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The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets – a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that). Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming – with no basis whatsoever – that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie – and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth – was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.

The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets — a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that). Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming — with no basis whatsoever — that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie — and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth — was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.

That the emails in the Wikileaks archive were doctored or faked — and thus should be disregarded — was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, The Atlantic, and Newsweek. And, by design, this Fake News spread like wildfire all over the internet, hungrily clicked and shared by tens of thousands of people eager to believe it was true. As a result of this deliberate disinformation campaign, anyone reporting on the contents of the emails was instantly met with claims that the documents in the archive had been proven fake. The most damaging such claim came from MSNBC’s intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance. As I documented on October 11, he tweeted what he — for some bizarre reason — labeled an “Official Warning.” It decreed: “#PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.” That tweet was re-tweeted by more than 4,000 people. It was vested with added credibility by Clinton-supporting journalists like Reid and Frum (“expert to take seriously”).

AUSTIN, Texas — Amid a wave of widespread criticism and legal threats, the Washington Post has added a lengthy editor’s note to an article which alleged that a host of independent media websites were spreading Russian propaganda. Washington Post added editor's note to top of "Russian propaganda" story after being called out for shoddy reportinghttps://t.co/dWKbZJGS9a pic.twitter.com/skGiZUX2Ls — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 7, 2016 The article, written by Craig Timberg and published on Nov. 24, relied largely on information compiled by PropOrNot, an anonymous group that claims to be comprised of media analysts and researchers. At the time the Post story was published, the group’s homepage featured a list of 200 websites, including MintPress News and many other well-established independent media outlets, which the organization alleges are either deliberately or inadvertently spreading Russian propaganda. Among other criticisms levied against the group, PropOrNot’s research depends on overly broad criteria. According to its own stated methodology, criticism of the ”US, Obama, Hillary Clinton, the EU, Angela Merkel, NATO, Ukraine, Jewish people, US allies, the ‘mainstream media,’ and democrats, the center-right or center-left, and moderates of all stripes,” would be grounds for inclusion on “The List.” The Post added an editor’s note to the article on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to distance the newspaper from the controversy. “The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests,” the note begins.

While Timberg’s article does refer to the work of multiple researchers, the bulk of the report relied on allegations made by PropOrNot. The Washington Post continued: “One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so.” Numerous websites, including MintPress, have objected to their inclusion on “The List.” On Tuesday, James Moody, the lawyer representing the publisher of the website Naked Capitalism, demanded a formal retraction and public apology on Tuesday. Moody wrote: “You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist. You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the “team” at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.” Backlash against both PropOrNot and the Post’s story hasn’t just come from media outlets included on “The List,” though.

“The group promoted by the Post … embodies the toxic essence of Joseph McCarthy, but without the courage to attach individual names to the blacklist,” wrote Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept, which was not featured on the PropOrNot list, on Nov. 26. The Post’s editor’s note concludes: “Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.” However, MintPress and Naked Capitalism remain on “The List,” as do respected alternative and independent media sites Antiwar.com, Black Agenda Report, Truthout, and Truthdig. Overall, the Post’s new position seemed poorly received by many of the media analysts who have criticized the story. On Wednesday evening, Adam Johnson, a reporter who writes for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, tweeted that the Post editors who refuse to retract the story are “a bunch of cowards.” what a bunch of cowards. "This blacklist that served as the entire news basis of our piece is bullshit but we wont retract the story" https://t.co/V5ZSwSMgTg — Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 7, 2016 Timberg’s article appeared amid widespread outcry over the apparent threat of “fake news” against American democracy. Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof, told MintPress editor-in-chief Mnar Muhawesh that the rush to create “blacklists” of media outlets undermines the freedom of the press.

Today, Prudential Financial announced it would suspend the distribution of a low-cost life insurance policy through Wells Fargo. The low-cost life insurance policy, called MyTerm, had been promoted by Wells Fargo since 2014 throughout its large number of retail banking outlets. The suspension comes shortly after a wrongful termination lawsuit was filed by three former Prudential employees, which alleged that Wells Fargo employees signed up customers for MyTerm life insurance policies without the customer’s knowledge to hit sales goals. The plaintiffs, who worked at Prudential’s corporate investigations division, claim their reports of the fraud led to their termination because Prudential management did not want to take any action that could damage its business with Wells Fargo. If true, those allegations would fit an already established pattern of Wells Fargo employees creating fake customer checking, saving, and credit card accounts. The resulting scandal from those revelations led to Wells Fargo being fined $185 million and the resignation of the CEO, John Stumpf. Wells Fargo is already facing a new investigation by the SEC concerning whether the bank made proper disclosures to investors. It’s not clear if the company disclosed the nature of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigation and others that led to $185 million in fines, or whether the company knowingly transmitted false sales numbers based on the gains from fake accounts.

Though it is hard to quantify, Wells Fargo’s name, reputation, and brand have been undeniably damaged. After the publicity of the congressional hearings, it is likely that many potential customers will not use the bank’s services. Customers whose names were used to open fake accounts will probably never bank with Wells Fargo again. In fact, some of them are suing. That’s all before whatever further damage is done by the more recent accusations about the fake life insurance accounts from Prudential. Hopefully not lost in all this is that the initial plan by Wells Fargo executives was to scapegoat low-level employees for this entire scandal. Despite creating the “cross-selling” program, which forced employees to aggressively try to open new accounts and even firing those that did not or complained about it, Wells Fargo upper management initially took no responsibility for the fake account scandal. In all, over 5,000 low-level employees have been terminated and are likely never going to work in banking again, while the CEO and the executive responsible for managing the program, Carrie Tolstedt, will walk away with millions upon millions of dollars.

However, in this political season, the Republicans want to gain some political advantage by stirring up doubts about President Barack Obama’s toughness on terrorism — and the Obama administration is looking for ways to blunt those rhetorical attacks by launching retaliatory strikes in Libya or elsewhere. Thus, it was small comfort to learn that Teflon-coated John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, had flown to Tripoli, hoping to unearth some interim Libyan government officials to consult with on the Benghazi attack. With the embassy’s help, he no doubt identified Libyan officials with some claim to purview over “terrorism.”

But Brennan is not about investigation. Retribution is his bag. It is likely that some Libyan interlocutor was brought forth who would give him carte blanche to retaliate against any and all those “suspected” of having had some role in the Benghazi murders. So, look for “surgical” drone strike or Abbottabad-style special forces attack — possibly before the Nov. 6 election — on whomever is labeled a “suspect.” Sound wild? It is. However, considering Brennan’s penchant for acting-first-thinking-later, plus the entrée and extraordinary influence he enjoys with President Obama, drone and/or special forces attacks are, in my opinion, more likely than not. (This is the same Brennan, after all, who compiles for Obama lists of nominees for assassination by drone.) If in Tuesday’s debate with ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama is pressed, as expected on his supposed weakness in handling Benghazi, attacks on “terrorists,” real or “suspect,” become still more likely. Brennan and other White House functionaries might succeed in persuading the president that such attacks would be just what the doctor ordered for his wheezing poll numbers.

It was no surprise, then, that almost completely absent from the discussion at last Tuesday’s hearing was any attempt to figure out why a well-armed, well-organized group of terrorists wanted to inflict maximum damage on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and kill the diplomats there. Were it not for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, impressionable listeners would have been left with the idea that the attack had nothing to do with Washington’s hare-brained, bomb-heavy policies, from which al-Qaeda and similar terrorist groups are more beneficiary than victim, as in Libya. Not for the first time, Kucinich rose to the occasion at Tuesday’s hearing:

Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, says the company will “engineer” specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine’s news delivery services. “We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik,” Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates “Russian propaganda.”

“We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.”The discussion focused on the company’s popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications.

The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a “longtime friend,” added that the experience of “the last year” showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves.“We started with the default American view that ‘bad’ speech would be replaced with ‘good’ speech, but the problem found in the last year is that this may not be true in certain situations, especially when you have a well-funded opponent who is trying to actively spread this information,” he told the audience.

The FBI is at it again. Creating fake terror plots to justify their existence. And this plot hits on all the themes one would expect from a good fake terror plot. The FBI initially found a patsy by trolling Twitter for support of ISIS. That's exciting because finding someone retarded enough to admit support for murderers is really difficult. Then they sent an in-house jihadist to team up with the patsy to plan a grand terror attack on the nation's Capitol. Heroically, the moment the 20-year-old patsy said he would "go forward with violent jihad" the FBI steps in and declares a victory in the war on terror. NBC News reports: Ohio man was arrested Wednesday and accused of planning to attack the U.S. Capitol, U.S. officials told NBC News. But the officials said the man, identified as Christopher Cornell, 20, was dealing with an undercover agent the entire time and was never in a position to carry out his plan. "There was never a danger to the public," an official told NBC News. The officials said that starting in August, Cornell began posting comments on Twitter in support of ISIS under an alias, Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah. Shortly after those posts began appearing, the FBI sent an undercover operative to meet with him.

During a meeting with the operative, court documents say, Cornell said he wanted "to go forward with violent jihad" and that Anwar al-Awlaki — the U.S.-born Muslim cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone in September 2011 and was the first U.S. citizen publicly known to have been added to the U.S. kill-or-capture list — and others had encouraged that kind of action. Seriously, Anwar al-Awlaki again? Hasn't his name become synonymous with "false flag"? He's a proven federal asset who also supposedly handled the Fort Hood Shooter, the Underwear Bomber and even the recent Paris Shooters - all incredibly shady events that served to advance the "war on terror" agenda. The FBI has incubated fake terror plots over and over: See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Surely they'd never let an event go live, would they? What would they have to gain? Well, the only reason this story exists at all is to make the public feel that there are genuine terror threats targeting the US Capitol. That is then used to justify spying on the Internet and funding the huge terrorism-industrial complex that has nothing better to do than make up the reasons to keep giving them money. The police state is a ruthless business, and false flag terror is its most effective marketing tool. UPDATE: Surprise, the salesmen are already using this fake story to push their agenda: John Boehner Credits Government Surveillance For Uncovering Capitol Bomb Threat

Julian Assange is a deeply polarizing figure. Many admire him and many despise him (into which category one falls in any given year typically depends on one’s feelings about the subject of his most recent publication of leaked documents). But one’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article, which is not about Assange. This article, instead, is about a report published this week by The Guardian that recklessly attributed to Assange comments that he did not make. This article is about how those false claims — fabrications, really — were spread all over the internet by journalists, causing hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to consume false news. The purpose of this article is to underscore, yet again, that those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it.

(CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Lawyers for a west suburban teenager charged with a downtown bomb plot say he was caught in a "fake war on terror" contrived by U.S. spy agencies. Each week it seems as though there is a new salvo of accusations by the legal team defending Hillside 19-year-old Adel Daoud. On Tuesday, a court filing by Daoud's attorneys characterizes U.S. spy agencies as outlaw arms of the government that snagged the west suburban teenager in a dummied-up bomb plot. The nation's intelligence gathering agencies, they believe, are operating in what amounts to a fourth, runaway, branch of government. Daoud was arrested a little more than a year ago, according to authorities planning to detonate a car bomb at this downtown intersection that would take out a popular nearby bar--if it was real. But the so-called plot was a sting operation and the bomb operatives worked for the FBI.

"Look, he's a young kid," said Daoud attorney Thomas Durkin. "He just graduated from high school." Durkin, from the beginning, has cried foul about the government investigation and tactics. In the sharply-critical Daoud surveillance motion filed Tuesday, Durkin states that the government has concocted a "fake choice between national security and civil rights, not unlike the fake war being conducted in our name against terror." Durkin, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago, states that: "The usually reliable representations of the U.S. Attorney's office can no longer be trusted. . .because the intelligence agencies. . . simply do not inform the local prosecutors of all material information." "The spy agencies," Durkin writes, "are as fearful of the prosecutors as they are defense counsel". . .and "just as easily compromised."

During the investigation, FBI agents secretly recorded phone conversations at the suspect's home, and elsewhere, and they monitored internet communications. Prosecutors have argued that evidence must be held in secret, from both the public and the defendant-- and so far, the courts have agreed. Lawyers for the 19-year old man from west suburban Chicago are challenging the initial legal grounds permitting authorities to monitor his communications. They contend Daoud may have been targeted by intelligence agencies for viewpoints expressed on the internet. The accused teenage jihadist remains in federal custody without bail, where he has been for 14 months. Authorities have said that Daoud made statements he intended to kill 100 people and injure 300. As his attorney continues a vigorous challenge of government tools and tactics, prosecutors declined to comment to the I-Team.

Special Report: Twelve years ago, a campaign of character assassination by the major U.S. newspapers drove an honest journalist to suicide. Now those papers claim to be paragons of truth-telling, says Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Amid the mainstream U.S. media’s current self-righteous frenzy against “fake news,” it’s worth recalling how the big newspapers destroyed Gary Webb, an honest journalist who exposed some hard truths about the Reagan administration’s collaboration with Nicaraguan Contra cocaine traffickers. Webb’s reward for reviving that important scandal in 1996 – and getting the CIA’s inspector general to issue what amounted to an institutional confession in 1998 – was to have The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times lobby for, essentially, his banishment from journalism.

The major media pile-on was so intense and so effective that Webb lost his job at the San Jose Mercury-News and could never find regular work in his profession again. Betrayed by his journalistic colleagues, his money gone, his family broken and his life seemingly hopeless, Webb committed suicide on Dec. 9, 2004. Even then, the Los Angeles Times wrote up his obituary as if the paper were telling the life story of an organized-crime boss, not a heroic journalist. The Times obit was then republished by The Washington Post. In other words, on one of the most significant scandals of the Reagan era, major newspapers, which now want to serve as the arbiters of truth for  the Internet, demonstrated how disdainful they actually are toward truth when it puts the U.S. government in a harsh light.

Indeed, if it had been up to the big newspapers, this important chapter of modern history would never have been known. A decade earlier, in 1985, Brian Barger and I first exposed the Contra-cocaine connection for The Associated Press – and we watched as the big papers turned their backs on the scandal then, too. The main point that Webb added to the story was how some of the Contra cocaine fed into the production of crack-cocaine that had such a devastating effect on America’s black communities in particular. Webb’s disclosure of the crack connection infuriated many African-Americans and the big papers acted as if it was their civic duty to calm down those inner-city folks by assuring them that the U.S. government would never do such a thing. So, instead of doing their jobs as journalists, the major newspapers acted as the last line of defense against the people learning the truth.

Following a series of similar widely ridiculed so-called “sting” operations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced last week that it had foiled yet another “terror plot” that, like virtually every supposed “terrorist” case in recent years, was created and managed from start to finish by the FBI itself. This time, the dupe was a 28-year-old California man, Matthew Aaron Llaneza, with a documented history of mental illness, who apparently believed his government handlers were helping him wage “jihad.” Critics, however, say the whole scheme smacks of entrapment and a waste of taxpayer money. Llaneza was arrested by federal agents on February 7 in Oakland after he supposedly tried to blow up a bogus bomb the FBI helped him create. According to authorities, the mentally ill San Jose suspect planned to detonate the fake explosives outside a Bank of America branch. The alleged plan, officials said, was to start a “civil war” by making it appear as if the attack had been carried out by “anti-government militias,” sparking a crackdown by the government on right-of-center dissidents.       “Unbeknownst to Llaneza, the explosive device that he allegedly attempted to use had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public,” the FBI admitted in a press release celebrating the arrest of its mentally unstable stooge. The man was charged in a criminal complaint with “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against property used in an activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce.” If convicted, he could face life in prison.

According to the government’s court filings, the mentally ill man met with an undercover FBI agent late last year under mysterious circumstances. The federal official somehow managed to convince the naïve dupe that he was connected to the “Taliban and the mujahidin in Afghanistan” — Islamist forces that were originally armed and trained by the U.S. government before becoming official enemies. From there, federal handlers worked with the man to develop the half-baked plot and the fake bomb to blow something up.  

In a story that is getting more surreal by the minute, a post on 4Chan now claims that the infamous "golden showers" scene in the unverified 35-page dossier, allegedly compiled by a British intelligence officer, was a hoax and fabricated by a member of the chatboard as "fanfiction", then sent to Rick Wilson, who proceeded to send it to the CIA, which then put it in their official classified intelligence report on the election. Here is 4Chan's explanation of how the story came to light: >/pol/acks mailed fanfiction to anti-trump pundit Rick Wilson about trump making people piss on a bed obama slept in >he thought it was real and gave it to the CIA >the central intelligence agency of the united states of america put this in their official classified intelligence report on russian involvement in the election >donald trump and obama have both read this pol/acks fanfiction >the cia has concluded that the russian plans to blackmail trump with this story we made up just let that sink in what we have become.

nd a summary posted on pastebin: On january 10, Buzzfeed posted a story under the byline of Ken Bensinger, Mark Schoofs and Miriam elder titled “these reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia” and posted a link to a document alleging, among other things, that russia has been cultivating trump for 5+ years, that trump has been in constant contact with the kremlin for information on his opponents, and perhaps most inflammatory, that there are many recorded instances of blackmail of trump in sexual misconduct. A prominent claim is that trump rented the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in moscow, where he knew that the Obamas had slept in; he them hired a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden shower' (pissplay) on the bed and in the room. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-dee...https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984/Trump-Intelligence-Al...   Noted #nevertrump voice Rick Wilson later commented on twitter, stating that the report “gave a new meaning to Wikileaks” (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818982395202379777) and that the report was the reason everybody was fighting so hard against the election of Trump. (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818983514335047680)   The remarkable thing? It's all fake. And not only fake; it's a prank perpetuated by 4chan, on Rick Wilson himself. A post on 4chan on october 26 stated “mfw managed to convince CTR and certain (((journalists))) on Twitter there'll be an October surprise on Trump this Friday” along with a picture of a smug face with a hash name. http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/94704894/#94705224   on november 1, a person without a picture but is assumed to be the same person posted “So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it. They still believe it. Guys, they're truly fucking desperate - there's no remaining Trump scandal that's credible.” https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/95568919/#95571329  

al media, a person with the same smug grin face, and the same hash title for the picture, stated “I didn't think they'd take it so far.” http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/106514445#p106520376   This story has taken on something of a life of it's own. Going through Rick Wilson's twitter, you can find many different stories from the time that he had shown the story to a wide number of anti-trump news sources, trying to find a news organization that would actually publish the story. During that time period, he referred to it often as 'the thing', and often playing coy with followers on the content with the story with anybody who was not also a #Nevertrumper. Unconfirmed sources has people as high up as John McCain giving the story to FBI Director James Comey to attempt to verify the story. Given that Rick Wilson runs in Establishment circles, it is not an impossible scenario that long-serving senators are falling for what amounts to a 4chan troll trump supporter creating an ironic October Surprise out of wholecloth to punk a GOPe pundit who derogatorily referred to them as single men who masturbate to anime. While this entire incident is laughable, and even more so if the 4Chan account is accurate, what makes it quite tragic, is that it is no longer possible to dismiss the "fake news" angle to an intelligence report. And if the CIA is compromised, what is left for "news outlets" like CNN and BuzzFeed, which were all too eager to run with the story without any attempt at verification?

Of course, the NYT/WaPo nexus rarely publishes any of our serious dissents and therefore we take refuge in alternate media, such as ‘The Nation,’ ‘Consortiumnews,’ ‘The Intercept,’ ‘Naked Capitalism,’ ‘Counterpunch,’ ‘Zero Hedge,’ ‘Antiwar.com,’ ‘Truthdig,’ ‘Common Dreams,’ etc. I think then we were all quite shocked (but not surprised) when recently we saw 200 WEBSITES listed as tools of the Kremlin (WaPo’s November 24, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election”).My God, the ghost of Izzy Stone is back from the 1950s! For that matter, so is Tom Clancy from the ’80s. False thrillers will now be written about the Russians hacking the American elections. Money and TV serials will be made. I’ve never read such hysterical junk in the New York Times (call it what it is — “fake news”), in which the editorials have become outrageous diatribes of alleged crimes by Russia, many of them presumably written by Serge Schmemann, one of those ideologues who still looks for Russians under his bed at night; they were called ‘White Russians’ in the old days and, like right-wing Cubans in Miami, are unable to live down past grievances. Schmemann is obviously riding high at the NYT edit board. This type of thinking has clearly influenced the Pentagon and many of our Generals’ statements, and has pervaded MSM reporting. When one group-think controls our national conversation, it becomes truly dangerous. In this spirit, I’m linking several crucial essays of new vintage, pointing out the disgrace the MSM has become.

The infighting between several foreign sponsored jihadist insurgency groups in northern and eastern Syria is sold by some as a fight of the "moderate" Free Syrian Army against the al-Qaeda affiliate ISIS. But this does not seem to be the reality. While there is some showing of the FSA flag over conquered ISIS territory this is likely just a fake to hide the real group behind the fighting, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhad al Nusra and a new, probably fictitious, Army of the Mujahideen. A similar fake was reported from southern Syria where Jabhat al-Nusra successes get sold to "western" supporters as sole FSA operations: “The FSA and Al Nusra join together for operations but they have an agreement to let the FSA lead for public reasons, because they don’t want to frighten Jordan or the West,” said an activist who works with opposition groups in Deraa. “Operations that were really carried out by Al Nusra are publicly presented by the FSA as their own,” he said.

A leading FSA commander involved in operations in Deraa said Al Nusra had strengthened FSA units and played a decisive role in key rebel victories in the south. “The face of Al Nusra cannot be to the front. It must be behind the FSA, for the sake of Jordan and the international community,” he said. Whether this infighting between the two al-Qaeda affiliates Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS is about, money or other issues, is not yet clear. ISIS seems not be putting up a real fight but is mostly just retreating when challenged. Something is fishy in this. Whatever it may be it is for now good news for the Syrian government. It may even open a chance to kick those fake "revolutionaries" out of Aleppo.

The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government. Today I am publishing a comprehensive and important guest essay, The Purchase of Our Republic, by longtime correspondent Y. Falkson.

Saudi Arabia has urged its citizens not to distribute "documents that might be faked" in an apparent response to WikiLeaks' publication on Friday of more than 60,000 documents it says are secret Saudi diplomatic communications. The statement, made by the foreign ministry on its Twitter account on Friday, did not directly deny the documents' authenticity, Reuters news agency reported. But on Sunday, foreign ministry spokesperson Osama Naqli warned the country not to "allow enemies of the state to achieve their intentions in regards to exchanging or publishing any documents" and said "many of them had been fabricated in a very obvious manner". Naqli said investigations were under way and that the ministry would prosecute those involved, a statement on the Saudi news agency said.

The released documents, which WikiLeaks said were embassy communications, emails between diplomats and reports from other state bodies, include discussions of Saudi Arabia's position regarding regional issues and efforts to influence media.

WikiLeaks said the released documents were a batch of more than half a million Saudi documents it has obtained and plans to publish. WikiLeaks did not say where it obtained the documents, but it referred in a press release to Riyadh's statement in May that it had suffered a breach of its computer networks, an attack later claimed by a group calling itself the Yemeni Cyber Army.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended the decision Friday to bar several news organizations from covering his question-and-answer session with press, saying the Trump administration would "push back" on "false narratives." In an audio recording from the gaggle published by Politico, Spicer defends his decision to bar outlets including CNN and The New York Times, saying "we had a pool and then we expanded it, we added some folks to come cover it." Moments later the press secretary said that the White House will "aggressively push back" against "false stories." ADVERTISEMENT"It was my decision to decide to expand the pool. We are going to aggressively push back. We're just not going to sit back and let, you know, false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there," he said. The White House barred several news organization from the gaggle, including CNN, The New York Times, The Hill, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Mail, BBC, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News.

The gaggle, which was held inside Spicer's West Wing office instead of the regular White House briefing room, was held hours after Trump slammed "fake news" media during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). "A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are — they are the enemy of the people," Trump maintained. The White House Friday specifically pushed back against reports that chief of staff Reince Priebus had asked the FBI to dispute news stories about Trump aides' ties to Russia. Spicer went back and forth with several reporters about those particular reports with journalists in the off-camera meeting. 

Donald Trump, for reasons I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is an extremist, despicable, and dangerous candidate, and his almost-certain humiliating defeat is less than a month away. So I realize there is little appetite in certain circles for critiques of any of the tawdry and sometimes fraudulent journalistic claims and tactics being deployed to further that goal. In the face of an abusive, misogynistic, bigoted, scary, lawless authoritarian, what’s a little journalistic fraud or constant fearmongering about subversive Kremlin agents between friends if it helps to stop him? But come January, Democrats will continue to be the dominant political faction in the U.S. — more so than ever — and the tactics they are now embracing will endure past the election, making them worthy of scrutiny. Those tactics now most prominently include dismissing away any facts or documents that reflect negatively on their leaders as fake, and strongly insinuating that anyone who questions or opposes those leaders is a stooge or agent of the Kremlin, tasked with a subversive and dangerously un-American mission on behalf of hostile actors in Moscow. To see how extreme and damaging this behavior has become, let’s just quickly examine two utterly false claims that Democrats over the past four days — led by party-loyal journalists — have disseminated and induced thousands of people, if not more, to believe. On Friday, WikiLeaks published its first installment of emails obtained from the account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Despite WikiLeaks’ perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents, MSNBC’s favorite ex-intelligence official, Malcolm Nance, within hours of the archive’s release, posted a tweet claiming — with zero evidence and without citation to a single document in the WikiLeaks archive — that it was compromised with fakes:

As you can see, more than 4,000 people have re-tweeted this “Official Warning.” That includes not only random Clinton fans but also high-profile Clinton-supporting journalists, who by spreading it around gave this claim their stamp of approval, intentionally leading huge numbers of people to assume the WikiLeaks archive must be full of fakes, and its contents should therefore simply be ignored. Clinton’s campaign officials spent the day fueling these insinuations, strongly implying that the documents were unreliable and should thus be ignored. Poof: Just like that, unpleasant facts about Hillary Clinton disappeared, like a fairy protecting frightened children by waving her magic wand and sprinkling her dust over a demon, causing it to scatter away. Except the only fraud here was Nance’s claim, not any of the documents published by WikiLeaks. Those were all real. Indeed, at Sunday night’s debate, when asked directly about the excerpts of her Wall Street speeches found in the release, Clinton herself confirmed their authenticity. And news outlets such as the New York Times and AP reported — and continue to report — on their contents without any caveat that they may be frauds. No real print journalists or actual newsrooms (as opposed to campaign operatives masquerading as journalists) fell for this scam, so this tactic did not prevent reporting from being done.

Secretary of State John Kerry opened his speech Friday by describing the horrors victims of the chemical weapon attack suffered, including twitching, spasms and difficulty breathing.

Attempting to drive the point home, Kerry referenced a photograph used by the BBC illustrating a child jumping over hundreds of dead bodies covered in white shrouds. “We saw rows of dead lined up in burial shrouds, the white linen unstained by a single drop of blood,” said Kerry. The photo was meant to depict victims who allegedly succumbed to the effects of chemical weapons via Assad’s regime. However, the photograph used in this context has been exposed as a fake. It had been taken in 2003 in Iraq and was not related to Syrian deaths whatsoever and was later retracted.

The US may have plans to use a fake chemical attack in Syria to hit government forces with airstrikes, the Russian Defense Ministry has said. Washington is already building up strike capability in the Middle East, it said. The warning comes a day after the Russian military said it had information about a looming provocation in Syria’s Idlib governorate, which would involve a staged chemical weapons attack. The US earlier warned it would respond to a chemical weapons attack by Syrian government forces with retaliatory strikes, which would be stronger than those conducted by the US, the UK and France in April.

In a statement published on Monday, the Russian MoD said it noted the deployment to the Mediterranean last weekend of the missile destroyer USS Ross carrying 28 Tomahawk cruise missiles on board. It came after a similar move of the USS The Sullivans to the Persian Gulf and the rebasing of a B-1B Lancer strategic bomber to an air base in Qatar. The Russian ministry said the “preparations are the latest evidence of the US intention to use the” expected provocation.The statement reiterated that the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militant group, previously known as Al-Nusra Front, was preparing a staged chlorine attack in a city in Idlib. It alleged that a group of jihadists, trained in the handling of chemical weapons by the British private military contractor Olive Group, has already arrived in Jisr al-Shughur. The group will “stage decontamination of victims of a staged chemical weapons attack posing as members of the notorious White Helmets group,” the ministry claimed.“The implementation of this provocation, which is being conducted with the assistance of the British intelligence services, is meant to serve as the latest pretext for the US, Britain and France to deliver a missile strike against state and economic facilities in Syria,” said General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry.On August 22, US National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that “if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons, we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”