U.S. Media Propaganda For War Against Russia

How US ‘News’ Media Propagandize for War Against Russia

On June 16th, Adam Johnson at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) headlined «‘Allegedly’ Disappears as Russians Blamed for DNC Hack», and he broke an enormously important news story about the Washington Post’s propaganda for the US to go to war against Russia. It concerned the question of whether the Russian government had been, as the Post’s reporter Ellen Nakajima alleged, caught red-handed in a cyberattack against both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the US government (particularly former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton).

In Adam Johnson’s opening, here was his blockbuster:

«While the Post story by Ellen Nakashima was sourced to «committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach» – i.e., CrowdStrike, the security firm hired by the DNC – that attribution dropped out of the headline, presenting Russian government culpability as an unquestioned fact. This framing was echoed by dozens of media outlets who picked up on the story and uncritically presented Russian guilt in their headlines without qualification:

▪ Russian Government Hackers Broke Into DNC Servers, Stole Trump Oppo (Politico, 6/14/16)

▪ Russia Hacked DNC Network, Accessed Trump Research (MSNBC, 6/14/16)

▪ Russians Steal Research on Trump in Hack of US Democratic Party (Reuters, 6/14/16)

▪ Russian Government-Affiliated Hackers Breach DNC, Take Research on Donald Trump (Fox, 6/14/16)

▪ Russia Hacks Democratic National Committee, Trump Info Compromised (USA Today, 6/14/16)

▪ Russian government hackers steal DNC files on Donald Trump (The Guardian, 6/14/16)

▪ Russians Hacked DNC Computers to Steal Opposition Research on Trump (Talking Points Memo, 6/14/16)

▪ Russian Spies Hacked Into the DNC’s Donald Trump Files (Slate, 6/14/16)

▪ What Russia’s DNC Hack Tells Us About Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server (Forbes, 6/15/16)»

Here was the opening sentence of Nakashima’s ‘news’ report: «Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.»

Here was the headline: «Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump».

No evidence has been published indicating that either the story’s opening clause or its headline is true, and the person who did the hacking says he’s not associated with the Russian government. 

Consequently, this ‘news’ story in the Washington Post is at least dubious, and is likely false. The real question about the story is: why was it published by a prominent US ‘news’ medium, and then trumpeted in other prominent US ‘news’ media? 

Or, to put this matter another (and broader) way: Are the US major ‘news’ media as untrustworthy now as they were when they stenographically transmitted to the US public, as being ‘news’, the US government’s propaganda line...Going back now to the first version of that question, as I had reported on June 15th: «On Tuesday, June 14th, NATO announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber-attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO’s Article V «collective defense» provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country.»

Or, as Germany's Die Zeit had headlined the matter: «NATO Declares Cyberspace War Zone». (You didn’t see that reported in US ‘news’ media, did you? It’s very important news – as my report about the matter explained in detail, but Die Zeit’s did not. But at least they reported the fact.)

In other words: the Washington Post’s story, which was immediately spread by other ‘news’ media, was alleging something to have occurred that in NATO’s new doctrine constitutes an act of war against the United States by Russia. (Never mind, espionage is routine and the US government commits it routinely even against allies such as Germany, and even taps into phone conversations of German Chancellor Angela Merkel who is more of a soldier for the US than an enemy of the US – but Germany is a fellow NATO member and so this new NATO doctrine doesn’t provide authorization for US espionage against Germany to be treated as constituting cause for an invasion of the US by Germany and the entire NATO alliance. NATO is the anti-Russia military club; it’s designed to conquer Russia, certainly not to defend one NATO member against another. When a nation joins, they’re already slaves of the US government. Like Obama repeatedly says, «The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.» The government in any nation that joins or stays in NATO, knows that their nation is «dispensable», and they accept this: they have to.)

And, since what the Washington Post’s story was alleging there, has been called false by the person who did the hacking, the Post’s implication that Russia committed an act which NATO’s new policy labels as being an act of war against the United States, isn’t only unfounded and likely false; it’s also mentally preparing the American public to go along with a march into possible nuclear oblivion on that dubious basis – like America had marched into war against Iraq in 2003 on the basis of lies from the government and its stenographic press, but this invasion would be much worse.

All of this goes back to NATO’s alleged ‘justification’ for its now (very provocatively) pouring US troops and nuclear weapons onto and near Russia’s borders with Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland (nations selected by Obama for their rabidly anti-Russian leadership): that ‘justification’ being Russia’s having supposedly ‘seized’ Crimea from Ukraine – which allegation against Russia is a lie, and which isn’t even NATO’s business, because Ukraine isn’t yet a NATO member, and therefore isn’t covered by NATO’s promise (Article V) to go to war to defend any NATO member against any invader.

And all of that goes back, in turn, to «How America Double-Crossed Russia And Shamed The West» – yet another lie by the US government, that one having been made in 1990, and now threatening to blossom into a full-fledged nuclear war.

Are these essential facts, including the relevant historical facts, being reported to the American public, so as to enable us to vote knowledgeably in elections? Can a person reasonably say that such a country as the US is a democracy?

Is our government trying to drive the world into a ‘pretext’ to ‘justify’ the US to invade Russia?

Why would it be doing that?

The same ‘news’ media that served the US government to ‘justify’, on the basis of lies, an invasion of Iraq in 2003, is now ‘justifying’ an invasion of Russia, perhaps to occur in 2017. Why would they be doing that?

Here is information about why US academics are highly dependent upon not publishing, nor accepting for publication, anything that would reveal to the public what’s really going on.

It seems that, every day, the real news is looking more and more like «The End of M.A.D. – The Beginning of Madness». Meanwhile, the US ‘news’ media are keeping these developments as secret, as hidden from and misunderstood by the public, as is possible to do.

Two things the US aristocracy are essentially united upon are: (1) the US government’s effort to conquer Russia; (2) not allowing their ‘news’ media to report either about that fact, or about any news-medium’s reporting about either that effort, or the pervasive control of America’s ‘news’ media by the aristocracy, which ‘news’ media not only are owned by members of the aristocracy, but are funded by advertisements from other members of the aristocracy, whose companies pay to advertise in them. So, none of them want to cover this.

In other words, the reality of the ‘news’ media in the United States is: in order for a ‘news’ medium to be able to acquire a large audience, what’s key is financial support of that ‘news’ medium by the aristocracy. Without that, no ‘news’ medium in the US can acquire a large audience. American ‘news’ media are virtually entirely controlled by the US (and allied) aristocracy. They separate themselves from the public, even more than masters were separated from their serfs. Though in rhetoric they express caring and concern about the public, in reality they have none whatsoever. In fact, the invasion that their agent Barack Obama is working towards would harm the public enormously more than even the invasions by their agent George W Bush did. But the public knows little to nothing about it, and misunderstands the little that it does know about it. And this ignorance and misunderstanding by the public provides the aristocracy the freedom they want, to surround Russia with nuclear weapons and hostile armies, until Russia will give in to the US government’s demands – as if Russia will have no alternative but to do that.

EU Agrees to Extend Anti-Russia Sanctions, Awaits Formal Decision

The European Union has agreed to extend economic sanctions against Russia until late January 2017, a source in the European Union Council told Sputnik Tuesday, adding that the Council still has to make a formal decision on the matter.

The EU leaders summit is scheduled for June 28-29. Extending the EU economic sanctions against Russia, which are due to expire in July, is likely to be on the summit's agenda.

Relations between Russia and the West deteriorated amid the 2014 crisis in Ukraine. The European Union, the United States and their allies have introduced several rounds of anti-Russian sanctions since the reunification of Crimea with Russia in 2014, accusing Moscow of meddling in the Ukrainian conflict, a claim Russian authorities have repeatedly denied.