MEDIA FRONT

The FBI was thus born primarily as a national security agency, charged with the domestic front. Over the ensuing decades, the agency accumulated a voluminous record of underhanded and controversial interventions, many clearly unconstitutional. It was precisely to deflect public attention from this unpopular political police role that the establishment began to provide the masses with a different image of the FBI, one concerned with leading “public enemies”, notorious gangsters and racqueteers. The “crime busters” image was reinforced by carefully managed p.r. campaigns and compliant media programs, such as the eponymous TV series The FBI, which made the agency a welcome fixture of Americana in most US households.

British Simon Tisdall demonstrates that presstitutes in the developed West can have a prosperous career spreading disinformation in the service of the Anglo-American oligarchy, even when they openly push for nuclear confrontation. Basic decency is a concept these media scum do not recognise. Literally, everything Tisdall says or imputes in this piece is a high-handed lie. Everything.

GREG MAYBURY—And who can forget the infamous “integrity initiative” that preceded it, whose lofty ambitions aimed to ‘defend democracy against disinformation’? This is faux-elite code for limiting—if not eliminating—free speech; this is already happening at a rate of knots, with the powers that be ‘setting up new perimeters’ online and offline. The prevailing efforts by a range of people to make it a crime to criticise Israel or boycott the country is arguably the most egregious example. The efforts by the MSM to designate genuine, independent analysis by alternative media as “fake news” is another one. The BigTech behemoths increasingly draconian attempts to control the flow and substance of free speech does not go unnoticed.

Such is the sophistication and ubiquity of the narrative control techniques used today—afforded increasingly by ‘computational propaganda’ via automated scripts, hacking, botnets, troll farms, and AI algorithms and the like, along with the barely veiled censorship and information gatekeeping practised by Google and Facebook and other tech behemoths—it’s become one of the most troubling aspects of the technological cum social media revolution.

JOHN V. WALSH—week ago, we made note of a May 11 New York Times news article, documenting that all was not going well for the U.S. in Ukraine, and a companion opinion piece hinting that a shift in direction might be in order.

Now on May 19, “THE EDITORIAL BOARD,” the full Magisterium of the Times, has moved from hints to a clarion call for a change in direction in an editorial uninformatively titled, “The War Is Getting Complicated, and America Isn’t Ready.” From atop the Opinion page the Editorial Board has declared that “total victory” over Russia is not possible and that Ukraine will have to negotiate a peace in a way that reflects a “realistic assessment” and the “limits” of U.S. commitment. The Times serves as one the main shapers of public opinion for the Elite and so its pronouncements are not to be taken lightly.

Journalism has virtually now ceased to exist around the entire sphere of activity known as western mainstream news. All pretence to integrity of reporting has vanished when those who laud Hitler and his Nazis can be greeted by wails of sympathy when they are forced to emerge and surrender themselves.