This month, disgraced Buzzfeed performed yet another astonishing feat of shoddy, agenda-driven journalism by reporting that it took just nine mouse clicks on YouTube to go from a PBS report on the 116^th Congress to a video entitled ‘A Day in the Life of an Arizona Rancher,’ produced by a Washington immigration reform group known as The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

The video that so enraged Buzzfeed details the story of Richard Humphries, an Arizona resident and former narcotics officer living just miles from the US-Mexico border. Humphries, increasingly concerned with the number of illegals traversing his 75-acre ranch, built a watchtower on his sprawling property to help him and federal border agents track illegal aliens. Considering the ‘extremist nature’ of the content, is it any surprise that the CIS was branded in 2016 a ‘hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group itself that has been portrayed as touting a leftist agenda, yet is quietly partnering with YouTube to flag ‘hate’ content?

The Buzzfeed article took exception with many other ‘right-wing’ videos that had the audacity to rear their racist heads in YouTube’s auto-select function. One of those channels is called PragerU, which hosts popular liberal bugbears, including Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, James Damore and Charlie Kirk. The channel, which filed a lawsuit to stop Google and YouTube from illegally censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech, operates on the principle of providing “knowledge and clarity on life’s biggest and most interesting topics… ranging from history and economics to science and happiness.”

Sounds pretty radical, yes? Well, only if you happen to be situated on the left of the political spectrum, as the overwhelming bulk of the IT undoubtedly is. Then yes, all that free right-wing speech may seem radical and worth tweaking the almighty algorithm to ensure they never see the light of day. Never mind that the original YouTube algorithm was built on a market-driven principle where the most popular videos shot to the top in the feeds, a phenomenon that presented a direct threat to the mainstream media message. Given the Left’s hot embrace of Cultural Marxist principles, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Silicon Valley shuns the free market when it works against its own interests.

Now YouTube, obeying the Buzzfeed dog whistle, has pledged to turn the screws even more on ‘conspiratorial’ (i.e. right-wing) creators by “taking a closer look” at how the “Up Next” videos that autoplay after each video ends can lead viewers astray into the dense field of conspiracy-theory, pockmarked as it is with rabbit holes of various sizes and shapes.

Google announced it will begin “reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”

Although Google said the changes will not affect “whether a video is available on YouTube,” judging by the personal experience of several popular YouTube commentators, for example, Mark Dice, the new algorithm is so effective that even when the exact title of one of his ‘controversial’ videos is entered into the channel’s search field it will not yield the correct result.

The New York Times reported on this latest crackdown against social media creators by saying YouTube and other communication platforms have faced rising criticism for “failing to police the content” that creators share.

That is an extremely disconcerting comment when it is considered that we are not talking about hate speech, but rather ideas that have not been awarded the stamp of approval by both the government and the mainstream media. Yet it is the media – the hallowed Fourth Estate – that was originally designed to keep government in check on behalf of the people. The mainstream media, due to its incestuous relationship with Corporate America has failed dramatically on that score. Now we find the two agencies closely aligned in not only promulgating a particular narrative on every major story that surfaces, but cracking down on those alternative voices that would dare suggest a different version of events.

The number of YouTube commentators that have been purged from the video platform is simply staggering, and reveals the true nature of ‘American democracy,’ which is more concerned with fortifying the status quo than bothering itself with truth and justice.

Tragically, the American Founding Fathers, when they were setting down the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights, which has been in force since December 15, 1791, could not have foreseen the development of two major obstacles that would greatly offset their freedom-loving legislation.

The first is the advancement of powerful private corporations, which fly under the radar of the First Amendment. This would have tremendous implications on free speech since corporations, which have largely cornered the market on all communications, are free to establish their own rules with regards to what they want their customers to see and hear. They are powerful enough to tell their customers ‘if you don’t like our policies, you don’t have to use our services,’ while knowing full well that there are not many alternative options. And since the major IT companies all tend to hold neo-Liberal political views, it is their vision of the world that is being pushed to the forefront.

Meanwhile, and this leads us to the second obstacle to free speech, an increasing number of voices from the political right are being smeared and silenced on the pretext of promoting ‘conspiracy theories.’ It should be kept in mind that no police detective worth his or her salt would stop following a particular lead in a case for fear of being branded a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ Indeed, the world-famous detective Sherlock Holmes would not have been able to solve a single crime had he been accused of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’ by his colleagues, many of whom could not follow his subtle train of thought.

In closing, allow me to just reproduce, for those who have forgotten its essence, the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

When will corporations be forced to live up to the law of the land, especially considering they have in many cases become an actual arm of the government?

Following what the Washington Post has described as “the highest-profile misstep yet for a news organization during a period of heightened and intense scrutiny of the press,” mass media representatives are now flailing desperately for an argument as to why people should continue to place their trust in mainstream news outlets.

On Thursday Buzzfeed News delivered the latest “bombshell” Russiagate report to fizzle within 24 hours of its publication, a pattern that is now so consistent that I’ve personally made a practice of declining to comment on such stories until a day or two after their release. “BOOM!” tweets were issued by #Resistance pundits on Twitter, “If true this means X, Y and Z” bloviations were made on mass media punditry panels, and for about 20 hours Russiagaters everywhere were riding the high of their lives, giddy with the news that President Trump had committed an impeachable felony by ordering Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed Trump office tower in Moscow, a proposal which died within weeks and the Kremlin never touched.

There was reason enough already for any reasonable person to refrain from frenzied celebration, including the fact that the story’s two authors, Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier, were giving the press two very different accounts of the information they’d based it on, with Cormier telling CNN that he had not personally seen the evidence underlying his report and Leopold telling MSNBC that he had. Both Leopold and Cormier, for the record, have already previously suffered a Russiagate faceplant with the clickbait viral story that Russia had financed the 2016 election, burying the fact that it was a Russian election.

Then the entire story came crashing down when Mueller’s office took the extremely rare step of issuing an unequivocal statement that the Buzzfeed story was wrong, writing simply, “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate.”

According to journalist and economic analyst Doug Henwood, the print New York Timescovered the Buzzfeed report on its front page when the story broke, but the report on Mueller’s correction the next day was shoved back to page 11. This appalling journalistic malpractice makes it very funny that NYT’s Wajahat Ali had the gall to tweet, “Unlike the Trump administration, journalists are fact checking and willing to correct the record if the Buzzfeed story is found inaccurate. Not really the actions of a deep state and enemy of the people, right?”

This is the behavior of a media class that is interested in selling narratives, not reporting truth. And yet the mass media talking heads are all telling us today that we must continue to trust them.

“Those trying to tar all media today aren’t interested in improving journalism but protecting themselves,” tweeted NBC’s Chuck Todd. “There’s a lot more accountability in media these days than in our politics. We know we live in a glass house, we hope the folks we cover are as self aware.”

More accountability in media than in politics, Chuck? Really? Accountability to whom? Your advertisers? Your plutocratic owners? Certainly not to the people whose minds you are paid exorbitant sums to influence; there are no public elections for the leadership of the mass media.

“Mueller didn’t do the media any favors tonight, and he did do the president one,” griped the odious Chris Cuomo on CNN. “Because as you saw with Rudy Giuliani and as I’m sure you’ll see with the president himself, this allows them to say ‘You can’t believe it! You can’t believe what you read, you can’t believe what you hear! You can only believe us. Even the Special Counsel says that the media doesn’t get it right.'”

“The larger message that a lot of people are going to take from this story is that the news media are a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president, and they’re willing to lie to do it, and I don’t think that’s true” said Jeffrey Toobin on a CNN panel, adding “I just think this is a bad day for us.”

“It does reinforce bad stereotypes about the news media,” said Brian Stelter on the same CNN panel. “I am desperate as a media reporter to always say to the audience, judge folks individually and judge brands individually. Don’t fall for what these politicians out there want you to do. They want you to think we’re all crooked. We’re not. But Buzzfeed now, now the onus is on Buzzfeed.”

CNN, for the record, has been guilty of an arguably even more embarrassing Russiagate flub than Buzzfeed‘s when they wrongly reported that Donald Trump Jr had had access to WikiLeaks’ DNC email archives prior to their 2016 publication, an error that was hilariously due to to the simple misreading of an email date by multiple people.

The mass media, including pro-Trump mass media like Fox News, absolutely deserves to be distrusted. It has earned that distrust. It had earned that distrust already with its constant promotion of imperialist wars and an oligarch-friendly status quo, and it has earned it even more with its frenzied promotion of a narrative engineered to manufacture consent for a preexisting agenda to shove Russia off the world stage.

The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it doesn’t mean it’s not true. The only reason people don’t rise up and use the power of their numbers to force the much-needed changes that need to happen in our world is because they are being propagandized to accept the status quo day in and day out by the mass media’s endless cultural engineering project. They are the reason why wars go unopposed, why third parties never gain traction, why people consent to money hemorrhaging upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while everyone else struggles to survive. The sooner people wake up from the perverse narrative matrix of the plutocratic media, the better.

caitlinjohnstone.com

For the past three years, the United States has attempted to disguise, manipulate, or outright deny its involvement in Yemen. Nonetheless, new facts come to light every so often that indicate Washington’s participation in the Saudi-led war is much more hands-on than officials let on.

The Covert Role of the US in Yemen

The recent news about Green Berets deployed along the Saudi border highlights the ever-growing U.S. role. So, what else is Washington not disclosing about the US in Yemen?

The United States regime has consistently downplayed its role in Yemen while news emerges that counters this narrative. Let’s take a look at everything the United States has done while insisting its role in Yemen is passive.

Green Berets Deployed Along the Saudi-Yemen Border

News emerged last week that Green Berets are stationed along the Saudi-Yemen border to assist Saudi troops. A report from the New York Times says 12 commandos arrived back in December. The NYT received this information from American officials and European diplomats who claim the Green Berets’ only mission is to destroy weapons caches belonging to Yemeni forces.

This timing coincides with a high-profile long-range missile launch by Yemeni forces targeting Riyadh in response to the ongoing airstrikes. The missile launch in question took place in early November. This is the same missile launch U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, used fragments from to suggest a U.S. war against Iran.

The NYT’s sources said that the Green Berets have not and will not participate in direct combat with Yemeni forces. Ansarullah (aka “the Houthis”) troops known as Yemen’s Army and Popular Committees have not shared any photos or reports indicating direct combat either. At this point, the “no direct combat” claim seems to stand.

It’s worth mentioning that the US deployed these Green Berets in December yet Yemen’s resistance forces have launched countless retaliatory missile attacks on Saudi targets since.

A U.S. Army Lieutenant Now Serves for the United Arab Emirates in Yemen — Seriously

This week, Buzzfeed reported that a former U.S. Army lieutenant now serves for the United Arab Emirates. Prior to joining the Emiratis, Stephen Toumajan served as a lieutenant colonel for the United States throughout most of his career.

But murdering Arabs in their own country isn’t Toumajan’s only passion — he also ran a breast enhancement company in Tennessee called “Breast Wishes.”

Although Buzzfeed broke the story, this information comes from Toumajan’s own admissions as well as an Emirati’s government website. The U.A.E. speaks highly of Toumajan as “his excellency” and promoted him from his previous U.S. Army lieutenant position. He now serves as a commander for the U.A.E. Joint Aviation Command manning helicopters.

Depending on who’s asking, Toumajan may deny his official status — it is, after all, a very gray area legality-wise. When it came to a recent child custody hearing, the American Emirati commander quickly back-peddled on his official involvement in the foreign military.

Speaking to Buzzfeed via WhatsApp, Toumajan called himself a “civilian contractor.”

This highlights the growing instances of using for-profit hires (bluntly: contract killers) to bypass standard military norms and international law. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates both utilize Blackwater mercenaries for boosting their military ranks.

These countries have flooded Yemen with foreign fighters to kill indigenous Yemenis on their own soil. Fighters often hail from Sudan and many Latin American countries like Columbia and Mexico.

The U.A.E. takes particular advantage of this market and it’s very common for foreigners to serve under the Emirati banner. Mike Hindmarsh, for example, is a retired Australian senior officer who now serves on the U.A.E. Presidential Guard.

This strategy allows the United States and western countries to station troops in Yemen without stationing troops in Yemen.

UAE and US in Yemen Establish 18 Black-site Torture Centers

Last year, reports emerged that the US in Yemen helped the United Arab Emirates establish a series of black-site detention centers throughout territory under their control.

Inmates at these 18 detention centers cited unspeakable torture. One device, known as “the grill,” roasted victims for interrogation. Guards smeared detainees with feces and crammed them into what looks like shipping containers in Yemen’s intense heat for indefinite amounts of time. Beatings and electrocutions are commonplace.

Conditions look similar — if not much worse — to the infamous Abu Graihb U.S.-run detention center in Iraq.

According to the Associated Press, U.S. and Emirati troops rounded up civilians without any justification as part of sweeps to flush out suspected al-Qaeda militants. It appears as though the prisons still function.

Low-key Raids by the US in Yemen

Eight-year-old Nawar Anwar Al-Awlaqi is said to have bled to death over two hours

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Yemen made headlines. But the war-torn nation didn’t break news because of the genocidal bombing campaign. No, Yemen made headlines because a Navy Seal died in a disastrous raid against suspected al-Qaeda militants — the Trump regime’s first official military action.

Not satisfied with the result, Washington ordered a similar raid just months later.

The first raid left 25 civilians dead while the second killed at least five. Many readers may not know that a very young girl died during one of these low-key raids — she was an eight-year-old American citizen named Nawar al-Awlaki. A 70-year-old partially blind man also died.

Again, Navy Seals did not leave the scene unscathed. In fact, conflicting reports cast doubt on Washington’s official story. According to local Yemeni sources, tribal fighters (not aligned to any group) killed or injured at least 30 U.S. and Gulf troops during the second raid which took place in May.

Yemeni sources also say that al-Qaeda fighters were not present in this particular area of Marib province during the attack.

So, why did the U.S. conduct the raid if al-Qaeda wasn’t even in the area? This particular blunder may be attributed to a number of factors including

• Securing oil-rich land from rogue (anti-U.S. but not “terrorist”) indigenous tribal groups.
• Bad intelligence — highly likely considering the U.S.-Saudi coalition’s general military failures in Yemen and on other battlefronts.
• Something else that Washington hasn’t (and probably won’t) disclose.

Considering that Yemen is known as the “secret war,” whatever the true goal of the mission was is anyone’s guess.

Occupying Socotra

Yemen is isolated: the blockade restricts access to both foreign and domestic journalists. As a result, detailed reporting about U.S. involvement is hard to find — especially in regards to remote Yemeni islands like Socotra and the Bab el Mandeb.  Socotra is a small island between Yemen and Somalia and its territory belongs to Yemen.

Abu Dhabi has used their war in Yemen as a springboard to challenge regional Saudi hegemony — with remarkable success. For just about every Saudi failure in Yemen, you’ll find a success from the Emirates. The United Arab Emirates began occupying Yemen’s Socotra — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — early on during the war.

Residents aren’t fond of their presence and have no desire to participate in the mainland’s war. Emirati troops recently bribed Socotris during a private door-to-door census: future cash and benefits for a possible vote to secede and become part of the U.A.E. Abu Dhabi’s assertiveness in Yemen has certainly rubbed their allies in Riyadh the wrong way.

Considering Washington’s close relationship with the Emirates, it’s hard to imagine that the U.S. is sitting on the sidelines during this land grab. This activity would require extreme stealth to avoid angering Washington’s allies in Riyadh.

Selling Internationally Banned Weapons to the Saudi Coalition

Saudi Arabia and the US in Yemen have used the war as a testing grounds for military action and weapons. Despite the United States condemning Syria for suspected chemical weapons, the US has no problem selling chemical weapons like white phosphorous to the Saudi coalition to use in Yemen.

In the war’s early days, Yemeni forces detained a large number of trucks in Marib province. The trucks contained materials which militants could use to manufacture sarin gas. Yemeni sources believed the weapons came from Turkish planes under the cover of humanitarian aid.

The United States also sold cluster munitions to the Saudi coalition before coming under international pressure from rights groups. Cluster bombs — previously manufactured in the United States until very recently — are internationally banned.

Even recent reports suggest the Saudis still use cluster bombs in Yemen. It’s unclear whether the United States or the United Kingdom provide the supply or if Riyadh is working through an old stockpile.

Occupying Oil Fields

The United States isn’t supposed to have any troops stationed in Yemen. Washington maintains that its role in Yemen involves two key goals: supporting the Saudi coalition and countering al-Qaeda influence.

Last summer, Emirati troops greeted U.S. soldiers in Yemen at a remote airport in eastern Yemen. Together, they conducted a special mission to push AQAP militants out of key oil fields. Now, the Emiratis and U.S. occupy some of Yemen’s vital oil supplies.

Fighting al-Qaeda in Yemen poses a significant challenge for the United States because their Saudi-allied fighters consider the terror group an ally against Ansarullah. For one thing, AQAP leader Qasim al-Raymi openly admits his men fight alongside U.S.-backed troops.

Terror attacks are common in territory controlled by U.S. allies. AQAP and ISIS militants frequently target Emirati-backed politicians and officials with car bombs or assassination attempts. When the UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen visited the war-torn country, he could not visit specific areas controlled by the US-Saudi coalition due to the threat posed by terror groups. The UN Special Envoy did not have this same experience in Sana’a and territory under Ansarullah control.

What Else is Washington Not Telling Us About the US in Yemen?

U.S. support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign has produced over 36,000 casualties between killed and injured. The airstrikes typically target homes, schools, businesses, farms, fishing boats, water treatment facilities and just about anything else you can imagine.

Washington also helps enforce the Saudi-led blockade which restricts imports, exports, and the flow of movement. This has put roughly 22 million Yemenis into either food insecurity or direct famine. Medical supplies are scarce and thousands of patients suffer the consequences — cancer patients, those requiring kidney dialysis, and pregnant women are most at risk.

On top of this, the United States has carried out covert military actions in Yemen for over the past three years. From deploying Green Berets and occupying oil fields to running black-site torture centers, the US in Yemen has ignored all international laws and norms.

What else is Washington not telling the public about the US in Yemen?

mintpressnews.com

Photo: Middle East Monitor

Eric Zuesse has brought to our attention that US intelligence officials have placed a story in Buzzfeed, “a Democratic party mouthpiece,” that the Russian government used fake news to get Donald Trump elected president. 

According to Buzzfeed:

“US intelligence officials believe Russia helped disseminate fake and propagandized news as part of a broader effort to influence and undermine the presidential election, two US intelligence sources told BuzzFeed News.

‘They’re doing this continuously, that’s a known fact,’ one US intelligence official said, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive national security issue.

‘This is beyond propaganda, that’s my understanding,’ the second US intelligence official said. The official said they believed those efforts likely included the dissemination of completely fake news stories…

One intelligence official said, ‘In the context, did Russia attempt to influence the US elections; the aperture is as wide as it can possibly be.’” ‘The real unanswered question is, why did they do it?’ the second US intelligence official said. ‘Is it because they love Donald Trump? Because they hated Hillary Clinton? Or just because they like undermining Western democracies?’”

Who are these US intelligence officials who are portraying the president-elect of the United States to be a “Putin stooge, a tool of Russia”? Once in office, Trump must investigate these hostile elements in US intelligence who are working to discredit the US president and the American people who voted him into office.

As one reader pointed out, those who debunk “conspiracy theories,” that is, explanations that they do not like, now have a conspiracy theory of their own: Vladimir Putin used independent American websites to elect Trump with fake news. Only voters living in a few large coastal cities were immune to the fake news.

In other words, the presstitute media has lost control over Americans’ minds to Putin.

With an opponent this powerful, neoconservatives better think a dozen times before fomenting any more tension with the Kremlin.

Open the link above to Zeusse’s column and look at the cover of Time magazine. This cover delegitimizes the presidential election. Which US intelligence agency planted this cover on Time? President Trump must have the Secret Service investigate this attack from inside the US government on the US President. Congress, both House and Senate, should immediately summon Time magazine to hearings under oath. This interference by US intelligence in American political life is illegal. Those responsible must be discovered, indicted, convicted, and sentenced. Otherwise fake news will displace facts as Americans are wrapped in a Matrix inside a Matrix.

Three hundred and ninety opponents of the US Constitution, who sit in the US House of Representatives, just passed a bill that voids the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Title V of the bill establishes an interagency executive branch committee “to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence.” Russian manipulation of US media (a routine practice of the US government) to spread disinformation (fake news) is one of the “active measures by Russia” to be countered. In other words, websites that do not participate in the demonization of Russia and President Putin will be subjected to McCarthyite suspicions and accusations. Countering is an open-ended activity that easily extends to enforcement actions against suspected parties.

If this bill becomes law, it can be used to discredit and destroy truthtellers as agents of foreign intelligence. In other words, the message is: if you dispute our lies you are a foreign agent and subject to arrest or elimination.

This is the state of democracy in America today. More than any other country, the United States needs to be liberated. Can Trump do it?

paulcraigroberts.org