MATT TAIBBI—We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation “requests” from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same, including Stanford’s Election Integrity Project, Newsguard, the Global Disinformation Index, and others, many taxpayer-funded. A focus of this fast-growing network is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations, or sympathies are deemed “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation.” The latter term is just a euphemism for “true but inconvenient.”
IDIOTIZED PUBLICS
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Greenwald } Pro-War Propagandists: How Bloodthirsty Media Push US Toward Every New War
15 minutes readGLENN GREENWALD—Tonight – that the U.S. media is biased and pursues a political agenda rather than truthful reporting is hardly in dispute these days. Less obvious is exactly what that agenda is. There are many ways to express it, but often, the overarching allegiance is not so much to any political party or even the left versus right wars, but rather status quo power subservience to the U.S. Security State, and, especially, a virtually reflexive craving for more U.S. war.
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We Need Democracy Which Is Far More Than Voting
16 minutes readFRANK SCOTT—While a new administration presides over what many hoped would be a return to normal after the even more blatant and open worship of wealth, war and Israel of the Trump regime, what’s missed is that what passes for normal is what needs radical change. As long as market normalcy in the USA means hundreds of thousands are homeless, millions are living in poverty and millions more than that are so much deeper in debt than ever before in our history that the World Bank warns of the possibility of social collapse.
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Debunking Lies About Stalin | Unmasking Imperialism
9 minutes readDuring today’s episode, we debunk claims that Vladimir Lenin left a “testament” before his death opposing Stalin. We present new research pointing out that this so-called “testament” stems from Leon Trotsky in his campaign to replace Stalin as party leader. We discuss why Trotsky is heralded by mainstream academia while Stalin is slandered. We also debunk outrageous claims made about Stalin, including that he’s responsible for famines and mass murder.
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A VIDEO ESSAY BY GONZALO LIRA: Sounds harsh and even flippant, but the logic of history and economics is irrefutable. The US empire is going down, a victim of its own obvious mistakes, the weight of innumerable errors neglected by the colossal level of hubris and corruption permeating the ruling elites of the West, headquartered in Washington, and the inexorable, myopic often chaotic thinking inherent in capitalism. Ironically, it is not solely the defeats in the military sense that are contributing so much to the downfall from supremacy, although they represent a major component of the problem, but, as Lira points out, the concomitant bloating of the financial sphere, where the accumulating contradictions of capitalism, chiefly the US public and private debt, and the resulting loss of dollar solvency, are causing a refusal by hitherto key “vassal” nations (i.e., Saudi Arabia) to continue trading exclusively in dollars. This, says Lira, and we agree entirely, is hammering the last nails into the Anglo-American empire coffin, regardless of the outcome of the Ukrainian war.