Edward Curtin

If you like my work, which I offer freely, please consider buying my book, Seeking Truth in A Country of Lies.

While the so-called liberal and conservative media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media.

A woman I know and who knows my sociological analyses of propaganda contacted me to tell me there was an excellent article about the war in Ukraine at The Intercept, an on-line publication funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar I have long considered a leading example of much deceptive reporting wherein truth is mixed with falsehoods to convey a “liberal” narrative that fundamentally supports the ruling elites while seeming to oppose them. This, of course, is nothing new since it’s been the modus operandi of all corporate media in their own ideological and disingenuous ways, such as The New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Fox News, CNN, NBC, etc. for a very long time.

Nevertheless, out of respect for her judgment and knowing how deeply she feels for all suffering people, I read the article. Written by Alice Speri, its title sounded ambiguous – “The Left in Europe Confronts NATO’s Resurgence After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” – until I saw the subtitle that begins with these words: “Russia’s brutal invasion complicates…” But I read on. By the fourth paragraph, it became clear where this article was going. Speri writes that “In Ukraine, by contrast [with Iraq], it was Russia that had staged an illegal, unprovoked invasion, and U.S.-led support to Ukraine was understood by many as crucial to stave off even worse atrocities than those the Russian military had already committed.” [my emphasis]

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Linh Dinh

Israelis gathered on a hilltop outside the town of Sderot to watch the
bombardment of Gaza. (Credit: The New York Times, Burton/Getty)

My last piece only got five likes after 41 hours. Perhaps because it was a bit disjointed, or maybe Armando’s preoccupation with dick size turned people off. I did rush to get it out. Though impatience is usually a flaw, it’s also a spur to get things done. In any case, I’ll definitely ramble in this article. I have a few odds and ends to address before I get on that plane for Saigon, with layovers in Joburg and Dubai.

Speaking of “likes,” YouTube disabled its “dislikes” during Covid, since way too many people disliked the official narrative, whenever it showed up. Though we no longer know the ratio of “likes” to “dislikes” with each video, the “dislike” button is still there. YouTube has long been a joke.

Like FaceBook and Twitter, YouTube openly censors. Its CEO, Susan Wojcicki, is Jewish, as is Mark Zuckerberg of FaceBook, of course. Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, is an Indian who only arrived in the US in 2005. That’s one heck of a rise.

Yesterday, I found out all episodes of On Contact, a Russia Today show hosted by Chris Hedges, have been scrubbed from YouTube. Speaking about the American underclass, I was featured on March 12th, 2017. Hedges:

💬 “I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished. In totalitarian systems you exist, then you don’t. I suppose this was done in the name of censoring Russian propaganda, although I have a hard time seeing how a detailed discussion of “Ulysses” or the biographies of Susan Sontag and J. Robert Oppenheimer had any connection in the eyes of the most obtuse censors in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Putin. Indeed, there is not one show that dealt with Russia.”

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Mark Crispin Miller

University of Nevada 2022: Left-wing students demand the reimposi-
tion of the university's micromanagement of their personal behaviour.

While all eyes have been on Canada, there also have been massive Freedom Convoys, and joyous multitudes applauding them, and turning out to help them, all around the world. We’re seeing it (despite the usual blackout by the quisling media) in Australia, where 1.4 million vehicles, and between one and two million protestors, have taken over Canberra, Australia’s capital, the people calling for an end to all restrictions, and the ouster of that once-free country’s quisling politicians. There, too, the biggest protest in that nation’s history has been just as peaceful as it is diverse—a wondrous mass display of solidarity, to re-assert our fundamental human rights, spontaneously led by many thousands of real workers.

So where’s “the left”? Australia’s “left” is on the other side—just like “the left” in the United States and Canada, there being no diversity among them, as they’re all one in their boiling hatred of that mass resistance, and in fanatical support of the state/corporate juggernaut coercing universal “vaccination.” So, on this unprecedented global confrontation, there is no disagreement whatsoever between US “leftists” like Noam Chomsky (the first public figure to propose detention of the “unvaccinated), Amy Goodman, Michael Moore (“Get off my fucking bridge!”), Chris Hedges, Thom Hartmann, the Trotskyites at WSWS (World Socialist Web Site), Sen. Bernie Sanders and Stalinist noisemaker Bob Avakian, the liberals at MoveOn, and many of the “woke” contributors to Truthout, Nation of Change, Truthdig, Counterpunch, Portside, the Progressive and The Nation. Nor, on this working-class resistance to the bio-fascist order, is the fearfully like-minded US “left” in any disagreement with its counterpart in Canada, typified by Naomi Klein (who deems the Great Reset a “boring” topic), Henry A. Giroux (who says the truckers are attempting to destroy democracy), “woke” neo-Nazi Justin Trudeau (whose government trained Ukraine’s feral National Guard), and the sanctimonious rabble of Canada’s “left” parties (and let’s throw Neil Young in there, too); so that “the left” throughout all North America is absolutely unified against the workers.

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“I am defenceless and am counting on you and others of good character to save my life.”

Below is the full text of Assange’s letter to Gordon Dimmack:

I have been isolated from all ability to prepare to defend myself, no laptop, no internet, no computer, no library so far, but even if I do get access it will be just for half an hour with everyone else once a week. Just two visits a month and it takes weeks to get someone on the call list and the Catch-22 in getting their details to be security screened. Then all calls except lawyer are recorded and are a maximum 10 minutes and in a limited 30 minutes each day in which all prisoners compete for the phone. And credit? Just a few pounds a week and no one can call in.

A superpower that has been preparing for 9 years with hundreds of people and untold millions spent on the case. I am defenceless and am counting on you and others of good character to save my life. [Press 'More' to continue reading Julian's letter.]

(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(Twitter)(Twitter)(Resources)(Stella Moris)(CrowdJustice)

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

Photo shows Gazans mourning their lost ones. The Israeli regime
has been engaged in brutal pounding of the besieged Gaza Strip
since July 8, 2014. (Photo credit: PressTV)

What is wrong with Israelis?

Every time Israel embarks on a new round of wholesale slaughter in Gaza, polls show that more than 90% of Israelis support the butchery.

For Israelis, mass-murdering children is a spectator sport. When the IDF starts dropping cluster bombs, white phosphorous, DIME munitions and other horrendous weapons on Gaza, crowds of Israelis pack the hilltops to barbecue meat, drink alcohol and cheer as they watch Palestinian children being blown to bits.

Every day in Israel’s major cities, mobs of Israelis gather to hunt down and brutalize Arab children and teenagers. Police stand by as they beat their victims into unconsciousness. According to Israeli blogger Elizabeth Tsurkov, the mobs’ favorite chant is: “Tomorrow there’s no school in Gaza, they don’t have any children left.”

Israelis proudly tweet their desire to murder children: “Kill Arab children so there won’t be a next generation,” “Stinking Arabs may you die, amen,” and “Arabs may you be paralyzed and die with great suffering” are some representative tweets exposed by Israeli journalist David Sheen.

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Minister Ariel Sharon

Ariel Sharon embodied the pure, unmitigated evil of Zionism. He was a war criminal, a terrorist, a mass murderer, a torturer, a rapist. The French term “genocidaire” also applies.

But Sharon did have one redeeming quality: He occasionally told the awful truth about himself and his country. During the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sharon vented his real feelings in public. In a Hebrew-language interview with Israeli writer Amos Oz, Sharon said:

“Even today I volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug out from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up a few synagogues, I don’t care. And I don’t mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal… What your kind doesn't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.”

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Chris Hedges

This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion into our lives and obliteration of privacy are now facts. And the challenge to us—one of the final ones, I suspect—is to rise up in outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free expression. If we do not do so we will see ourselves become a nation of captives.

The public debates about the government’s measures to prevent terrorism, the character assassination of Edward Snowden and his supporters, the assurances by the powerful that no one is abusing the massive collection and storage of our electronic communications miss the point. Any state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry, any state that has the ability to snuff out factual public debate through control of information, any state that has the tools to instantly shut down all dissent is totalitarian. Our corporate state may not use this power today. But it will use it if it feels threatened by a population made restive by its corruption, ineptitude and mounting repression. The moment a popular movement arises—and one will arise—that truly confronts our corporate masters, our venal system of total surveillance will be thrust into overdrive.

The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.

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Kim Petersen

Common decency demands that when someone slanders you in a public forum that you should have the right to respond in that same forum.

TRNN is an independent news network that provides thought-provoking news, analysis, and commentary. TRNN is much more than news headlines. For the greatest part, news events are reported in context and with relevant background information. This distinguishes TRNN very much from state and corporate media news. In addition, TRNN senior editor Paul Jay is very adept at playing devil’s advocate, laying out the corporate media/government line whereby guest analysts can probe and expose propaganda and disinformation.

Since criticizing the corporate media is very much like flogging a dead horse and because getting the real news out there is so important, I tend to focus my media criticism on TRNN. For instance, I criticized TRNN for parroting a corporate-state media message about North Korea (without providing relevant background information).[1] Its US electoral coverage in 2008 and 2012 was fundamentally anti-democratic because of its inordinate focus on the evilist parties rather than alloting equal coverage to all parties (albeit third party coverage did increase from 2008 to 2012).

Recently TRNN has been presenting a series called “Reality Asserts Itself.” Some fine insight has been provided by Chris Hedges, Vijay Prashad, and Max Blumenthal. However, in a recent installment of the show, Blumenthal engaged in, what can best be described as, character assassination. Blumenthal’s target was the jazz musician/author Gilad Atzmon.[2]

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Chris Hedges

The appointment of Suzanne Nossel, a former State Department official and longtime government apparatchik, as executive director of PEN American Center is part of a campaign to turn U.S. human rights organizations into propagandists for pre-emptive war and apologists for empire. Nossel’s appointment led me to resign from PEN as well as withdraw from speaking at the PEN World Voices Festival in May. But Nossel is only symptomatic of the widespread hijacking of human rights organizations to demonize those—especially Muslims—branded by the state as the enemy, in order to cloak pre-emptive war and empire with a fictional virtue and to effectively divert attention from our own mounting human rights abuses, including torture, warrantless wiretapping and monitoring, the denial of due process and extrajudicial assassinations.

Nossel, who was deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs under Hillary Clinton in a State Department that was little more than a subsidiary of the Pentagon, is part of the new wave of “humanitarian interventionists,” such as Samantha Power, Michael Ignatieff and Susan Rice, who naively see in the U.S. military a vehicle to create a better world. They know little of the reality of war or the actual inner workings of empire. They harbor a childish belief in the innate goodness and ultimate beneficence of American power. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, the horrendous suffering and violent terror inflicted in the name of their utopian goals in Iraq and Afghanistan, barely register on their moral calculus. This makes them at once oblivious and dangerous. “Innocence is a kind of insanity,” Graham Greene wrote in his novel “The Quiet American,” and those who destroy to build are “impregnably armored by...good intentions and...ignorance.”

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Chris Hedges

It is only the outcasts and the rebels who keep truth and intellectual inquiry alive.

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false.

The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

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