media bias

Every artist, every scientist, must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of the greatest of man’s literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear.

Paramilitaries on the Columbia Venezuela border

A swarm of vulgar and violent Trump haters have expanded their hate to the little girl herself. YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter claim they are censoring Internet comments in order to stop hate speech but they have totally ignored this genuine hate speech and allowed it to go viral on the Internet. The fact that there is no action from any quarter to restrict criminality from the Left tells us all we need to know about the loyalties of those in charge. [...]

Can anyone still doubt that access to a relatively free and open internet is rapidly coming to an end in the west? In China and other autocratic regimes, leaders have simply bent the internet to their will, censoring content that threatens their rule. But in the “democratic” west, it is being done differently. The state does not have to interfere directly – it outsources its dirty work to corporations.

There are reasons to be extremely worried about what is happening on the Internet – quite silently.
Worried in terms of freedom of information gathering, respect for Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, worried about democracy, the open society – and more.

Investigative journalist Gareth Porter has published two exclusives whose import is far greater than may be immediately apparent. They concern Israel’s bombing in 2007 of a supposed nuclear plant secretly built, according to a self-serving US and Israeli narrative, by Syrian leader Bashar Assad.
Although the attack on the “nuclear reactor” occurred a decade ago, there are pressing lessons to be learnt for those analysing current events in Syria.

In a recent piece published on Politico, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, that “crusty ex-cargo pilot,” makes us privy to another of his unnerving assessments of the world-at-large, “The Russians have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.” The last time Mr. Clapper assured us of something, it was that the intel community wasn’t spying on us. We saw how that turned out. But that was under oath before Congress.

The scandal surrounding Priti Patel, who was forced to resign as Britain’s international aid minister last week after secret meetings with Israeli officials during a “family holiday”, offers a small, opaque window on the UK’s powerful Israel lobby.
Ms Patel’s off-the-books meetings with 12 Israelis, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were organised by a British lobbyist in violation of government rules requiring careful documentation of official meetings. That is to prevent conflicts of interest and illicit lobbying by foreign powers.

The truth of corporate journalism, and the great irony of its obsession with ‘fake news’, is that it is itself utterly fake. What could be more obviously fake than the idea that Truth can be sold by billionaire-owned media dependent on billionaire-owned advertisers for maximised profit?

For the past nine months, we have seen widespread attacks on the common good. The latest assault is the Republicans’ proposed tax reform, a huge transfer of wealth to the richest one-tenth of one percent. This legislation would also greatly increase the national debt, supposedly a major red line for Republicans. In addition, President Trump continues to: 1) slow action on climate change; 2) support fossil fuels; and 3) weaken the protections of clean air, water and soil. Trump and the Republicans have repeatedly tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act.