Quote:Washington Post's Fake News' Guilt
November 27, 2016

Exclusive: The "fake news" theme has captivated The Washington Post and the mainstream U.S. media so much that it is stooping to McCarthyistic smears against news outlets that don't toe the State Department's propaganda line, says Robert Parry.




By Robert Parry


The mainstream U.S. media's hysteria over "fake news" has reached its logical (or illogical) zenith, a McCarthyistic black-listing of honest journalism that simply shows professional skepticism toward Officialdom, including what's said by U.S. government officials and what's written in The Washington Post and New York Times.


Apparently, to show skepticism now opens you to accusations of disseminating "Russian propaganda" or being a "useful idiot" or some similar ugly smear reminiscent of the old Cold War. Now that we have entered a New Cold War, I suppose it makes sense that we should expect a New McCarthyism.


Lawyer Roy Cohn (right) with Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Lawyer Roy Cohn (right) with Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
After returning from a Thanksgiving trip to Philadelphia on Saturday, I received word that Consortiumnews.com, the 21-year-old investigative news site that has challenged misguided "group thinks" whether from Republicans, Democrats or anyone else over those two-plus decades, was included among some 200 Internet sites spreading what some anonymous Web site, PropOrNot, deems "Russian propaganda."


I would normally ignore such nonsense but it was elevated by The Washington Post, which treated these unnamed "independent researchers" as sophisticated experts who "tracked" the Russian propaganda operation and assembled the black list.


And I'm not joking when I say that these neo-McCarthyites go unnamed. The Post's article by Craig Timberg on Thursday described PropOrNot simply as "a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds [who] planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns."


The Post granted the group and its leadership anonymity to smear journalists who don't march in lockstep with official pronouncements from the State Department or some other impeccable fount of never-to-be-questioned truth. The Post even published a "blind" (or unattributed) quote from the head of this shadowy Web site as follows:


"The way that this propaganda apparatus supported [Donald] Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,' said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia's legions of skilled hackers."


The Shoddy Washington Post


As a professional journalist for more than four decades, it is hard for me to comprehend how a supposedly reputable newspaper like The Washington Post would allow some anonymous character to attack the patriotism of American journalists while hiding the person's name behind the ridiculous excuse that he or she might be targeted by hackers.


The Washington Post building. (Photo credit: Daniel X. O'Neil)
The Washington Post building. (Photo credit: Daniel X. O'Neil)
In 1985, when I was an investigative reporter for The Associated Press and first exposed Oliver North's secret White House operation in support of the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, I got some flak for using North's name because he claimed that he might be targeted by assassins even though he was not officially a covert operative. His name and title were listed in the White House directory, for instance.


So, as silly and unfounded as North's worries were and The Washington Post then followed me in publishing North's name at least North's concerns dealt with his personal safety. But now we have the Post treating an alleged study by supposed "independent researchers" as needing the protection of anonymity to allow the Web site's executive director to expound on the group's slanderous assessments without giving his or her name.


In such a case, how is the public supposed to evaluate the smears and whether these researchers are indeed "independent" or are funded by some actual propaganda network, like those financed by the National Endowment for Democracy or USAID or financial speculator George Soros or some military-industrial-complex think tank?


Indeed, isn't what this Post-promoted Web site doing the essence of McCarthyistic "fake news" making vague accusations and imposing guilt by association, suggesting that all the Web sites on its list are either treasonous or dupes?


Though the Post doesn't seem to care about fairness regarding the 200 or so Web sites subjected to this McCarthyism, the smear operation doesn't even present evidence that anyone actually is part of this grand Russian propaganda conspiracy. The PropOrNot site admits that the criteria for its "analysis" is "behaviorial," not evidentiary.


In other words, the assessment is based on whether this anonymous group doesn't like that some journalist is questioning the State Department's propaganda line or has come up with information that isn't convenient to the NATO narrative on a topic that also involves Russia, Ukraine, Syria or some other international hot spot.


Then, you and other journalists are slimed as either active Russian intelligence operatives or "they are at the very least acting as bona-fide useful idiots' of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further scrutiny," according to PropOrNot.


A Cold War Slur


As the Post recognized in its article, the phrase "useful idiot" or "useful fool" comes from the old Cold War when journalists and citizens who didn't march in lock-step with Washington's propaganda were so stigmatized. That such a grotesque and pejorative phrase was used in this supposedly "independent" study should have been a warning to any professional newspaper to toss the report in the trash can. Instead, The Washington Post embraced it as gospel.


Sergey V. Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, addresses the general debate of the General Assembly's seventy-first session. 23 September 2016 (UN Photo)
Sergey V. Lavrov, Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, addresses the United Nations General Assembly on
Sept. 23, 2016 (UN Photo)
What is further remarkable about this bizarre "study" is that it mixes together a wide variety of diverse political, ideological and journalistic groups, including some of the best independent journalism sites on the Internet, such as Counterpunch, Truthdig, Naked Capitalism, Zero Hedge, WikiLeaks and I would humbly suggest Consortiumnews.


Also, neither truth nor fact-based journalism appears to be involved in this "analysis." No one from this Web site or from The Washington Post contacted me about any alleged inaccuracies or "propaganda" in Consortiumnews' stories.


Obviously, there have been times when we have challenged "facts" as claimed by the U.S. government and the Post, including their 2002-03 assertions about Iraq's fictional WMD. (Back then, we were denounced by George W. Bush's fans as "Saddam apologists.")


We also have cited cases of disagreements inside the U.S. intelligence community about other "group thinks" that were being pushed by the State Department and the mainstream U.S. news media, such as the CIA's internal doubts about who was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus, Syria.


Consortiumnews also has cited disclosures buried deep inside articles by the Post and New York Times regarding the important role of neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalist militias in the putsch that ousted Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014, and in the subsequent civil war.


I guess readers are supposed to ignore these occasional bursts of honesty from some reporter in the field who feels obliged to mention the Swastikas and other Nazi symbols festooning the rooms of these U.S.-backed "freedom fighters" although the reporter and editors know well enough to stick these references near the end of stories where few people are likely to read. Our "propaganda guilt" is that we read to the end of these articles and highlight these important admissions.


Then, there are times when Consortiumnews has referred to these occasional admissions about neo-Nazis and compared them to positive mainstream references to these same neo-Nazis. For instance, the Times itself included at least one brief reference to this neo-Nazi reality, though buried it deep inside an article. On Aug. 10, 2014, a Times' article mentioned the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in the last three paragraphs of a lengthy story on another topic.


"The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat," the Times reported.


"Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag." [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Discovers Ukraine's Neo-Nazis at War."]


Yet, later the Times published a story about the Ukrainian government's defense of the port of Mariupol against ethnic Russian rebels and the Azov battalion was treated as the last bastion of civilization battling against the barbarians at the gate. Remarkably, the article left out all references to the Azov battalion's Nazi Swastikas. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Whites Out Ukraine's Brown Shirts."]


It is that exposure of the mainstream U.S. media's distortions of the reality in Ukraine that has apparently earned Consortiumnews a spot on this strange list of willful disseminators of "Russian propaganda" or "useful idiots."


Washington Post Fake News'


It also might be noted that Consortiumnews has repeatedly pointed out how The Washington Post falsely reported as flat fact that Iraq was hiding WMD yet the editors responsible for this acceptance of State Department propaganda, which got some 4,500 American soldiers killed along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, have never faced accountability. [See Consortiumnews.com's "A Media Unmoored from Facts."]


Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.
Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, who published as flat fact that Iraq was hiding WMD stockpiles.
Ironically, too, it should be noted that on Saturday, The New York Times, which also has been flogging the "fake news" theme, ran a relatively responsible article revealing how a leading "fake news" Web site was not connected to Russia at all but rather was an entrepreneurial effort by an unemployed Georgian student who was using a Web site in Tbilisi to make some money by promoting pro-Trump stories, whether true or not.


The owner of the Web site, 22-year-old Beqa Latsabidse, said he had initially tried to push stories favorable to Hillary Clinton but that proved unprofitable so he switched to publishing anti-Clinton and pro-Trump articles whether true or not.


The front-page Times article revealed what has been happening entrepreneurs who want to make money have been peddling pro-Trump "news" because that's what gets the clicks and thus the advertising dollars. That behavior does not implicate Consortiumnews or any other independent Web site that happens to challenge State Department propaganda. (Consortiumnews relies on donations from readers and some book sales to meet its modest $200,000-a-year budget.)


To merge these two groups profit-driven sites that don't care what the truth is and honest journalism sites that show professional skepticism toward government propaganda whatever its source is a kind of classic example of "fake news" although in this case the mysterious Web site PropOrNot and The Washington Post are peddling the disinformation.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:Corbett is also listed on the now infamous list. Not listed are all the MSM 'all-the-propaganda-that fits' outlets who have fed and continue to feed us lies and distortions to divert attention from the real criminals and crimes going on at the highest reaches of power.

I again remind all that Roy Cohen who worked with McCarthy taught Trump 'all he knows about power and politics' [this by Trump's own admission]....so beware of the years ahead!

David Guyatt Wrote:

Peter Lemkin Wrote:Corbett is also listed on the now infamous list. Not listed are all the MSM 'all-the-propaganda-that fits' outlets who have fed and continue to feed us lies and distortions to divert attention from the real criminals and crimes going on at the highest reaches of power.

I again remind all that Roy Cohen who worked with McCarthy taught Trump 'all he knows about power and politics' [this by Trump's own admission]....so beware of the years ahead!

The take away I have from this is that this whole affair is a Soros and friends offensive. I say this only because of the recent 3 day meeting of Soros and other wealthy elite at Washington's Mandarin Oriental hotel to discuss strategy following the Trump win.

If I were to offer a conjecture it would be that because another criminal mob won the presidency, the prior criminal family who had it are sick with rage because their feeding trough is now being sucked dry by their crime competitors.

Quote:The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting

The capital's paper of record crashes legacy media on an iceberg


The 'Washington Post' ran a piece last week headlined "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say." Joe Raedle/Getty

By Matt Taibbi

Last week, a technology reporter for the Washington Post named Craig Timberg ran an incredible story. It has no analog that I can think of in modern times. Headlined "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say," the piece promotes the work of a shadowy group that smears some 200 alternative news outlets as either knowing or unwitting agents of a foreign power, including popular sites like Truthdig and Naked Capitalism.

The thrust of Timberg's astonishingly lazy report is that a Russian intelligence operation of some kind was behind the publication of a "hurricane" of false news reports during the election season, in particular stories harmful to Hillary Clinton. The piece referenced those 200 websites as "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda."

The piece relied on what it claimed were "two teams of independent researchers," but the citing of a report by the longtime anticommunist Foreign Policy Research Institute was really window dressing.

The meat of the story relied on a report by unnamed analysts from a single mysterious "organization" called PropOrNot we don't know if it's one person or, as it claims, over 30 a "group" that seems to have been in existence for just a few months.

It was PropOrNot's report that identified what it calls "the list" of 200 offending sites. Outlets as diverse as AntiWar.com, LewRockwell.com and the Ron Paul Institute were described as either knowingly directed by Russian intelligence, or "useful idiots" who unwittingly did the bidding of foreign masters.

Forget that the Post offered no information about the "PropOrNot" group beyond that they were "a collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds."

Forget also that the group offered zero concrete evidence of coordination with Russian intelligence agencies, even offering this remarkable disclaimer about its analytic methods:

"Please note that our criteria are behavioral. ... For purposes of this definition it does not matter ... whether they even knew they were echoing Russian propaganda at any particular point: If they meet these criteria, they are at the very least acting as bona-fide 'useful idiots' of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further scrutiny."

What this apparently means is that if you published material that meets their definition of being "useful" to the Russian state, you could be put on the "list," and "warrant further scrutiny."

Forget even that in its Twitter responses to criticism of its report, PropOrNot sounded not like a group of sophisticated military analysts, but like one teenager:

"Awww, wook at all the angwy Putinists, trying to change the subject - they're so vewwy angwy!!" it wrote on Saturday.

"Fascists. Straight up muthafuckin' fascists. That's what we're up against," it wrote last Tuesday, two days before Timberg's report.

Any halfway decent editor would have been scared to death by any of these factors. Moreover the vast majority of reporters would have needed to see something a lot more concrete than a half-assed theoretical paper from such a dicey source before denouncing 200 news organizations as traitors.

But if that same source also demanded anonymity on the preposterous grounds that it feared being "targeted by Russia's legions of skilled hackers"? Any sane reporter would have booted them out the door. You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.

Yet the Post thought otherwise, and its report was uncritically picked up by other outlets like USA Today and the Daily Beast. The "Russians did it" story was greedily devoured by a growing segment of blue-state America that is beginning to fall victim to the same conspiracist tendencies that became epidemic on the political right in the last few years.

The right-wing fascination with conspiracy has culminated in a situation where someone like Alex Jones of Infowars (who believes juice boxes make frogs gay) is considered a news source. Jones is believed even by our new president-elect, who just repeated one of his outrageous reports, to the effect that three million undocumented immigrants voted in the November 8th election.

That Jones report was based on a tweet by someone named Greg Phillips of an organization called VoteStand.

When asked to comment on his methodology, Phillips replied in the first person plural, sounding like a lone spree killer claiming to be a national terror network. "No. We will release it in open form to the American people," he said. "We won't allow the media to spin this first. Sorry."

This was remarkably similar to the response of PropOrNot when asked by The Intercept to comment about its "list" report. The only difference was, Phillips didn't use emoticons:

"We're getting a lot of requests for comment and can get back to you today =)" PropOrNot told The Intercept. "We're over 30 people, organized into teams, and we cannot confirm or deny anyone's involvement."

"They" never called The Intercept back.

Most high school papers wouldn't touch sources like these. But in November 2016, both the president-elect of the United States and the Washington Post are equally at ease with this sort of sourcing.

Even worse, the Post apparently never contacted any of the outlets on the "list" before they ran their story. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism says she was never contacted. Chris Hedges of Truthdig, who was part of a group that won the Pulitzer Prize for The New York Times once upon a time, said the same. "We were named," he tells me. "I was not contacted."

Hedges says the Post piece was an "updated form of Red-Baiting."

"This attack signals an open war on the independent press," he says. "Those who do not spew the official line will be increasingly demonized in corporate echo chambers such as the Post or CNN as useful idiots or fifth columnists."

All of this is an outgrowth of this horrible election season we just lived through.

A lot of reporters over the summer were so scared by the prospect of a Trump presidency that they talked in some cases publicly about abandoning traditional ideas about journalistic "distance" from politicians, in favor of open advocacy for the Clinton campaign. "Trump is testing the norms of objectivity in journalism," is how The Times put it.

These journalists seemed totally indifferent to the Pandora's box they were opening. They didn't understand that most politicians have no use for critical media. Many of them don't see alternative points of view as healthy or even legitimate. If you polled a hundred politicians about the profession, 99 would say that all reporters are obstructionist scum whose removal from the planet would be a boon to society.

The only time politicians like the media is when we're helping them get elected or push through certain policies, like for instance helping spread dubious stories about Iraq's WMD capability. Otherwise, they despise us. So news outlets that get into bed with politicians are usually making a devil's bargain they don't fully understand.

They may think they're being patriotic (as many did during the Iraq/WMD episode), but in the end what will happen is that they will adopt the point of view of their political sponsors. They will soon enough denounce other reporters and begin to see themselves as part of the power structure, as opposed to a check on it.

This is the ultimate in stupidity and self-annihilating behavior. The power of the press comes from its independence from politicians. Jump into bed with them and you not only won't ever be able to get out, but you'll win nothing but a loss of real influence and the undying loathing of audiences.
Helping Beltway politicos mass-label a huge portion of dissenting media as "useful idiots" for foreign enemies in this sense is an extraordinarily self-destructive act. Maybe the Post doesn't care and thinks it's doing the right thing. In that case, at least do the damn work.

Quote:A few days before the 2016 election I contacted several publishers and told them they were on a list to be dealt with/ taken down after what was supposed to be a Clinton victory. This effort was against news sites and websites that spoke or wrote against current US policies that Clinton supported. As I was writing this Glen Greenwald's great article came out specifically about propornot. That plays a small part in this.

Journalists that said or wrote anything damaging to the Clinton campaign or supported her opponents in any way were targeted. News sites and journalists that failed to criticize Vladimir Putin, or worse; they were sympathetic of this or that Russian or Syria policy at any time are on the lists.

The implication isn't that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with this. She didn't, at least not directly. We're going to take a clear look at this, who is behind it, and why. The political stakes and stakeholders go far beyond the presidency. It was about setting the next 20 years of US policy, cabinet positions, and redefining what the United States of America is.

Long before this election, I became aware of an Inform & Influence Operation (IIO) against the American public. While researching this I came across a list of news sites that were going to be dealt with n following what was at the time thought to be an easy "Clinton victory."

Before the election I told different publishers this was in the works and the goal was to discredit and destroy alternate media sources and silence dissent.

The Donald Trump victory slowed this down a little bit for the moment, but redoubled the effort going into it. Let's look behind the Fake news of propornot that is the internet rage today. I've been keeping tabs on some of the players involved for over 1 1/2 years now.

Propornot is another incarnation of Stopfake or the Daily Dot. Both of these propaganda sites have been doing the same essential thing as propornot since the beginning of the 2014 Coup in Ukraine. In that sense there is nothing notable or remarkable about it. What is remarkable is the amount of press this crude website has generated and why.

The website itself is a compilation of working lists developed by different sources that now work in tandem. It's been over 3 years in the making and propornot is just the latest side dish.

OpEdNews, Washingtonsblog, ZeroHedge, Consortium News, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, the Vineyard of the Saker, and Off Guardian are among many others listed publicly and privately to developed website hit lists. Propornot pulls its own lists from sites and contacts like these. The base model is the Ukrainian website "PeaceMaker" which gained fame in March 2015.

The people that wrote the Ukrainian information policy and developed the methods for the "Myrotvorets" or Peacemaker website did so with the sole goal of creating a clearinghouse for killing dissent and dissenters. Site's like propornot are offspring from the 40,000+ people working on the projects. At the top of the heap the lists feed downward to feed activists workloads.

Russian proxy sites are popping up and all the naive Americans posting their stories are easy to shut down. To counter, I just post a link to "Russian News And Russian Proxy News Sites" with a brief note and it usually stops. Education is a wonderful thing. There have been a ton of new websites started, probably just for this election, and I've simply recognized them as election propaganda sites. Not worthy for even this blog… The good news is I'm trying to gather listings for many of these sites and put them in some sort of a dump file for later. Let's see who uses them after this election is done."

Here is an example of their work in 2015. What exactly does "lets see who uses them mean?"

https://offgraun.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/gheliasonpic1.png

This is how open discussions have been in the past about damage done to a site, in this case Southfront.org.

This is one example of how the lists are used from inside a conversation with the people that developed them. Jessikka Aro came to fame for her expose on Russian trolls like the publication above. She has since crowd funded over $30,000 to get the necessary hacking tools to fight them.

"The process of the private sector becoming offensive actors in cyberspace has already begun. Where this leads is uncertain, but it's hard to imagine it being particularly positive."
Tobias Feakin is a senior analyst at ASPI

Using play for pay actors to harm journalists , activists, and publications is nothing new. One of the questions I have been asked repeatedly by publishers is "how could they damage me? We are a top 100 publication." The answer is that the people that designed the methods cut their teeth taking down the largest independent alternative media news source in history. That was Indymedia.

They used an advanced form of what would later become known as "swatting." What is swatting? Calling SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) to raid your home after trolling you online as a final form of harassment. Imagine after publishing a political article, being in bed and your door is suddenly smashed open. Heavily armed men come in screaming because they think you are a drug dealer or the new bin Laden. What if someone hacked and planted evidence supporting this on your computer?

For one of the world's premier news websites at the time, they called the US government and Interpol. The servers were taken, the sites shut down. No crimes were prosecuted but the accusation was enough to take it down.

The people doing the work get paid by how much measurable damage they do. This is known as cyber privateering. The people and companies that get hired and paid based on the damage they do to the publication or journalist in question.

They work for different countries. Ukraine has over 40,000 volunteers across the globe as well as paid professionals like Weisburd and Harding attacking American alternative media websites.

Within one month of writing that the Weisburd/Harding inspired "Peacemaker" was a kill list, the first journalist targeted using Aaron Weisburd's method was Olez Buzina.

Weisburd doesn't get paid to follow people. After stalking and collecting information his method hasn't changed since the beginning. "Weisburd has not merely "dismantled" websites. He has harassed individuals engaged in perfectly legal online dissent, threatened their family members, harassed their employers, and harassed their web hosts. He regularly uses lies, disinformation and threats to accomplish these goals. Weisburd decides what is "threatening."

https://offgraun.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/gheliasonpic2.png

Within a short time of writing how news websites were going to be hacked, the hacking started.

Who is paying for the new McCarthyism? It's the same people that paid for the real fake news throughout the election cycle and were the strongest large group supporters of Hillary Clinton of course.

Let's start with groups that are worried about deportation. Let's talk about the Muslims. Before we do, I'll remind you of my perspective on Muslims. It should be clear after writing "Tomi Lahren- It's Not the Muslims Stupid!"

One of the largest Islamic groups in the US supporting Hillary Clinton are the Gulenites. The Gulenites are Islamic-fascists whose political roots are like every other group listed Waffen SS nationalists. They are so entwined in Congress right now that they were given a free pass while trying to commit a coup against a NATO partner. They are also one of the largest media operations in the world today. Gulen is also financially supportive of ISIS through the Muslim Brotherhood.

On Oct. 6, Sabah, the main pro-government paper, came out with a front-page headline "Himmet paralari Clinton'a gitti," which translates as "Religious donations [referring to Gulenists in this context] went to Clinton."

As a result, a majority of Turks in Turkey seem to support Trump, while a majority of Turks in the United States support Clinton, wrote Mahmut Ovur in Sabah. He added that the close relationship between Clinton and the Gulenists is not just of a financial nature, but like in Turkey, the Gulenists' infiltration goes to "Clinton's main arteries."

Gülen believed that if Clinton was elected president, he would never be extradited to Turkey and that the pressure on President Erdogan would increase. Donald Trump has already made moves for his extradition back to Turkey.

According to retired Lt. General Michael Flynn:

It is unconscionable to militate against Turkey, our NATO ally, as Washington is hoodwinked by this masked source of terror and instability nestled comfortably in our own backyard in Pennsylvania."

The Albanians and Kosovars are just as nervous. Without Clinton in the presidency, foreign policy may allow a fair trial that hangs Clinton's long time friend Kosovar president Hashim Thaci for crimes against humanity.

Hussam Ayloush, long-time head of CAIR's Los Angeles office, will help awaken the press to CAIR's true Islamist identity. Ayloush wrote:

That second line is Arabic ("الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام‎‎") for "The people wants to bring down the regime."

In other words, Ayloush unambiguously and directly called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.

https://offgraun.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/unnamed.png

We can't forget the Syrian American Council who, like Ahmed Chalabi won Iraq, will rule an Islamic State in Syria if ISIS wins against Assad. The brotherhood between the Syrian American Council and the Ukrainian American UCCA go back to WWII.

Nobody believes in it. You're like, f*ck this,'" a former Green Beret says of America's covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. "Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, f*ck it, who cares?"…"I don't want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans," the Green Beret added.

As you can see the two fascist entities have a long history together. This brings us back to Joel Harding and Aaron Weisburd that hate terrorism but support ISIS, especially in Ukraine. In June 2016 Joel Harding was commissioned with updating Ukraine's information policy. At the same time, he tried to forward one to the US Congress. Given the fact you can be shot if you disagree with the Ukrainian government, I wonder what he turned over to the US.

I need to give a brief bit of history before proceeding, about the Ministry of Information Policy
(abbreviated MIP). The MIP was founded on 2 December 2014. Shortly after I was contacted and I produced a "National Information Strategy for Ukraine" on their behalf.

After various corrections, I submitted the last version on 2 January 2014. It was apparent, however, that their interest was in cyber only, which is only one of many aspects of information operations'…were accompanied by a long-time friend of mine, Christina (I do not have permission to use her last name, yet, I am protecting her)…That, plus I have worked, quite literally, for years with Christina, to educate as many as possible of Russia's treacherous nature and actions." Joel Harding

I'm going to come back to the phrase "cyber only." Before going to Washington DC and meeting Harding, the Rada members were obliged to stop in Albany, New York followed by a community meet-and-greet event at the Ukrainian-American Citizens Club, located in Watervliet, New York.

Accompanying the four national deputies was Krystyna V. Dobrovolska, a U.S. Embassy-assigned government liaison and translator who escorted the delegates from Kyiv during their visits to Albany and Washington. She is the Christina that Joel mentioned working with, and is an emigre nationalist from Canada. She among other things writes at NBC.

The Watervliet Ukrainian-American Citizen's Club is owned by Nestor Paslawsky, the nephew of Mikola Lebed, OUNb leader. It was his family that they were there to meet. And it is his family's influence as OUNb leaders that professor Moytl states Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to be afraid of. Consider the fact that they now control CEE (Central & Eastern European) countries. The CEE is composed of 18 emigre nations that are putting their resources behind Ukraine and the UCCA (OUNb).

The second reason I mention Paslawsky is that he was, after all, a Ukrainian-American. In killing himand make no mistake about it: Putin killed himPutin has taken on, in addition to the entire world, the Ukrainian American diaspora. He probably thinks it's a joke. But in killing a Ukrainian American, he's made the war in Ukraine personal for Ukrainian Americans. Their intellectual, material, and political resources are far greater than Putin can imagine. Be forewarned, Vlad: diasporas have long memories. And this one will give you and your apologists in Russia and the West no rest."
Alexander Moytl

In other words, the OUNb and the Paslawsky's will not rest until they have exhausted US resources in a hot war with Russia.

Andrij Dobriansky is a spokesman for the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. It is an umbrella group for about a million Ukrainian-Americans, which is supposed to remain nonpartisan campaigned for Clinton because the OUNb (nazi-political ideology) of the UCCA was deathly afraid that Trump would force Ukraine to act like a civilized democratic country.

Someone should probably tell Weisburd and Harding that Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, wants to help ISIS militants take revenge against Russian forces in Syria "in accordance with Sharia law."

In another statement from Gerashchenko, he recently threatened president-elect Donald Trump that he would put him on his
"Peacemaker" site as a target. The same has been done with Silvio Berscaloni in the past.

This means they are attacking US citizens for a foreign government, their property, reputation, and income because they are journalists and publishers. Harding and Weisburd also currently work for a country that threatened an elected president. In March 2015, when the Verkhovna Rada passed a law in 2383 which made it legal for Ukraine to hunt down and eliminate anyone that disagreed with the regime across the entire world.

In March 2015, I wrote an article about the beginning of an invasion scale info war being prepared and what to expect in the US against journalists and publications. At the time, one of the people standing behind the people at propornot noted that this was the definition of Propaganda in use "The word is frequently used to describe any news emerging from one's opponent."

Going further he stated:

As she said, and I am paraphrasing for my purposes, the vast majority of peaceful people are irrelevant…The official US government view on free speech is It is also important that US citizens enjoy their freedom of speech and their unique ability to voice their own opinions. This portrays a vibrant democracy and further aids to combat oppressive governments.'…About this last paragraph, this is a source of frustration for me, personally. I believe this is, perhaps, an overly altruistic statement.

His reason is that free speech causes information fratricide. Free speech makes the IIO at best difficult and at worst impossible. To counter this a top-down disinformation charter needed to be established and "rival" media from Al-Jazeera, BBC, and beyond needed to get together and create a charter of what was acceptable behavior. Media organizations which practice conscious deception defined as propaganda were to be excluded from the community.

Today he is saying:

We also must restrict fake news sites, fake news, and their spread on social media and elsewhere. Detractors will cite the first amendment, but the issue is national security, so preventing information designed to undermine our freedom more than justifies such a law."

The above list of emigre organizations is far from complete. These articles link over 20 emigre groups that were stakeholders in foreign policy if Clinton won. They want to keep control of the old countries from America and decide who there is worthy of living. An overview of this history shows they have been belligerent and committed atrocity to the people they are supposed to represent.

Add to this the 187 Soros groups and you have a media frenzy out to destroy what should have been an easy election for them if it were not for alternative media stepping up and playing a role by reporting facts.

The onslaught journalism is facing won't stop unless these groups are rooted out of Congress. They supply so much graft that when one group of congressmen came under investigation, the investigators had to let them go because they were guilty on another count. Look at the Gulen articles above.

This brings us to the 3rd part of the IIO which is still to come. Protest the inauguration if you must. It is your right, no caveat there. But be aware the same minds that killed so many in Kiev and across Syria are looking to start the same kind for upheaval in the USA.

Inside Soros 187 groups are groups that to find out about you need to look at documents that have a "Nazi war crime disclosure act" release attached to them.

One group called Common Cause is translated Spilna Sprava in Ukrainian. They pushed crowds into the police so the police thought they were being attacked and threw Molotov cocktails in Kiev.

These people are fighting for the survival of WWII Axis ideologies in America and if they win, America loses. People that support ISIS, Pravy Sektor, Al-Nusra, and pick your bad guy are crying foul the loudest right now. They are fighting to keep their influence and to be able to influence governments abroad. Just be aware of who is next to you.

Should they win and gain policy positions or keep their hold on Congress through gifts and graft, the publication you are reading this in will probably be shuttered. The amazing journalism of the last year won't be allowed to happen again. It's been labeled information fratricide and therefore propaganda.

Quote:The Fake News About Fake News
November 30, 2016

The Washington Post's McCarthyistic conspiracy theory implicating some 200 Web sites in an alleged Russian propaganda network continues to spread across mainstream media despite being debunked, as in Patrick Henningsen's report.




By Patrick Henningsen


The mainstream media's post-election hysteria has taken on new level of crazy. It seems that The Washington Post has gone off the deep end this past week, claiming that Russia is behind the "fake news" crisis which they claim helped propel an insurgent Donald Trump to victory on Nov. 8, and they are still standing by the official conspiracy theory that Russia has somehow hacked into the U.S. elections. Everything that's wrong with the establishment media is contained within this incredible story…


The hacking claim is nothing new backed by the White House and trumpeted by Hillary Clinton, the U.S. mainstream media has claimed that Russia has been hacking and manipulating our U.S. elections. The only problem is it never happened. What's more disturbing though, is the complete collapse in journalistic standards at what used to be considered America's paper of record.'


The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)
The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)
It seems the The Post is playing a key role in waging a new McCarthy-style witch hunt targeting any independent websites which dare to challenge the prevailing anti-Russian party line currently dominating the mainstream political and media establishment evident beyond any doubt after reading this latest feature in The Washington Post written by Craig Timberg entitled, "Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news' during election, Experts say."


"Experts say"? Make no mistake, this was a true-to-form propaganda piece by the Washington Post, and in itself could be classed as actual "fake news."


Not surprisingly, it wasn't difficult to debunk this article. I take no pleasure in saying this, as The Post was once a newspaper I admired growing up, however, what's going on right now with America's mainstream media is nothing short of tragic. More than anything, the 2016 Election showed the world how biased, corrupt and broken America's papers of record have become. Instead of emulating Woodward and Bernstein, it seems most of the journalists' are channeling Stephen Glass instead. For those who don't know already, Glass was one of Washington's fake news pioneers of note, writing for the leftwing magazine, New Republic. Glass routinely madeup news stories which his journalism school-trained editors weren't smart enough to pick up on.


It's clear that the same partisan Clinton and Democratic Party supporters embedded in the media who were pushing anti-Russian talking points throughout the election cycle are not giving up. As I pointed out in my pre-election piece entitled, "Hillary's Russian Hack' Hoax: The Biggest Lie of this Election Season," what was previously a stance reserved for right-wing neoconservative hawks and Cold War hold-outs has become the new standard for the establishment wing of the Democratic Party which is the universal demonization of Russia, and the hitlerization of its current president, Vladimir Putin.


The mainstream media continues to lower the bar on what it claims is journalism'. Just when you thought you've seen the worst, unsourced, completely contrived "investigation," the Washington Post, which used to be regarded as the paragon of American journalism, has produced a rant of an article that is written as if it were a student submission:


"The flood of "fake news" this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation."


You have to feel bad for The Post's Craig Timberg who seems to have drawn the short straw this week in the anti-Russia propaganda pool at the Post. According to his biography at the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford, Timberg's primary mission is, "studying potential revenue sources and business opportunities related to foreign news coverage, which he fears is under particular threat from digital disruption of the news industry." The perfect man for the job.


His Thanksgiving Day exposé posits a unified theory of a Trump-Putin axis of evil an all of the above, buckshot blog post pushed out by the Washington Post (amazing) where Timberg claims The Russians are not only behind the US establishment's latest "fake news" hysteria, but also hacking both the DNC and the US elections, and carrying Donald Trump into the White House.


To support his case, Timberg claims that:


"Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House."


So The Post claims that the Russians hacked the DNC and US elections systems, engineered Facebook's fake news' crisis, which helped get Trump elected. In order to weave all three of these things together, Timberg had to rely on the mainstream media's propaganda weapon of choice: anonymous sources. After that, it was just a case of plugging-in and hyperlinking to previous Washington Post headlines made to look as if these events actually happened, when no evidence exists to date that they ever did:


"U.S. government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections"? (By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post Oct 7, 2016)


This story was used to great effect by Hillary Clinton herself on national TV during the Presidential debates. The headline is written to give the false impression there was actual proof to back up such profound accusations, but when you actually read the article, there is nothing. It seems that in today's Washington Post, what passes for evidence can be as little as the President accusing Russia of being involved.


The statement from the vaunted intelligence community' is about as vague as it gets, stating, "The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations," said a joint statement from the two agencies. "… These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process." No proof, no evidence, but… they are "confident". This must be the same sort of confidence these same intelligence agencies had when they briefed Colin Powell about Saddam Hussein's mobile anthrax labs, aka The Winnebagos of Death. Sounds crazy, I know, but it was good enough for the mainstream media in 2002-2003, just like "we are confident" is good enough for the Washington Post today.


"Russian hackers targeted Arizona election system" (By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post Aug 29, 2016)


Despite the misleading headline, the article does not contain any evidence or anything remotely near proof' by any normal journalistic standards. But this is not normal journalism. After reading past the colorful headline in the Arizona Russian Hack story, it gets really vague, claiming the FBI's theory that Russia did it' was, "credible" and significant, "an eight on a scale of one to 10." It's hard not to laugh when reading some of these mainstream stories. It gets better, saying that, "FBI investigators did not specify whether the hackers were criminals or employed by the Russian government. Bureau officials on Monday declined to comment…" What else is this but Washington-based, politically motivated propaganda, designed to scapegoat Russia?


By definition, Timberg is using actual fake and misleading news articles (produced by his employer the Washington Post) in order to validate his own unified conspiracy theory. It's hard to tell if Timberg himself is even aware of what he's doing. If not, certainly an argument can be made for mainstream journalists' who are so ensconced in their own corporate bubble that they actually believe their own organization's propaganda.


Despite the best efforts of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, the White House and mainstream media outlets like CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, the New York Times and countless other outlets, all of whom either endorsed Hillary Clinton or tailored their news coverage to favor her campaign with many even colluding directly with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), there is zero evidence to validate the establishment's epic Conspiracy Theory that the Kremlin master-minded the greatest election heist in modern times.


VIRTUAL WITCH HUNT: "PropOrNot.com"


Deep Throat: The Washington Post's Secret Source'


Timberg claims to have a mysterious deep throat source': "researchers" from a group called PropOrNot, a website which just sprung up on October 30, 2016, and who claims to have "proof" that ties together Fake News'/Pro-Trump' articles online back to Russia. The only problem is, he can't show us any of their research, nor can he tell us the name of the principal, allegedly because this person fears threats of retribution. Timberg states, "The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy," said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia's legions of skilled hackers. When you hear things like this in the mainstream media, there is a high probability you are reading an actual government-sponsored propaganda piece.


More likely, the only fear PropOrNot's authors have is of being held accountable for their own online smear and propaganda campaign.


PropOrNot's web domain registration is also hidden behind "Domains By Proxy," a company in Scottsdale Arizona.


Timberg's source' is a nameless website, with no author names given, with links to "Boycott Russia Today," and yet, PropOrNot claims to be "a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds," and Timberg says they plan to release their findings on Friday "showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns."


"… (PropOrNot) planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns," stated Timberg.


The much anticipated groundbreaking report arrived belatedly and can be found online here and in PDF here. On first glance, it's much worse than we thought, but our analysis is still forthcoming.


Thus far the only investigation' PropOrNot has done was an article implicating the financial news site Zero Hedge posted on Oct 31st and can be found here a unintelligible mix of websites, speculating that they are somehow linked and in league with the Kremlin. It claims its thesis is corroborated by other sites PropOrNot says are "our allies" similar anti-Russia web sources including the EU Disinformation Review (a campaign' run by the EU's East StratCom Task force), Polygraph Info (run by US gov't-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America), Fake News Watch (home of an extensive virtual book burning list), Stop Fake (Ukraine based, Pro-Maidan), Russia Lies (run by Julia Davis, a "national security expert" behind the tabloid reports alleging foul play in celebrity Britney Murphy's death), and of course no anti-Russian allied list would be complete without Bellingcat (by now a widely discredited, Atlantic Council/NATO-linked, anti-Russian, anti-Syrian, open source investigation' website, run by Elliot Higgins).


The timing of this anti-Russian campaign is no coincidence either. This week the EU passed a new anti-Russian resolution to counter act' supposed Russian propaganda: EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties', with 179 voting against it and 208 abstaining.


(Image: @21WIRE)
(Image: @21WIRE)
PropOrNot's "Executive Summary" (yes, we're trying not to laugh, too) states:


"Thus far we at PropOrNot have identified over 200 distinct websites which qualify as Russian propaganda outlets according to our criteria, and target audiences in the United States. We estimate the regular US audiences of these sites to number in the tens of millions. We are gathering data to measure that more precisely, but we are confidant that it includes at least 15 million Americans."


The McCarthyite tone of their defamation is breathtaking, as the site claims they can spot Russian agents of influence online and collaborator websites through an endless list of things to look out for':


(…) 9. Refer their audiences to each other, via hyperlinks and other means, at disproportionately high rates;


Are consistently visited by the same audiences, both directly and via search, demonstrating that those intra-network referrals build "brand loyalty" in their audiences over time;
Are consistently visited by their audiences after searches for terms which congrue with the Russian propaganda "line", and are unrelated to the purported focus of their branding; (…)
I guess it never occurred to these geniuses that people might be loyal followers of well-established alternative websites like AntiWar.com, Counterpunch, Information Clearing House, OpEd News, Activist Post, Global Research.ca, Oriental Review, Truth-Out, Truth Dig, Zero Hedge, Consortium News (run by award-winning US journalist Robert Parry), Ron Paul Institute (former US Congressman) and Paul Craig Roberts (former Cabinet member under President Reagan), to name only a few off of PropOrNot's massive list of alleged Russian propaganda collaborators.'


This is basically an amateur attempt to reverse engineer a virtual conspiracy spuriously connecting 200 popular alternative websites with a theoretical Russian plot.


It should be a cause for concern that The Washington Post is now promoting a Blacklist' in the spirit of Joe McCarthy's Red Scare.


Michael Krieger, editor of Liberty BlitzKrieg, one the sites on PropOrNot's "List" sums up the fundamental flaw in both Timberg and ProOrNot's insular Washington DC-centric mainstream bubble thinking:


"What's particularly interesting about this list, isn't the fact that a bunch of anonymous whiners decided to demonize successful critics of insane, inhumane and ethically indefensible U.S. government policy, but rather the fact that the Washington Post decided to craft an entire article around such a laughably ridiculous list. This just further proves a point that is rapidly becoming common knowledge amongst U.S. citizens with more than a couple of brain cells to rub together. The mainstream media is the real "fake news."


Krieger adds: "Unfortunately, this is apparently all we know so far about this shadowy organization, which is simply hilarious considering the group deems any alternative news source that does not agree with the U.S. government narrative to be either outright Russian propaganda, or "useful idiots."


Krieger makes an indisputable point though, and one that's also been made by numerous qualified pundits: by far the most prolific purveyor of real fake news and propaganda, especially over the last 30 years is undoubtedly the US and UK media, and as we can all see they haven't slowed down.


The issue of confirmation bias in western media is chronic, but it's also an institutional problem when you consider that many of these mainstream writers are submerged under their own layer of Western-generated American or British propaganda. As a result, they might be completely oblivious of the fact that John Kerry has been caught lying to the world at the UN about what Russia supposedly did in the Ukraine, Crimea, and Syria, or they might have missed UN Ambassador Samantha Power's antics at the UN an embarrassment to the US in front of a world audience, or Admiral John Kirby's epic meltdown last week after he couldn't defend his own lies to an RT reporter at the US State Department press briefing. On Syria in particular, US politicians have lied so much and so often, that most serious people around the world do not believe a word that comes out of this Administration's mouth and American and European bloggers most certainly have a right to point this out not because it pleases Putin but because they are disgusted with their own government's poor (and highly illegal) conduct on the world stage, especially at this moment in Syria and Yemen. Evidently, none of this factors into the reports by Timberg and "PropOrNot."


Maybe they didn't get the memo either, about the fact that Assad did not "gas his own people" in East Ghouta in August 2013, or any other time that can be proven by his accusers.


Many in the US media are simply living inside of their own self-generated, self-reverential propaganda bubble.


Even more incredibly, PropOrNot then implores its visitors to only visit and get information from US government-funded news sources like NPR, state-owned media like the BBC, Murdoch-owned and financed outlets like the Wall Street Journal and VICE News, and corporate establishment media sources:


"We call on the American public to: Obtain news from actual reporters, who report to an editor and are professionally accountable for mistakes. We suggest NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed, VICE, etc, and especially your local papers and local TV news channels. Support them by subscribing, if you can!"


It's pretty incredible to see The Washington Post basing a case on an anonymous website one which is conducting a virtual witch hunt, clearly with malicious intent (to smear some 200 websites), as a primary journalistic source.


At this point, everyone should question the political motives of Washington Post staff writer Craig Timberg. It's beyond outrageous even by today's decrepit standards.


Judging by the looks of it, PropOrNot itself is a pretty good example of pure black propaganda.


Who is behind Timberg's source' PropOrNot? Is it Timberg himself? Is it run by staff at The Washington Post? As it's so secretive, you can't rule that possibility out.


In true NeoMcCarthyite form, PropOrNot has also issued "The List" a guide to alternative media websites which it accuses of "echo Russian propaganda." As of today, amazingly, 21st Century Wire.com is not included on their virtual book burning list (but its likely to be after they read this article).


Strangely, there is no mention at all by Timberg about a report by BuzzFeed News which identified the primary source of the actual fake news' flooding Facebook more than 150 pro-Trump websites being run from a single town, by a cohort of savvy teenagers in Veles, Macedonia which is not Russia. Granted, Buzzfeed and The Guardian are both establishment media that sometimes produce their own propaganda. However, unless Timberg can refute either the Buzzfeed or The Guardian reports on this subject, or somehow tie his suspected battery of Kremlin controlled' hackers to Veles, then this entire unified conspiracy theory in D.O.A.


According to these investigations, the Veles crew are not ideologically motivated, but rather, driven by that old classic money. They are raking it in with standard Google Ad Sense and other online traffic CPM advertising unit revenue, with incomes ranging from $5,000 to as high as $30,000 per month. They're not doing it for Mother Russia, but rather for Benjamin Franklin.


No Credibility


Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for PropOrNot, on their front page they posted this:


"UPDATE: We are publishing our Black Friday Report, adding FAQ entries, updating The List, and more! Please see our latest post for more information. Also, for a sense of what certain kinds of Russian trolls look and sound like in real life, check out this Samantha Bee segment, which cleverly interviews Russian social-media and comment-section propagandists:"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OauLuWXD_RI [PropOrNot links to the Samantha Bee Show]


Aside from the fact that this secret Washington Post source would rely on the Samantha Bee Show for anything, the geniuses at PropOrNot seem to have missed the fact that the alleged Russian Trolls were acting for money they convinced Bee they were a "the real deal" when she approached them via Twitter, where the hoaxer and his female associate were paid $10,000 for appearing on Bee's "Full Frontal" show.


Bee may have just fell short of a Pulitzer for that one.


It's certainly possible that Macedonia's fake news bedroom empire is being managed by someone higher up the food chain than a cadre of eastern European gamers, but based on their ubiquitous references to breaking FOX News events and nuanced political and emotive button pushing from these faux news sites it's on the whole much more likely that any alleged Pro-Trump' hidden hand would be more likely directing their talking points from inside of the United States.


Timberg's fake story in The Post was then echoed by Daniel Politi at the popular liberal website The Slate, under the heading, "How Russian Propaganda Used Facebook to Spread Fake News During the Election," in an attempt to give more credence to Timberg's contrived thesis:


Politi says, ".. at least some of the false news that spread in the last few months of the campaign appears to have had much more serious geopolitical implications and was spread thanks to "a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign," reports the Washington Post, which cites two recent expert reports on the issue."


Again, "expert" claims. Just to remind readers, the first expert is an anonymous Russiaphobic website PropOrNot, while the other expert' writes for an anti-Russian blog and works for a neoconservative think tank (see Neocon below).


Less we forget, The Slate invented a fake story that went viral in October, one which was retweeted by Hillary Clinton herself. Apparently, Clinton's campaign staff fed her planted online news story created by another on The Slate's journalists' named Franklin Foer, complete with the comical clickbait headline, "Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?"


Here's Hillary Clinton's tweet of The Slate's own fake news' story:


(View image on Twitter)


four-things


Follow Hillary Clinton


It's time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.


http://slate.me/2dWggCd


John Roberts at Forbes explains how The Slate got caught passing off actual fake news' at the height of the election, "The bottom line is that Slate screwed up by publishing this in the first place, and by adding more kooky misinformation to an already addled election season. As for Foer, he says on Twitter a "follow up" piece is in the works."


What's the difference between The Slate's fake news story and the Macedonian fake Trump stories on Facebook? There is no difference, other than the fact that Hillary Clinton ended up making a fool out of herself by tweeting out and validating to her millions of followers a completely make-up, fake news story by The Slate.


So Craig Timberg and The Slate are guilty of doing exactly what Timberg and his deep throat source' PropOrNot are accusing Russia's alleged clandestine Facebook and blogger network of doing passing around and "echoing fake news."


How these journalists' at The Washington Post and The Slate expect to be taken seriously after this is just beyond the pale.


Neocon Think Tanks and other Experts'


Craig Timberg's other supporting evidence' or opinion (it's hard to tell the difference in the Washington Post these days) is being supplied by Clint Watts from the ubiquitously titled, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), a Cold War era think tank' (not surprisingly, still stuck in the Cold War), no doubt with links to Washington's intelligence establishment. If that think tank sounds familiar to any neocon fossil hunters, you'd know that FPRI is run by none other than John Lehman, one of the original signatories to the neoconservative doctrine of continuous war, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and a foreign policy advisor to both John McCain and Mitt Romney two virulent anti-Russian hawks. So it's no surprise then that Timberg is referencing his expert' Watts, along with co-authors Andrew Weisburd and JM Berger, in an article from the website War On the Rocks, entitled:


"Trolling For Trump: How Russia is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy."


This is coupled with a related story by Watts and Andrew Weisburd published at the very anti-Russian publication, the Daily Beast, entitled:


How Russia Dominates Your Twitter Feed to Promote Lies (And, Trump, Too) "Fake news stories from Kremlin propagandists regularly become social media trends. Here's how Moscow does it… and what it means for America's election 2016."


Impressive headline, if not a touch Click Bait-y. Once again, the familiar mainstream media pattern of misleading headlines inferring that the article contains actual evidence, and again, the evidence supplied by Watts is that a lot of people think Russia did it,' claiming that:


"And the evidence is compelling. A range of activities speaks to a Russian connection: the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign officials, hacks surrounding voter rolls and possibly election machines, Putin's overt praise for Trump, and the curious Kremlin connections of Trump campaign operatives Paul Manafort and Carter Page."


Very "compelling"? Essentially, the above are a series of familiar, albeit recycled, talking points that may as well have been beamed-in via John Podesta's personal Blackberry. To Clinton supporters, those talking points sounded plausible a month ago, but even staunch Clintonites are fast abandoning the Russian conspiracy theories. For establishment supporters of Hillary Clinton, that translates as case closed. This is a perfect example of a propaganda bubble, or a self-feeding propaganda loop. Many have argued that it was this sort of delusional incestuous closed loop that inadvertently helped to get Donald Trump elected on Nov 8th.


Timberg's source at War On the Rocks also claims that Putin has rebooted the old Soviet "Active Measures" information warfare program designed to "Undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance." Their evidence: a 1992 document from the US Information Agency, of course, not anything from Russia itself. Again, we'll have to accept the word of the "intelligence community," because they talked about it back in 1992. The rest of the theory is comprised of a fill-in-the-blanks exercise plugging-in a little Alex Jones for good measure, and various other websites into a highly creative infographic proving' the Russians are waging an Active Measures on Steroid' information warfare against the United States.


Here's creative infographic from their website designed to stitch together Watts's elaborate conspiracy theory:


russia-active-measures


Watts also claims that anyone in the West who supports Bashar al Assad in Syria is doing so at the behest of this Russian Active Measures' operation:


"When experts published content criticizing the Russian-supported Bashar al Assad regime, organized hordes of trolls would appear to attack the authors on Twitter and Facebook. Examining the troll social networks revealed dozens of accounts presenting themselves as attractive young women eager to talk politics with Americans, including some working in the national security sector. These "honeypot" social media accounts were linked to other accounts used by the Syrian Electronic Army hacker operation. All three elements were working together: the trolls to sow doubt, the honeypots to win trust, and the hackers (we believe) to exploit clicks on dubious links sent out by the first two."


This is derivative theorizing that would make even Bellingcat wince. The use of the word "troll" as a generalized pejorative label is buttressed by an even more bias notion that no one in the west would ever be against regime change in Syria, unless they were convinced otherwise by attractive Russian online honeypots. This level of research' is beyond ridiculous, and yet, this is what passes for a trusted source' at the Washington Post today.


Political Bias: An Occupational Hazzard at The Washington Post


In a previous article, it's just a little too obvious that Timberg can't hold back his disappointment in Hillary Clinton's defeat when you read his headline: "Could better Internet security have prevented Trump's shocking win?"


"The election of Republican Donald Trump has stunned Silicon Valley, sparking renewed fears about how the federal government's powerful surveillance machinery could undermine personal privacy especially in the hands of a man with a history of threatening retaliation against those who challenge him," claims Timberg.


The hysterical lamenting quickly turns to fear mongering:


"In Silicon Valley, many were dazed after Tuesday's election. Some companies let their employees take the day off or wrote all-staff letters reminding their colleagues of their commitment to inclusive workplaces that protect women, immigrants and minorities. Techies, meanwhile, warned one another on Twitter to begin using privacy and encrypted tools."


What is the difference between this politicized diatribe and the fake Macedonia posts on Facebook? There is no difference, they are doing the same thing. What is going on at The Washington Post? It looks like the organization abandoned any pretense of objective journalism.


Here you have a writer who is on staff at The Washington Post and a fellow at Stanford University's John S. Knight School of Journalism trying to posit a unified conspiracy theory that Russia steered the outcome of a US Presidential Election.


Timberg is just one of many examples of overtly politically bias writers in mainstream publications, specifically employed by The Washington Post, New York Times, ABC, CBS, CNN and others. Many were caught working in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign, like The Post's "star reporter" Juliet Eilperin who was revealed in an email to have offered John Podesta a "heads up" about a story she was about to publish, even going so far as to provide the Clinton campaign CEO with a brief pre-publication synopsis. Here are a few more famous "journalists" and their corrupted publications guilty of colluding with the Clinton Campaign:


clintonjournalists


Not surprisingly, Timberg then goes on to call the news output of RT (Russia Today) "propaganda," and goes on to base his value judgment on a Rand Corporation report that describes Russian media as a "propaganda efforts a firehose of falsehood' because of their speed, power and relentlessness" a report which also claims that Russia attacked neighboring Georgia in 2008, a common western meme, when in reality it was US-backed Georgian military forces that attacked South Ossetia an obvious point which Timberg seems to have overlooked due to his own confirmation bias. Sadly, this is par for the course with most US media pundits, most of whom do not really care what actually happened, only what Washington's party line is on events.


His source, War on the Rocks, continues pushing their conspiracy theory, stating, "But most observers are missing the point. Russia is helping Trump's campaign, yes, but it is not doing so solely or even necessarily with the goal of placing him in the oval office. Rather, these efforts seek to produce a divided electorate and a president with no clear mandate to govern. The ultimate objective is to diminish and tarnish American democracy."


I think America has managed to do a pretty good job of that by itself.


Decline of the US Mainstream Media


The loss of credibility is the least of The Post's worries though.


The reality is that in an effort to recoup dwindling revenues needed to pay for its inflated salaries and non-investigative investigations,' The Washington Post themselves have had to resort to pushing daily some of the most gratuitous click bait' stories on the web. Here's one of many daily low-brow items, this Polar Bear Eats Dog story is from Tuesday Nov 22nd.


If you follow the Post's newsfeed, you will see endless articles like the polar bear story, most of which carry a deceptive headline that does not reflect the story in the article. That's real Click Bait, and it's now their bread and butter.


In an age of universal corruption in Washington and rampant collusion between political elites and the US corporate media, it's much easier to scapegoat an existential enemy for every systemic and institutional crisis affecting America. Whole industries have been spun out of this old habit: the intelligence industry, the defense industry, and the new security' industry collectively well over a trillion-dollar per year financial concern requires a boogyman in order to justify not only its existence, but also its corporate share prices, and financial growth projections. Now, there's a real unified conspiracy theory for you! Maybe Craig Timberg should consider looking into that conspiracy, in the tradition of the former versions of Woodward and Bernstein.


Author Jay Dyer explained the current corporate media structure in America today in his article entitled, "The Entire Mainstream Warmongering Media is Fake," explaining, "Given the mainstream media is almost wholly owned by 6 conglomerates, we can begin to see how the coordination and control once considered a "conspiracy theory" is now made evident.


6_major_corporations_own_90_communications


2012 Ownership Chart (Image Source: Jays Analysis)


In 1983, there were 50 and now it is roughly six, with NewsCorp owning the largest papers on three continents. That these facts sound like a "conspiracy theory" can only be presumed from a position of ignorance, especially given the full coordination and deception regarding the Trump Clinton election of 2016, from rigged polls to Wikileaks revelations of 60-plus top media operatives directly promoting Hillary."


Dyer adds, "If the Trump phenomena showed anything, it showed the consensus reality the mainstream media attempted to create concerning Hillary's certain victory, as well as the consensus reality erected for decades, is not omnipotent."


In short, the entire US corporate media seems to function with a singular hive mind, aggressively promoting one war after the another, and elevating a new geopolitical foe every few years. This can be explained in part by the defense industry's ownership of US mainstream outlets, and the hundreds of millions of dollars these Pentagon-linked companies pour into both TV, print and online ads none of that explains how editors, writers and producers at these outlets can sit there and still claim they are still performing their duty as part of the Fourth Estate.


As it stands, mainstream journalism is truly dead in America.


On Oct 9, 2016, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it accurately:


"We have witnessed a fundamental change of circumstances when it comes to the aggressive Russophobia that now lies at the heart of U.S. policy towards Russia. It's not just a rhetorical Russophobia, but aggressive steps that really hurt our national interests and pose a threat to our security."


What Lavrov didn't say is that it has now reached hysterical proportions in US mainstream media circles, where those who call themselves journalists are willing to present virtually anything and call it reporting, even if it's pure hyperbole, so long as it fulfils the anti-Russian narrative.


Unfortunately, The Washington Post continues to be a big part of the problem.


Patrick Henningsen is the founder and managing editor of the independent news and media analysis website 21st Century Wire.com and host of the weekly SUNDAY WIRE radio show which broadcasts live weekly on the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). [This article originally appeared at 21st Century Wire.com]

Quote:The US corporate media, its strings pulled by the modern version of the Central Intelligence Agency's old Operation MOCKINGBIRD media influencing operation, is laughably accusing Russia of generating «fake news» to influence the outcome of the American presidential election. In a November 24, 2016, article in the CIA-connected Washington Post, reporter Craig Timberg reported: «Russia's increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human trolls,' and networks of websites and social-media accounts echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers». The Post's article is worthy of the CIA-generated propaganda spun by the paper at the height of the Cold War-era MOCKINGBIRD.

Contrary to what the Post reported about right-wing accounts of Hillary Clinton's ties to «a shadowy cabal of global financiers, the vanquished Democratic presidential nominee and her husband, via the slush fund known as the Clinton Foundation, was closely linked to a variety of «shadowy global financiers», including those who serve as executives of Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan Chase. The Clinton cabal was more at home in the gatherings of the secretive syndicates of the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Club, and the Council on Foreign Relations than they were at labor union and student meetings.

The Post was clearly fed its poorly-sourced and anecdotal-based article on Russian «fake news» by the usual suspects of Russia-bashers and CIA mouthpieces, including The Daily Beast; former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul; Rand Corporation; George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs; the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia; and a website called «PropOrNot.com» or «Is It Propaganda Or Not?», which is linked not only to George Soros-funded anti-Russia websites but also to conveyors of CIA disinformation like Snopes.com. The Post article is nothing more than an advertisement for PropOrNot.com, which bills itself as a «Propaganda Identification Service, since 2016».

The media influencing operation targeting Russia appears to be an outgrowth of the US State Department's Counter-Information Team of the Bureau of International Information Programs. The team, established under the George W. Bush administration, was a resurrection of the Cold War-era US Information Agency's (USIA) Bureau of Information, which was designed to counter «Soviet» disinformation. The truth of the matter was that many of the news reports from TASS, Radio Moscow, and Novosti, branded as «Soviet disinformation» by USIA, were, in fact, truthful reports on CIA covert operations, including political assassinations, biological warfare, and weapons and narcotics smuggling. Today, the media mouthpieces for the CIA and Soros replace Soviet-era media outlets as their main targets for derision with RT television and Sputnik News.

In 2013, Amazon signed a $600 million contract with the CIA to provide cloud computing services to the agency. Amazon's owner, Jeff Bezos, also happens to own The Washington Post. Considering the long close relationship between the newspaper and the CIA, the Post is the last media outlet that should be writing about fake news. In 1981, the Post published a fake news story about a 7-year old heroin addict named «Jimmy». Not only was the story fake, but the Post's assistant managing editor, Bob Woodward of Watergate infamy, submitted the fake Jimmy story to the Pulitzer Prize award committee. The Post reporter who wrote the piece, Janet Cooke, did receive a Pulitzer but had to return it after the story was deemed to be fake. Cooke was fired by the paper but Woodward, a longtime US intelligence mouthpiece, kept his job. So much for The Washington Post and fake news.

In its piece on «fake news», the Post linked to a «blacklist» of alleged «fake news sites» maintained by the mysterious PropOrNot.com. A November 25, 2016, article in Fortune magazine by Mathew Ingram rightfully criticized the Post's reliance on PropOrNot.com for its story. Ingram wrote: «PropOrNot's Twitter account, which tweets and retweets anti-Russian sentiments from a variety of sources, has only existed since August of this year. And an article announcing the launch of the group on its website is dated last month».

It is very likely that PropOrNot.com is a creation of The Washington Post's cloud computing business partner, the CIA. PropOrNot.com calls itself a group of «concerned American citizens with a wide range of backgrounds and expertise, including professional experience in computer science, statistics, public policy, and national security affairs». There are more than enough CIA employees who possess such «professional experience».

PropOrNot.com published a list that would make disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy, the purveyor of «red lists» of Communists in the 1950s, very proud. PropOrNot.com lists 200 sites, which it claims are «routine peddlers of Russian propaganda». On the list are Strategic Culture.org, globalresearch.ca, drudgereport.com, counterpunch.com, wikileaks.com, wikileaks.org, wikispooks.com. zerohedge.com, and truthdig.com. RT.com and Sputniknews.com also appear on the list. Not on the list are media outlets that have notoriously engaged in fake news reporting. These include The New York Times, USA Today, NBC News, CBS News, The New Republic, CNN, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Outrageously, the blacklist includes USSLIBERTYVETERANS.org, a website maintained by survivors of the willful and unprovoked 1967 Israeli air and naval attack on the US intelligence ship «USS Liberty» in the eastern Mediterranean. The attack killed 34 American Navy sailors and intelligence personnel and the website, in part, is dedicated to their memory. The inclusion of the Liberty veterans' website strongly suggests the involvement of pro-Israeli shills, all neoconservatives, who nest within a number non-profit think tanks in Washington, DC and may be associated with PropOrNot.com.

The inclusion of some white nationalist «hate sites» on the PropOrNot.com list is reminiscent of the tactics of the misnamed «Southern Poverty Law Center» (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama. The center is neither «Southern» or suffering from poverty since it has $175 million in the bank and owns two buildings in Montgomery, both of which have been dubbed by critics as «Poverty Palaces». The Washington Post often quotes SPLC officials in attacking president-elect Donald Trump and his advisers.

PropOrNot.com utilizes a very subjective methodology to come up with its black list: «it does not matter whether the sites listed here are being knowingly directed and paid by Russian intelligence officers, or whether they even knew they were echoing Russian propaganda at any particular point: If they meet these criteria, they are at the very least acting as bona-fide useful idiots' of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further scrutiny». And who does PropOrNot.com propose for placing other websites on its blacklist and putting them under «further scrutiny?» Perhaps they want the CIA, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or US Cyber Command to engage in harassment in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Other alleged «Russian propaganda» websites included on the blacklist are infowars.com, intrepidreport.com, intellihub.com, informationclearinghouse.info, corbettreport.com, moonofalabama.org, floridasunpost.com, opednews.com, oilgeopolitics.com, gatesofvienna.net, blackagendareport.com, mintpressnews.com, ahtribune.com, thefreethoughtproject.com, consortiumnews.com, washingtonsblog.com, asia-pacificresearch.com, filmsforaction.com (which advances the rights of Native Americans), thirdworldtraveler.com, and activistpost.com.

Many of the blacklisted websites have something in common: they supported Trump for president. The Washington Post heartily endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, which makes the blacklist appear to be, in part, nothing more than sour grapes on the part of the Post and its unnamed «experts» working for PropOrNot.com.

PropOrNot.com also managed to salt its list with a few obvious fake news websites, including http://www.superstation95.com, which purports to be a New York FM radio station; baltimoregazette.com; and veteranstoday.com. This has the effect of tarnishing the legitimate sites on the list by associating them with fabulists and cyber-grifters.

Two members of the Ronald Reagan administration, Director of the Office of Management and Budget David Stockman (davidstockmanscontracorner.com) and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy Paul Craig Roberts (paulcraigroberts.org) find their websites on the blacklist. Also blacklisted is former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul (ronpaulinstitute.org).

The blacklist highlighted by The Washington Post appears to be more of a censorship target list developed for the not-to-be Hillary Clinton administration. For the Post to engage in blacklisting other press outlets merely because it does not care for their news content is shameful beyond belief. If any outlet should be ordered to cease its operations for not acting in the public interest, it is The Washington Post for grossly distorting the news and misleading the public from the end of World War II to the present day.

If one wants «fake news» the intelligence-corporate complex is the place to go. From corporate media reports about bogus Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the Pentagon's hiring of British public relations firm Bell Pottinger to create fake news stories about terrorist attacks in Iraq to the use of a group called the «White Helmets» that pumps out fake stories regarding the Syrian government, the corporate media is full of «fake news» fed to it by an omnipresent US intelligence-run psychological warfare infrastructure.