Ha! yes! As a matter of fact, #BBC you are right, it is a scourge, and you are right, I am heartily sick of hearing it. Problem is, YOU are the ones pumping it out every second of every day.
One of the most noble aspirations of a journalist used to be to unite people in common causes. To analise situations and events in an attempt to bring the world closer to a position of understanding each other. To exposing those who would stir up trouble between nations, to shed light upon corruption, that we might one day live in a more peaceful and tolerant world.
Yet our mainstream media has for decades seemed to take great delight in creating or highlighting divisions and separation. They have failed to support nations, failed to help them to stay intact and functional. They have failed to stand up to corporate bullies who threaten the peace of all nations. They have failed to report truth where truth would have healed wounds. They have failed to report truth where truth would have prevented war and would have saved millions of lives. Yet they now want our sympathy.
Crying and bleating about so called "fake news sites" is as pathetic as it is contemptibly hypocritical, coming from these master fakers and mischief makers of our time. Why in the hell did they lose their integrity to the degree that people were forced to go elsewhere for their information? They did it to themselves. And now they are finished. In journalism, reputation is everything. A reputation is not easily repaired once sullied. They should all have surely learned this on their first day at college. Apparently it did not sink in. It will now. It will sting. It will pinch. It will gnaw at the conscience of those who still possess a soul as the whole world turns its back on them in disgust. They've blown it. And they did it to themselves. And I have no sympathy for the devil tonight.
THE MEDIA IS STILL LYING. THE PEOPLE ARE STILL BUYING IT...
A very interesting retrospective, this interview with Slobodan Milosovic. The shameful lies and demonisation of this man, later quietly cleared of all charges at the tribunal at the Hague, should ring alarm bells with us. And before anyone starts off on a tangent, I am well aware that life under this particular boss was no picnic. I know that he made poor decisions and lead badly. But he was labeled the "Butcher of the Balkans" by our media in a bid to break up a nation state into pieces, which is a pattern I cannot help noticing, the current project of course, is Syria. I am not here to talk about what he did wrong as a leader. I am here to talk about serial interventionalism under spurious pretexts. Wouldn't if be wonderful if we'd learned anything at all from looking back at these events? Sadly, it would seem we haven't learned a damned thing.
Whatever you think about him, Milosovic sheds light here upon the war of militia and war of information waged against his country in the nineties. Does this sound a little familiar? It should. It is a story that will repeat and repeat until the people rise up with one voice and say "NO MORE TERRORISING of SOVEREIGN NATION STATES you happen to disagree with or want to control".
Regime change, hobby of the idle rich narcissists that grace our corridors of power, should no longer be supported or forgiven by the people of UK, the people of USA and other NATO / UN countries currently indulging themselves in this heinous of all blood-sports. What is the matter with people? They will allow their governments to do these things and get away with it? They'll sign countless petitions to protect badgers and get the gelatin taken out of the new five pound notes, but they won't stand up and be counted when whole nation states are being destroyed by our policies. I do not understand. Not one bit. Never will I understand the complacency with which people accept their governments' lies about world events.
A despotic regime can exist for decades without so much as a penny in the pot for the innocent civilians caught up in the mayhem. Yet all of a sudden, when America decides they want a piece of that nation state, they begin a campaign of righteous indignation on behalf of the "tortured victims of a brutal dictator". The disingenuous nature of their protestations of outrage is impossible to stomach.
Milosevic was painted as a mad dictator/mass murderer. Clearly from this clip he was not mad. And the Hague cleared him of all massacre charges as despite having countless paid witnesses, and hundreds of other witnesses, they could not find any evidence he had ever ordered such events or resided over such appalling atrocities. Which is not to say they did not happen. It is to say there is a question mark over who orchestrated those events. The British people bought into the mainstream version, however, which enabled an illegal regime change. Saddam Hussein was painted as a mad dictator/mass murderer who had weapons of mass destruction. These easily provable and now proven lies about WMD were repeated by every news outlet in unison, were gobbled up by the British people, and this enabled our vile government to annihilate a whole country. There is footage from 1994 of Dick Cheney saying that the reason they didn't push to Baghdad in the nineties to get Saddam was "there would be a vacuum which would be filled by terrorists, there would be mayhem and we'd never get Iraq back under control, it would be torn apart". So. There was military foresight into what would become of Iraq once it was properly targeted. With this knowledge and foresight, Iraq was invaded again a decade later. And yes, Dick Cheney's predictions did come true about a broken, terrorist infiltrated Iraq. And all Tony Blair's bleating about "we didn't know, we should have perhaps had an exit strategy".. blah blah.. is completely bogus. They did know. They did it on purpose. Now they have military bases all over Iraq, which is what they wanted.
The former Yugoslavia was a melting pot of various minority groups living together, just as secular Syria six years ago contained Muslims, Christians and all creeds and sects living in relative harmony. Until that is, western interventionalism descended upon those countries and began to invoke chaos by introducing outside change agents and mercenaries to stir up troubles within the various communities and cause deep resentment or to open old wounds of feuds of the past. And stories of massacres do strike a chord, they do sound exactly similar to the stories coming out of Syria, of Mad cut throats going around villages and beheading children. The people on the ground in Yugoslavia would not immediately recognise that massacres are being carried out by outsiders brought in to cause trouble. They would instead immediately choose a side and dig in.. and resent, from that moment forward, naturally enough, the side they believed responsible for the massacres. And as Milosovic says at the beginning of this interview, the war was both a military one and also a media war jointly attacking their nation state.
I cannot believe people are so stupid that they cannot see a pattern emerging here. The ominous pattern of serial regime change. We saw it in Chile, we saw it in Ukraine, we saw it in Libya. Why have you not noticed the anomalies and the sheer absence of logic in the mainstream media's one existing and apparently only acceptable narrative about Syria? All the hallmarks, all the signature pieces, the hyperbole and rhetoric of ugly imperialism at its most disgusting are on display every time we turn on the TV or open a British newspaper. Even the most respectable journalists, whilst giving their accounts, cleverly cover themselves by fence-sitting. They will give us partial truths, no doubt with one eye on future Select Committee reviews ... making sure to avoid controversy, and of course keeping the other eye firmly focused upon protecting their cushy job inside of the mainstream establishment. Crucially, these erudite, allegedly heavyweight reporters will refrain from commenting upon the inaccuracies and false reporting elsewhere in the press. They will refrain from mentioning pertinent facts or contexts that would sway public opinion against UK/NATO activities in Syria. For me, though, this silence, this reluctance to be completely honest, these premeditated sins of omission by our most illustrious journalists, is tantamount to supporting those who are knowingly enabling despicable illegal regime change policy. I am therefore thoroughly disgusted with them, that they are so cowardly in the face of genocide and people displacement happening on our doorstep. As I've said many times, and indeed as President Assad has pointed out time and again, the Syrian war stops when America says it stops. You have your answer right there about what is going on. And when that sentence sinks in, you are beginning to get the whole picture. Is it really that difficult to understand? To put it another way, how many more times, people of UK? How many more times, people of USA? How many illegal interventions will it take before you realise that this is all utter bullshit - all of our outlaw activities in these countries we're in the business of decimating, and all of the justifying press releases sent out to make sure this has your fingerprints all over it? How many more? The latest tactic of dressing it up as humanitarian aid makes it somehow, for me, even more disgusting.
I'm wondering how many more times you will allow these actions to be carried out in your name, with your tax contributions assigned to it, and with your nodding dog approval of all of this. All of this upheaval of peoples, all of this pulverising of precious and irreplaceable historical sites, all of this mass slaughter, seemingly with very little recourse to questioning the reasons of such vile activities? I'm wondering how many more times the people of America and Britain will give their nodding dog approval and thumbs up to heartless, inhumane sanctions on struggling countries that merely punish innocents and do nothing to achieve the alleged objectives of your trusted leaders. I'm wondering how long it will be before the majority of people in Britain and America will finally notice that they're reading propaganda rather than "news" every day. Propaganda which has turned us into nations of enablers to all of the above atrocities. In our unquestioning consumption of such filthy propaganda and a seemingly insatiable appetite for nauseatingly passive distraction trivia, we have become the foot soldiers for the advent of the dawning apocalypse. Congratulations. Sleep well.
at the tiniest whim and behest of the puppet masters of this world. Right now half the world is writhing in misery, pain and despair, whilst the other half of us might as well be at a Honey G concert. I say "Honey" you say "G". Not very satisfying, is it? So why are so many of you spending your day "reacting" to the obvious - when you could be analising the real story behind the one you've been given to stamp your foot about? Wouldn't you rather change something than sit there harrumphing and moaning about Donald Trump? Ok then. Let's do that.
To those of you, wherever you might live, still gobbling up your daily dose of spoon-fed media, I want to express something. It could apply to any topic but to save time let us choose one example. Mr. Trump's recent victory.
Leaving all of our feelings about Mr.Trump aside, because they do not matter, let us proceed with the point about reacting. Our media, across the board and across the Atlantic and back, is attacking this president elect in a way I have never seen done before in my lifetime. With help from paid chaos agitators, false reporting, hired actors turning up at speeches and so on and so on. The attacks are vicious, personal, and seemingly relentless. They humiliate the presidency, and humiliate a nation. For those interested in a possible reason why this would be orchestrated, you'd have to find previous discussions (on facebook) on George Soros and how he claims he is in the process of lowering the value of the dollar and generally turning his notoriously twisted idea of gaming inward upon his own nation - as to why he is doing this, you'd be best to take it up with the man himself. Again, all this is irrelevant to the topic, which is reactionary knee jerk serial whingers who sit and whimper while the world burns.
During the election debates, Hillary sniffed with disapproval at the prospect that Trump might not accept the result graciously, as is the American way. After all, if you lose respect for the process, all is lost, apparently. Better to accept defeat graciously and come back harder next time, blah blah, seemed to be the attitude she was promoting. However, Hillary lost the election, and all I can see is democrats spitting the dummy, creating merry hell and screeching that they "will not accept the result". You see the problem I'm having here. What the fuck is going on? Yes, I know, I know. The man is odious, and very stupid - though he's occasionally correct, for example on the TTIP agreement - but getting back to the point, you have survived several very stupid presidents. If they got in, they got in. Half the country is always going to be pissed off because they did not get their puppet of choice. Just like any election anywhere in the world. It was bad enough America disgraced themselves during the election campaigns. We don't usually get this post election circus, complete with orchestrated mayhem by easy-to-rise middle class nincompoops.
He was voted in. By you, the people. Fairly. That is that. That is as good as your system gets, sweethearts. You can either: choose a new system (recommended), or, you could make sure you choose suitable candidates next time (highly recommended). Or you can carry on behaving like disgraceful spoiled brats and play into the hands of the aforementioned media, who are driving all of us toward an inevitable world war unless someone intervenes very, very soon (seems unlikely, but I'm still hoping).
So, chattering classes, in whichever country, stop chattering. And I address this to British moaners and American/French/German/anyone moaners alike, because they are everywhere right now - wallowing in negativity and bile. Please. Please shut up now. Turn your TVs off and plug your brains back in, because this is fucking embarrassing. Yes, we know Trump is a douche. Yes, yes, we know you wanted Hillary to get in (would have been a front row ticket to Armageddon but anyway).. darlings.. she did not win. Get over it. Stop disrespecting the democratic process. Take it on the chin, look at what went wrong, and work harder next time. Stop whinging and whining and wringing your hands and crying like tiny little babies. Stop negatively obsessing, stop with the ridiculous hyperbole, and stop echoing back to us the Trump hate propaganda you've been force fed and evidently swallowed. It will not help. And believe me when I tell you, it's making you look really, really stupid right now.
We're all being played, of course, but you people, the ones on the infant to toddler special formula shit-they-actually-believe-us-juice ...you are the easiest to play, by a long country mile. For the rest of us though, you could say our frustration is inversely proportionate to the amount of that crap you swallow.
What we have is a natural, very long overdue uprising against the proposed and openly proclaimed Soros world government model; met with hissy fits from people who just want to believe every single word they are fed in the promotional literature paid to impose that model - also known as "newspapers".
We have every single dumb and dumber "news" presenter reading from autocues exactly the same version of events on every channel in the west. Holding exactly the same (vacuous) opinions, and inappropriately placing these mind-blowingly dumb opinions inside every "independent" "unbiased" "news" story on TV. It is preposterous to imagine that anybody with even a semi-functional brain would not notice how entirely terrifying is the situation we find ourselves in. Yet somehow, people are happily buying into and indeed parroting the media's slant on any given day without any recourse to evidence, fact checking, source checking and deeper investigation. So we have people throwing hissy fits and toddler tantrums about shit that does not matter, about personality politics or whatever, rather than saying, "fuck me we better stand back and analise this because something... no, scratch that, because EVERYTHING stinks to high heaven, therefore I can't afford not to look deeper into all of this". And look into it we should. The gate- keepers, the purse holders, the scriptwriters, the foot soldiers, the pawns, whores and 'useful idiots' and especially the self confessed architects of all of it. Oh yes. They're here.
PEOPLE ARE DYING EVERY MINUTE BECAUSE OF AMERICA'S VILE ACTIONS in SYRIA and LIES ABOUT SYRIA; YET WE'RE SUBJECTED TO THIS BASE, CRASS CIRCUS IN PLACE OF SERIOUS DISCUSSION. I HOPE YOU HAVE A WAY TO EXPLAIN YOUR CALLOUS, UNCONSHIONABLY TRITE BEHAVIOUR TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE FEELING THE SHARP END OF YOUR STUPIDITY, AMERICA/UK/UN/NATO
I watched the last debate this evening. Only one word "ridiculous".
Trump - a child in grown-up's clothing. Missing every opportunity to go in for a kill like a pathetic little boy who forgot to do his homework. Trailing off in the middle of each sentence and turning everything into a vague and very badly written fairytale for the under fives.
Clinton, the serviceable lawyer/politico of over thirty years of lying for a living. Gliding over major cravasses in her suitability and her policies with slick, over-poised oily smirks and chilling laser glares back at the gumbar who she knows has already passed her the keys to the Oval office. Neither of them having a single shred of compassion, remorse, awareness, acknowledgement, or empathy for anyone else on the planet.
To say I'm disgusted does not begin to cover it. I mean, am I missing something here? Everyone goes on and on (especially Trump) about flushing the emails..... and Hillary comes back with "yeah it was just shopping lists and talks with my daughter and anyway I made a mistake and deleted them, sorry for that.." Surely to God it is the fact she DISCUSSED STATE AFFAIRS ON AN INSECURE, unauthorised PRIVATE SERVER that is AGAINST THE FECKING LAW last time anyone checked, even in the Godless fallen empire that is America? Can someone explain how that's fine? In the debate, she said "that's been debunked" as her answer to another accusation about missing money. Oh, really? That's OK then. - WTF?! Like being accused of embezzlement to the tune of six billion dollars equates exactly to a fake UFO video that six net nerds have "debunked" ... ? Excuse me but surely a criminal investigation would be a more appropriate avenue, oh beleaguered American criminal justice system?
It is now undisputed that Hillary's camp hired rent-a-thug to disrupt the Trump campaigns; which she denies of course but unfortunately for her this looks to be true, as do all of the extremely damning Wikileaks emails. Wikileaks have a 100% voracity rating over a ten year period for everything they have ever released. Hill the bitter Pill does not care about any of that. She knows that for a few weeks, at election time, it's very important to tell poor people how much she loves them and how she's going to help them to stop being poor.
I'm not even going to speak about her involvement in the middle east because it makes me cry that anyone can be so fucking callous and despicable. Anyway gone into it all before too many times. To sum up, you could say this:
Trump = has absolutely no clue who is fighting who and why
Hillary = funds terrorists, deploys them to fight proxy wars and probably has ISIS's phone number in her purse.
Actually Clinton reached a new low by accusing a world leader (Putin) of espionage in a 'live' TV debate! Aside from having no evidence, and aside from it being utterly preposterous as a premise, is it not just a wee bit demented to raise such a serious accusation in that way, in that situation? I've heard poor judgement being mentioned, but this is something else again. I mean.. to risk a world war as a deflection tactic to bat off a difficult question, Hills? It's as if she thinks she's in a movie. It shows a complete disregard for the people this might effect if her international mud-slinging causes an escalation of the tensions between east and west - already being stoked up deliberately and unnecessarily by NATO and the UN.
So we have this:
Two people sling mud for an hour. They both come out filthy. Both have disgraced their candidacy and also the office of President. Nice.
If Hillary gets in, not only will we get a "BOGOFF" deal - for those none Britishers, that is 'Buy One (Clinton), Get One Free" - where we get Bill as well. A person who wants to bomb Syria, re-start the cold war crap, and seemingly, an actual war with Russia whilst knowingly funding terrorism and using it as a weapon to depose legitimate leaders.
If Trump gets in, I'm sorry I can't even go there because it is just too ridiculous.
While Clinton will take us to war deliberately, in fact she seems hell bent on it, Trump gets in he could just as easily take us to war by accident, just by being the stupidest man who ever lived as well one of the most intellectually insecure and emotionally immature and unstable.
Well, all things considered, isn't it a good job the president doesn't actually run the country, Mr. Soros?
I posted a video imploring people to put pressure on their MPs to lift the inhumane sanctions imposed upon the Syrian people.
I've since had many people ask me the same question, which is this:
"What is the point in writing to an MP? They did not listen when a million of us told them not to invade Iraq. They're still not listening to 17 million of us who want to cut our ties to the insidiously corrupt EU institutions. They won't ever listen. We're heading for world war three and there's nothing we can do to stop them, so what's the point?".
I must admit, I have a healthy supply of cynicism myself on any given day. Along with a pinch of closet optimism and a tiny dash of 'oh fuck it anyway'.
Cynicism keeps me sane at times. It staves off all out despair. It also frightens 'complete fucking meltdown' back into my 'save for later' draw.
I understand that time's running out. I understand that our leaders are hurtling toward nuclear war and it all looks hopeless. But what if I told you that something you said, something you shared, something you thought could influence world events. If your thought patterns, merging with thousands of unified voices repeating and repeating the same thoughts and wishes could create even a tiny blip - a hiccup - a blink - and a re-think? A little 'pause for lunch' from the lemmings' day out on the clifftop that is our current foreign policy?
If you really think you can't change the direction in which this world is heading, I'd urge you to curl up and listen to the following story.
Once upon a time, there was an intrepid warrior queen called Vanessa. Vanessa was fighting in 'The Great War of the Words', and was usually based in a cyber village known as '21Wire'.
Vanessa had heard about a false paradigm centering around the exploits of a group of heroic rescuers who travelled the land of Syria rescuing its people. These men were known far and wide as The White Helmets. They rescued many many millions and millions of people. A lot of the people they rescued were children, who were pulled out from probably more than a million tons of rubble which lies all over the land of Syria.
Vanessa travelled to the land of Syria. She began to notice that these White Helmets were never found rescuing children in any parts of King Sad's territory. They were always doing their valiant and saintly rescuing in the same one part of Syria, known as the 'Naughty Steps to Dark State'. She also noticed something vey strange indeed. When they lifted a dusty child out of the millions of tons of rubble that had been on top of him, they placed the child in an ambulance that had never been used before, and was not at all dusty, and sat the child onto a very clean chair. They did not tend his wounds, apply a saline dehydration drip, put on a neck or back splint, check his vital signs or comfort him. Instead they decided to gather round the dusty child and take lots and lots of photographs with their Iphone 6 and deliver them into the cyber town of 'Twitter' and the unknowable city of 'CNN'.
These White Helmets were said to be so saintly that heavenly choirs broke into song when they walked down the streets with their cameras, they were in fact a little bit like the brothers of little baby Jesus. Vanessa noticed that they were never short of food, and always had plenty of water, and weapons, and trucks and vans and internet connections, unlike everyone else in the land of Syria where the wicked witch of sanction was gobbling up all of their supplies...
OK... well, that was just my little parody of the White Helmet story. I hope it does not offend. I am not making light of ANYBODY's suffering here. Quite the reverse is true. There is a lot of evidence these recuse stories are either partly or completely fake; whilst rebels are injuring, maiming and wholesale slaughtering innocents who receive absolutely no tears of sympathy, and no news coverage at all. Couragious independent journalist Vanessa Beeley in particular has been investigating all of this for many months. Vanessa has been calling bullshit on this vile organisation calling itself 'The Wite helmets' and "the Syria Civil Defence', for quite some time.
Vanessa has written article after article, on her own page, 'The Wall Will Fall' and at the excellent '21st Century Wire' web site, (down for maintenance now, so link following soon), which go into details about The White Helmets; their history, their funding, the fact that they call themselves the 'Syrian Civil Defence', thus confusing people, and stealing this name away from the real Syrian Civil Defence Forces which have been a member of the ICDO since 1972 and are recognised by the UN.
The WH, with the help of their massive western million dollar funding, seem to be working in league with Al Qaeda and Al Nusra Front and several other hordes of Muslim Brotherhood savages and mercenaries. These terrorists are rampaging around Syria causing misery and carnage. They are aiding the overthrowing of President Assad which Israel and America so desperately want. It seems as though The White Helmets are a PR and psyop tool in America's and Mossad's latest proxy war, masquerading as a humanitarian organisation.
I urge anyone who has not yet read Vanessa's reporting on the White Helmets to do so at the link above. It was these hard hitting articles and Vanessa's resolute, inspirational interviews on 'UK Column' and '21st Century Wire', that motivated an army of foot soldiers (including myself) to go to war on the side of truth and justice.
Anyway, back to the story. What happened next was rather extraordinary.
In the three weeks leading up to the Nobel Prize announcements, thousands of us took to the comment boxes of all the major newspapers, TV channels, shared facebook messages, videos messages, bombarded related web pages and articles about the White Helmets, called their MPs, wrote to their MPs, wrote on their MP's facebook pages, wrote to Boris Johnson, bombarded Theresa May, tweeted and retweeted thousands of tweets and made sure there was a visible and overwhelming majority consensus of no confidence in their choice of nominee (and hotly tipped favourite to win) for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Vanessa had even called the Nobel Office in Oslo to protest at the nomination. I think Cathy Newman (Channel Four News) received over three thousand anti-White Helmet rants on her facebook page, and so it went on for a few weeks.
So.
Despite a documentary film that tugged on every emotional receptor in the brain to cynically manipulate world opinion and brand the White Helmets on the biggest film outlet in the world (Netflix)...
Despite one of the most insidious and disgusting high end propaganda campaigns we have ever seen - featuring rising stars 'Dusty Boy', 'Rag Doll girl', and 'Beach Boy', brought to you courtesy of practically every single news outlet in the world; and quite obviously co-ordinated by a major PR company probably based in UK, Qatar or Dubai (we can but speculate)...
Despite Boris Johnson having mawkishly sung the praises of the WH to the heavens and donated thirty two million pounds of tax payers' money into their account; and USA the UN donating around a further thirty milllion dollars...
Despite Brangelina as was, the Clooney Loonies, every "A" list celebrity who can actually speak (I said speak, not think), and every twonky talking head on every TV station in the world branding them 'heroes of the hour and saints-in -waiting'...
Despite all of this, and despite it looking like a done deal that they would win, the big day finally arrived. The announcement was made. And... guess what? We all got to find out that The White Helmets would ...
...NOT, in fact, be receiving a Nobel Peace Prize! Nor would they be receiving the million pounds that would have gone with that.
Apparently someone on the inside has intimated that just two days before the announcement was to be made, the panel apparently backed off, and changed their decision about who would receive the prize. It would appear they might have been unwilling to attract the backlash of negative publicity, given the strength of recent public opinion and general outrage that might follow, at this bogus nomination.
So our 'all-singing, all-dancing, all round angels of mercy super heroes with wings and specially polished camera-ready halos terrorist outfit' suddenly looked for all the world, and in front of the whole world, like the bunch of cry-baby gold-digging 'helmets' they really are.
Now this outcome might not have had anything at all to do with any efforts people made to get the word out. But there's a chance that it had everything to do with getting the word out, and changing people's perception.
Do you still think it's a waste of time to try to change this world around with words? Clearly our MPs and ambassadors, paid to represent us, think so. Our governments have broken off diplomatic links with Syria and Russia - therefore closing avenues of diplomacy and possibilities for non hostile solutions. I don't think these decisions should be theirs to make. I think it is deeply disgusting that they arrogantly refuse to talk to the legitimate UN representative of President Bashir Al Assad.
Our leaders have proven to be miserable failures at representing us, if it has come to this stage of impasse, where military intervention is almost inevitable.
The level of deception being used by our governments upon their own people is not only shocking, it is terrifying. I would say criminal but, as the late Michael Hastings was once warning us on Buzzfeed back in 2013, Obama changed what they refer to as "the law" to make sure it is in fact now legal to propagandise in the homeland of America against their own people. Nice job.
So. Stay in your safe place? Or give it a shot - just in case we really can change the world with words, one brain at a time?
Been trying to work out how we got here. To this extreme low point in our civilisation's decline and perhaps ultimate fall from grace.
With respect to media lies.. whilst they have been going on since forever, powered by private firms (Fox News, CNN, Disney et al), I'm thinking back to what I believe was a pivotal moment. Do you any of you remember the late Michael Hastings reporting on the proposal (as it was then) to end the ban on the use of propaganda against the American people?
Michael Hastings is still sorely missed. He was a brilliant reporter, and was murdered for his trouble. He was on the right track to try to draw people's attention to this treasonous legislation. How vital it is to shine a light on the government's sanctioning of "the production of fake news for your own good". This amendment breaks so many oaths given to the American people in their constitution. It opens the door to a world in which nobody has a means of knowing what is real and what is not.
Of course, propaganda was always used, directed at "foreigners"... but the proposed amendment to which Michael refers was making it legal to turn the PR and bullshit inward toward their own people (nice).
When you look at the cult status and blind worshipping of "celebrities", making it possible for the likes of George Clooney and Angelina Jolie to be used as pawns in selling any lie dressed up as "humanitarianism". We also have the baffling and suffocating proliferation of NGOs and "charities", able to blindside yet more millions of people under the banner of "philanthropy".
I really do believe things became radically worse after this bill, amendments included, was in fact passed, in 2013. This made it legal to produce flashy films (think "The White Helmets" and pretend rescue clips, "dusty boy pulled from rubble" nonesense, and crappy films like "Zero Dark Thirty" that completely skewer and obfuscate the disgusting adventures of USA in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria... all of it fake, fakety fucking fakeries here there and everywhere to get the American people onside with whatever the government and military happens to be up to at that time
This is what lead us to the Truman Show nightmare we live in today. This is how a group of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda was able to masquerade as a "humanitarian organisation" and win endorsements from hundreds of cerebrally challenged Hollywood luvvies, to the point where they AMOST won a Nobel Peace Prize! They were given millions of dollars of funding from EU countries, USA and UK and other NATO sources (though they claim to be impartial and independent), and.. millions more in personal donations given by well-meaning, warm hearted people who have been taken in by the lie; because the affore-mentioned Hollywood whores tugged at their heart strings, crying crocodile tears and showing scene after scene of carnage and despair in Syria to provoke a deep seated need in the public to "do something".
The reason Oslo didn't award the WH the prize was almost certainly the backlash from people like us, foot soldiers in the information war, calling bullshit, during the three weeks leading up to the announcements. And we've learned that it is possible to change people's perceptions, one person at a time, through a combination of evidence, logic, and sincerity - I'm old enough to remember when all of those three things were a damn sight more fashionable.
R.I.P. Michael Hastings - (January 28, 1980 – June 18, 2013),
fallen hero in the information war.
The following is an excerpt from a piece in "Business Insider"
2013:
"Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who released a highly critical report regarding the distortion of truth by senior military officials in Iraq and Afghanistan, dedicated a section of his report to Information Operations (IO) and states that after Desert Storm the military wanted to transform IO "into a core military competency on a par with air, ground, maritime and special operations."
Davis defines IO as "the integrated employment of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception (MILDEC), and operations security (OPSEC), in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own."
IO are primarily used to target foreign audiences, but Davis cites numerous senior leaders who want to (in the words of Colonel Richard B. Leap) "protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will" by repealing the Smith-Mundt Act to allow the direct deployment of these tactics on the American public."
The above article from Business Insider can be found here: http://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5?IR=T
Shortly after 9/11, I remember George W. Bush stating "you're either with us, or you're with the enemy". I remember the disgust I felt that a president could utter such a crass, toxically reductive phrase on the world stage.
Naturally we have become used to crass, over-simplistic rhetoric hailing from America for decades; but somehow this statement crystallised something in my mind on that day. It forced me to admit to myself that I was going to have to take responsibility for finding out what is going on in the world. It forced me to realise I was going to have to take time out of my life to become involved in things I previously believed was the domain of "experts" and "professionals".
And it does not get any better this side of the Atlantic either. Our equivalent talking heads here in UK have become increasingly inept, increasingly obtuse, and incapable of representing us in an honourable way.
Since then I have become more engaged with political machinations and world events, as have many of us. This lead me to ruminate upon one or two over-riding themes. Let me explain.
Our military and administrations decided to "remove Saddam Hussein" because he "was hurting his own people", was a nasty man and had also entered Kuwait. They then put in place sanctions which killed 500,000 children over ten years, upwards of a million people altogether. When Saddam stubbornly refused to go, we had the WMD lies, repeated and repeated and bleated by every dumb-dumb masquerading as a journalist in UK and USA. This lead to the bombing of the country and its people into oblivion; leaving depleted uranium shells that would cause cancers for decades to come, and a country bereft of infrastructure, bereft of hope. Who, do you think, caused the most devastation to the innocents in Iraq? Saddam, or those who took it upon themselves, under spurious circumstances, to "overthrow him"?
Now I ask you to think about Syria, in the same way. There is a filthy and extremely childish propaganda campaign in the west to demonise President Assad. It is worthy of an Oscar nomination for its guile and shameless self propagation. Not since the blackening of the now exonerated Melosovic, have we seen so many lies told by so many liars. Put that to one side, and suppose for a moment that it's not propaganda. Suppose that President Bashar Al Assad really was and is hurting his own people. I need to ask this vital question:
Bearing in mind the catastrophic failures of intervention in Iraq... which course of action do you think will hurt the people and land of Syria more: western bombing raids (increasingly inept bombing) and inhumane sanctions, or... leaving the people of Syria to decide their own fate and make their own future?
Can you honestly believe the west has "humanitarian concerns" about anybody in Syria, given the lack of concern for people of Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Serbia/Yugoslavia/Bosnia, or any other country they have tried to either conquer, sabotage or "regime change" by proxy?
We always measure the human cost of war first, of course. But add to this that Iraq and Syria had an abundant heritage stretching back millennia, to the oldest known, and possibly much wiser civilisations. Priceless artifacts, irreplaceable buildings and remnants of "The Holy Land" used to abound in what is fast becoming a desert, bereft of any traces of our ancestry. You have to ask yourself the question: "what kind of perverse, malevolent entities would be able to carry out such irreparable devastation without remorse, without exhausting all possible alternative diplomatic means to secure peace?"
Dirty wars. Filthy cover up propaganda, via a disgustingly corrupted media mafia. Tainted, compromised and cynical politicians; spineless skivvies for a rabid and rampant machine commonly referred to as the "military industrial complex" and of course, for Mossad. We see the pattern repeating and repeating ad nauseam. We hear Hillary Clinton et al openly admitting there has been a campaign to cultivate a citizenry which is "unaware", meaning less justification is necessary because people will accept just one version of everything and not even notice that real life is never that simple. We heard Madeleine Albright shamelessly confess, when asked about 500,000 child deaths in Iraq, that it had still been "worth it" to secure "peace" in Iraq (?)
If our world leaders were any good at their job, they would solve problems without firing a single shot, through diplomacy, give and take, and graceful manoeuvering. Sadly, they are far from good at their jobs. Clearly, they absolutely stink at their jobs. In fact they have been abjectly failing ever since political life was invented as a thing. In my lifetime I don't remember a prime minister who did not leave "under a cloud". I don't think USA has had a president who even tried not to fail since JFK. This succession of serial Mr. Beans cannot be seriously thinking we have not noticed that they, erm, are perhaps not even trying to get it right? That somehow there is more to it... that, perhaps, chaos and a permanently confused, disenfranchised public better suits the needs and desires of those from whom they get their orders?
And while we can muse interminably upon the ineptitude of our effete, Alinsky-esque ruling classes; Upon whether it really is feckless incompetence, or rather a fawning, obsequious servitude, the end result remains the same. Millions dead. The rest of us reluctant, acquiescent observers of a perpetual Groundhog Day vision of hell on earth. Morally bankrupt, emotionally shattered, and spiritually damned.
Does it ever make you wonder what the fuck is wrong with all of us that we continue to vote for these vermin to come back again for another term? Are we that far gone down "Lobotomy Lane"? Not only swallowing that "there's one naughty bad guy out there, here's his picture, we have to woop his ass" ... but now also nodding and smiling at the ludicrous postulate that "there's no other way to run the country, and if we tried to reform the electoral process it would all go straight to hell".
Ladies and gentlemen, if there is indeed a "hell", we are already there. And someone is about to turn up the thermostat. Let's talk.
I got your message about standing outside the Russian Embassy to protest about Russian Bombing. Thanks for that.
I won't be going.
As far as I can see, the Russians are fighting ISIS, and I was told that they were the really really bad guys. So... after five years of USA and UK failing to defeat ISIS, I'm struggling with the reasons why you would not use diplomacy to arrange how to do this better, by talking to Mr Putin. Instead, you seem hell bent upon cutting off diplomatic ties and refusing to do your job as the voice of UK overseas; an approach that is putting us all in harm's way completely unnecessarily.
I do, however, have a suggestion which might sate your obvious desire to agitate the UK citizenry into activism. May I suggest we all meet outside the British Parliament buildings, and overseas participants at their respective British Embassies, to protest vehemently against the illegal and immoral sanctions currently imposed upon the beleaguered people of Syria?
We learned from Iraq that sanctions do not have any effect upon the "regime" you are trying to overthrow. Sanctions merely heap suffering upon an already tormented innocent citizenry. In Iraq it is probable one million people lost their lives over a ten year period of sanctions. There is no justification whatsoever for imposing sanctions upon Syria, a nation which has never attacked anyone.
Boris, nobody will be waiving "Putin is a monster" banners at the Russian Embassy. That bird just ain't gonna fly, sweetheart. If you still want to go, you can stand there with "Plebgate Mitchell" and swap "cold war" yarns about the good old days when "baddies were baddies because .. er.. we said so, and there was no internet to bugger it all up".
STOP THE SANCTIONS. SANCTIONS are MURDER.
Yours sincerely,
Lyn Smith - embarrassed, ashamed, and devastated UK citizen
Oh dear. Boris says "jump" I say "how high" ... you obviously didn't get the memo luv. You know. The one that says "write out fifty times: 'I must not be a fawning little prick in the future, because Boris Johnson is off with fairies and wants us to go to war'..." Yes, that memo. Now go home and change those ridiculous pink pants.
