Daily Archives: October 31, 2020

2020-10-31: News Headlines

_____ (2020-10-31). Draft Debacle: Bellingcat Smears OPCW Whistleblower, Journalists With False Letter, Farcical Claims. strategic-culture.org Bellingcat claimed to have uncovered a letter that disproves OPCW inspectors and journalists who challenged the censorship of a Syria chemical weapons probe. But in one of many falsehoods, Bellingcat's "letter" was in fact only a draft that was never sent — and only further exposes the cover-up. | Aaron MATÉ | Bellingcat, the NATO member state-funded website that has participated in a propaganda effort to accuse Syria of a chemical weapons attack in April 2018 and justify the US-led bombing that followed, has published a new falsehood-ridden attack on an OPCW whistleblower whose suppressed findings exposed…

Raul Diego (2020-10-31). From a wealthy socialite to an Israeli Govt censor, Facebook's new "Free Speech Court" is anything but independent. mronline.org Freedom of speech on the Internet is all but extinct, and on the eve of the 2020 U.S. elections, a de facto "free speech court" is going to make sure it never comes back. On Facebook at least.

_____ (2020-10-31). Biden And Trump Agree Far More Than They Disagree. popularresistance.org With the U.S. presidential elections slated for next Tuesday November 3rd, unprecedented numbers of voters have already cast their ballot. Despite a polarized electorate deeply divided on issues from police brutality to COVID-19, for many voters commited to preventing four more years of Trump, the two major candidates prove far more similar than presented in mainstream media. | To shed light on some of these dyanmics in this crucial election for the hemisphere, we spoke with Adrienne Pine, professor of medical anthropology at American University, member of the Embassy Protection Collective, and author of the rece…

Editor (2020-10-30). Greenwald: My Resignation from The Intercept. scheerpost.com By Glenn Greenwald / Reposted with permission from the author's site Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media. The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept's editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I… |

Virginia Rodino (2020-10-30). Why I'm Voting Green in 2020. globalresearch.ca Author's note: Kevin and I worked on this article together right before his untimely passing on September 6. I met Kevin during Ralph Nader's 2004 presidential campaign. Throughout the years since, I appreciated seeing his anti-imperialist and eco-socialist arguments strengthen …

Alan Macleod (2020-10-30). The Knives Come Out as Greenwald Splits From the Intercept Citing Censorship. mintpressnews.com Funded by a billionaire oligarch and increasingly seen as a mouthpiece for the neoliberal establishment, The Intercept suffered its biggest blow yet with the very public departure of Greenwald.

Caitlin Johnstone (2020-10-30). Greenwald's Intercept Resignation Exposes The Rot In All Mass Media. thealtworld.com Journalist Glenn Greenwald has made major waves throughout mainstream and alternative media by Greenwald says he resigned because Intercept editors refused to let him publish

Rev. William Alberts (2020-10-30). Democracy is Colorful, Not Colorblind. counterpunch.org Many white Americans believe racism is about individual relationships: how they think about and treat individual persons of color. Here racism is individualized and interpersonalized, which obscures its historical, institutional and White-controlled dimensions including its power base. Black friends and acquaintances, no matter how genuine the relationships, may serve to cloud rather than clarify the

Stephen Lendman (2020-10-30). Will Trump Surprise Pollsters and Hostile Media by Defeating Biden? globalresearch.ca The NYT is notably unrelenting in pushing fake news of Russian US election meddling to help Biden defeat Trump. | Despite claiming otherwise, the US intelligence community has no evidence suggesting foreign interference in the US election process this year or …

Julia Conley, staff writer (2020-10-30). 'Truly Sociopathic Behavior': After Mother Beaten by Philly Cops, Fraternal Order of Police Use Photo of Terrified Toddler as Propaganda. commondreams.org The conduct of Philadelphia police officers and their national union on Thursday amounted to what one journalist called "an extraordinary mix of police violence and disinformation," after it was revealed that officers beat a young mother and then used her toddler's image in pro-police propaganda. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…

_____ (2020-10-30). Western Sanctions a Failure of Diplomacy — What Lies Beneath. strategic-culture.org Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) once remarked that "assassination is the extreme form of censorship". The satirist might add that so too are "sanctions" as a form of censorship. | Hardly a week goes by, it seems, when there is not some new round of sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and its allies in the European Union. This debased ritual has been going on for six years since the Western powers backed a violent coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014, and yet they have continued to blame Russia for that conflict. | In addition to ironical allegations about Russia interfering in Ukraine, oth…

sputniknews (2020-10-30). Labour Suspends Corbyn, Europe Locks Down, US Told Vote or Die. sputniknews.com After four years of pretending to care about non-center voices, US mainstream media is eager for the good old days.

Jeff Harris (2020-10-30). Nine COVID Facts: A Pandemic of Fearmongering and Ignorance. globalresearch.ca Ever since the alleged pandemic erupted this past March the mainstream media has spewed a non-stop stream of misinformation that appears to be laser focused on generating maximum fear among the citizenry. But the facts and the science simply don't …

Dr. Jack Rasmus (2020-10-29). US Elections 2020: Why the Record Vote Turnout May Not Matter. globalresearch.ca Mainstream media is pounding out an incessant drumbeat: 'Get Out and Vote! Mail in Your Ballot! Do It Now! Vote Early!' | But what may well determine the outcome of the election on November 3 may not be the current record …

Staff (2020-10-29). Facebook Choked Traffic to Mother Jones & Other Sites While Amplifying Right-Wing Misinformation. democracynow.org Big Tech CEOs were grilled Wednesday about how they moderate election disinformation and extremist content, and were accused by Republicans of censoring conservatives. Overlooked were reports that Facebook designed changes to its news feed algorithm in 2017 to reduce the visibility of left-leaning news sites like Mother Jones. Mother Jones editors wrote in 2019 that the site had seen a sharp decline in its Facebook audience, which translated to a loss of around $600,000 over 18 months. "The fact that we are trying to do everything we can to get the truth out and Facebook is deliberately sabotaging our readership…

_____ (2020-10-29). Bolivia Needs to Guard Itself Against Further U.S. Intervention. strategic-culture.org Bolivia has managed to overturn the neoliberal agenda which the U.S. attempted to force upon the nation in the 2019 coup, which ousted former President Evo Morales to instal the far-right wing Jeanine Añez as president, or dictator. While Chile was dealing with its state violence, the Bolivian coup was out in the streets exerting its vengeance on the country's indigenous population. For months, Bolivians protested against state violence and police repression. It is now the new government's obligation to bring the perpetrators to justice, while retracing Bolivia's path to its revolutionary progress. | Mainstream p…

_____ (2020-10-29). Deception 2020: It's Not Propaganda When We Do It. popularresistance.org In this fourth installment of the Deception 2020 Series, we dig into the cesspool of propaganda — the red, white and blue kind. Joined by Mickey Huff, Director of Project Censored, we turn the camera towards the corporate media and discuss some of the things you won't hear in this election run up, and why media literacy is so vital now and especially moving forward.

Bruce Lerro (2020-10-28). "Dictatorship" and "Democracy" as Loaded Language: Anti-Communist Cold-War Propaganda. dissidentvoice.org ORIENTATION In my last article I showed how the word "totalitarian" was used as a loaded vice word to attack the Soviet Union after World War II and to red-bait communists around the world. The use of the word totalitarian began in the 1930s, but even before then in the 1920's, the word "dictator" began …

MEE and agencies (2020-10-28). UAE to become first Arab state to open consulate in Morocco-controlled Western Sahara. middleeasteye.net UAE to become first Arab state to open consulate in Morocco-controlled Western Sahara | The Moroccan King Mohammed VI welcomed the decision as 'historic' | Wed, 10/28/2020 – 07: 35 | Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, left, sits besides King Mohamed VI of Morocco on 2 December 2015 (AFP) | The United Arab Emirates is set to become the first Arab state to open a consulat…

C.J. Hopkins (2020-10-28). The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich. dissidentvoice.org So, according to the corporate media, this is it for Russian-backed Hitler. Game over. The walls are closing in. It's the last days of the Trumpian Reich. Get those vuvuzelas ready! Yes, apparently, the American people, who were all a bunch of Putin-worshipping, white-supremacist neo-Nazis when they elected Trump in 2016, have come to their …

_____ (2020-10-28). Girls on Top. Dirty Diplomats and CNN Hacks Cast a Shadow Over London Foreign Office. strategic-culture.org CNN is arguably the most corrupt, tainted and unethical news organisation on the planet. It's also the most successful. Those two sentences shouldn't really sit comfortably together but the times we are living in are making such news giants go to remarkable lengths to stay on top. And it's not just the network which follows the doctrine do whatever it takes to stay number one. It's also CNN reporters. | Recently, mainstream

Kenny Stancil, staff writer (2020-10-28). 'Stuff of Tinpot Dictatorships': Trump Appointee Denounced for Move to Turn US Media Agency Into Mouthpiece for State 'Propaganda'. commondreams.org "Trump stooge Michael Pack is eliminating the legally required editorial independence of U.S.-funded news outlets abroad so they can act like Trump's Ministry of Propaganda," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files…

WSWS (2020-10-28). The New York Times attacks the First Amendment and embraces censorship of "disinformation" wsws.org An essay published in the October 18 edition of the New York Times Magazine argues that online "disinformation" has rendered First Amendment rights to free speech "inadequate," requiring government and social media censorship of "unfettered speech."