Mass media

Western news media are once again distorting the conflict in Syria with lopsided coverage this week, claiming to focus their concern on a humanitarian crisis in the northwest of the country.

Not all the highly suspicious and flagrant bungling and/or manipulation of the Iowa caucuses – which should be the simplest and smallest of all democratic election procedures to count honestly and efficiently in real time – could save Senator Elizabeth Warren and her dreams of power.
A quarter of a million voters in the little Granite State of New Hampshire put the last nails in her political coffin.

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.
Whitney WEBB
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.”

A David vs. Goliath battle between the independent Virginia-based online journal Consortium News and the gigantic Security Communications Establishment of Canada has begun this week. As Consortium News’ Editor-in-Chief, Joe Lauria wrote in his recent press release:

My email box fills with questions: what about the coronavirus epidemic?  Is death on its way from Asia to the West?  There is no vaccine for this viral scourge. Will our infants who have no antibodies against this virus die?  Will vulnerable and frail senior adults be whisked off in ambulances to hospital intensive care units, never to return home as they drown from fluid in their lungs (pneumonia)?
But coronavirus it is just a common cold virus.

Once again, the mainstream media is pushing the repugnant race card, suggesting that Trump supporters are a bunch of knuckle-dragging xenophobes whose only reason for wanting a wall on the Mexican border is because they suffer an aversion to people with different skin color than them.

Caitlin JOHNSTONE
The hashtag #CNNIsTrash is the number one trend on Twitter as of this writing due to the network’s appalling treatment of Bernie Sanders in last night’s Democratic presidential debate in Iowa.

Caitlin JOHNSTONE
The New York Times reports that GRU operatives launched a successful “phishing attack” on the Ukrainian gas company at the heart of scandalous allegations about Joe Biden, and establishment pundits are falling all over themselves to tweet the hottest take on this exciting new Russia conspiracy.

Оn #PropagandaWatch we look at how the propagandists are wringing their hands over the plunging popularity of their dinosaur media outlets.

Paul STREET
Anyone who hoped that the terrible experience of a neofascistic presidency might jolt the Democratic Party media and politics establishment into embracing the basic lesson of the 2016 election – that running a dismal, dollar-drenched centrist well to the right of the citizenry for president just guarantees right-wing control of the United States’ executive branch – is certain to be disappointed.