Category Archives: Media

What Have We Learned? By Visayas Outpost

Posted on March 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

In an increasingly complex world, adopt the contrarian strategy. Simplify! From Visayas Outpost at theburningplatform.com:

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil

to one who is striking at the root.”

-Henry David Thoreau

That is an aerial view of the chemical fire in Palestine, Ohio, looking for all the world like a bruise on the Earth.  As the story is still unfolding, and seems to be competing with “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” as the distraction du-jour, let me doff my hat to the man who surely ignited all this media firestorm:  Mr. Seymour Hersh.  By now you have undoubtedly read his work on the Nordstream pipeline sabotage, a story which itself still has more pages to be turned.

Nordstream should not come as a shock to anyone paying attention.  Between Cognitive Warfare and the downright evil machinations of the Borg, we need distraction events to round out the narrative intake.  It keeps us from noticing the real stories, like the US attacking its own NATO allies, or Pfizer producing vaccines they knew had a 44% miscarriage rate in women.  You know, the actual stories that you mustn’t focus on lest civilization itself be undermined.  So balloons, funny clouds, earthquakes, anything will do.  Literally just 20 minutes ago Mrs. Outpost sent me a link about a fireball streaking through the Texas sky.  Yes, Facebook will be all abuzz, so congratulations to the ever-vigilant netizens who like to poke this giant beehive.  Take a lunch break, take a deep breath.  Enjoy a smoke.

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Nord Stream Attack – ‘Officials’ Throw More Chaff To Hide The Real Perpetrators, by Moon of Alabama

Posted on March 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government hasn’t told the truth about the Ukraine-Russia war since before it began. Why would they start now? From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:

Right at the same moment the New York Times publishes a shoddy ‘officials say’ story about alleged intelligence about the Nord Stream terror attack the Germany weekly Die Zeit, which has strong U.S. secret services ties, comes up with an equally unbelievable tale of a ‘Ukrainian owned’ sailing boat playing the major role in the attack:

Nord-Stream-Ermittlungen: Spuren führen in die Ukraine
Ermittler haben das Boot identifiziert, von dem aus die Anschläge auf Nord Stream ausgeführt wurden. Offenbar wurde es von einer Firma gemietet, die Ukrainern gehört.

My translations:

Nord Stream investigation: Traces lead to Ukraine
Investigators have identified the boat from which the attacks on Nord Stream were carried out. Apparently, it was rented by a company owned by Ukrainians.

No, it is not the USS Kearsarge, the U.S. amphibious assault ship which ‘trained’ ‘mine removals’ near Bornholm island next to the pipelines just days before they blew up,  which the ‘investigators’ identified.

AZ @AZmilitary1 – 13:52 UTC · Sep 27, 2022

An expeditionary detachment of US Navy ships led by the universal amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge days ago was in the Baltic Sea
It was 30 km from the site of the alleged sabotage on the Nord Stream-1 gas pipeline and 50 km from the threads of Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline


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The new claim is that some rather small yacht, which would not even be able to carry the necessary equipment to perform such a deed, was the main instrument in this:

Following joint research by [German main public TV news unit] (ARD’s capital city studio), the ARD political magazine Kontraste, [German public TV] SWR and DIE ZEIT, it was possible to reconstruct to a large extent in the course of the investigation how and when the explosive attack was prepared. According to this, traces lead in the direction of Ukraine. However, investigators have so far found no evidence of who ordered the destruction.
…

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Explaining the Unexplainable, by Karen Kwiatkowski

Posted on March 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Who are you going to believe, the U.S. government or one of the most revered journalists in America, a man with a decades-long record of breaking big stories the U.S. government didn’t want broken? If you’re having trouble with that question you’re on the wrong website. From Karen Kwiatkowski at lewrockwell.com:

The US Government and its political apologists have repeatedly called the Seymour Hersh expose of what really happened, the who, how, and why of Nordstream 1 and 2 fantasy, fiction and completely false.  All of a sudden, “US government investigators” have identified a vessel from which the Nord Stream sabotage was committed and …wait for it…. traces to a company owned by Ukrainians, according to new reports in Die Zeit and the New York Times, and well, everywhere!

Who’d a’ thunk it?

The pipeline sabotage was an act of war by the United States, as explained and documented a few weeks ago by Seymour Hersh with his extensive range of deep state sources. A major question remains: Was this an unlawful US Executive Act of War against Russia, against Germany, or horrifyingly, both? It is unlikely that German intelligence has not known the basic facts of the pipeline attacks for many months, but until Hersh’s reporting the German Chancellor and his party could simply remain silent, and they did.

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Posted in Crime, Geopolitics, Governments, Horseshit, Media, Uncategorized, War

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As Bakhmut Falls, US May Turn From Ukraine, Starting With Pipeline Story, by Joe Lauria

Posted on March 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

If the U.S. can blame Ukraine for the Nordstream pipelines sabotage, it may be able to start backing away from Ukraine. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:

If the Donbass city of Bakhmut falls to the Russians the U.S. may need to save face in order to reverse course in Ukraine, writes Joe Lauria.

On its face, The New York Times article yesterday, “Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say,” appears intended to exonerate both the U.S. and Ukrainian governments from any involvement in the destruction last September of the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany.  

The thrust of the Times article is that Ukrainians unaffiliated with the Kiev government were the ones who did it, according to the newspapers often cited, unnamed “U.S. officials.” 

But a closer examination of the piece reveals layers of nuance that do not dismiss that the Ukrainian government may have had something to do with the sabotage after all. 

The story quotes anonymous European officials who say a state had to be involved in the sophisticated underwater operation.  The Times goes out of it way to say more than once that that state was not the United States.  And while the second paragraph of the story says categorically that the state is not Ukraine either, the article then leaves the door open to possible Ukrainian government involvement:

“U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services. [Emphasis mine.]

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Media, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

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Secret Surveillance Video Dismantles January 6 Narrative, by Julie Kelly

Posted on March 8, 2023 | 1 comment

This is a good summary of the surveillance video that’s been released so far, and it takes a lot less time to read than watching the video would take. From Julie Kelly at amgreatness.com:

Clips aired during Tucker Carlson’s show on Monday night demonstrate how the January 6 select committee doctored surveillance video.

ox News host Tucker Carlson aired the first set of previously-unseen surveillance video captured by Capitol police security cameras on January 6, 2021 that undermines several aspects of the reigning narrative about what happened that day.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last month gave Carlson’s team “unfettered” access to 41,000 hours of footage the government kept hidden from the American public and individuals charged in the Justice Department’s unprecedented and ongoing investigation into the events of January 6. Capitol Police and the Justice Department designated the recordings as “highly sensitive” material in March 2021; the trove remains under tight protective orders and defendants must agree to strict rules before gaining access to clips entered as evidence against them.

Capitol Police turned over to the FBI roughly 14,000 hours of video covering the hours of noon and 8:00 p.m. on January 6 but the full 24-hour reel has been in the hands of House Democrats for two years—reportedly the footage that Carlson’s team was authorized to view.

Carlson exposed falsehoods that bolster key animating aspects of January 6 including the movements of Jacob Chansley; the activity of still-uncharged agitator Ray Epps; the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick; alleged “reconnaissance tours” conducted by House Republicans the day before; the “escape” of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.); and the overall deceptiveness of the January 6 Select Committee. “Taken as a whole, the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection,” Carlson explained. “In fact, it demolishes that claim. And that’s exactly why the Democratic Party and its allies in the media prevented you from seeing it.”

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My Fifty Years With Daniel Ellsberg, by Seymour Hersh

Posted on March 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

A tribute to a man who was willing to go to jail to stop the Vietnam War, from Seymour Hersh at seymourhersh.substack.com:

The man who changed America

Daniel Ellsberg at a press conference in New York City, 1972.

I think it best that I begin with the end. On March 1, I and dozens of Dan’s friends and fellow activists received a two-page notice that he had been diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer and was refusing chemotherapy because the prognosis, even with chemo, was dire. He will be ninety-two in April.

Last November, over a Thanksgiving holiday spent with family in Berkeley, I drove a few miles to visit Dan at the home in neighboring Kensington he has shared for decades with his wife Patricia. My intent was to yack with him for a few hours about our mutual obsession, Vietnam. More than fifty years later, he was still pondering the war as a whole, and I was still trying to understand the My Lai massacre. I arrived at 10 am and we spoke without a break—no water, no coffee, no cookies—until my wife came to fetch me, and to say hello and visit with Dan and Patricia. She left, and I stayed a few more minutes with Dan, who wanted to show me his library of documents that could have gotten him a long prison term. Sometime around 6 pm—it was getting dark—Dan walked me to my car, and we continued to chat about the war and what he knew—oh, the things he knew—until I said I had to go and started the car. He then said, as he always did, “You know I love you, Sy.”

So this is a story about a tutelage that began in the summer of 1972, when Dan and I first connected. I have no memory of who called whom, but I was then at the New York Times and Dan had some inside information on White House horrors he wanted me to chase down—stuff that had not been in the Pentagon Papers. 

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Posted in Government, History, Media, Morality, War

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PATRICK LAWRENCE: What Dan Ellsberg Means

Posted on March 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

Daniel Ellberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, is dying. From Patrick Lawrence at consortiumnews.com:

The term “Fourth Estate” had taken on the dust of a neglected antique before the release of the Pentagon Papers. Afterwards it seemed possible to think again of the press as the independent pole of power required by a working democracy. 

Dan Ellsberg at a press conference in New York City, 1972. (Bernard Gotfryd, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

I have never met Daniel Ellsberg. A mutual friend, Rob Johnson, the executive director of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, in New York, proposed to introduce us several times but the occasion never presented itself. It does not matter. I know Dan Ellsberg as one knows someone by way of the work he or she has done, and what that work has meant in one’s life.

Another friend, a dear one, wrote a note from Gadsden, Alabama, last Thursday with the subject line, “Ellsberg dying.” This was thoughtful, as this friend unfailingly is, because Twitter has censored my account and I cannot read anything on it unless someone sends an item I am able to open. Ellsberg broke the news first to friends and supporters, among them ConsortiumNews, and then decided to share it on his Twitter account after someone had leaked it. “I’m sorry to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six months to live. Of course, they emphasize that everyone’s case is individual; it might be more, or less.” 

[Related: Daniel Ellsberg’s Not Yet Goodbye]

In the letter, Ellsberg recounts his experiences during and since the Pentagon Papers period — the antiwar work, the work against nuclear weapons:

“When I coped the Pentagon papers in 1969, I had every reason to think I would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would have gladly accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War, unlikely as that seemed (and was). Yet in the end, that action — in ways I could not have foreseen, due to Nixon’s illegal responses — did have an impact on shortening the war.”

And, addressing all of us forthrightly:

“It is long past time—but not too late—for the world’s publics at last to challenge and resist the willed moral blindness of their past and current leaders. I will, as long as I am able, to help in these efforts….”

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How Could Western Intelligence Have Got It Wrong, Again? They Didn’t. They Had Other Purposes, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on March 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

The intelligence agencies no longer provide intelligence, they supply “narrative support.” From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The West now faces the task of de-fusing the landmine of their own electorate’s conviction of a Ukraine ‘win’, and of Russian humiliation.

Larry Johnson, an ex-CIA analyst, writes “I no longer hold clearances and have not had access to the classified intelligence assessments. However, I have heard that the finished intelligence being supplied to U.S. policymakers continues to declare that Russia is on the ropes – and their economy is crumbling. Also, analysts insist that the Ukrainians are beating the Russians”.

Johnson responds that – lacking valid human sources – “western agencies are almost wholly dependent today on ‘liaison reporting’” (i.e., from ‘friendly’ foreign intelligence services), without doing ‘due diligence’ by cross-checking discrepancies with other reporting.

In practice, this largely means western reporting simply replicates Kiev’s PR line. But there does occur a huge problem when marrying Kiev’s output (as Johnson says) to UK reports – for ‘corroboration’.

The reality is UK reporting itself is also based on what Ukraine is saying. This is known as false collateral – i.e., when that which is used for corroboration and validation actually derives from the same single source. It becomes – deliberately – a propaganda multiplier.

In plain words however, all these points are ‘red herrings’. Bluntly, so-called western ‘Intelligence’ is no longer the sincere attempt to understand a complex reality, but rather, it has become the tool to falsify a nuanced reality in order to attempt to manipulate the Russian psyche towards a collective defeatism (in respect not just to the Ukraine, but to the idea that Russia should remain as a sovereign whole).

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Intelligence, Media, Politics, Propaganda

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Chris Hedges: Lynching the Jan. 6 Deplorables

Posted on March 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges is a rare liberal who realizes principles transcend political affiliation. From Hedges at consortiumnews.com:

The criminal investigation undertaken by the federal government against hundreds of participants in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol is polarizing the country and shredding civil liberties.

Executing the Law — by Mr. Fish

There is little that unites me with those who occupied the Capitol building on Jan. 6. Their vision for America, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, blind support for Trump and embrace of reactionary fact-free conspiracy theories leaves a very wide chasm between their beliefs and mine.

But that does not mean I support the judicial lynching against many of those who participated in the Jan. 6 events, a lynching that is mandating years in pretrial detention and prison for misdemeanors. Once rights become privileges, none of us are safe. 

The U.S. legal system has a very sordid history. It was used to enforce segregation and legitimize the reign of terror against Black people. It was the hammer that broke the back of militant union movements. It persecuted radicals and reformers in the name of anti-communism.

After 9/11, it relentlessly went after Muslim leaders and activists with Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). SAMs, established by the Clinton administration, originally only applied to people who ordered murders from prison or were convicted of mass murder, but are now used to isolate all manner of detainees before and during trial.

They severely restrict a prisoner’s communication with the outside world; prohibiting calls, letters and visits with anyone except attorneys and sharply limit contact with family members. The solitary confinement like conditions associated with SAMs undermine any meaningful right to a fair trial according to analysis by groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights and can amount to torture according to the United Nations.

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A Contagion of Cowardice, by Jeffrey A. Tucker

Posted on March 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Not very many people stepped up to the plate to challenge Covid totalitarianism. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at brownstone.org:

contagion of cowardice

Jordan Peterson’s interview with Jay Bhattacharya is one of the more insightful conversations to come out of the post-pandemic period. It’s fascinating to see Peterson coming to terms with the sheer scale of the lockdown during which time he was rather sick. We could have used his voice then and I have no doubt that he would have been fantastic. 

Fortunately for the whole world, we did have Jay. It’s not just his credentials or his position at Stanford University. It’s his erudition that gave him the reach to make sense of our times. In this interview, Jay explains the unfolding of events in ways I personally found compelling. 

Summing up his message, the response upended a century of public-health practice based on computer modeling that was not informed by any medical knowledge or public-health experience. That modeling came to be fused with a military-style response that waged a war on a pathogen with no exit strategy. Powerful industrial interests saw their chance to realize every hidden agenda.

That was further complicated by severe political division. Even though the lockdowns began under the Trump administration, opposing them mysteriously came to be seen as “right-wing” even though the pandemic policies violated every civil liberty, massively harmed the poor, divided the classes, and trampled essential freedoms, which one might suppose were concerns of the left, once upon a time.

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