the Guardian clearly had no compelling evidence for its claims when it published them. That is profoundly irresponsible journalism – fake news – that should be of the gravest concern to readers.

A pattern, not an aberration

Despite all this, even analysts critical of the Guardian’s behaviour have shown a glaring failure to understand that its latest coverage represents not an aberration by the paper but decisively fits with a pattern.

Glenn Greenwald, who once had an influential column in the Guardian until an apparent, though unacknowledged, falling out with his employer over the Edward Snowden revelations, wrote a series of baffling observations about the Guardian’s latest story.

First, he suggested it was simply evidence of the Guardian’s long-standing (and well-documented) hostility towards Assange.

“The Guardian, an otherwise solid and reliable paper, has such a pervasive and unprofessionally personal hatred for Julian Assange that it has frequently dispensed with all journalistic standards in order to malign him.”

It was also apparently evidence of the paper’s clickbait tendencies:

“They [Guardian editors] knew that publishing this story would cause partisan warriors to excitedly spread the story, and that cable news outlets would hyperventilate over it, and that they’d reap the rewards regardless of whether the story turned out to be true or false.”

And finally, in a bizarre tweet, Greenwald opined, “I hope the story [maligning Assange] turns out true” – apparently because maintenance of the Guardian’s reputation is more important than Assange’s fate and the right of journalists to dig up embarrassing secrets without fear of being imprisoned.

Glenn Greenwald

✔@ggreenwald

The reason it will be so devastating to the Guardian if this story turns out false is because the Guardian has an institutional hatred for Assange. They've proven they'll dispense with journalistic standards for it. And factions within Ecuador's government know they can use them.

Jimmy Wales

✔@jimmy_wales

I love the Guardian. And this needs to be resolved. Did Assange meet Manafort? Who are the sources? If you can't say then doubt. Anonymous sourcing is dangerous at best. https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status/1067476487392174081 …

547

12:59 AM - Nov 28, 2018

Deeper malaise

What this misses is that the Guardian’s attacks on Assange are not exceptional or motivated solely by personal animosity. They are entirely predictable and systematic. Rather than being the reason for the Guardian violating basic journalistic standards and ethics, the paper’s hatred of Assange is a symptom of a deeper malaise in the Guardian and the wider corporate media.

Even aside from its decade-long campaign against Assange, the Guardian is far from “solid and reliable”, as Greenwald claims. It has been at the forefront of the relentless, and unhinged, attacks on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for prioritising the rights of Palestinians over Israel’s right to continue its belligerent occupation. Over the past three years, the Guardian has injected credibility into the Israel lobby’s desperate efforts to tar Corbyn as an anti-semite. See here, here and here.

Similarly, the Guardian worked tirelessly to promote Clinton and undermine Sanders in the 2016 Democratic nomination process – another reason the paper has been so assiduous in promoting the idea that Assange, aided by Russia, was determined to promote Trump over Clinton for the presidency.

The Guardian’s coverage of Latin America, especially of populist leftwing governments that have rebelled against traditional and oppressive US hegemony in the region, has long grated with analysts and experts. Its especial venom has been reserved for leftwing figures like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, democratically elected but official enemies of the US, rather than the region’s rightwing authoritarians beloved of Washington.

The Guardian has been vocal in the so-called “fake news” hysteria, decrying the influence of social media, the only place where leftwing dissidents have managed to find a small foothold to promote their politics and counter the corporate media narrative.

The Guardian has painted social media chiefly as a platform overrun by Russian trolls, arguing that this should justify ever-tighter restrictions that have so far curbed critical voices of the dissident left more than the right.

Heroes of the neoliberal order

Equally, the Guardian has made clear who its true heroes are. Certainly not Corbyn or Assange, who threaten to disrupt the entrenched neoliberal order that is hurtling us towards climate breakdown and economic collapse.

Its pages, however, are readily available to the latest effort to prop up the status quo from Tony Blair, the man who led Britain, on false pretences, into the largest crime against humanity in living memory – the attack on Iraq.

That “humanitarian intervention” cost the lives of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and created a vacuum that destabilised much of the Middle East, sucked in Islamic jihadists like al-Qaeda and ISIS, and contributed to the migrant crisis in Europe that has fuelled the resurgence of the far-right. None of that is discussed in the Guardian or considered grounds for disqualifying Blair as an arbiter of what is good for Britain and the world’s future.

The Guardian also has an especial soft spot for blogger Elliot Higgins, who, aided by the Guardian, has shot to unlikely prominence as a self-styled “weapons expert”. Like Luke Harding, Higgins invariably seems ready to echo whatever the British and American security services need verifying “independently”.

Higgins and his well-staffed website Bellingcat have taken on for themselves the role of arbiters of truth on many foreign affairs issues, taking a prominent role in advocating for narratives that promote US and NATO hegemony while demonising Russia, especially in highly contested arenas such as Syria.

That clear partisanship should be no surprise, given that Higgins now enjoys an “academic” position at, and funding from, the Atlantic Council, a high-level, Washington-based think-tank founded to drum up support for NATO and justify its imperialist agenda.

Improbably, the Guardian has adopted Higgins as the poster-boy for a supposed citizen journalism it has sought to undermine as “fake news” whenever it occurs on social media without the endorsement of state-backed organisations.

The truth is that the Guardian has not erred in this latest story attacking Assange, or in its much longer-running campaign to vilify him. With this story, it has done what it regularly does when supposedly vital western foreign policy interests are at stake – it simply regurgitates an elite-serving, western narrative.

Its job is to shore up a consensus on the left for attacks on leading threats to the existing, neoliberal order: whether they are a platform like Wikileaks promoting whistle-blowing against a corrupt western elite; or a politician like Jeremy Corbyn seeking to break apart the status quo on the rapacious financial industries or Israel-Palestine; or a radical leader like Hugo Chavez who threatened to overturn a damaging and exploitative US dominance of “America’s backyard”; or social media dissidents who have started to chip away at the elite-friendly narratives of corporate media, including the Guardian.

The Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred of evidence. It did what it is designed to do.

By Jonathan Cook / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo

=============================

Zie ook het volgende artikel plus begeleidende video, waarin ook al onterecht beschuldigingen over contacten met Assange en de aanklachten tegen het Trump team, WikiLeaks en Rusland aangaande 'Russiagate', een beschuldiging die speciaal aanklager Mueller nooit rond gaat krijgen.

Het gaat hier om Randy Credico (politiek- en mensenrechtenactivist, programmamaker en komiek), hij wordt door Mueller beschuldigd van banden met WikiLeaks..... (zien beste bezoeker!)

EXCLUSIVE: Subject of Mueller Investigation
Exposes Roger Stone, Wikileaks' Role

In this exclusive interview, Abby Martin speaks with Randy Credico on his role in the Russia investigation, his upcoming interview with Robert Mueller, and his relationship with Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone.

With never before revealed details about Stone and the Mueller investigation, Credico details his long-standing ties to the political operative and answers the hard questions about his alleged coordination with Wikileaks.

The interview highlights the larger context of the multi-front assault on Julian Assange, Wikileaks and the future of press freedom.

Keep Empire Files independent and ad-free! Make a one-time donation or contribute monthly.

======================================

*  Zie: 'Obama gaf toe dat de DNC e-mails expres door de DNC werden gelekt naar Wikileaks....!!!!'

** Vergeet niet dat de Obama administratie al lang bezig was om de Russen te demoniseren, dit onder andere t.b.v. het militair-industrieel complex en waarmee de VS en haar oorlogshond de NAVO ook in Oekraïne aan de grens met Rusland zou komen te staan........ Zo hebben Hillary Clinton en de CIA de opstand in Oekraïne op poten gezet, een opstand waarvan de opzet was een staatsgreep te ontketenen tegen de democratisch gekozen regering Janoekovytsj...... Deze 'grap' (een specialiteit van de VS) heeft de VS maar 'liefst' 4 miljard dollar gekost.......

*** Deze toegevoegde tekst later overgenomen van Common Dreams, daar deze niet op Anti-Media werd genoemd en de extra vermelding terecht is (m.i.).

PS: geeft door mensen, er kan niet genoeg feiten worden weergegeven tegenover de enorme berg leugens (met heel veel 'fake news, of anders gezegd: 'nepnieuws') waaruit het kwaadaardige sprookje Russiagate bestaat.

Zie wat betreft het Steele dossier, een spil in de leugens die men 'Russiagate' is gaan noemen, de volgende berichten:

'Democraten VS kochten informatie over Trump >> Forgetting the ‘Dirty Dossier’ on Trump' en: 'Hillary Clinton moet op de hoogte zijn geweest van aankoop Steele dossier over Trump........'

Zie ook:
'Julian Assanges vervolging is de genadeklap voor klokkenluiders en (echte) journalisten' 

'Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis'

'VN heeft eerder de 'detentie' van Assange al als onwettig verklaard'

'Julian Assange gearresteerd, een flagrante schending van de persvrijheid!'

'Arrestatie Julian Assange: een aanfluiting voor internationale regels en een enorme aanval op onafhankelijke journalistiek'

'Julian Assange, valse beschuldigingen, Big Brother en VS steun voor terrorisme'

'Democraten deden zich voor als Russen in false flag operatie om Roy Moore (Republikein) zwart te maken tijdens verkiezing.....'

'Der Spiegel, groot bestrijder van 'fake news' bracht zelf jarenlang dit soort 'nieuws''

'Russiagate: de westerse massamedia gebruiken propaganda om het volk te manipuleren, precies waar ze Rusland van beschuldigen'

'BBC: Rusland 'misbruikt humor' om Russiagate te ontkrachten..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Uitgelekte telefoongesprekken tussen Trump en Putin bewijzen dat 'Russiagaters gelijk hebben......''

'Russiagate en Assange: The Guardian wordt nu zelfs door collega's voor zot uitgemaakt'

'WikiLeaks belooft The Guardian 1 miljoen dollar als het haar leugens i.z. Assange en Russiagate kan bewijzen.......'

''Banden van Trump met Rusland' gebaseerd op FBI operatie om VS 'burger' (CIA) in Iran vrij te krijgen......'

'Russiagate? Britaingate zal je bedoelen!'

'New York Times 'bewijzen' voor Russiagate vallen door de mand......'

'Facebook gebruikte 'fake news' beschuldiging om de aandacht voor schandalen af te leiden'

'Politico rapport bevestigt: Russiagate is een hoax'

'De Israëlische manipulatie van de VS presidentsverkiezingen, gaat veel verder dan wat men Rusland in de schoenen schuift.....'

'FBI, de spin in het Russiagate web........'

''Russiagate' een complot van CIA, FBI, Hillary Clinton en het DNC...........'

''Russiagate' een verhaal van a t/m z westers 'fake news.....''

'Russiagate sprookje ondermijnt VS democratie en de midterm verkiezingen'

'Britse en VS manipulaties van verkiezingen en stimulatie van conflicten middels psychologische oorlogsvoering' (voor VS manipulaties van verkiezingen elders, liggen er 'metersdikke' dossiers, o.a. in te zien op WikiLeaks)

'FBI Director Comey Leaked Trump Memos Containing Classified Information'

'Publicly Available Evidence Doesn’t Support Russian Gov Hacking of 2016 Election'

'Murray, ex-ambassadeur van GB: de Russen hebben de VS verkiezingen niet gemanipuleerd'

''Russische manipulaties uitgevoerd' door later vermoord staflid Clintons campagneteam Seth Rich......... AIVD en MIVD moeten hiervan weten!!'

''Russiagate': Intel-raport over Russische bemoeienis met verkiezingen opgebouwd met leugens en is politiek gemotiveerd, aldus Matlock, voormalig VS ambassadeur in Moskou'

'Mocking Trump Doesn’t Prove Russia’s Guilt'

'CIA deed zich voor als het Russische Kaspersky Lab, aldus Wikileaks Vault 8.....'

'WikiLeaks: Seth Rich Leaked Clinton Emails, Not Russia'

'Hillary Clinton en haar oorlog tegen de waarheid........ Ofwel een potje Rusland en Assange schoppen!'

'CIA chef Pompeo waarschuwt voor complot van WikiLeaks om de VS op alle mogelijke manieren neer te halen....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'VS 'democratie' aan het werk, een onthutsende en uitermate humoristische video!'

'Flashback: Clinton Allies Met With Ukrainian Govt Officials to Dig up Dirt on Trump During 2016 Election'

'Russia Is Trolling the Shit out of Hillary Clinton and the Mainstream Media'

'Russische 'hacks' door deskundigen nogmaals als fake news doorgeprikt >> Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence'

'Rusland krijgt alweer de schuld van hacken, nu van oplichters Symantec en Facebook....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Russiagate, of: hoe de media u belazeren met verhalen over Russische bemoeienis met de VS presidentsverkiezingen........'

'Campagne Clinton, smeriger dan gedacht............' (met daarin daarin opgenomen de volgende twee artikelen: 'Donna Brazile Bombshell: ‘Proof’ Hillary ‘Rigged’ Primary Against Bernie' en 'Democrats in Denial After Donna Brazile Says Primary Was Rigged for Hillary')

'Clinton te kakken gezet: Brazile (Democratische Partij VS) draagt haar boek op aan Seth Rich, het vermoorde lid van DNC die belastende documenten lekte'

'Kajsa Ollongren (D66 vicepremier): Nederland staat in het vizier van Russische inlichtingendiensten....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Ollongren gesteund door Thomas Boesgaard (AD), 'Rusland verpakt het nepnieuws gekoppeld aan echt nieuws.....' Oei!!'

'RT America één van de eerste slachtoffers in een heksenjacht op westerse alternatieve media en nadenkend links......'

'Rusland zou onafhankelijkheid Californië willen uitlokken met reclame voor borsjt.......'

'Alarm Code Geel: Lara Rense (NOS) voedt Rusland-haat'

''Russiagate' een nieuwe ongelooflijke aanklacht van de Democraten.......'

'VS demoniseert Russiagate critici als Jill Stein.....'

'De Russiagate samenzweringstheorie dient de machthebbers.........'
=========================================

En terzijde:
'Facebook gebruikte 'fake news' beschuldiging om de aandacht voor schandalen af te leiden'

'Trump (Republikeinen) wint de midterm verkiezingen, alsook de Democraten, het verschil voor mensen elders in de wereld, die onder VS terreur moeten leven, is nul komma nada.......'

'The Attack on ‘Fake News’ Is Really an Attack on Alternative Media'

'The Lie of the 21st Century: How Mainstream Media “Fake News” Led to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq'

'Mediaorgaan Sinclair dwingt 'TV ankers' propaganda op te lezen (Sinclair bedient rond de 70% van de VS bevolking van 'lokaal nieuws')'

'Ex-CIA agent legt uit hoe de VS schaduwregering en deep state werken, ofwel de machinaties achter de schermen......'

'New York Times: eerste Israëlische inval in Gazastrook sinds 2014 >> fake news!'

'Noord-Koreaans 'bedrog met nucleaire deal' is fake news o.a. gebracht door de New York Times'

''Fake News' misbruikt door dictaturen en de reguliere (massa-) media'

'Twitter weert waarheid: Paul Craig Roberts in de ban, Roberts >> de grote criticus van de illegale oorlogen die de VS voert'

Machthebbers en elite misbruiken media en fake news voor uitbreiding en bestendiging van macht.......

Oké mensen, niets nieuws, maar gezien het continu volhouden van leugens in de reguliere westerse media (en door het grootste deel van de politici), kan de waarheid niet vaak genoeg herhaald worden (als was het tegengif), inclusief het noemen van de bewijzen dat het om leugens gaat. Dat geldt bijvoorbeeld voor alle leugens over 'fake news' (nepnieuws), maar ook die over de illegale oorlogen van de VS tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië, Syrië, Iran en Venezuela (de laatste 2 een economische oorlog die deze landen op de knieën moeten krijgen voor de VS.....).......

Overigens zijn de reguliere westerse (massa-) media in handen van super welgestelden (plutocraten) en investeringsmaatschappijen, die daarmee die media al sturen, ofwel winst über alles! Die winst gaat op zeker ver voor de waarheid, waarbij het inhumane neoliberalisme ('fascisme light') ten koste van alles moet worden beschermd en gepropageerd....... Over manipulaties gesproken......

Kit Klarenberg is de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, eerder geplaatst op Sputnik, daarin beschrijft zij het boek van T.J. Coles met de volgende titel: 'Real Fake News: Techniques of Propaganda and Deception-based Mind Control'.

Coles gaat ook in op de geschiedenis van fake news, maar dan wel het 'fake news' dat machthebbers gebruiken om hun positie veilig te stellen...... Het eerst bekende gebruik van fake news was dat door de Babylonische heersers, die daarmee hun goddelijke aanwijzing probeerden te bewijzen (en dat lukte destijds wonderwel goed, later nam het christelijk geloof het over om de koning en koningin als door god gegeven functies neer te zetten, deze achterlijke gedachtekronkel werd ook in de bijbel opgenomen). Terwijl de adel aanvankelijk bestond uit de sterkste en wreedste boeren die de boel met veel geweld onder hun duim wisten te houden en het volk uitbuitten tot het erbij neerviel........ 

Trouwens over religies of geloven gesproken: als er één groot fake gebeuren is zijn het de religies wel, al gaat het dan in het westen wel over 'lang' vervlogen tijden, tegenwoordig gebruikt men zoals gezegd de media (en de politiek) als vehikel om 'fake news' (nepnieuws) te brengen....... De voorbeelden van het verkondigen van fake news zijn overweldigend zie wat dat betreft niet alleen het bericht hierna, maar ook de links die na dat artikel zijn opgenomen.

HOW ELITES USE MAINSTREAM MEDIA TO ‘MAINTAIN AND EXPAND THEIR POWER’

Tags: NOVEMBER 18, 2018 FRIENDS OF GREED 3 ELITISM, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, POLITICS, PROPAGANDA,SPUTNIK

(Sputnik) – For quite some time, debate about ‘fake news’ has reverberated clamorously in both mainstream and alternative discourse. One could easily conclude the issue was a pressingly new plague, restricted to certain corners of the web – but academic TJ Coles begs to differ. In fact, he tells Sputnik fake news has been ubiquitous for thousands of years.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment the term ‘fake news’ entered the Western political and media lexicon, but the election of Donald Trump as US President certainly turbocharged its usage. For the controversial leader and his supporters, the label can be automatically applied to any and all media reporting critical of him, while his opponents play much the same game when roles are reversed.

This tit-for-tat sparring inspired TJ, director of the Institute for Peace Research, to write a book on the subject — the fruit of his labours, Real Fake News: Techniques of Propaganda and Deception-based Mind Control, was published in September.

“All that talk made me think ‘hang on a minute, we’ve always had fake news’. It’s the nature of power — all power structures want to maintain and expand their power, so it’s therefore important to present information that benefits them, and keeps populations in a psychological and/or intellectual prison. The ‘fake news’ peddled by elite financial, commercial and political financial interests, duly regurgitated by major media organizations, eclipses any bogus story perpetuated by alleged ‘bots’ on Twitter, or whatever,” TJ says.

BABYLONIAN BEGINNINGS

In his work, TJ traces the birth of fake news all the way back to ancient Babylon, when rulers sought to perpetuate the notion they were descended from Gods and thus had a right to dominate and control the populace — history’s first recorded instance of the ‘divine right of kings’.

Similarly, Plato famously popularized the idea of the ‘noble lie’ — privileging untruths told for the benefit of elites and the population alike. These ideas very much endure in the modern day — TJ notes Wikileaks’ dump of the Clinton campaign’s internal emails amply demonstrates her team felt it wouldn’t be good, or necessary, for Hillary’s supporters to be aware of her close connections to Wall Street, so did their utmost to conceal the mephitic kinship.

“Elites the world over are acutely aware information is power, and actually quite open about their use and abuse of the news to shape public perceptions and preserve sociopolitical conditions benefitting them. For instance, the UK Ministry of Defence regularly publishes projections of how planners think the world will look in 10 — 20 years, and they routinely note the media is one of the key ways to maintain the current paradigm, and discuss the various ways information can be ‘weaponized’ against the public,” he says.

TJ suggests elites shape and control the public mind so effectively because they exploit fundamental facets of human nature. First, the well-established instinctive inclination to reflexively believe something reinforcing one’s existing beliefs, rather than assessing whether alternative facts or viewpoints have any value, or indeed considering whether what one believes might be wrong, or informed by confirmation bias.

This tendency is greatly exacerbated by the use of internet and social media algorithms that present a ‘personalized’ picture of the world to users, unfailingly presenting individuals with content they want to see, and tacitly suppressing information contrary to their existing opinions.

“Elites also know how easy it is to exploit guilt, which is why atrocity propaganda is so widespread today. Most sympathize with the victims of major atrocities, and naturally want to do something to help, so this aspect of human nature can be easily manipulated to justify aggressive foreign policy actions — ‘look at what we’re letting happen to poor defenceless people, we have a responsibility to protect them’ etcetera. It’s funny, when it comes to the economy, the powerful are quick to say people are naturally selfish, so it’s everyone for themselves, but when it comes to foreign policy, we should care about our fellow human beings and do something to help,” TJ says.

ABSENCE IS EVIDENCE

As the academic’s work makes clear, atrocity propaganda doesn’t even need to have any grounding in reality whatsoever. In the lead-up to the NATO-backed violent overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the mainstream media was awash with reports government forces fuelled by viagra were conducting mass rapes of civilians, and planning a borderline genocidal massacre of rebel forces — claims used to justify the imposition of a no-fly zone over the country, and NATO airstrikes.

The stories were subsequently found to be entirely without foundation — similarly, serious question marks hover over the veracity of numerous claimed chemical weapons attacks in Syria, which likewise have provided a pretext for Western attacks on the country.

“It’s especially easy to exploit guilt when you present bite-sized news reports about an atrocious event stripped of all context, and exclude the voices of people who are actually on the ground. Occasionally, contradictory voices do filter through the system, although largely by accident. For instance, the BBC made the mistake of inviting Peter Ford, former UK ambassador to Syria, on air to discuss chemical weapons attacks — he quickly demolished their propaganda. He hasn’t been invited back since,” TJ says.

Ford is surely but one of a great many talking heads to effectively be banned from appearing on the BBC for daring to state views and evidence contrary to ascendant elite narratives. However, the British state broadcaster’s blacklisting activities also extend to its own employees — in April 2018, the BBC admitted that for decades, job applicants and serving staff were subject to political vetting by MI5, in an effort to prevent “subversives” gaining employment with the Corporation.

Often, individuals were ostracized on extremely tenuous grounds. For instance, respected film director John Goldschmidt was blacklisted in the late 1960s, with two projects he was working on for the Beeb cancelled midway through production without warning or explanation — MI5 deemed him a potential subversive as he’d spent a few weeks in Czechoslovakia in his youth, as part of a student exchange program. Similarly, award-winning journalist Isabel Hilton was refused a job by BBC Scotland in 1976 — that she spoke Chinese and had been a member of Scottish China Association at Edinburgh University made MI5 extremely anxious.

Under the policy, popular children’s book author and playwright Michael Rosen was also outright sacked from the BBC in 1972 while a graduate trainee for a number of ‘transgressions’, including student activism at Oxford, and producing a film featuring clips of US soldiers being tested with LSD. The American Embassy in London complained about the project to both MI5 and the BBC directly, whereupon Rosen was shown the door.

The policy was wound down in the 1990s, and it’s unknown whether any comparable structures existed at other major news organizations — although City University research suggests dissenting voices remain rare in the British mainstream media. The 2016 study concluded UK journalists are overwhelmingly white, male, and elite-university educated — and are far more trusting of politicians, the government, police and military than the general population, which the study’s authors partly attributed to reporters’ “reliance on these institutions as sources of information”.

Such widespread faith in the establishment may account for why so many prominent reporters see no problem with maintaining close relationships with the intelligence services. The Guardian’s Luke Harding has frequently, openly and proudly advertised his warm bond with British spying agencies in articles and books — and equally frequently been condemned for uncritically running stories of questionable probity potentially provided to him by agency staff. In a September article he claimed Russian diplomats had held secret talks in London with associates of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in an attempt to assist in his escape from the UK. The covert action would’ve allegedly seen Assange smuggled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge under cover of Christmas Eve in a diplomatic vehicle and transported to Moscow.

The story was entirely based on the testimony of anonymous sources, the identity of which Harding didn’t even hint at in the piece. In response, Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, slammed the article, calling it a “quite extraordinary set of deliberate lies” and “entirely black propaganda” published by an “MI6 tool”.

“I was closely involved with Julian and with Fidel Narvaez of the Ecuadorean Embassy at the end of last year in discussing possible future destinations for Julian. It is not only the case Russia did not figure in those plans, it is a fact Julian directly ruled out the possibility as undesirable. The entire story is a complete and utter fabrication. It is very serious indeed when a newspaper like the Guardian prints a tissue of deliberate lies in order to spread fake news on behalf of the security services. I cannot find words eloquent enough to express the depth of my contempt for Harding and Katherine Viner, who have betrayed completely the values of journalism,” Murray wrote.

Similarly, in 2007 the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran published an analysis of 44 articles written by Daily Telegraph Defence Editor Con Couglin on Iran — including stories suggesting North Korea was helping Tehran prepare a nuclear weapons test, and the country was grooming Bin Laden’s successor. They found the pieces almost invariably were based on “unnamed or untraceable” sources in intelligence agencies or the UK Foreign Office and “published at sensitive and delicate times” when there’d been “relatively positive diplomatic moves” towards Iran, and contained ‘exclusive revelations’ about Iran combined with eye-catchingly controversial headlines, which were typically based on a single sentence in the wider article.

PRISON BREAK

Despite his bleak analysis, TJ does not view the elite monopoly on information as insurmountable, or invincible — there’s much individuals and groups can do to shatter the stranglehold.

“People should keep a keen eye on sources that analyse news reporting and misreporting, such as Glasgow University Media Group and MediaLens, which offer alternative information and tell you what media coverage is actively omitting from the real story. However, change must come from within too — people should divorce themselves from preconceptions, and question their beliefs wherever and whenever possible. When presented with information that doesn’t conform to our predispositions, we should ask ourselves whether it’s true, rather than reflexively dismissing it outright,” TJ says.

While having less trust in the media more generally is a must, the academic also warns against placing too much faith in alternative news outlets and social networks, despite them being valuable resources with a significant positive potential.

“Independent media is growing in size and strength, but its overall reach is still relatively tiny — while print circulation is obviously down, people still get the vast bulk of their information from mainstream outlets. Similarly, social media could’ve democratized the spread of information, but it hasn’t — and in fact any such potential has probably been neutered by the proliferation of ‘fact-checking’ resources, which are anything but unbiased and disinterested arbiters of truth,” TJ notes.

One-such ‘fact-checker’ is the Atlantic Council, a NATO-offshoot with a board of directors comprised of a ‘who’s who’ of contentious US political figures, including Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Robert Gates, Michael Hayden and David Petraeus, among others.

It partnered with Facebook in May to “independently monitor disinformation and other vulnerabilities” and combat the spread of fake news on the platform. To date, the collaboration has resulted in untold hundreds of pages and personal accounts being shut down — rather than being promulgators of propaganda though, the overwhelming bulk of the banished were alternative news sources, political organizations and individuals, highlighting issues and events the mainstream media downplays or ignores, such as US interventionism, drug legalization and police brutality.

Moreover, that elites exploit social media’s information-sharing capabilities to suit their own objectives is well-established.

“The US State Department has used major social networks to recruit revolutionaries on several occasions, most notably during the ‘Arab Spring’, connecting ‘moderate rebels’ — actually violent jihadist lunatics — in select countries. Washington wanted Assad, Gaddafi and Mubarak gone, because they weren’t following orders — but there were no Twitter or Facebook ‘revolutions’ in the Gulf states, because the American empire wanted their rulers to remain in place. In Cuba, the CIA even went as far as creating a social network for the same purpose,” TJ concludes.

The views and opinions expressed by the contributors do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik

This report prepared by Kit Klarenberg for Sputnik

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'CNN, de grote brenger van 'fake news!!!''

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