Russia, China and Iran are already being blamed for using tech to undermine the 2020 election. Yet, the very technologies they are allegedly using were created by a web of companies with deep ties to Israeli intelligence.

As World War II drew to a close in Europe, British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that "neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear."

Though numerous examples in the post-World War II era have proven Russell's point, perhaps one of the best examples was the U.S. public's willingness to swallow lie after lie about Saddam Hussein's Iraq due to the climate of fear that followed the September 11 attacks. Those lies, propagated by dubious intelligence, government officials and a compliant media, resulted in catastrophes - large and small, both abroad and at home.

Today, an analogous narrative is being crafted by many of the same players - both in media and government - yet it has avoided scrutiny, even from independent media.

Without enforced suppression of truth, there would be no way that the U.S. and its allied regimes could continue hiding the lies that were behind their invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Syria since 2012, and their coup against Ukraine in 2014, and also of their takeovers and attempted takeovers of other countries that had refused to be bullied by the U.S. regime into complying with its obsessive anti-Russian demands — America's subterranean continuation of the Cold War, even after Russia had quit the Cold War in 1991.

All of the lies are still being propounded by the U.S. regime and remain fully enforced by suppression of the truth about these matters. That's being done in all news-media except a few of the non-mainstream ones.

So: this is about an actual Western samizdat — the West's equivalent to the former Soviet Union's systematic, and equally pervasive, truth-suppression, to fool the public into thinking that the Government represents them, no matter how much it does not. (The chief trick in this regard is to fool them into thinking that since there is more than one political party, one of them will be "good," even though the fact may actually be that each of the parties represents simply a different faction of a psychopathically evil aristocracy. After all: each party lied and supported invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria constantly; and no party acknowledges that the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine was a U.S. coup instead of a domestic Ukrainian democratic revolution. On such important matters, they all lie, and in basically the same ways. These lies are bipartisan, even though most of the other political lies are heavily partisan.)

"Jerry. Jerry. Jerry!"

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff tried to stop House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler from having the last word in the question and answer portion of the Senate impeachment trial on Thursday.

As Senators prepared to adjourn for the night, Sen. Amy Klobuchar tried to ask the last question with a question card that got lost in the shuffle, making the moment slightly awkward.

Well, they finally got around to 'officially' marking Sott.net 'fake news'.

In October 2018, a representative of 'NewsGuard Technologies', a self-described "news rating agency," reached out and invited us to answer "some questions regarding Sott.net's background and editorial practices." Based on the false assumptions that were clear in their questions, and their ludicrous examples of Sott.net content they deemed "far-right," we immediately had a good idea of who they were and what their shtick was. (Ostensibly, "combating online disinformation." Really, cracking down on dissent.) We nevertheless humored NewsGuard with detailed responses, which apparently stumped them because it was another 14 months before they got back to us.

Much background digging has been done on this outfit in the meantime, but for now I'll summarize NewsGuard's pitch then share with readers some of our most recent correspondence with them. NewsGuard's 'technology' is a free opt-in browser extension that flags search engine results and social media posts that include links to content from news and information sites with a color-coded 'nutrition label'. They base it on nine 'journalistic criteria', five for credibility and four for transparency.

If you download the NewsGuard app and see a red shield appear next to a post or search result, this means it comes from a site NewsGuard has deemed 'fake news'; if a green shield appears, users may proceed to click on it, safe in the knowledge that it's from a 'trustworthy' news site. While they don't actually say 'Sott.net is fake news', that is clearly implied given the climate in which this is taking place. The red shield contains an exclamation mark and next to it appears a warning to "proceed with caution," and a link to "see the full Nutrition Label" (here's Sott.net's). They even have a third category: a yellow shield with a smiley face in it, reserved for satirical news sites like The Onion, along with this helpful explainer: "This is a satire or humor source. It is not an actual news source."

While this is a free opt-in browser extension for now, NewsGuard has big plans to roll it out nationwide in the US - and its powerful backers are also intensively lobbying the EU to do likewise - as a default feature in libraries and educational institutions, and is in the process of securing big contracts with Big Tech to have it baked into devices and operating systems like Microsoft Windows, and/or 'at source', directly with Internet Service Providers. NewsGuard isn't the only such initiative taking off; a plethora of similar 'news ranking initiatives' are competing to "turn media credibility into a booming business."

As Newsguard's project advances, it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site's ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States.

Soon after the social media "purge" of independent media sites and pages this past October, a top neoconservative insider - Jamie Fly - was caught stating that the mass deletion of anti-establishment and anti-war pages on Facebook and Twitter was "just the beginning" of a concerted effort by the U.S. government and powerful corporations to silence online dissent within the United States and beyond.

While a few, relatively uneventful months in the online news sphere have come and gone since Fly made this ominous warning, it appears that the neoconservatives and other standard bearers of the military-industrial complex and the U.S. oligarchy are now poised to let loose their latest digital offensive against independent media outlets that seek to expose wrongdoing in both the private and public sectors.

Beijing has slammed the US for issuing a warning against traveling to virus-stricken China, calling the decision "truly mean." Earlier, the World Health Organization urged countries not to restrict travel.

"The World Health Organization urged countries to avoid travel restrictions, but very soon after that, the United States did the opposite," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement. "It's truly mean."

Earlier on Friday, the US State Department issued its highest-level travel warning, advising citizens: "Do not travel to China due to novel coronavirus." The warning also advised those currently in China to "consider departing using commercial means."

Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin pointed out Wednesday in the question-and-answer session in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate that the Washington Post had written a lengthy article about former Vice President Joe Biden's conflict of interest in Ukraine on July 22, 2019 — three days before Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when he raised the issue.

Democrats have claimed that the president only became interested in corruption in Ukraine when Biden became a political threat, leading Trump in early polls of the 2020 presidential race. They reiterated that claim on Wednesday, after Republican Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) asked the White House whether Trump had ever asked Ukraine about corruption regarding Biden before that call.

President Donald Trump will not be removed from office following his impeachment by the House of Representatives and a trial in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has reportedly told colleagues they have the votes to finish things this week.

Whether the senators put the trial out of its misery this week or drag it on for months, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Here are the eight big reasons why Trump won impeachment.

Oliver Stone's films have won 12 Academy Awards including two for Best Director, as well as a bunch of Golden Globes and BAFTAs. His new focus is documentaries - on Venezuela, Ukraine, and Edward Snowden - all reflecting on the dubious activities of the US government both at home and abroad.

Oliver Stone, the award-winning American director and a relentless critic of US administrations, has called his country an "evil empire".

The term was coined by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 when he was referring to the Soviet Union and its arms race with the United States.

Things have changed a lot since then, at least for Stone. "Empires fall. Let's pray that this empire, these evil things... because we are the evil empire," he said in an interview to RT. "What Reagan said about Russia is true about us."

Stone - best known for his films Platoon and Wall Street - has long criticised US foreign policy, particularly its involvement in armed conflicts in the Middle East.

Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday tried to ask a question that may identify the whistleblower whose complaint sparked President Trump's impeachment — but Chief Justice John Roberts refused to read it.

"The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted," Roberts said after reading the Kentucky Republican's written query during Trump's impeachment trial.

It was the first time during the question-and-answer phase of the trial that Roberts declined to read a question.

Paul later read aloud his proposed question to reporters.