2019-09-20: News Headlines

RT (2019-09-20). US media LAUGHING STOCK of the world: Trump accuses 'fake news' of gutting their credibility. rt.com US President Donald Trump called the US media the "laughing stock of the world" and a "joke" over reports of a spy whistleblower alarmed by his conversations with a foreign leader, which he dismissed as "a political hack job." | Speaking at the Oval Office on Friday, after a meeting with Australian PM Scott Morrison, Trump said he did not know who the alleged whistleblower was, calling the story "ridiculous" and yet another attempt by the "fake news" to make him look bad. | Things get TENSE between President Trump and media… | "Our media has become the laughingstock of the world. When you look at what they d…

WSWS (2019-09-20). Germany: How the secret service and far-right AfD organised the ban on the "linksunten.indymedia" website. wsws.org The cessation of criminal proceedings confirms that the ban on the website was an act of political censorship in which the Interior Ministry, the secret service and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) closely collaborated.

Tracy Keeling (2019-09-20). BBC News website's latest Corbyn propaganda is spectacularly ruined by its own video editors. thecanary.co The BBC published an article on an interview with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on 19 September. A short video of the interview featured alongside the article by the BBC.But the public broadcaster really should have thought better than to use the video alongside that headline. Because the video shows the Labour leader's full remarks in the interview, as opposed to what the BBC News website prioritised in its…

David Rosen (2019-09-20). Evangelicals, Abstinence, Abortion and the Mainstreaming of Sex. counterpunch.org In 2010, Barbara G. Brents and Teela Sanders published a pioneering study, "Mainstreaming the Sex Industry: Economic Inclusion and Social Ambivalence," that argued, "mainstreaming of the sex industry is invariably linked to wider patterns in leisure consumption, travel, and the hedonistic search for relaxation and pleasure." They announced the establishment of the sexually "new normal." The More

Joshua Cho (2019-09-20). Media Omit Context Behind Latest North Korean Missile Tests. fair.org by Joshua Cho | In his 2004 book North Korea: Another Country, historian Bruce Cumings described the irony of corporate media's perpetual narrative of North Korea as an unhinged or devious adversary of the US with hostile nuclear ambitions: Almost always, media discussion of North Korea assumes that Washington is in a position of original innocence, and the North is assiduously trying to obtain and then to use "weapons of mass destruction"—the ubiquitous media trope for the arsenals of American enemies since the Cold War ended. Yet the American record in Northeast Asia since the 1940s is one of consistent us…

Fabian Van Onzen (2019-09-19). 'Value and Crisis' by Alfredo Saad-Filho reviewed. mronline.org It is very common for leftist commentators to use the term 'neoliberalism' in their analysis of a political situation or social struggle. The term is frequently used in socialist political economy, cultural studies, and even mainstream liberal newspapers. | Source

Staff (2019-09-19). American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: The Propaganda That Upholds the Status Quo. therealnews.com In the book American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News From the Revolutionary War to The War On Terror, authors Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong assert that "The mainstream corporate media is one of the chief propagators of American exceptionalism and innocence…the narratives of American exceptionalism and American innocence work together…

FAIR (2019-09-19). Support FAIR: Corporate Media Sidetracking Real Election Issues—Again. fair.org Dear FAIR Friends, While corporate media focus on who's up/who's down in the horserace for the Democratic nomination, more substantive concerns—What are the candidates' policy proposals? Are they adequate to the scale of the problems we face? Will our votes be suppressed, or even miscounted?—go unaddressed. With so much at stake, we've got to …

Alan MacLeod (2019-09-19). The media's war with Bernie Sanders highlights the need to factcheck the factcheckers. thecanary.co One of the only growing industries in news media right now is factchecking, which promises to differentiate reality from fiction for us in today's post-truth world of spin and fake news. But factcheckers themselves are not neutral arbiters of truth; like everyone else, they're individuals and organizations with their own interests and biases. And a case in point is how the media appears intent on trying to factcheck into oblivion everything Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders says, sometimes with comical results. |

teleSUR (2019-09-19). Mafias Controlling Amazon Have Killed 300 in 10 Years: Report. telesurenglish.net Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that more than 300 people have been killed in the last decade in conflicts over the use of land and natural resources in the Amazon, but only 14 of those responsible have been brought to justice so far. | RELATED: | 'US-Brazil Trade Deal is the Holy Grail', Minister Araujo Says | The report, published in Sao Paulo, added that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was driven by violent criminal networks that have been fueld by the Jair Bolsonaro gove…

Hatewatch Staff (2019-09-18). Daily Stormer Website Goes Dark Amid Chaos. splcenter.org The website for the Daily Stormer, the white supremacist, neo-Nazi and antisemitic racist group, has lost access to a critical piece of web infrastructure that allows the general public to access its hate propaganda easily.

RT (2019-09-17). 'Not a House party': Ex-Trump aide Lewandowski hearing turns into impeachment circus. rt.com Seeking to impeach President Donald Trump, the House Judiciary Committee summoned his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski for a hearing that devolved into a trolling and shouting match. Here are some of the craziest moments. | Appearing before the committee on Tuesday, Lewandowski accused the Democrats of "petty and personal politics," described the hearing as "going down a rabbit hole" and vowed to be "as sincere in my answers as this committee is in its questions." The video of his opening statement was approvingly tweeted by Trump. | pic.twitter.com/wrEmfGFRHm

Robert Mackey (2019-09-16). Threatening New War for Oil, Donald Trump Calls His Own Offer of Iran Talks "Fake News" theintercept.com As he threatened to bomb Iran at Saudi Arabia's behest, Trump also intensified his battle with objective reality, by denying his own prior comments.

Edward Hunt (2019-09-13). In the Pacific Islands, the Trump Administration Sees Empire, Ignores Climate Change. progressive.org The U.S. government views the islands as keys to controlling the Pacific and constraining the rise of China.

pip.hinman (2019-09-13). As the Amazon forest burns, corporate media deflects blame. greenleft.org.au climate emergency Brian MierIssue 1237 Australia Amazon fires ranchers monocultureSeptember 13, 2019I spent last week in the Brazilian Am…

Eoin Higgins, Common Dreams (2019-09-08). New Season of Amazon's Jack Ryan Focused on Venezuela Denounced as 'Over-the-Top and Ridiculous' US Propaganda. venezuelanalysis.com The upcoming season of Amazon's Jack Ryan could have been scripted by John Bolton.

splcenter (2019-09-03). Identity Unmasked: Meet the Proprietors of the Internet's Largest Neo-Confederate Propaganda Machine. splcenter.org A small Facebook campaign predicated on keeping Confederate monuments in place has morphed into a group of more than 200 ardent, secretive separatists planning to make the South a separate nation.

ACLU (2019-08-27). New Resource Tool Sheds Light on Government's Prepublication Review System. aclu.org Millions of current and former government employees are subjected to this far-reaching censorship system. | This piece was originally published in Just Security. | For more than three years, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University have been litigating a series of Freedom of Information Act requests relating to "prepublication review." Under this far-reaching censorship system, millions of current and former government employees, con…