Puppet Masters

Fake news is a major threat to global security

Neil Clark
RT
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 18:04 UTC

Journalists need to take some sort of Hippocratic oath pledging to tell no lies, otherwise we could end up with a war even more calamitous for humanity than Iraq.

As cited by American journalist Sharyl Attkisson in her excellent book 'The Smear', John H. Johnson, author of 'Everydata: The Misinformation Hidden in the Little Data you consume every day', divides fake news into five categories.

1. News that's entirely false.
2. News that's slanted and biased
3. Pure propaganda
4. Stories that misinterpret or misuse data
5. Imprecise or sloppy reporting.

It's interesting, as Attkisson says, that the "public ignition" of the 'Fake News movement' can be traced to September 13 2016 - the last eight weeks of the Clinton vs. Trump presidential campaign, with the announcement that a group named 'First Draft' were forming a partner network to tackle "malicious hoaxes and fake news reports."

Then, within days everyone is talking about 'fake news'. Which is strange, because if we go by Johnson's definition, fake news has been around for an awful long time.

Group of Democrats vow to block Pelosi from retaking role as House Speaker, Trump throws in monkey wrench by supporting her

RT
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 00:17 UTC

Democrats are pledging to block Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) from resuming her post as Speaker of the US House, writing in a letter that voters only gave Democrats back the House to upend the status quo, not provide more of the same.

Sixteen House Democrats signed the letter, leaving Pelosi one vote shy of the margin she needs to win back the Speaker post on January 3. The signatories included 11 incumbents, four incoming freshmen, and a Utah candidate whose race has not been settled.

Three more Democratic reps told Politico they planned to oppose her coronation as well but did not sign the letter, which called Pelosi a "historic figure" but spoke of the need for "real change in Washington."

US meddles in selection of new Interpol chief, pressures other countries to vote down Russian candidate because he's Russian

RT
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 19:40 UTC

US senators, fired up by the idea that the Russian candidate could lead Interpol, urged nations to vote against him. The Kremlin branded this "intervention" in the voting process.

Electing Major General of the Russian police Aleksandr Prokopchuk as the head of Interpol is "akin to putting a fox in charge of a henhouse," four US senators said in a statement, released on Monday.

Comment: Pure projection! Electing any person who is subservient to US imperial whims as head of Interpol is putting a fox in charge of the henhouse.

The position in question became vacant after Interpol's President Meng Hongwei was detained in his homeland China, pending a corruption investigation. The new president is due to be elected in Dubai, UAE, on Wednesday. US lawmakers, meanwhile, in a preemptive move decided to dissuade delegates from voting for a Russian candidate.

Republicans Roger Wicker and Marco Rubio, along with their Democratic colleagues, Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Coons, argue that Moscow "routinely abuses" Interpol, using it for "settling scores and harassing political opponents, dissidents and journalists." Without providing concrete cases or examples, they also said that securing the presidency would allow Russia to "harass critics" living abroad and to "aid other authoritarian regimes."

Comment: The anti-Russian racism pouring out of the US these days is Nazi-Jew-hating-level stuff.

EU intelligence agency in the works? 25 member-states (sans UK) agree to launch 'joint spy school'

Philip Kaleta
Politico.eu
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 22:38 UTC

The defense ministers of 25 EU member countries agreed Monday on a joint EU intelligence school, along with 16 other new projects, as part of their military pact.

The new projects, signed off by the defense ministers of all the EU's member countries except Denmark, Malta and the United Kingdom under the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) pact, range from improving training and facilities to boosting maritime operations and air systems, as POLITICO reported before their official adoption.

The establishment of a joint EU spy school would be a big step forward for the bloc's intelligence community. Until recently, a significant deepening of intelligence cooperation in the Union was blocked by the U.K., which viewed it as unwelcome competition to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, made up of the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain. With Brexit approaching, London no longer stands in the way.

Comment: This is the crux of the issue: a split in the West between the 'original' anglosphere superstructure - first publicly disclosed in the late 1990s as ECHELON, though of course originally derived from the British empire before it was subsumed under American military authority during WW2 - and the continental European structure known today as the EU.

It's precisely this kind of 'Permanent Structured Cooperation' that the UK has always been uneasy about being subsumed into, much less seeing come about at all. Why 'go foreign', after all, when you can 'keep it all in the (English-speaking) family'?

Comment: The British, needless to say, are not happy about this and similar developments, with UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson (yes, he of 'go away Russia' fame) describing Merkel and Macron's recent proposal to create an EU army as "an absolutely crazy idea."

But is it any crazier than a 'North Atlantic Alliance' that includes Colombia and Australia??

Dictator of Israel? Netanyahu shuns call for snap elections, names himself defense minister (in addition to being PM, foreign & health minister!)

RT
Sun, 18 Nov 2018 23:22 UTC

Assuming the position of Defense Minister after several high-profile resignations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, for the sake of national security, warned remaining ministers against pushing for an early election.

While Netanyahu is known for cleverly playing the security card in the past, there's no guarantee that it will be enough to hold his crumbling coalition together this time. The crisis was sparked by the resignation of hawkish Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, due to his outrage with the ceasefire deal agreed by Israel and Palestinian armed group Hamas.

"I would like to say that now when we are witnessing one of the most difficult periods in terms of security, we cannot topple the government and hold an early election. That is irresponsible. We have a year before the election... I hope that all our partners will act responsibly, will not seek dissolution of the government and will work for the benefit of the state of Israel and its security," Netanyahu said.

A week ago, Israel and Hamas were on the brink of a large-scale conflict after Hamas fired more than 400 rockets and mortars at Israel, while the IDF retaliated by sending its warplanes to bomb around a hundred sites in Gaza. When a truce was reached through UN and Egyptian mediation on Tuesday, Lieberman blasted the deal as "capitulation to terror" and quit.

Comment: Netanyahu fearing for his position, fending off corruption probes, and now taking on the DM role in addition to the other portfolios he manages, a case of no rest for the wicked?

The 'only democracy in the Middle East'!

Can you imagine the media reaction if Syria's Assad claimed 4 key offices for himself?

More from South Front:

Virtue-signalling blowback: Twitter CEO Dorsey provokes backlash for holding sign, in India, denouncing India's caste system

RT
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 16:06 UTC

© Twitter / @annavetticad
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and legal director Vijaya Gadde met with female journalists and activists in India.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is facing accusations of inciting hatred and violence in India, and has upset both activists and Hindu nationalists, by holding a sign denouncing the Hindu caste system.

Dorsey posed for a picture with six women in India brandishing a poster that read "Smash Brahminical patriarchy" during a visit last week to discuss the role of Twitter in the country.

After the photo was posted on the social media platform on Sunday evening, Dorsey was quickly accused of inciting hatred and violence against Hindu nationalists and India's Brahmins, the highest group who sit atop the rigid caste hierarchy.

Comment: DNA evidence suggests that the Indian caste system has existed for thousands of years. Did the Twitter CEO think his virtue-signalling would somehow change that?

More to the point, Twitter uses hysteria as an excuse for its own censorship all the time, so it looks like it finally came back to bite them:

DOJ says federal judge ruling to block asylum restrictions 'absurd' & will be appealed

RT
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 22:09 UTC

© Reuters / Hannah McKay
A migrant from El Salvador making his way to the US border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, November 20, 2018

The Trump administration is pushing back on the decision by a federal judge in California to block asylum restrictions put in place to deal with caravans of migrants that have arrived on the US-Mexican border.

"It is absurd that a set of advocacy groups can be found to have standing to sue to stop the entire federal government from acting so that illegal aliens can receive a government benefit to which they are not entitled," the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a joint statement on Tuesday, hours after a federal judge in San Francisco issued a month-long injunction against the policy, saying it violated federal law.

The only regime change really needed should be made in Washington

Philip Giraldi
The Ron Paul Institute
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 21:37 UTC

One of the things to look forward to in the upcoming holiday season is the special treats that one is allowed to sample. Fruitcake and nuts are Thanksgiving and Christmas favorites. They usually come in tins or special packages but it seems that this season some of the nuts have escaped and have fled to obtain sanctuary from the Trump Administration.

Currently, there is certainly a wide range of nuts available on display in the West Wing. There is the delicate but hairy Bolton, which has recently received the coveted "Defender of Israel" award, and also the robust Pompeo, courageously bucking the trend to overeat during the holidays by telling the Iranian people that they should either surrender or starve to death. And then there is the always popular Haley, voting audaciously to give part of Syria to Israel as a holiday treat.

Has a possible ray of hope appeared in the relationship between the US and China?

Vladimir Terehov
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 00:00 UTC

The New Eastern Outlook has been covering the current shape and transformation of Sino-American relations on a regular basis. This is quite understandable as the discussion involves one of the aspects of the global political game that impacts the development of the situation in not only the Indo-Pacific, but the entire world.

This topic was last reported on one month ago, and at the time the outlook on the actual state of the relationship between the two leading nations was, at best, not optimistic.

The impact of the trade war, which had begun in earnest, is compounded by the latest tensions in the South China Sea, caused by the dangerously close maneuvers initiated by US and Chinese warships on 30 September. A few days later, the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, referring to the latest incident, confirmed the US military's long-term intention to ignore PRC's claims of dominance in vast swathes of and islands in the South China Sea.

As expected, Beijing's reaction towards the decision (also made by the US at the end of September) to sell Taiwan components for its jet fighters for $330 million was negative. This is the second move, of this nature, made by the current US administration. A year earlier the United States signed an agreement with Taiwan to supply it with various U.S.-produced arms worth $1.4 billion.

Comment: Is it a pullback for a scheme never intended to go this far? Or one not working out as planned? Lowering tensions between superpowers would be a welcomed sign.

The 'resistance' struggles for justification in Trump's prosecution of Assange

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Mon, 19 Nov 2018 00:00 UTC

Ever since suspicions were confirmed that the Trump administration is indeed working to prosecute and imprison WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing authentic documents, the so-called "Resistance" has been struggling to explain exactly why it is so enthusiastically supportive of that agenda. And when I say struggling, I am being very, very generous.

When news broke that a court document copy-paste error had inadvertently exposed the fact that the Trump administration is pursuing an agenda which experts of diverse political persuasions agree would have devastating effects on the freedom of the press, #Resistance pundit and DC think tank operative Neera Tanden responded by tweeting, "Never mess with karma". As of this writing if you do a Twitter search for the words "Assange" and "karma" together, you will come up with countless Democratic Party loyalists using that concept to justify their support for a Trump administration assault on the press that is infinitely more dangerous than the president being mean to Jim Acosta.

The trouble with that of course is that "karma", as far as observable reality is concerned, is not an actual thing. It's a Hindu religious concept that is supported by no more factual evidence than the Roman Catholic claim that a priest literally turns bread and wine into the body and blood of a Nazarene carpenter who died thousands of years ago. A Democratic pundit using the concept of "karma" to justify enthusiastic support for Trump's fascistic attack on press freedoms is exactly the same as a Republican pundit using "God wills it" to justify the existence of poverty, and it is just as intellectually honest.

But it's also the best argument these people have got.

Comment: For the Greenwald article, go here:
Prosecution of Assange bodes grave threats to freedom of the press - Obama DOJ consensus

New Lt. Governor of Virginia Winsome Sears: "We're going to have safer neighborhoods, safer communities, and our children are going to get a good...

parzival

Bill Gates is going to be the one with the uncertain future,,, * New Lt. Governor of Virginia Winsome Sears: "We're going to have safer...

parzival

The more we hear about adverse affects the more we will merely shrug. It's a catch 22. Is that an asteroid trail in the photo?

sass

Welcome to the new normal. The more sensory exposure we have about such things, the less it is an issue.

sass

more misbehaving phuqqin' jewzskies starring on the sott; speaks for itself

Jibrish

Puppet Masters

Fake news is a major threat to global security

Group of Democrats vow to block Pelosi from retaking role as House Speaker, Trump throws in monkey wrench by supporting her

US meddles in selection of new Interpol chief, pressures other countries to vote down Russian candidate because he's Russian

EU intelligence agency in the works? 25 member-states (sans UK) agree to launch 'joint spy school'

Dictator of Israel? Netanyahu shuns call for snap elections, names himself defense minister (in addition to being PM, foreign & health minister!)

Virtue-signalling blowback: Twitter CEO Dorsey provokes backlash for holding sign, in India, denouncing India's caste system

DOJ says federal judge ruling to block asylum restrictions 'absurd' & will be appealed

The only regime change really needed should be made in Washington

Has a possible ray of hope appeared in the relationship between the US and China?

The 'resistance' struggles for justification in Trump's prosecution of Assange

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