Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Disinformation Wars


Disinformation Wars

by C. A. Matthews  

“The first casualty when war comes is truth.” —Senator Hiram W. Johnson

From Caitlin Johnstone’s Newsletter:

AP's anonymously sourced report which said "A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people" went viral because of the massive implications of direct hot warfare erupting between Russia and the NATO alliance. AP subsequently retracted its story as the mainstream political/media class came to accept that it was in fact a Ukrainian missile that had struck Poland.
AP's firing of reporter James LaPorta looks at this time to be the end point of any accountability for the circulation of this extremely dangerous falsehood. AP spokesperson Lauren Easton says no disciplinary action will be taken against the editors who waved the bogus story through, and to this day the public has been kept in the dark about the identity of the US official who fed such extremely egregious misinformation/disinformation to the public through the mainstream press. —AP Editor Says She “Can’t Imagine” a US Intelligence Official Being Wrong
I find it odd that any grown, normally-functioning person couldn’t possibly imagine being lied to by a US intelligence official, but that is what this recent news story suggests. The mainstream media (the AP or Associated Press, no less) is acting stupid to please the American intelligence community. Simply put, the US government wants to keep us in the dark about which one of their propagandists fed false information about these missiles to a now unemployed reporter, James LaPorta. I think in this case the intelligence official(s) knew the lie would be exposed sooner or later, but they felt confident that the damage they wished to inflict upon the reputation of Russia would be enough to justify their actions.

According to journalist Ben Norton at Multipolarista:

By publishing the fake news, the AP set off an international scandal that could have triggered a direct US military attack on Russia.
 
To try to save face, the AP fired LaPorta on November 21... This controversy shows how cozy mainstream corporate media outlets are with US intelligence agencies, and how anonymous spies feed them claims that are often false, but that serve Washington’s foreign-policy interests. —Media Regurgitates Fake News From US Spies Risking World War III with Russia
“All is fair in love and war.”—a proverb attributed to John Lyly's Euphues
Is it? When has “lying in war” ever come close to the equivalent of “fairness”? To propagandists, lying is just another tool in their repertoire they use to control the public’s initial reaction and later to build devotion to a cause. In this case, the cause is the continued support of the NATO-led proxy war in Ukraine and the continuing monetary and military aid the US is sending without hesitation to that part of the world. 
 
If any evidence would surface to demonstrate that the billions of dollars of weaponry the US is giving away isn’t being used for the purpose it was sent for, then it would be more than embarrassing—it could prove fatal to the cause. (For more about the 70% of US-provided weapons gone missing in Ukraine, check out Lab Rats of the World Unite! and the archived CBS 60 Minutes documentary.)
 

If the actual facts were made crystal clear, people might see through the trickery practiced by the US "Ministry of Truth" and demand an end to this conflict altogether. But never fear, the military industrial complex and fossil fuel corporations would never stand for that. Neither would their politician-puppets who enjoy all the money that come from these special interest groups. 
 
The propaganda-spewing US mainstream media stays in step as they cry in horror about the dangers of free speech. Award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald states:
Online censorship has become one of the most potent propaganda weapons they possess, and there is no way they will allow anyone to dilute it even mildly without attempting to destroy them.  (...)

In unison, these media outlets decreed that not only would greater free speech on Twitter usher in the usual parade of horribles they trot out when demanding censorship — disinformation, hate speech, attacks on the “marginalized,” etc. etc. — but this time they severely escalated their rhetorical hysteria by claiming that Musk would literally cause mass murder by permitting a broader range of political opinion to be aired. —The Media's Deranged Hysteria Over Elon Musk's Restoration of Free Speech


Journalist Matt Taibbi shares another instance of how the US intelligence community is working to muddy the waters of public opinion:
Whether or not you thought the actual content of the story was important, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop affair was a crossroads moment in the history of modern censorship. YouTube played a major role in this event.
This was a case in which major news media — including CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and countless other outlets — actively embraced disinformation, in the form of a group letter from 50-plus former intelligence officials saying the laptop story (they referred to a “laptop op”) had the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” All the aforementioned news agencies fell for this, as did Twitter (which blocked access to it, in what then-CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted was a “total mistake”) and Facebook (whose increasingly adrift founder Mark Zuckerberg later told Joe Rogan the story was throttled down at the suggestion of the FBI).
YouTube also pushed this disinformation campaign. It still does. Despite the total absence of evidence ever existing that the laptop was either fake or part of a Russian “information operation” and a growing pile of evidence that the laptop is real, YouTube continues to leave unmolested on its site countless videos promoting the conspiracy theory — that’s what it is, let’s be clear — that the laptop story is both bunk and an intelligence op. —YouTubeCensors Reality, Boosts Disinformation: Part 1
Once again, a US intelligence agency—in this case it appears to be the FBI—has jumped into the news cycle and tried to deflect attention away from what is actually happening. Not only did they try to cast doubts on the authenticity of the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop, they tried to place the blame for the laptop’s potentially embarrassing and possibly criminal contents on another source. 
 

Hunter Biden’s laptop contents were a “Russian op” like the Ukrainian missiles shot into Poland were “Russian missiles.” No thoughts are given to the facts of how the Ukrainians are still using Soviet-era rocket launchers and multiple experts in ballistics can prove the missiles were launched by Ukraine. No thoughts as to how much of the content of the laptop in question has already been verified. (Read more about how Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2014 here.) Whatever the US intelligence community wants the public to think, that's the story mainstream media is going with.
 
There seems to be sort of a pattern to these disinformation attempts... Who are we supposed to trust? Who are we supposed to distrust? What actual evidence have we been given not to trust these people other than what the US intelligence services have told us?
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” —John 8:32
Before we get too down on journalists in general, here's more sobering news that reporting the truth can prove dangerous to one’s health and career:
Sweden’s parliament adopted a major espionage law expansion that will permit the country’s police to investigate journalists, publishers, and whistleblowers if they reveal secret information that “may damage Sweden’s relationship with another state or an international organization.”
Journalists, publishers, or whistleblowers found guilty of revealing such “damaging” information could be sentenced to up to four years in prison under the new law.
The expansion was aimed at ensuring the Swedish government has even more control over what the public learns about the country’s cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and the United Nations. —Sweden Expands Espionage Law, Endangering Freedom of Journalists and Whistleblowers
What comes to mind after reading this bit of news is that Sweden has cooperated with the United States and the United Kingdom to keep Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange imprisoned, first in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and currently in Belmarsh Prison. Western governments—particularly NATO members—seem to be big on perpetuating their propaganda and covering up the truth from the public. They're more than willing to cooperate with each other if the lie proves to be of benefit to them, too.

Here’s another example of the hypocrisy of this situation:

US State Department spokesman and CIA veteran Ned Price tweeted disapprovingly about the Kyrgyz Republic's decision to deport investigative journalist Bolot Temirov to Russia, where press freedom groups are concerned that the Russian citizen could face conscription to fight in Ukraine. (...)
This is after all the same government that is working to extradite an Australian journalist from the United Kingdom with the goal of imprisoning him for up to 175 years for exposing US war crimes. Price says "Journalists should never be punished for doing their job," but that is precisely what the government he represents is doing to Julian Assange, who has already spent three and a half years in Belmarsh Prison awaiting US extradition shenanigans. This is in top of the seven years he spent fighting extradition from the Ecuadorian embassy in London under what a UN panel ruled was arbitrary detention. —US Officials Concern Troll About World Press Freedoms While Assaulting Them
Whistleblowers are forever being painted as the enemy, but never those who openly lie and obfuscate the truth via the implementation of propaganda. Our so-called freedom relies on government officials lying to us and locking up truth-tellers, or so it seems.
“A fool and his money are soon parted.” —Proverbs 21:20
Once again, US propagandists and mainstream media pundits are good at confusing the public about what’s really going on in the world and how much tax payer money we’re throwing at it. We’re informed that economically distressed Americans shouldn’t be too concerned about how the US is sending billions of dollars in military aid to country with a dubious history to fight our proxy war against Russia. There's never enough money for social programs such as universal health care and student loan debt relief, but there's always enough to buy and ship instruments of death: 
The White House on Tuesday asked Congress to approve $37.7 billion in new aid for Ukraine, which would bring total US spending on the war to about $105 billion.
According toThe Hill, the request includes $21.7 billion in military aid for Ukraine and to replenish US military stockpiles that have been sent to the country.
A total of $14.5 billion in budgetary aid to directly fund the Ukrainian government is included, as Kyiv is expecting the US and its allies to pay its budget deficit for 2023. —White House Asks Congress for $37.7 Billion in New Ukraine Aid
Over one-hundred billion dollars sent to Ukraine and who knows how much more will be forthcoming. And US intelligence officials will continue to lie to us about what’s really going on there.
 
When will Americans realize that wars are not being run by generals? They’re being run by propagandists. Yeah, fools and their money are soon parted. Disinformation from our own government is turning us all into penniless fools. What are we going to do about it?
 

Related Articles:
 
US Officials Concern Troll About World Press Freedoms While Assaulting Them  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/us-officials-concern-troll-about
 
AP Editor Said She "Can't Imagine" a US Intelligence Official Being Wrong  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/ap-editor-said-she-cant-imagine-a
 
 
The Media's Deranged Hysteria Over Elon Musk's Restoration of Free Speech (video) https://rumble.com/v1xbl8g-the-medias-deranged-hysteria-over-elon-musks-restoration-of-free-speech.html
 
Sweden Expands Espionage Law Endangering Freedom of Journalists and Whistleblowers https://scheerpost.com/2022/11/21/sweden-expands-espionage-law-endangering-freedom-of-journalists-and-whistleblowers/
 
Why is the AP Still Protecting the Source Behind Its False Russia Bombed Poland Story? https://scheerpost.com/2022/11/18/why-is-ap-still-protecting-the-source-behind-its-false-russia-bombed-poland-story/
 
 
White House Asks Congress for $37.7 Billion in New Ukraine Aid
https://scheerpost.com/2022/11/16/white-house-asks-congress-for-37-7-billion-in-new-ukraine-aid/

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