In order to be a staff journalist, one must adhere to the propaganda-aims of the individual(s) (the employer) who control(s) the given ‘news’ medium. No newsmedia-owner hires ‘reporters’ or editors who report (or allow to be published) facts which contradict that owner’s (or controller’s — because this applies to ‘non-profits’ as well) central viewpoint. The employees are purely megaphones for their boss’s views. That’s what they were hired to be, and that’s what they are if they succeed in their profession and rise up the career-ladder in it. Anything that a staff journalist writes (or allows to be published, if that person is an editor) contradicting the owner’s views, counts against that employee, and increases his/her likelihood of being eliminated, or at least of being denied a deserved promotion (because not doing the person’s job for the employer).

To be a staff ‘journalist’ is to be a ‘reporter’ for hire, who is willing to exclude reporting whatever facts the owner wants his/her audience not to know (which can be some very important things, such as that the President is clearly lying to say that solid evidence exists that “Saddam’s WMD” still exist). Unfortunately, almost all media-owners have an agenda that overrides truth — they don’t obtain the huge funding that’s necessary to build audience-share if they aren’t backed by big money (billionaire investors, and mega-corporate advertisers) to begin with. Opposing the big money is a sure pathway to obscurity in the field of ‘journalism’; and ‘journalism’ prizes (especially on international-news or other major stories) are pig’s lipstick, far more than indications of journalistic competence. The best journalists, and news-sites, are low-budget, basically volunteer operations (such as you now are reading, and wikileaks). The big corporations don’t own them, and don’t advertise in them — and so, don’t control them.

The demonization of Vladimir Putin and Russia—one of the great and irrefutable barometers of media bankruptcy, not so much for what they say about these targets of constant vilification, but for what they do NOT say about their imperial masters.

A good example of this is the virtually uniform failure of the U.S.’news’ media (including all the Pulitzer people) to have reported the undeniable and simple — and supremely important — fact that U.S. President George W. Bush was lying to assert that he possessed solid evidence that ‘Saddam’s WMD’ still existed, and solid evidence that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his WMD stockpiles — and for him to have asserted, for example, that “a report came out of the Atomic – the IAEA that they [Iraq] were six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need” to invade Iraq without allowing international weapons-inspectors to complete any new investigation into the matter. But that ‘IAEA’ ‘report’ was actually fictitious — it didn’t even exist.

That 7 September 2002 lie by Bush was stenographically reported to the (unfortunately) trusting public, by the many propaganda-organizations (called ‘news’media) — none of which (except the small Washington Times) reported its blatant falsehood — none of them published to readers that, as the IAEA asserted, “There’s never been a report like that [which Bush alleged] issued from this agency.” That ‘IAEA report’ Bush referenced, had simply been cooked-up by George W. Bush and endorsed by Tony Blair. Like one great journalist bannered, “Everyone Knew that Iraq Didn’t Have WMDs”. Among those “Everyone” was Tony Blair himself, but his participation in Bush’s hoax would already have been obvious by no later than 7 September 2002, when Prime Minister Blair was accompanying U.S. President Bush as Bush was fabricating on-the-spot that lie, and when Blair failed to ‘correct’ what the U.S. President had just asserted. Instead, Blair reaffirmed it. They were two gangsters (just ask the Iraqis whether they were gangsters): Bush, and Bush’s lapdog Blair, destroyed Iraq. They are war-criminals, though unprosecuted (because the U.S. aristocracy and the ones that subordinate themselves to it, prohibit any of themselves or their agents from being prosecuted).

As Craig Murray blogged in Britain, the UK’s aristocracy joined America’s aristocracy in deep-sixing the truth on this crucial matter; and, furthermore, Barack Obama continued the rabid lying for war, after George W. Bush had finished being America’s Liar-in-Chief. Obama was merely a more-articulate and cunning version of Bush, in blackface (which won him almost solid support from Blacks, and from ‘liberals’). So, Obama gave us Libya instead of Iraq; and Syria instead of Afghanistan; and Yemen as the Sauds’ playground for their American-made weapons and supported by their U.S. trainers — and also civil war and ethnic cleansing in Ukraine instead of peace with Russia (whose longest European border is the one it shares with Ukraine). And, instead of an economic crash, Obama gave us (besides his pretty rhetoric of ‘concern’ about the elite’s injustices that his actual actions did nothing to punish) increased economic inequality, flatlined wages, and soaring poverty with lots of new burger-flipping jobs. How much are such realities being reported (except by Bernie Sanders, whom the Clinton-Obama Democratic Party cheated out of the nomination, by manipulating the primaries and relying — and feeding — upon Democratic suckers, on Election Day)?

Lies are not permitted to be called ‘lies’, unless they are made by the ‘enemy’ (such as Putin), even if the ‘enemy’ isn’t really the one who is lying.

MSNBC's russophobe Maddow at work—a shameless propagandist, but the Russia hate campaign has made richer and even more famous among her following of clueless, identity politics liberals.

For example, did the ‘news’ media report that what overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President in February 2014 was no such thing as “democracy demonstrations” which had begun spontaneously in Ukraine after President Yanukovych on 20 November 2013 rejected the EU’s trade offer (which offer would actually have cost Ukraine $160 billion — a cost that was never reported in the U.S. press), but was instead a bloody barbaric coup which Obama’s team had started planning way back in 2011? Did America’s (and ’The West’s’) ’news’ media report this U.S. coup in Ukraine — or even that it WAS a “coup” (or even that it had been one) and that it was (as the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor called it when speaking only to a non-U.S. audience) “the most blatant coup in history”? None of them reported any of that. But now the hostilities against Russia — including the sanctions, and the NATO buildup — are based upon those lies, those potentially WW-III-generating libels, against Russia.

Did they report that the economic sanctions and NATO buildup against Russia that the Obama regime ‘justified’ by ‘Putin’s conquest’ of Crimea was actually forced upon Russia, because it’s next door to Ukraine — forced by Obama’s land-grab of Ukraine via a U.S.-imposed coup in Ukraine (as a hoped-for U.S. missile-base against Russia, a mere five minutes missile-flight to Moscow)? And did they report that this aggressive coup overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President, whom 75% of Crimeans had voted for? And did they report that Crimea had been a state in Russia until 1954 when the Soviet dictator arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine? Obama insisted that Nikita Khrushchev’s imposed transfer of Crimea to Ukraine remain permanently — that Crimea remain as a state in Ukraine, no matter what the Crimean people wanted. What would your own local state do if the federal government were taken over by a bloody coup from an enemy power, and threw out the President whom 75% of the people in your state had voted? Obama was opposed to the right of self-determination of peoples when it referred to Crimeans, but not when it referred to the Scotch, or to the Catalans. And he also opposed democracy in Syria. Was any of that reported in the U.S. ’news’ media? Or will Americans first learn about it in the history books — if even then?

Did the ‘news’ media report that the Obama-gang’s entire case against Russia is based upon lies (even if some of the things that Russia’s Vladimir Putin has said have also been lies)? Did they report that Obama’s charges that Russia is the world’s #1 ‘aggressor’-nation are rabid lies from the world’s actual #1-aggressor-nation?

Volunteer journalists (such as “bloggers”) can report these things; well-paid ‘journalists’ cannot and do not. In true George Orwell 1984 fashion, reporting these things is called ‘fake news’, by the actual fake-news masters — and unfortunately suckers believe them. Even on serious domestic-policy news, the prestigious ‘news’ media pump the aristocracy’s lies, and inculcate the desired (by the super-wealthy) misconceptions.

Thus, the question for many young reporters nowadays is: “Will I be bad enough to keep a good job, or maybe even atrocious enough to advance in it?”

Fox Friends is as low as it gets in so-called television journalism and commentary, but these people are not a rare exception, they are almost the norm. Similar nincompoop crews are found in all major media, print, electronic and television. It's par for the course.

As for the consumers of journalism, there is no substitute for a reader’s demanding that every news-report include mentioning each of its sources, and that those sources are 100% reliable ones on the matter alleged, and that the report link directly to the root-source and not to any mere paraphrase of what it allegedly says. In a democracy, the public don’t trust the mere allegations from ‘authority’. Because, to trust ‘authority’ (note: this refers to fake authorities, not to methodologically careful scientific research) is to invite fascist rule, aggressive wars, and mass-exploitation. (Only a few investigative journalists with a long record of proven-accuracy, such as Seymour Hersh, are exceptions, whom a reader can reasonablyaccept upon the basis of unnamed, private, sources. Such veteran, proven, journalists are rare.)

Getting to the truth, and staying with it, requires constant vigilance and a constantly open mind to the possibility that there are falsehoods in one’s own beliefs. If a person isn’t skeptical of his own beliefs, then he becomes a waste-dump of falsehoods, instead of an accumulator of truths — a truly (i.e., truthfully) educated person. Even today, Republicans approve of George W. Bush, and Democrats approve of Barack Obama. Democracy is thus virtually impossible in America, because both sides are polluted by the same aristocracy. The aristocracy controls both Parties. And the government. And the press.

And that’s the problem. Nobody has figured out a solution for it. And America’s press won’t allow even its existence to be published. So, the public cannot understand why they cannot understand.

What can be done to solve this problem that the press hide from the public? Might there be a way for some members of the press to become part of the solution, and no longer part of the problem? Would that even be possible? If not, then how can the public ever come to understand what the problem is? 

The anti-neoconservative Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who had been the chief aide to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and had opposed America’s invading Iraq, spoke on March 2nd explaining how the U.S. and Russia are drifting ever-more-rapidly into World War III. He said it’s essentially the same way that England and Germany drifted into WW I: being sucked in by their entangling web of foreign alliances. However, as he sees it, the role that Sarajevo played to spark world-war in 1914, is being performed this time by Israel. Instead of the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip igniting the war by assassinating in Sarajevo the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, Benjamin Netanyahu is igniting this war throughout the Middle East, by escalating his campaign to conquer Shiites in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon — overthrowing and replacing the governments there (which would then become controlled by allies of the anti-Shiite Sunni regime in U.S.-Israel-allied Saudi Arabia), and also aiming ultimately to expand Israel itself, to take over Jordan so as to confirm biblical prophesy.

And, as Wilkerson sees it, Netanyahu is also fronting for the Saud family: the Israel lobby is fronting not only for Israel’s aristocracy, but for Saudi Arabia’s. (Whereas Israel works both inside and outside the U.S. Government to control the U.S. Government, the Sauds, which are the world’s richest family, work only inside the U.S. Government, by outright buying it; so, unlike the Jewish billionaires who control Israel, they don’t need acceptance by the American people; and each time the Sauds try, they fail at it.) However, since Wilkerson’s speech was being sponsored by organizations that oppose Israel’s lobbyists, most of it dealt with Israel’s side of the Israel-Saud alliance that controls U.S. foreign policies (especially in the Middle East). (The U.S. aristocracy’s hostility toward Russia is, however, its own; it is primary for America’s billionaires, but not for Israel’s aristocracy, and also not for the Sauds — both of which aristocracies are instead focused mainly against Iran and Shiites.)

Wilkerson thus criticized especially “where Israel is headed – toward a massive confrontation with the various powers arrayed against it, a confrontation that will suck America in and perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become.” Here is how he described the likeliest “tripwire” for what would become global nuclear annihilation:

They want a Greater Israel for a number of reasons, security reasons, you know, the old biblical prophecies and so forth. So I think they’re going to try to keep this in the air to start with. You’re going to see some bombing. I think you’re going to see in the next six months, they’re going to take Lebanon on. They’re going to take Hezbollah on in Syria and Lebanon. When that doesn’t work or when Hezbollah present to them, as they did in July 2006, with some new options in terms of what Hezbollah can do to them and maybe even the Lebanese Armed Forces do too, it might get tricky. Then there might be armored formations, ground units, infantry and so forth. That’s when the door opens for general conflict.

There is a question asked, too, about the [U.S. military] base [recently placed in Israel]. Here’s why I think we put the base there. … We put the base there for the same reason we have tripwire forces in other places. We put the base there so that there can be no question in the minds of the American people when the president directs U.S. forces into Israel equipped to go into Syria because we will have been attacked. The disposition of that base is just sitting on an Israeli Air Base and we put the Stars and Stripes up and declared it a U.S. Air Base. It’s for Patriot batteries as far as I know. But it’s there and it’s U.S. territory. So, when missiles start flying or — God forbid — the RGC [Iran’s Republican Guard Corps] actually tries to put guerillas into Israel proper, then we are being attacked, too. So, when we go to Congress, if Trump feels like he has to go to Congress — he isn’t going to have to probably — Congress is going to be demanding that the president take action. …

If so, then the U.S. Government will be at war against Russia, too, not merely against Iran and Hezbollah. … So, the thing that ought to be happening right now is that the United States and Moscow, despite all this mess [Russiagate, Skripal, etc.] that’s been created between us, ought to be cooperating to bring the two parties that really need to talk — to talk, Riyadh and Tehran — and get them to deal with their problems diplomatically and then turn that diplomatic success on to the Syrian conflict which is being fueled principally by Saudi money with Prince Bandar in charge.

He’s saying that this isn’t at all an ‘Israel-versus-the-Arabs’ thing, nor even fundamentally a Russia-versus-America thing (at least not in the Middle East) but instead a Sunni-versus-Shiite thing, at root. And, he’s right. The fundamental Middle-Eastern conflict is intra-Islamic, not between religions. But (and he never talks about this; almost nobody does), it’s really between blocs of aristocracies, not really between different nations’ publics. In terms of publics, the American people are victimized by the American aristocracy and by its allied Saud family, and by its allied Israeli aristocracy; but America’s media are controlled by America’s aristocracy; and, so, hide these facts, in order to make these invasions by the U.S. possible — politically acceptable to the duped public (like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc., were).

Bandar is the person who was paying, out of his and his wife’s own personal checking accounts, flight-training etc. for at least two of the 15 Saudis who were preparing to do the 9/11 attacks. In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump personally sold, to the Saud family, $350 billion in U.S. weaponry and training. That sale was the biggest part yet, of Trump’s plan to restore U.S. manufacturing. And basically, Trump is now owned by the Sauds, and this (in addition to his own billionaire Israel-backers) means that he needs to be gung-ho for invading Iran, and certainly not for overthrowing the Sauds. He needs to support aristocracies that are the chief enemies of the American public. This is realpolitik, in a world that’s controlled by psychopaths. It’s today’s world.

Wilkerson said, “We might have the stirrings of 1914 as utterly stupid as we now know those stirrings to have been.” But would this really be just “stupidity,” or, perhaps, something more — and worse? He evidently knows that it’s far more, and that it involves not only the Sauds and their agents, but also the Israelis and their agents:

Col. Wilkerson

This is Joseph Goebbels territory. Karl Rove [George W. Bush’s chief propagandist] is envious. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies as the heir to the Project for the New American Century, Bill Kristol’s Iraq-bound think tank, leaves that pack of wolves disguised as warmed over neocons lavishly funded by the likes of Paul Singer [one of Trump’s top financial backers]. It has even spawned the Institute for the Study of War. A fascinating Orwellian title if there ever was one [it’s run by former PNAC people]. It should be [called] the Institute for War.

I’ve been asked why is it that you ascribe to FDD and now the ISW such nefarious motives. I was asked this by the New York Times’ editorial staff when they published my op-ed on Iran a few days ago. My answer is simple. Because that is precisely what FDD is attempting to do. Just as Douglas Feith, undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Office of Special Plans, did in 2002 and 2003 for Richard Bruce Cheney to lead us in the war with Iraq.

If this is true, then the Skripal matter, and all of Russiagate’s pressures upon Trump to bring America to war against Russia and against Russia’s allies (such as Iran, Syria, and China), would fit also as being parts of that broader plan, which would fulfill the objectives both of the Saud family, and of Israel’s aristocracy — and, of course, of America’s aristocracy, which have long wanted to conquer Russia.

The NATO PR agency Atlantic Council announced on March 25th that, as the neoconservative Daily Starin London expressed the matter, “Defence experts at the Atlantic Council have now laid out the ‘significant threat’ from Russia on the edge of Europe.” Now that NATO has expanded right up to Russia’s very borders, NATO wants its populations to know that Russia is threatening NATO by massing troops and weapons on NATO’s borders. (It’s as if Russia had taken Mexico and then blamed America for being ‘aggressive’ and ‘threatening’ by doing defensive military drills on our own territory.) The next day, the Daily Star headlined “Vladimir Putin orders WAR DRILLS as Russia tensions ready to snap with West”. Then, on March 29th, they headlined “‘This is very rare’ Russia warship ‘to fire missiles SIX MILES off Sweden coast’”.

The aristocracies of Israel and of Saudi Arabia will likely have the support of the aristocracies in the U.S. and UK, in their planned war against Russia and its allies. Like WWI, and WW II, this is a joint enterprise; but, this time, unlike in WW II, America will be out to conquer Russia, not to conquer Germany. Russia is the nation that has, by far, the most natural resources; and aristocracies always value land more than they value the populations that are on it, for whatever they can exploit out of the conquered ones, especially because dealing with the natives can mean more trouble than it’s worth. For examples: native populations didn’t do too well in U.S., nor in Australia, nor in Africa, nor in Palestine. Russians aren’t the goal; Russia (the land) is. But, as usual, the aristocracies have first been knocking off the leaders of the allies of the country that’s the main target — such as in Iraq, and in Libya, and in Syria, and in Ukraine. Now, the allied aristocracies are getting ready to go in for the kill.

As regards the view from the opposite side, it was well summarized by Joe Hargrave in his recent “What Putin Wants Is The Most Important Issue Of Our Time”, in which he accurately represented what Putin has been both saying and doing.

And as regards Wilkerson’s recommendation: it was for the U.S. to abandon Israel, so that Netanyahu won’t be able to start WW III. (Wilkerson closed by saying: “The country that will have started it all, the relationship, unbalanced as it is that will make it possible, is Israel. That’s the danger we face.”) Of course, the Sauds won’t allow that, and they might even renege on their $350 billion U.S. weapons-purchase commitment if we did it. The Israel lobby would secretly carry the Sauds’ water on that, and the Sauds pay well for any service provided to them; so, those lobbyists would have access to virtually unlimited funds, some of which would, of course, ultimately find its way not only into politicians’ campaigns, but also into America’s ‘news’ media. Thus, corporations such as Lockheed Martin can get loads of free PR (sales-promotion), for American ‘nationalism’, which is the military-industrial complex’s form of internationalism.