Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
The most important news-story since the U.S. Presidential election has been the blockbuster by Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton at The Intercept, headlining at 1:17 on the afternoon of November 26th,\u00a0“Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group\u201d<\/span><\/a>. They reported that:<\/span><\/p>\n THE WASHINGTON POST<\/i><\/b><\/span>\u00a0on Thursday <\/i>[Thanksgiving] night\u00a0promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of\u00a0U.S.\u00a0news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The\u00a0<\/i>article<\/i><\/span><\/a>\u00a0by reporter Craig Timberg \u2014 headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread \u2018fake news\u2019 during election, experts say\u201d\u00a0\u2014 cites a report by an anonymous\u00a0<\/i>website calling itself PropOrNot<\/i><\/span><\/a>, which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n WHO EXACTLY IS\u00a0behind PropOrNot, where it gets its funding, and whether or not it is tied to any governments is a complete mystery. The Intercept\u00a0also sent inquiries to the Post\u2019s Craig Timberg asking these questions, and asking whether he thinks it is fair to label left-wing news sites like Truthout\u00a0\u201cRussian propaganda outlets.\u201d Timberg replied: \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I can\u2019t comment about stories I\u2019ve written for the Post.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n As is so often the case, journalists \u2014 who constantly demand transparency from everyone else \u2014 refuse to provide even the most basic\u00a0levels for themselves.\u00a0When subjected to scrutiny, they reflexively adopt the language of the most secrecy-happy national security agencies:\u00a0We do not\u00a0comment on what we do.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Timberg\u2019s piece on the supposed ubiquity of Russian propaganda is misleading in several other ways.\u00a0The other primary \u201cexpert\u201d upon which the\u00a0article relies is Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a pro-Western think tank whose board of advisers includes\u00a0neoconservative figures like infamous orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis and\u00a0pro-imperialist\u00a0Robert D. Kaplan, the latter of whom served on\u00a0the U.S. government\u2019s Defense Policy Board.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n What the Post does not mention in its report is that\u00a0Watts, one of the specialists it relies on for its claims, previously worked as an FBI special\u00a0agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force and as the executive officer of the U.S. Military Academy\u2019s Combating Terrorism Center. As Fortune\u2019s\u00a0Ingram wrote of the group, it is \u201ca conservative think tank funded and staffed by proponents of the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n PropOrNot is by no means a neutral observer. It actively calls on Congress and the White House to work \u201cwith our European allies to\u00a0disconnect Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system, effective immediately and lasting for at least one year, as an appropriate\u00a0response to Russian manipulation of the election.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n In other words, this blacklisting group of anonymous cowards \u2014 putative experts in the pages of the Washington Post \u2014 is actively pushing\u00a0for Western governments to take punitive measures against the Russian government and is speaking and smearing from an extreme\u00a0ideological framework that the Post concealed from its readers.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Greenwald and Norton also reprise the Post\u2019s<\/i> 2002 propaganda supporting G.W. Bush\u2019s allegations that Saddam Hussein had huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and needed to be overthrown. The deception of the American people by the Washington Post<\/i> didn\u2019t just start when the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, purchased that U.S.-aristocracy-controlled propaganda-organ in 2013 and kept it that way, otherwise known in foreign-policy circles as \u201cneoconservative\u201d or simply \u201cneocon,\u201d and also in domestic-policy circles as \u201cneoliberal\u201d<\/span><\/a> or simply \u201cneolib\u201d: they\u2019re the two sides of the same aristocratic coin (otherwise called \u201ccrony capitalism,\u201d or \u201cfascism,\u201d but it has become the American way<\/span><\/a>, and not only the way of other<\/i> corrupt nations).<\/span><\/p>\n Here is the list of the 200 news-sites<\/a><\/span> that PropOrNot label as \u2018Russian Propaganda\u2019 sites. I feel happy that the 18 sites which still are publishing me are on that list (of\u00a0alleged \u2018Russian propaganda\u2019 sites<\/span><\/a>):<\/span><\/p>\n beforeitsnews, blacklistednews, countercurrents, globalresearch, greanvillepost, informationclearinghouse, off-guardian, paulcraigroberts, rinf, russia-insider, sott, strategic-culture, theduran, thesaker, thetruenews, unz, washingsonsblog, zerohedge\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Four others, that also are on the \u2018Russian propaganda\u2019 list, used to publish me but then banned me because I wouldn\u2019t accept their editing, or ripped commentators or politicians they publish or respect: counterpunch, infowars, nakedcapitalism, opednews<\/span><\/p>\n Very few mainstream sites ever published me, but they quit doing so, banned me: alternet, commondreams, dailykos, huffingtonpost, salon, truth-out (which last one somehow made it onto that list of alleged \u2018Russian propaganda\u2019 sites even though truth-out is heavily censored by the U.S. Establishment and so really didn\u2019t belong on that list, and is far more like this list that starts with alternet, none of which is \u2014 nor belongs \u2014 on that \u2018Russian propaganda\u2019 list at all: these ones seem to me to be quite CIA-compliant).<\/span><\/p>\n And then there are some on the \u2018Russian propaganda\u2019 list that I wish would publish me but can\u2019t or don\u2019t, especially stormcloudsgathering and moonofalabama \u2014 both terrific sites, which are written and produced by the same individual who owns it (and both of which are vastly more truthful than is the Washington Post<\/i>, though moonofalabama seems to be blind to the falsenesses of Karl Marx and too selective in the truths that are being reported, but some good reporters are communists blind to the falsenesses of Karl Marx, just as some good reporters are libertarians blind to the falsenesses of Adam Smith \u2014 ideology is fundamentally different from journalism).<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, I think that almost all of the trustworthy sites are on that list of \u2018Russian propaganda\u2019 sites. In the West, reporting truthfully about international relations, or even just about the United States, is defined to be \u2018Russian propaganda\u2019, no matter how well-documented and irrefutable it might actually be.<\/span><\/p>\n 27 hours after publication of The Intercept\u2019s blockbuster, I entered into a google search “Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group\u201d and expected to see there at the top, on the first page of the listings, many mainstream newsmedia, reporting on this brilliant and fast expos\u00e9 of propaganda by the Washington Post<\/i> and by their fellow-neocons in the U.S. government. Instead, there were only news-sites that were themselves on the WP<\/i>-pumped list of \u201cRussian propaganda\u201d sites, plus mirror-sites that don\u2019t publish anything on their own but simply automatically pick up headlines from many different news-media.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Whereas Greenwald and Norton at The Intercept had caught the Washington Pos<\/i>t red-handed lying to their massive audience, the only people who were being allowed to learn that the WP<\/i> \u2019news\u2019 report was fake, and pure neocon propaganda, were ones who were reading news-sites even smaller than The Intercept itself \u2014 mainly comprising news-media that were themselves on the WP<\/i>-publicized urged-to-be-banned list of \u2018Russian propaganda\u2019 sites.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One thing that U.S. \u2018news\u2019media refuse to report is the uniform rot of the U.S. \u2018news\u2019media \u2014 even when it\u2019s only a single one (and not themselves) of those \u2018news\u2019media that\u2019s being exposed. They all protect each other<\/b> \u2014 and not only protect the aristocracy that controls both of the political Parties and thus the U.S. government itself and which also both finances and advertises in (pays) those \u2018news\u2019media \u2014 all of which are fake: \u2018news\u2019 managed by the U.S. aristocracy.<\/span><\/p>\n PS:<\/b> At midnight on Friday November 25th, the scamming-operation (PropOrNot) issued their 32-page \u201cBlack Friday Report: Russian Propaganda Network Mapping\u201d<\/span><\/a> which argued not that the news-sites that they were calling \u201cRussian Propaganda\u201d had published a higher percentage of false, or even of unconfirmed, allegations than America\u2019s major \u2018news\u2019 media did \u2014 and no attention at all<\/i> was being paid by PropOrNot\u2019s \u2018researchers\u2019 to that crucial question, the issue of the truthfulness-falseness of the reporting \u2014 but instead they alleged that the \u201cRussian Propaganda\u201d sites tended to quote from and link to each other. However, a network-mapping of mainstream \u2018news\u2019 sites would show exactly the same thing: they also quote and link to each other. That\u2019s how Americans came to believe, during 2002 and early 2003, that Saddam Hussein had huge stockpiles and active programs to produce Weapons of Mass Destruction, and so we needed to invade Iraq to protect U.S. national security. The exclusivity or \u201cnetworked\u201d operation might even be less on the \u2018Russian Propaganda\u2019 side than it is on the mainstream \u2018news\u2019 side. PropOrNot\u2019s report ignored whether it is, or not. But what\u2019s vastly more important even than this is that they ignored the percentage-accuracy on either side \u2014 the truthfulness\/falseness ratio on either side of that divide<\/i> \u2014 and so no allegations were made in their report regarding the relative trustworthiness<\/i> of the two sides. A web-search for the following three terms entered into the search-box will produce many articles that I have published on the incessant and shameless lying that\u2019s rampant in major U.S. \u2018news\u2019 media: zuesse major media<\/span><\/p>\n PropOrNot isn\u2019t interested in truthfulness, but that\u2019s the only thing I care about. <\/span><\/p>\n All of my articles are simultaneously submitted for publication without charge, to all of the major and almost all of the small newsmedia in the U.S. and most of them also to media in UK and Canada. Some I submit also to Russian and German news-sites, when I believe that the subjects might be of particular interest to those audiences. The reason why my articles are no longer being published by any but small news-sites \u2014 none of which is controlled by any billionaire or centi-millionaire nor by any government anywhere \u2014 is that too high a percentage of my submissions report and document truths that the U.S. aristocracy and the government it controls simply refuse to allow their public to know. It has nothing to do with my being less careful in my use of sources than their reporters are, nor vaguer or less precise in my allegations, nor less attentive to structure in my articles, nor anything like that; it has everything to do with the U.S. aristocracy \u2014 in both of America\u2019s two established political Parties \u2014 prohibiting their respective public (Democratic or Republican) from knowing, or especially from understanding, certain basic truths concerning the control of the U.S. government (such as that the U.S. has the most aggressive government of any on Earth<\/span><\/a> and in recent decades has mass-murdered in many countries that have posed no threat to America\u2019s national security, such as Iraq, Libya and Syria \u2014 facts that both sides of the U.S. aristocracy hide from their public). This is the reason why I always urge my readers to click onto the links wherever a reader questions an allegation that I am making: I want my readers to be able easily to access my sources and evaluate them themselves, and I want any reader who finds any error in one of my sources, or in my article, to call it out in the reader-comments, which I read, especially at the two sites where I directly post (not merely submit<\/i>) my articles, which are rinf.com<\/span><\/a> and washingtonsblog.com<\/span><\/a>. I am painstaking in every article I write, so that no one will find any error of fact or of reasoning in any of my articles, and, thus far, no one ever has \u2014 but if it ever happens, I shall issue a correction, especially at washingtonsblog and rinf, where I can make the corrections myself (as I occasionally have done, of typos). <\/span><\/p>\n The reason why I am now published only at sites that are on the Washington Post\u2019<\/i>s (relying upon PropOrNot\u2019s) banned list is that those are the sites that the U.S. aristocracy don\u2019t control. Other than that, there is considerable diversity amongst those Establishment-banned sites. They certainly aren\u2019t controlled by \u2018the Russian government\u2019 nor by \u2018Russia\u2019s aristocracy\u2019. But they\u2019re also<\/i> not controlled by America\u2019s. <\/span><\/p>\n The only thing that I care about, in any case, is truthfulness. If \u2018journalism\u2019 in the U.S. were likewise, then it wouldn\u2019t be merely a branch of the PR profession in this country, as now is the case. And on November 26th, The Intercept, in a stunning and extraordinarily honest article, exposed the fakeness of the Washington Post\u2019<\/i>s big \u2018news\u2019 story about the news. And none of the major \u2018news\u2019 media reported about it. So, I do, because anything that the U.S. aristocracy want to hide from the public, I want to report.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse The most important news-story since the U.S. Presidential election has been the blockbuster by Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton at The Intercept, headlining at 1:17 on the afternoon of November 26th,\u00a0“Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group\u201d. They reported that: THE WASHINGTON POST\u00a0on Thursday [Thanksgiving] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":281401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[30,1036,32,96,1035,535,698,1034,38,59,1017,753,524,754,523,49,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-281400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-big-brother","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-daily-news","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary-clinton","15":"tag-independent-media","16":"tag-iraq","17":"tag-military","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-police-state","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-syria","22":"tag-ukraine","23":"tag-usa-news","24":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}