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Сorporate media of all stripes have rushed to support the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran, throwing objectivity and accuracy by the wayside in order to manufacture consent for regime change.

On February 28, the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, bombing cities across the country, assassinating its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and openly stating their goal was overthrowing the government.

Despite this, media have gone out of their way to present the actions as the U.S. protecting itself, describing them as “defensive strikes,” and to frame Iran as the aggressor. “Iran chooses chaos” ran the headline of the New York Times’ newsletter, portraying the Islamic Republic as the primary actor.

The Free Press used similarly Orwellian concepts. “War is Iranians’ best chance at peace,” presenting U.S./Israeli crimes as an act of mercy on its long-suffering population.

Meanwhile, under the new leadership of self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss, CBS News has transformed itself into a mouthpiece for the Israeli Defense Forces, interviewing IDF Brigadier General Effie Defrin, and uncritically presenting Israel’s war as “aimed at preventing a wider global threat.”

Across the West, corporate media have employed the same tactics of using the passive voice and not naming the perpetrator when describing U.S./Israeli aggression. A perfect encapsulation of this was the BBC’s headline, “At least 153 dead after reported strike on school, Iran says,” that made it sound as if the children died in a lightning strike or a labor dispute, rather than that they were bombed by hostile foreign powers.

Israeli casualties were given more sympathetic coverage than their Iranian counterparts, while media regularly toned down the language used to describe Israeli actions to make them sound more reasonable, and did the opposite with Iran. The Washington Post, for example, wrote (emphasis added) “Israel urges evacuation of south Beirut suburbs; Iran threatens revenge on U.S. over warship.” Thus, Israel was treated as making a good faith attempt to reduce civilian casualties, while the Iranian response to their ship being attacked and sunk in international waters was presented as menacing.

Another common tactic of delegitimization media use is to describe the Iranian as a “regime” (e.g., Bloomberg, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, CNN, NBC News). The word “regime” immediately discredits a government, and cues the reader to oppose it. The phrase “Israeli regime” is virtually never used, unless in a quote from Iranian officials.

Earlier this week, large numbers of Israeli troops re-invaded southern Lebanon. Media attempted to find ways to present the operation as legitimate, including euphemistically using the phrase “cross over into Lebanon” to describe the invasion, or even blaming Hezbollah for the violence. CNN, for instance, wrote that, “Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into the war on Iran,” and that “Hezbollah just restarted the fight that Israel was waiting to finish,” thereby flipping the realities of who was attacking whom.

There have also been a number of fawning profiles of Israeli leaders. “Benjamin Netanyahu’s long career was built on conflict avoidance—then, October 7 transformed and radicalized him,” wrote The Atlantic. In Britain, the coverage from some quarters was even more positive. “Netanyahu is the great war leader of our age” The Daily Telegraph stated, describing the prime minister as a “genius.”

The Daily Telegraph’s Monday front page headline read “Britain backs war on Iran,” with a picture of diaspora Iranians cheering on the bombing of their country. The reality, however, is far less jingoistic. A YouGov poll published the same day found that only 28% of U.K. citizens support U.S./Israeli actions, with 49% expressing their opposition to them. Nevertheless, BBC anchor Nick Robinson suggested, on air, that protests against the U.S./Israeli attacks should be banned across the U.K.

This sort of mentality should come as no surprise, given BBC leadership’s stated positions on Israel. The corporation’s Middle East editor, Raffi Berg, is a former CIA operative and Mossad collaborator who has a signed letter of recommendation from Netanyahu on his office wall.

Anonymous BBC employees speaking to Drop Site News claimed that Berg’s “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel.” They went on to allege that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” The BBC has disputed these claims.

If true, the sort of top-down pro-Israel bias at the BBC closely mirrors that of American outlets. A leaked 2023 New York Times memo revealed that company management explicitly instructed its reporters not to use words such as “genocide,” “slaughter,” and “ethnic cleansing” when discussing Israel’s actions. Times staff must refrain from using words like “refugee camp,” “occupied territory,” or even “Palestine” in their reporting, making it almost impossible to convey some of the most basic facts to their audience.

CNN employees face similar pressure. In the wake of the October 7 attacks, the company’s C.E.O. Mark Thompson sent out a memo to all staff instructing them to make sure that Hamas (and not Israel) is presented as responsible for the violence, that they must always use the moniker “Hamas-controlled” when discussing the Gaza Health Ministry and their civilian death figures, and barring them from any reporting of Hamas’ viewpoint, which its senior director of news standards and practices told staff was “not newsworthy” and amounted to “inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda.”

German media conglomerate Axel Springer, meanwhile – owner of outlets such as Politico and Business Insider – requires its employees to sign what amounts to a loyalty oath to support “the trans-Atlantic alliance and Israel.” The company fired a Lebanese employee who, through internal channels, questioned the requirement.

American newsrooms are also filled with former Israel lobbyists. A MintPress News investigation found hundreds of former employees of Israel lobbying groups such as AIPAC, StandWithUs and CAMERA working in top newsrooms across the country, writing and producing America’s news – including on Israel-Palestine. These outlets include MSNBC, The New York Times, CNN, and Fox News.

There are even ex-Israeli spies writing our news. Another MintPress report revealed a network of former agents of IDF intelligence outfit, Unit 8200, working in America’s newsrooms, including at CNN and Axios.

Therefore, with American newsrooms presided over and staffed in no small part by pro-Israel zealots, it is far from a surprise that their coverage closely mirrors the outlook and biases of Washington and Tel Aviv.

And now, with CNN, CBS News, and TikTok owned by CIA asset Larry Ellison, the IDF’s largest private funder and a close personal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, we should only expect the propaganda to be dialed up to eleven.

Original article: mintpressnews.com

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The oppression of women has been at the core of the CIA’s propaganda attacks against Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. All the media outlets, think tanks, NGOs, parties, and personalities that make up the CIA’s extensive payroll accuse Iran of oppressing women. This campaign of demagoguery reached alarming levels when the U.S. government decided to attempt a coup through a failed color revolution and now bombards the Persian nation incessantly.

Daily events, however, invariably demolish this demagoguery and cruelly expose its hypocrisy.

This artificial feminist movement is even authorized by its sponsors to denounce Trump’s sexism or Netanyahu’s violence when such denunciations have no power to affect the general policy of imperialism and represent no serious confrontation with those governments. Or when Democrats and liberals want to undermine the power of the far right solely to reap electoral benefits. In any case, this phenomenon amounts to nothing more than an imperialist pawn.

The dominant slogans about the oppression of women follow to the letter the script of the great bankers and capitalists, especially the European and American ones. The same applies to the demagoguery surrounding the oppression of Black people, homosexuals, Indigenous peoples, immigrants, and the various “minorities.”

It is enough to see that this monstrous propaganda apparatus, which made such a spectacle against Trump’s sexism, fully supports the imperialist aggressions led by the president of the United States. Or did anyone see CNN, BBC, DW, and Rede Globo denouncing the kidnapping of the Venezuelan first lady and deputy Cilia Flores along with Nicolás Maduro? Is it possible to find a greater oppression against women than the massacre of at least 150 girls at the school in Minab, in southern Iran, carried out by a U.S. bombing launched from a base in the United Arab Emirates? And among the more than 1,300 people killed in U.S. and Israeli attacks against Iran, how many hundreds were women?

The imperialist aggression against Iran is being fully supported by the feminist demagoguery industry made in the USA. Part of it even criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but only so as not to lose the little credibility it still manages to maintain, thanks to the blindness of the majority of the petty bourgeoisie. Yet from the moment the regime responsible for the extermination of around 15,000 Palestinian women—the terrorist regime of Israel—launched aggression together with the United States against Iran, Jeffrey Epstein’s colleagues suddenly turned into liberators of Iranian women.

Of course, all these immaculate fighters against fake news will not say that Iran is one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East, where women have achieved rights that they do not have in most neighboring countries, where they enjoy broad access to higher education, the labor market, leisure, and freedom to dress in ways found in no other country of the Gulf. Rights won by the Revolution of 1979.

What the imperialists have never accepted is precisely the fact that Iran carried out a revolution that freed it from the slavery imposed on the overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples by the very same forces that present themselves as liberators of women. And in the face of the constant aggressions of those slave masters, that revolution has only grown stronger—to the point that, at this moment, it is paying back with interest all the provocations, threats, and attacks it has suffered over decades.

The actions of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have no precedent in modern history. By destroying or severely damaging U.S. and NATO military bases, embassies, and other facilities—and by bombing the largest of them (the land stolen from Palestine called “Israel”)—Iran is striking a monumental blow against the imperialist presence in the Middle East.

“We have no choice but to put an end to the American presence in the Gulf,” said the Persian deputy foreign minister, Sayed Khatibzadeh. These words express Iran’s conviction that its war is not merely a war of definitive independence against aggressive powers—though that alone would already justify fighting it. It is an even more sacred war: a war to free the entire region from the colonial domination of the United States and other imperialist powers, which are there only to plunder its oil and natural wealth and to control one of the arteries of the global capitalist system.

Since the late nineteenth century, in order to guarantee the plunder of those peoples, the imperialist powers imposed puppet dictatorships that would control the populations with weapons, training, technology, and full political, diplomatic, and economic support from the United States and European imperialist nations. They even artificially created many of those countries.

The regimes of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, and of course Israel remain in power only because of the strong military presence of the United States and NATO. Without it, they would never exist. The governments of most of these countries are monarchies or military dictatorships where political rights and democratic freedoms do not exist and where, obviously, women live in the deepest darkness. At this stage, of course, “progressive” demagoguery will not utter a word, but it is difficult to believe that Iranian women are more oppressed than Saudi women.

By attacking imperialist installations in those countries, Iran is undermining the foundations of colonial domination over their peoples. It not only weakens the U.S. military presence but also, consequently, the very puppet regimes created to more conveniently exploit their wealth. These artificial and oppressive regimes become increasingly fragile as Iran expels imperialism. The weakening of these regimes means the weakening of exploitation over their peoples. Iran’s expulsion of imperialism opens the path for the fall of this entire system of oppression, especially the regimes themselves.

It will not be long before the peoples of the entire Middle East hail the Islamic Republic of Iran. And women will be freer than ever, following the example of Iranian women.

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La opresión de la mujer forma parte del eje central de los ataques propagandísticos de la CIA contra Irán desde la Revolución Islámica de 1979. Todos los medios de comunicación, think tanks, ONG, partidos y personalidades que componen la extensa nómina de la CIA acusan a Irán de oprimir a las mujeres. Esta campaña de demagogia alcanzó niveles alarmantes cuando el gobierno estadounidense decidió impulsar un golpe mediante una revolución de color fallida y ahora bombardea incesantemente a la nación persa.

Los acontecimientos cotidianos, sin embargo, invariablemente echan por tierra esta demagogia y desenmascaran su hipocresía de manera cruel.

Este movimiento feminista artificial incluso recibe autorización de sus financiadores para denunciar el machismo de Trump o la violencia de Netanyahu cuando esas denuncias no tienen el poder de afectar la política general del imperialismo y no representan ningún enfrentamiento contundente con esos gobiernos. O cuando los demócratas y liberales quieren minar el poder de la extrema derecha únicamente para cosechar beneficios electorales. En cualquier caso, este fenómeno no pasa de ser una masa de maniobra imperialista.

Las consignas dominantes sobre la opresión de la mujer siguen al pie de la letra el guion de los grandes banqueros y capitalistas, sobre todo los europeos y estadounidenses. Lo mismo ocurre con la demagogia en torno a la opresión de los negros, de los homosexuales, de los indígenas, de los inmigrantes y de las diversas “minorías”.

Basta ver que todo ese aparato monstruoso de propaganda, que tanto teatro hizo contra el machismo de Trump, presta todo su apoyo a las agresiones imperialistas encabezadas por el presidente de Estados Unidos. ¿O acaso alguien vio a CNN, BBC, DW y Rede Globo denunciando el secuestro de la primera dama y diputada venezolana, Cilia Flores, junto con Nicolás Maduro? ¿Será posible encontrar una opresión mayor contra las mujeres que la masacre de al menos 150 niñas en la escuela de Minab, en el sur de Irán, ejecutada por un bombardeo estadounidense proveniente de una base en los Emiratos Árabes? Y, de las más de 1.300 víctimas fatales de ataques de Estados Unidos e Israel contra Irán, ¿cuántos centenares eran mujeres?

La agresión imperialista contra Irán está siendo apoyada íntegramente por la industria de la demagogia feminista made in USA. Parte de ella incluso criticó el genocidio de Israel en Gaza, pero solo para no perder el poco de credibilidad que todavía logra mantener, gracias a la ceguera de la mayoría de la pequeña burguesía. Sin embargo, desde el momento en que el responsable del exterminio de cerca de 15.000 palestinas, el régimen terrorista de Israel, inició la agresión junto con Estados Unidos contra Irán, ¡los colegas de Jeffrey Epstein se transformaron en libertadores de las mujeres iraníes!

Por supuesto, todos esos inmaculados combatientes de las fake news no dirán que Irán es uno de los países más progresistas de Oriente Medio, donde las mujeres han alcanzado derechos que no poseen en la mayoría de los países vecinos, donde tienen amplio acceso a la educación superior, al mercado laboral, al ocio y libertad para vestirse como en ningún otro país del Golfo. Derechos conquistados por la Revolución de 1979.

Lo que los imperialistas jamás aceptaron es precisamente el hecho de que Irán haya realizado una revolución que lo liberó de la esclavitud impuesta a la aplastante mayoría de los pueblos del mundo por los mismos que se presentan como libertadores de las mujeres. Y, frente a las constantes agresiones de esos señores de esclavos, aquella revolución solo se fortaleció, hasta el punto de que, en este momento, está devolviendo con creces todas las provocaciones, amenazas y ataques que sufrió a lo largo de décadas.

La acción del Cuerpo de los Guardianes de la Revolución Islámica no tiene precedentes en la historia moderna. Al destruir o dañar gravemente las bases militares, embajadas y demás instalaciones de Estados Unidos y de la OTAN, además de bombardear la mayor de ellas (la tierra robada de Palestina llamada “Israel”), Irán está asestando un golpe monumental contra la presencia imperialista en Oriente Medio.

“No tenemos otra opción que poner fin a la presencia estadounidense en el Golfo”, afirmó el viceministro de Relaciones Exteriores persa, Sayed Khatibzadeh. Estas palabras expresan la convicción iraní de que su guerra no es solo una guerra de independencia definitiva contra potencias agresoras —si fuera solo eso, ya valdría la pena librarla—. Es una guerra aún más sagrada: la guerra para liberar a toda la región del dominio colonial de Estados Unidos y de las demás potencias imperialistas, que no están allí sino para saquear su petróleo y sus riquezas naturales y controlar una de las arterias del sistema capitalista mundial.

Desde finales del siglo XIX, para garantizar el saqueo de aquellos pueblos, las potencias imperialistas impusieron dictaduras títeres que controlaran a las poblaciones con armas, entrenamiento, tecnología y todo el apoyo político, diplomático y económico de Estados Unidos y de las naciones imperialistas europeas. Incluso crearon artificialmente buena parte de esos países.

Los regímenes de los Emiratos Árabes, Baréin, Kuwait, Catar, Arabia Saudita, Omán, Yemen, Jordania, Líbano, Siria, la Autoridad Palestina y, por supuesto, Israel se sostienen en el poder solo gracias a la fuerte presencia militar de Estados Unidos y de la OTAN. De no ser por ello, jamás existirían. Los gobiernos de la mayoría de esos países son monarquías o dictaduras militares donde no existen derechos políticos ni libertades democráticas y donde, obviamente, las mujeres viven en la más profunda oscuridad. A estas alturas, por supuesto, la demagogia “progresista” no dirá ni una palabra, pero es difícil creer que la mujer iraní esté más oprimida que la saudí.

Al atacar las instalaciones imperialistas en esos países, Irán está minando las bases de la dominación colonial sobre sus pueblos. No solo debilita la presencia militar de Estados Unidos, sino también, como consecuencia, a los propios regímenes títeres creados para explotar con mayor comodidad sus riquezas. Estos regímenes artificiales y opresores se debilitan de manera marcada a medida que Irán expulsa al imperialismo. El debilitamiento de estos regímenes significa el debilitamiento de la explotación sobre sus pueblos. La expulsión del imperialismo por parte de Irán abre el camino para la caída de todo este sistema de opresión, especialmente de los propios regímenes.

No tardará mucho y los pueblos de todo Oriente Medio gritarán vivas a la República Islámica de Irán. Y las mujeres serán más libres que nunca, siguiendo el ejemplo de la mujer iraní.

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Journey to the center of the world of American leaders’ madness and ruin, writes Dennis Kucinich, to see desperate Iranian parents picking through rubble, searching for any signs of their little girls.

The Trump Administration, at the behest of the decrepit Netanyahu government, was instrumental in the bombing of a girls’ elementary school in Iran on Saturday, killing 57 children.

Let that sink in.

Journey to the center of the world of American leaders’ madness and ruin to see desperate Iranian parents picking through rubble, searching for any signs of their little girls. [Iran’s Tasnim News Agency cited the Judiciary of Minab as saying that the death toll had risen to 85.]

Now tell those parents, as we are being told, that America has done this so the Iranian people can be free. It’s the Empire’s new equation, Freedom = Death.

This murderous approach that the Trump Administration has wantonly indulged is identical to the policy of the Netanyahu government to bomb schools in Gaza and to murder innocent children as a (psychopathic) determination of heading off retribution in the future. The murder of children has become a state sacrament.

This is, in fact, an extension of the Epstein saga, the destruction of innocence through child rape, murder and cannibalism by powerful people whose thirst for blood will never be slaked in this cartwheeling carnival of human sacrifice called war.

Peter Berger, in [his 1974  book] Pyramids of Sacrifice drew the equation between the Aztec civilization’s cult of human sacrifice and the collapse of its empire, writing:

“Thus the great pyramid of Cholula provides a metaphorical paradigm for the relations among theory, power and the victims of both – the intellectuals who define reality, the power wielders who shape the world to conform to the definitions and the others who are called upon to suffer in consequence of both enterprises.”

Consider the wider context in which these events occur:

• The rise of predatory Zionism, with its execution of a strategy of annihilation, ethnic cleansing, mass murder and genocide and with ambitions for an Empire from the Euphrates to the Nile;
• the attempt to stifle dissent on U.S. college campuses, threats to university funding; changes in First Amendment law at state levels to punish critics of Israel; the domination of both political parties in U.S. politics by AIPAC and affiliated groups;
• the domination of the media by those more dedicated to the shameful cause of the Likud Government of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir than they are to the United States Constitution.

Front Row Seat on Western Civilization Decline

We have a front row seat at the steady decline of Western “civilization,” led by the U.S. government, recently precipitating the Iraq-Iran War, the war in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, the War against Lebanon, the War against Syria, the War against Gaza and the West Bank, the War against Yemen and now presenting the (second) U.S. war against Iran.

Renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War is splendid Truth in Advertising.

Simultaneously, the collapse of the American economy is in the offing, mired in debt, yet preparing to appropriate $1.5 trillion dollars a year for war, most of next year’s discretionary spending which would otherwise be used for the health, education and general welfare of the American people.

Today the U.S., the “most powerful military in the world” has been reduced to being an arm of the Israeli government, in service of greater Israel.

That we have made Netanyahu’s long-desired war upon Iran our own, is a sign that Lincoln’s Prayer of a “Government of the People, by the People and For the People, Shall not Perish,” is no longer part of our national invocation. Nor are George Washington’s admonitions about foreign entanglements regarded, nor President Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex.

No today, America’s leaders cast aside centuries of accumulated wisdom of governance and descend into a circle of Hell, lower than Dante imagined in the Inferno, a place reserved for those who sacrifice their nations for personal wealth and power and for whom nothing is immoral, there is no spiritual code and no divine being other than themselves.

The modern punishments of Impeachment and trial by the Hague are insufficient to deal with such beings.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

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Il recente licenziamento di centinaia di giornalisti del Washington Post ha fatto notizia, così come la crisi finanziaria che ha colpito la divisione internazionale della BBC (BBC World Service), suscitando un dibattito sul futuro dell’informazione internazionale.

La maggior parte dei licenziamenti del Post ha riguardato i corrispondenti esteri, indicando che l’informazione internazionale, almeno per i media mainstream, è in declino. Per molti, questa non è una novità. L’informazione internazionale, come area tematica, è stata un settore che i giganti dei media hanno abitualmente ridotto per almeno un decennio, se non di più, in linea con le tendenze degli spettatori che cercano fonti alternative. Potrebbe essere questa la semplice spiegazione del perché questi due giganti dell’informazione internazionale stanno affrontando una crisi esistenziale, o c’è qualcosa di più?

Il BBC World Service è stato per decenni una fonte affidabile di notizie per molti paesi del Sud del mondo sin dalla sua nascita. Per molti in Africa e in Asia, è l’unica fonte di informazioni affidabili su ciò che realmente accade in paesi in cui il giornalismo vero e proprio è stato sradicato da giunte militari preoccupate che una stampa libera possa significare una breve permanenza al potere. Tuttavia, negli ultimi 20 anni, il mondo è cambiato. Internet, naturalmente, ha offerto numerosi canali e voci, e le notizie stesse hanno subito una crisi di identità, superate dall’opinione. Questo processo ha diviso i giganti su cosa fare. Da una parte c’era chi voleva rimanere fermo e continuare con lo stesso prodotto, dall’altra chi voleva stare al passo con i tempi e diventare più trendy. La correttezza politica ha conquistato uno spazio un tempo dominato da uomini bianchi di mezza età e improvvisamente la copertura della BBC World è diventata “locale” e ha perso l’obiettività che aveva un tempo. È stata evidente anche una fuga di cervelli di giornalisti di qualità, come nel caso del Foreign Office di Londra, che la finanzia in parte.

Oltre a tutto ciò, nuovi concorrenti sono entrati nel mercato delle notizie internazionali in lingua inglese, offrendo un nuovo stile di informazione globale: emittenti come RT e CGTN, ad esempio, entrambe con una copertura impressionante nel Sud del mondo. In breve, il BBC World Service ha iniziato a sembrare noioso, fuori dal mondo e non particolarmente rilevante. Anche un recente articolo del Guardian sul finanziamento del servizio ha ammesso che Russia Today e CGTN hanno entrambe guadagnato credibilità negli ultimi anni.

La credibilità è, ovviamente, fondamentale in questo campo. E il pubblico africano e asiatico deve aver notato la sconcertante mancanza di obiettività nel modo in cui la BBC copre i principali conflitti – più recentemente l’Ucraina e quella che i suoi giornalisti continuano ancora oggi a chiamare “la guerra a Gaza” (quando si tratta semplicemente di un genocidio, puro e semplice) – quindi non sorprende che il suo servizio internazionale stia affrontando una crisi di finanziamento senza precedenti.

I giganti dell’informazione internazionale stanno cambiando completamente il loro marchio e, in alcuni casi, stanno emergendo da questo processo senza assomigliare affatto ai fornitori di notizie nel senso tradizionale del termine. Al Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, il suo nuovo proprietario, ha creato difficoltà quando ha rilevato il giornale e ha voluto apportare importanti cambiamenti ideologici, come, ad esempio, interrompere il sostegno aperto a un candidato democratico alla presidenza degli Stati Uniti o rompere con il suo stile consolidato di scrittura di opinioni. Questi cambiamenti hanno portato a un’enorme perdita di entrate e suggeriscono che un marchio che si è costruito su un’ideologia di sinistra avrà difficoltà a finanziarsi senza un nuovo modello rivoluzionario che lo sostituisca. Il problema è che la maggior parte dei proprietari dei media sa che stanno arrivando grandi cambiamenti nel campo dell’informazione internazionale, ma semplicemente non sa come contrastarli. Abbandonare del tutto l’informazione internazionale potrebbe sembrare un po’ avventato per il nuovo proprietario del Post, ma non è così estremo come ciò che hanno fatto altri giganti, ovvero allearsi con governi autocratici in tutto il mondo e posizionarsi come partner di contenuti nel migliore dei casi, o come consulenti di pubbliche relazioni nel peggiore.

Se si osserva come Reuters opera attualmente in paesi come il Marocco, emerge l’immagine di un giornalista locale assunto solo per scrivere articoli positivi sulle attività e le politiche del governo, in perfetta sintonia con i media locali sovvenzionati da Rabat. Da anni ormai Reuters non è in grado di scrivere un solo articolo in Marocco che metta in discussione, anche nei termini più delicati, il modo in cui il governo gestisce il paese. Anche l’AP in Marocco sta seguendo lo stesso modello, spingendosi oltre con la produzione di reportage video che sono vergognosi pacchetti promozionali a favore dell’industria turistica e che promuovono il Marocco come destinazione ideale, con un focus esilarante sulla pesca alla carpa. Il Marocco è un Paese di straordinaria bellezza. Tuttavia, ha bisogno di giornalisti di call center per promuovere il proprio marketing? Questo non è il giornalismo come lo conosciamo. Tuttavia, questo è il modo in cui alcuni giganti dei media credono che sia il futuro e dove si potrebbero ottenere entrate da autocrazie riconoscenti che desiderano alimentare quelle macchine.

Ma l’arte dell’autocensura non è più un’esclusiva dei Paesi del Sud del mondo. L’Occidente ha recuperato terreno. Uno dei temi ricorrenti di cui dovremmo prendere nota è come i giganti dei media occidentali stiano assumendo una nuova generazione di giornalisti che hanno paura di mettere in discussione le narrazioni offerte dal governo di turno. Una generazione di giornalisti fragili che non riescono a sopportare le parole offensive sui social media o le calunnie più subdole dei funzionari governativi che desiderano intimidirli. Il risultato è che ciò che vediamo come notizie in realtà non lo è affatto, ma è una versione edulcorata della narrativa offerta, che è stata riconfezionata per sembrare che sia stata fatta la dovuta diligenza.

La CBS News, che una volta ha dovuto edulcorare il suo servizio su un sensazionale rapporto trapelato dall’industria del tabacco perché la minaccia legale contro di essa superava il valore della rete (una storia trasformata in un superbo film diretto da Michael Mann intitolato The Insider), ora ne è vittima.

Il capo della CBS ha recentemente scioccato molti con la sua offerta in denaro ai dipendenti che non volevano lavorare secondo il suo nuovo piano di edulcorare le notizie e abbandonare gli scoop.

“Dobbiamo iniziare guardando onestamente a noi stessi”, ha detto Bari Weiss in quel momento. “Non stiamo producendo un prodotto che abbastanza persone desiderano”.

Sta dicendo che le grandi notizie non raggiungono lo stesso numero di persone di prima, o sta dicendo che le ripercussioni politiche e/o i minori introiti pubblicitari non ne valgono la pena?

Un produttore che ha lasciato l’azienda ha riassunto bene la situazione, citando la paura come motivo principale. Alicia Hastey ha lamentato che “una nuova visione radicale” ha dato priorità a “una rottura con le norme tradizionali dell’emittenza televisiva per abbracciare quello che è stato descritto come giornalismo ‘eterodosso’”.

“La verità è che l’impegno nei confronti di quelle persone e delle storie che hanno da raccontare sta diventando sempre più impossibile”, ha aggiunto. “Le notizie potrebbero invece essere valutate non solo in base al loro valore giornalistico, ma anche in base alla loro conformità a una serie mutevole di aspettative ideologiche, una dinamica che spinge i produttori e i giornalisti all’autocensura o a evitare narrazioni provocatorie che potrebbero scatenare reazioni negative o titoli sfavorevoli”.

Pur sottolineando che questo sentimento non sminuisce “il talento dei giornalisti che rimangono alla CBS News”, Hastey ha definito questo cambiamento nel settore “così straziante”, aggiungendo: “L’eccellenza che cerchiamo di mantenere è ostacolata dalla paura e dall’incertezza”.

La notizia della CBS, ovviamente, sarà musica per le orecchie di Trump, che attualmente ha citato in giudizio la CBS per il montaggio approssimativo di una sua intervista. Il declino dei media occidentali sarà accolto con favore dalle élite che vedono solo tempi migliori per quanto riguarda il controllo della narrativa mediatica o per allontanare i giornalisti dalle loro pratiche discutibili, come la recente “notizia” nel Regno Unito secondo cui sarebbe stata la Russia, e non Israele, la mente dietro il racket pedofilo di Epstein, solo per citare un esempio. Dovremmo sorprenderci che il governo britannico, che proprio l’altro giorno ha approvato altri 500 milioni di sterline in aiuti militari all’Ucraina, non riesca a trovare i 100 milioni di sterline che il Ministero degli Esteri di solito assegna al World Service (come parte del suo contributo)? Dovremmo sorprenderci che i media occidentali si avvicinino sempre più al governo e alle sue agenzie di intelligence, che li aiutano a produrre clip di propaganda simili a quelle mostrate alla popolazione durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale?

Segue nostro Telegram.

Mario Sechi, con l’editoriale di domenica 15 febbraio 2026 dal titolo “La lezione americana” con cui ha impiastricciato “Libero”, da lui diretto con buona pace dei suoi lettori, ci ha spiegato che la destra e la sinistra europee sono la stessa melma antirussa e anticinese, ripetendo le medesime baggianate del socialdemocratico Josep Borrell, il già Alto Rappresentante dell’Unione Europea per gli Affari Esteri e la politica di sicurezza, il quale qualche tempo addietro vedeva nel Vecchio Continente il giardino fiorito attorniato dai barbari. Tuttavia “i barbari”, ovvero il Sud Globale, ritengono i governi europei vergognosamente impresentabili, rappresentanti di una delle peggiori pagine della storia dell’umanità, dietro la farsa della democrazia infatti l’Occidente collettivo ha depredato e rubato dal 1945 le materie prime energetiche, minerarie e alimentari delle loro nazioni, in continuità con il precedente miserevole ed esecrabile colonialismo.

Oggi Cina e Russia guidano la costruzione di un nuovo mondo multipolare e di pace, costruito sul rispetto delle nazioni e dei popoli e fondato su scambi economici, politici rispettosi delle tradizioni e delle culture, pagando quelle stesse materie prime infinite volte di più, tanto che, non accettando l’Occidente collettivo il libero mercato, organizza guerre civili, come nella Repubblica Democratica del Congo, per rubare il coltan che non vuole pagare più di quanto i cinesi e i russi corrispondano.

L’inizio di Sechi è degno delle chiacchiere da bar, su quanto siano bravi e buoni gli statunitensi: “Winston Churchill nelle sue memorie scrisse che «gli Stati Uniti sono come una gigantesca caldaia. Una volta acceso il fuoco, non c’è limite alla potenza che può generare». Erano i giorni dell’attacco giapponese a Pearl Harbor e, di fronte alla tragedia, egli pensò: «Abbiamo vinto la guerra». In quel momento di estremo dolore, il primo ministro inglese capì che la Germania hitleriana sarebbe caduta di fronte alla «gigantesca caldaia». L’Europa, adagiata nel sogno di una eterna “belle époque” post 1945, ha dimenticato la lezione del leone d’Inghilterra, siamo qui, siamo liberi, siamo europei (senza -ismo, vi prego) perché è arrivato il Settimo Cavalleggeri. Che Dio perdoni gli smemorati di Bruxelles, campioni d’ipocrisia.”

Sechi è sbadato e smemorato al pari della discendente dei nazisti che oggi occupa il posto di Borrell a Bruxelles, la signora Kallas, tutti e due esaltano il mezzo milione di caduti statunitensi e i trecentomila britannici, si scordano ventisette milioni di sovietici e venti milioni di cinesi sacrificatisi eroicamente per la libertà del mondo e dell’Europa. Le tragiche e dolorose cifre spiegano a perfezione chi abbia dato il maggior contributo per la Liberazione dal nazifascismo e dall’imperialismo nipponico.

Sechi tenta poi maldestramente il tono elegiaco, ma deraglia riprendendo la citazione di Rubio in merito all’aggressione occidentale contro la Corea negli anni ‘50 del Novecento e contro l’Afghanistan agli albori di questo secolo, due pagine buie di cui vergognarsi: “Ieri Marco Rubio nel suo discorso alla Conferenza sulla sicurezza a Monaco ci ha ricordato che questa potenza nasce dalla storia e dalla cultura, dalla visione e dal pragmatismo, dal ranch e dal grattacielo, dalle grandi praterie e dai grandi laghi, dal senso dell’urgenza e dall’azione, dai pionieri del New England e dalla fanteria spedita a liberare l’Europa. Da noi occidentali, europei e americani, nella scoperta e nella costruzione, in pace e in guerra, perché «abbiamo sanguinato e siamo morti fianco a fianco sui campi di battaglia da Kapyong a Kandahar». Il grandioso intervento di Rubio ha “rimesso la chiesa al centro del villaggio”, ha ristabilito l’ordine delle cose, ha spiazzato i sonnambuli europei fino al risveglio e all’applauso a scena aperta. In un battito di mani è evaporato il racconto dei giornali italiani su Friedrich Merz della Germania che tagliava i ponti con gli Stati Uniti, una balla colossale – impaginata solo in chiave anti-meloniana dopo l’intesa tra Roma e Berlino -, bastava leggere l’intero intervento del cancelliere tedesco.”

Sechi cerca poi di buttarla sul patetico – affettivo prima di passare all’escatologico: “Allora l’America ci vuole bene, si saranno detti a Monaco nell’ascoltare Rubio. Ancora una volta senza capire che il problema non è una questione sentimentale, ma prima filosofica e poi politica: saper riconoscere il bene e il male.”

Sperticandosi quindi gongolante della definizione per lui ineluttabile del male e dei cattivi, guarda caso russi e cinesi: “Da che parte stai nella nuova Guerra Fredda, figliolo? Con la Russia e con la Cina? Tanti auguri, presto o tardi perderai la tua libertà. Perché i cattivi esistono e contano sull’utile idiota travolto dalla passione per gli Aya tollah e ogni risma di sanguinario dittatore, sui progressisti senza patria e onore, sugli ignoranti colti (leggere William Hazlitt), sulla claque per Francesca Albanese, sugli antisemiti, sui pusher di menzogne e sullo scemo da talk show.”

Infatuato da un delirio amoroso verso la bandiera a stelle e strisce, invoca lubricamente le cannoniere della NATO, che lui immagina come una tenera mamma vegliante sul riposo del pargoletto: “Abbiamo vinto alla lotteria della storia l’inestimabile “pax americana” e non sappiamo più che farcene. Rubio pronuncia la parola che a molti oggi sembra un’eresia, «Occidente», chiama con il loro nome gli errori e gli orrori, ribadisce che l’amministrazione Trump è un progetto per il futuro (che costruiranno con noi o senza di noi, sperando che prevalga il «noi») e non uno sguardo indietro al passato «delle cannoniere» (che per fortuna esistono e vegliano sulla nostra libertà). La standing ovation riservata al Segretario di Stato non deve ingannarci, per molti leader europei le sue parole suonano come una minaccia, per gli intellettuali di complemento sono un’intollerabile sfida alle loro rovinose certezze, sono una chiamata alle armi, e non intendo solo quelle degli eserciti, mi riferisco all’intelligenza e alla cultura (politica e non solo) che sono il fondamentale nutrimento per interpretare l’essenza del nuovo mondo (l’America) che sta forgiando un mondo nuovo (la visione dell’amministrazione Trump).”

A complemento, ecco che Sechi indugia sorridente, esaltandosi nel vedere, solo lui poveretto, genialità in ogni angolo della Casa Bianca, tutta protesa contro il male rappresentato come il solito da Russia e Cina, quindi in preda a un vago delirio estatico chiama questa vecchia roba, ovvero l’imperialismo unipolare statunitense, “un nuovo ordine mondiale” e verrebbe da ridere se non si sapesse, ahimè, che ci crede davvero: “Pochi hanno afferrato la forza trasformatrice, la qualità delle persone che fanno parte del team di Trump. I critici in servizio permanente, mai colti dal dubbio, si sono concentrati sul ciuffo, ma non vedono il cervello. Trump ha messo su una squadra di prim’ordine che ha capacità e visione, ha un programma e lo sta realizzando. Alla Casa Bianca pensano a un nuovo ordine mondiale, certamente, che scoperta, perché vedono il disordine incombente e la minaccia delle dittature, della Cina, della Russia, dei tagliagole di Hamas e dell’Iran, uno Stato terrorista che insegue ancora il progetto della bomba atomica.”

Poi arriva la tirata d’orecchie agli europei, come nella celebre favola paragonati alla bella addormentata e quindi un’imbarazzante idea degli Stati Uniti che sarebbero stati costruiti “sulla Bibbia, la forca e la Colt”, una specie di versione a stelle e strisce del mussoliniano “libro e moschetto”, fondamentali a detta del dittatore di Predappio, per fare il fascista perfetto: “A Washington sono svegli, il sonno abbonda nelle cancellerie europee, intrise di boria e ignoranza al punto da negare l’evidenza di un insostituibile scudo americano per la nostra sicurezza. Dopo aver fallito, ci spiegano come ripartire da capo, eccezionale operazione di trasformismo, senza mai dire che tutto questo costa. Roger Kimball, editore e direttore di The New Criterion, una raffinata rivista culturale conservatrice, qualche giorno fa ricordando che «George Washington aveva Thomas Jefferson come Segretario di Stato e Alexander Hamilton come Segretario del Tesoro», ha scritto che Rubio e Bessent «sono emersi come tra i migliori segretari della storia. Guardare Rubio istruire il Congresso e i media ottusi su questioni serie come Venezuela, Iran e Gaza ricorda ciò che disse Orazio sullo scopo della poesia: dovrebbe deliziare oltre che istruire». Il piccolo establishment europeo si è auto – inchiodato alla descrizione dei cowboy (che hanno costruito l’America, en passant, la prima potenza mondiale, partendo dalla Bibbia, la forca e la Colt). Per nostra fortuna Giorgia Meloni è tra coloro che hanno colto e anticipato lo spirito del tempo, i temi sono quelli giusti, basta guardare indietro ai suoi interventi, non solo da Presidente del Consiglio, per apprezzare la freschezza e attualità delle sue intuizioni. Non è un caso che i libri di Meloni siano tradotti in America, l’ultimo (“Giorgia’s Vision”) andrà in libreria in aprile, con la prefazione del vicepresidente JD Vance.”

Preso dallo slancio, Sechi si getta in ginocchio e chiude con uno sperticato e aureolare elogio alla Presidentessa del Consiglio, vedendo poi un filo invisibile unire le rovine della Roma imperiale ai palazzi dell’imperialismo declinante: “C’è assonanza e stima per la leader che in Europa rappresenta quella rivoluzione conservatrice che ha abbattuto il totem di un progressismo in declino, rimesso in gioco la politica, chiuso l’era dei governi d’emergenza e delle alchimie di palazzo, restituito lo scettro al popolo con una vittoria elettorale chiara, un Parlamento con una maggioranza forte e un governo stabile. Sono conquiste che Meloni ha rafforzato in questi anni a Palazzo Chigi con una netta scelta di campo, giocando la partita nello spazio vitale che si chiama Occidente e si estende da Roma a Washington, una linea che congiunge i due Campidogli, una parabola comune, dove le divergenze non possono mai essere differenze incolmabili. Siamo tutti occidentali, un tempo si scriveva perfino che «siamo tutti americani», ma in troppi hanno dimenticato l’11 settembre 2001, il significato di quella data. Marco Rubio in modo magistrale ha mostrato il libro, la mappa, la rotta di un gruppo di nuovi pionieri d’America che ha deciso di cavalcare la storia, non subirla in attesa del “The End”.

Dopo aver letto Mario Sechi, non si può che cercare rifugio in Dante Alighieri: “Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta, non donna di provincie, ma bordello!”, il suo era un Purgatorio letterario, gli italiani, a quanto pare, sono purtroppo condannati a un purgatorio vero.

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Last week I had the pleasure to again appear on Tucker Carlson’s popular broadcast. Although the program appears on several different platforms, on X alone the episode has been seen by more than two and a half million people.

That does not include the various clips and shorts that people made and posted themselves. It is incredible how the reach and influence of the independent media has grown over the past decade or so.

As I have often said, while there are many evil things out there on the Internet, at the same time we have the tools to communicate the unfiltered message of freedom like never before.

Even though Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News was enormously popular – number one in the nation – the network still yanked the show from underneath him because they didn’t like some of the things he was saying.

Now, Tucker and other independent media figures answer not to studio executives with their own agendas, but rather they answer directly to the American people in the marketplace of ideas. Carlson’s reach as an independent is arguably greater than when he was on Fox.

And there are many more like him with large – and not so large – audiences who are appealing directly to the “consumer,” without the middleman to tell them what they can and cannot say. Admittedly, sometimes what people say is ugly, but we do not have free speech to only talk about the weather.

Big media and big government are in bed together and they hate the fact that we can communicate with each other without their filters and influence. They long for the days when they could shovel down our throats just what they wanted us to hear and believe.

While we may be winning this battle for free expression, we must not fool ourselves into thinking that we have won the war. We must remember just a few years ago during COVID that all it took to have your platform wiped off the face of the earth was to dare question the “wisdom” of Anthony Fauci.

Even today there are forces seeking to use the power of the state to silence opinions they disagree with.

In Europe, free speech is under attack by totalitarian measures like the Digital Services Act, which creates a police state in the name of “protecting” citizens from “disinformation.” Of course, “disinformation” is simply information that governments or elites don’t want to get out. You can go to jail for an X post in Europe, while violent criminals are set free.

Make no mistake – many in the US would love to have such a system in place to protect speech they like and punish speech they don’t like. We have already seen attempts to intimidate – or even deport – people who have protested the recent mass killings in Gaza, for example. And the US government forced sale of TikTok was not a victory for free speech.

The truth is, “cancel culture” exists in both the left and the right and everywhere in-between. If we want to maintain and expand our ability to communicate freely and grow our voice in the independent media sphere we cannot let our guard down. “Free speech for me but not for thee” – using government force to shut down unwanted voices – will result in free speech for no one. And once it is gone, it will not be easy to get back.

Original article:  ronpaulinstitute.org

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A massive layoff of hundreds of Washington Post journalists made headlines in recent days, as did news about a funding crisis for the international division of the BBC (BBC World Service), leading to debate among some about the future of international news.

The lion’s share of the Post’s redundancies were foreign correspondents, indicating that international news, for the mainstream media at least, is in decline. For many, this is not news. Global news, as a subject area, has been a domain that media giants have been habitually cutting for at least a decade, if not more, in line with trends from viewers who are looking to alternative sources. Could this be the simple explanation for why these two giants of global news are facing an existential crisis, or is there more to it than that?

The BBC World Service has for decades been a stalwart source of reliable news for many Global South countries since its inception. For many in Africa and Asia, it is the only source of reliable information about what is really going on in countries where any real journalism has been eradicated by juntas nervous that a free press might mean a short hold on power. Yet in the last 20 years, the world changed. The internet, of course, offered numerous outlets and voices, and news itself suffered an identity crisis, overtaken by opinion. That process divided the giants as to what they should do. One camp wanted to hunker down and keep going with the same product; the other wanted to move with the times and become more trendy. Political correctness moved into a space once dominated by white, middle-aged men, and suddenly the BBC World’s coverage became ’local’ and lacked the objective edge it once had. A brain drain of good journalists was also evident, as has been the case at the Foreign Office in London, which partially funds it. In addition to all that, new contenders entered the marketplace for English-language international news, offering a new style of global news – outlets like RT and CGTN, for example, both of which have impressive coverage in the Global South.

In short, the BBC World Service started to look dull, out of touch, and not especially relevant. Even a recent report in The Guardian on the service’s funding admitted that Russia Today and CGTN had both gained credibility in recent years. Credibility is, of course, critical in this field. And those audiences in Africa and Asia must have noticed how there is such a shocking lack of objectivity in the way the BBC covers major conflicts – more recently Ukraine and what its news presenters still, to this day, call “the war in Gaza” (when it is simply a genocide, plain and simple) – that it is hardly a surprise its international service is facing a funding crisis like never before.

International news giants are rebranding themselves totally, in some cases emerging from that process looking nothing like news providers in the traditional sense. At The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, its new owner, threw a spanner in the works when he took over the paper and wanted to make major ideological changes, like, for example, stopping the open support of a Democratic candidate for the US presidency or breaking away from its established style of opinion writing. These changes have led to a huge loss in revenue and suggest that a brand which built itself on a left-wing ideology is going to struggle to fund itself with no new revolutionary model to replace it. The trouble is that most media owners know that huge change is coming with international news, but they simply don’t know how to counter it. Binning international news altogether might seem a bit rash for the Post’s new owner, but it is not as extreme as what other giants have done, which is to get into bed with autocratic governments around the world and position themselves as content partners at best, or PR consultants at worst. If you look at how Reuters now works in countries like Morocco, a picture emerges of a local journalist employed to only write up positive stories about the government’s activities and policies, perfectly aligned with the local media that Rabat subsidizes. Reuters has been incapable, for years now, of writing a single piece in Morocco that questions, even in the gentlest terms, how the government is running the country. AP in Morocco is also following the same model, which goes even further to produce video reports that are shameful promotional packages promoting the tourism industry and pushing Morocco as an ideal destination – one hilariously focused on carp fishing. Morocco is a stunningly beautiful country. But does it need call-center journalists to do its promotional marketing? This is not journalism as we knew it. But this is how some media giants believe the future lies and where revenues could be sought from grateful autocracies that want to feed those machines.

But the art of self-censorship is no longer the exclusivity of Global South countries. The West has caught up. One of the repeated themes we should take note of is how Western media giants are employing a new generation of journalists who are afraid to question narratives offered by the government of the day. A snowflake generation of hacks who can’t cope with hurtful words on social media or the more surreptitious smears from government officials who want to intimidate them. The result is that what we see as news is actually not news at all but a polished version of the offered narrative which has been repackaged to look as though the due diligence has been done.

CBS News, which once had to water down its reporting on a sensational leaked report from the tobacco industry because the legal threat against it outweighed what the network was worth (a story made into a superb movie directed by Michael Mann called The Insider), is now a victim of this.

The head of CBS recently shocked many with her cash offer to staffers who did not want to work under her new plan of watering down the news and breaking away from scoops.

“We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves,” Bari Weiss said at the time. “We are not producing a product that enough people want.”

Is she saying that breaking great stories doesn’t reach the same number of people it did, or is she saying that the political blowback and/or lower advertising returns aren’t worth it?

One producer who left summed it up well, citing fear at the heart of the matter. Alicia Hastey bemoaned that “a sweeping new vision” has prioritized “a break from traditional broadcast norms to embrace what has been described as ’heterodox’ journalism.”

“The truth is that commitment to those people and the stories they have to tell is increasingly becoming impossible,” she added. “Stories may instead be evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations – a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.”

While Hastey noted that this sentiment didn’t detract “from the talent of the journalists who remain at CBS News,” she called this shift in the industry “so heartbreaking,” adding, “The very excellence we seek to sustain is hindered by fear and uncertainty.”

The CBS story, of course, would be music to the ears of Trump, who is currently suing CBS for its crude editing of one of his interviews. Western media’s decline will be welcomed by elites who only see better times ahead for how to control the media narrative or direct journalists away from their own dirty practices – like the recent ’news’ in the UK that it was Russia who was in fact the mastermind behind Epstein’s honey trap pedophile racket, rather than Israel, as just one example. Should we be surprised that the British government, which just signed off the other day on £500 million more in military aid to Ukraine, can’t find the £100 million that the Foreign Office usually gives the World Service (as part of its contribution)? Should we be surprised that Western news outlets cozy up more and more to the government and its intelligence agencies, who help them produce propaganda news clips similar to those shown to people in the Second World War?

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The GDI calls itself “independent”—but if it depends on funding from governments and public institutions like the European Commission, what kind of independence is that?

Hortly before Christmas, the U.S. State Department slapped visa sanctions on five individuals whom it described as being agents of a “global censorship-industrial complex” bent on restricting the freedom of speech of Americans. The headliner of the sanctions list was, of course, Thierry Breton, the former EU internal market commissioner, who spearheaded efforts to enforce the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) during the last years of his tenure in the Commission. But the directors of three organizations allegedly involved in censorship activities were also sanctioned: HateAid, the Global Disinformation Index, and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

As discussed in my recent portrait of HateAid, the German organization is directly integrated into the DSA censorship system as a so-called trusted flagger of allegedly illegal or harmful online content. Under the DSA, online platforms and search engines are required to give priority treatment to the notifications of ‘trusted flaggers’ precisely because they have been certified as ‘trusted’ by EU member state governments—in this case, the German government.

But even though it does not have ‘trusted flagger’ status, another of the organizations targeted by the U.S. sanctions has likewise been a major player in the EU’s efforts to ‘regulate’ online speech, which in fact began many years before the passage of the DSA. Moreover, it, too, has important, if largely unclarified, ties to Germany. The organization in question is the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), whose executive director and best-known figure, Clare Melford, was placed on the sanctions list.

Although it had already come under scrutiny from right-leaning media and politicians in the U.S., GDI gained particularly wide public attention in April 2024 when the British website UnHerd revealed that it had been placed on a ‘dynamic exclusion list’ by the organization and was losing advertising revenue as a result. ‘Defunding disinformation’—or, more precisely, alleged purveyors of disinformation—by compiling this sort of advertising blacklist is the stated goal of GDI.

GDI is usually identified as a British organization in news reports, and it is that in the sense that it has a London office and Melford is British. But it is not only that, as the below entry from the European Commission’s CORDIS database makes clear. The GDI receives funding from the European Union as a German organization with its headquarters in Berlin.

Moreover, GDI also receives funding from the German government itself—or at least was receiving such funding when it last deigned to acknowledge its funding sources.

Thus, when UnHerd went public with its beef with GDI in 2024 and raised the issue of GDI’s funding by the British government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), it soon turned out that FCDO had already ceased funding the organization. The U.S. State Department had done likewise, following a similar controversy involving conservative media in the United States. As UnHerd noted in a follow-up report, FCDO and Disinfo Cloud, a now defunct platform that was funded by the U.S. State Department, quickly disappeared from the funders list on the GDI website. European Union and the German Foreign Office—Auswärtiges Amt—remained, as can be seen in the below screen cap from the site as it appeared on 19 April 2024.

Meanwhile, the entire funders list has been purged from the GDI website. As it so happens, the German Foreign Office, located in Berlin’s central ‘Mitte’ district, is about a five-minute drive from GDI’s Friedrichstrasse 114 address, which is likewise in Berlin Mitte.

In 2018, the European Commission rolled out its first formalized effort to combat alleged online ‘disinformation’ in the form of the so-called Code of Practice on Disinformation, a supposedly ‘self-regulatory’ industry code into which the Commission recruited all the major online platforms and search engines. GDI was founded that very year.

In June 2022, shortly before the passage of the DSA, the Code of Practice was strengthened, and the EU-funded European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) was given a seat on a Permanent Task Force on Disinformation that was created under it. Melford serves on the EDMO advisory board. Last year, the Code of Practice was elevated to the status of a Code of Conduct, meaning that platforms can use Code participation as a means of demonstrating compliance with the DSA.

In a 2021 presentation to the European Parliament titled “Monetizing Disinformation in the EU,” Melford identified not only the Russian media RT and Sputnik as purveyors of ‘disinformation’ but also the American media Breitbart, The Epoch Times, and The Western Journal (see the below visual). The following year, Ursula von der Leyen would, of course, ban RT and Sputnik from operating in the EU—a ban that did not only cover their broadcasting but was also dutifully applied by online platforms.

In its early years, GDI was indeed generously funded by the British government. But GDI submissions to the EU lobby register already made its eagerness to be serviceable to the coalescing EU censorship regime unmistakably clear. Thus, GDI data circa May 2022 notes,

We are working globally but see a clear and unique opportunity at the EU level to advance the code of practice on disinformation to defund sites. We are keen to leverage our knowledge of this topic for meeting the EU’s commitment to this issue.

The submitted information also refers to “the weekly evidence we compile and share with EU contacts”—notably, on “ads funding disinformation (on COVID-19 conspiracies, for example).”

Lobbyfacts.eu, which assembled the above-cited data, was also able to document numerous meetings between GDI and European commissioners or their staff between 2020 and 2022. These included meetings with the offices of all the commissioners most actively involved in the Code of Practice and the preparation of the DSA: Thierry Breton (Internal Market), Margrethe Vestager (Europe Fit for Digital Age), and Věra Jourová (Values and Transparency).

Interestingly, the May 2022 data still lists a major grant of nearly €1.5 million from FCDO. Since, however, the British funding began to dry up (the last FCDO contribution was in 2023), GDI has taken to listing Disinformation Index Inc. as its main donor. See, for instance, the most recent register data here.

This is to say that GDI lists itself as its main donor! ‘Disinformation Index Inc.’ is the name used by an American branch of GDI. As we will see momentarily, this lack of transparency is typical for the organization—and indeed extends to the American branch as well, thus rendering GDI’s funding almost entirely opaque.

The current version of the register entry notes that “The Global Disinformation Index is tracking and supporting EU commitments to combat disinformation as outlined in the EU Code of Conduct on Disinformation and the Digital Services Act,” and Lobbyfacts.eu has been able to document five more meetings with European Commission officials—including one just last week! The most recent meeting was with the Commission’s current point person on the DSA, Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen.

In 2022, following controversy over the GDI’s targeting of conservative U.S. media, the American branch of the organization released tax returns to the DC-based news outlet The Washington Examiner. The returns, however, not only omitted the identity of donors but even redacted those of its own officers.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 990 that excludes the names of officers and directors,” a lawyer specializing in non-profit law told The Washington Examiner at the time, “And I’ve looked at hundreds.”

In any case, the German government’s response to a parliamentary question (p. 82) shows that already in 2023, precisely as the British funding was being wound down, the German foreign office had begun funding GDI via, namely, its American branch, as can be seen below. “AA” is the Auswärtiges Amt, and “Disinformation Index Foundation” is another name associated with the American branch of GDI. That year, the AA contributed a relatively modest sum of €48,000.

As touched upon above, GDI is devoted to defunding alleged online purveyors of ‘disinformation’ by depriving them of their advertising revenues. Not coincidentally, this demonetization agenda is part of both the 2022 strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation and the DSA. But the irony of this is that advertising revenues are, of course, precisely what allow non-paywalled websites to remain independent. GDI calls itself “independent”—namely, from the media whose reliability it claims to assess—but if it depends on funding from governments and public institutions like the European Commission, what kind of independence is that? The would-be ‘watchdog’ could be nothing more than a guard dog.

And why has GDI become so cagey about its funding sources since the FCDO funding dried up? Who exactly is funding the defunders?

Original article:  europeanconservative.com

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Western officials seized on a dubious death toll of 30,000 protesters to escalate against Iran. The number originates with a single, clearly compromised source. But a zealously pro-war Guardian reporter is doing her best to legitimize it.

The claim of “30,000 killed” during two days of protests and rioting across Iran appears to be based largely on a single anonymous source, who admitted extrapolating that figure by assuming without evidence that “officially registered deaths related to the crackdown likely represent less than 10% of the real number of fatalities.”

That quote was attributed by The Guardian to an alleged doctor whose real name the newspaper refused to publish, but whose identity it claimed to have verified.

Originating in TIME Magazine on January 25th, the dubious “30,000” claim was quickly amplified by The Guardian, a key voice of left-liberal London respectability. From there, European officials seized on the death toll to justify designating Iran’s IRGC as a terrorist organization – essentially green-lighting another US-Israeli military assault on Iran.

The author of The Guardian’s article is a former fashion blogger named Deepa Parent, who has become the paper’s go-to source for Iran war propaganda, churning out over a dozen pieces for The Guardian driving the regime change narrative against the Islamic Republic since violent riots engulfed the country on January 8 and 9.

Parent has emerged as the face of The Guardian’s attacks on Iran despite having no apparent ties to the country and not appearing to speak its language. Farsi is not listed among the half-dozen languages in which she claims to be bilingual or speak in some functional professional capacity.

Before adopting the surname Parent around 2019, The Guardian’s go-to Iran reporter wrote under the name Deepa Kalukuri. Her journalistic output was largely limited to fashion reviews in Indian media. A typical piece published in India’s Just For Women magazine in 2016 was headlined: “Samantha Is Setting Some Serious Fashion Goals! Check Them Out!”

“What’s better than a Little Black Dress for a weekend party? Samantha pairs her LBD with these killer stilettos! We are loving it!!! Have a fashionable weekend!!!!”

Elsewhere, in an article informing Indian housewives that “understanding stocks is not [as] difficult as the news shows” suggested, she explained that investing was actually quite simple: “like a playing a video game but only your favorite batman is replaced with that stock broker who gives you the right advice to invest at the end of the bell.”

Published by The Guardian, sponsored by Omidyar

When the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests kicked off in September 2022 following the death of a young woman in Iranian custody, the improbable Parent suddenly materialized as The Guardian’s point woman on civic unrest in a nation with which she had no apparent professional or personal experience.

Much of Parent’s work at The Guardian’s so-called “Rights and Freedom” section has been funded by an NGO called Humanity United, which was founded by tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam.

As The Grayzone reported, Omidyar has partnered with US intelligence cutouts like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy to promote regime change from Ukraine to the Philippines, while advancing various “counter-disinformation” efforts aimed at suppressing anti-establishment viewpoints.

A channel for pro-war regime change activists in Tehran

As the violence in Iran continues to dominate the headlines, Parent has all but admitted to functioning as a channel for foreign-backed regime change activists inside Iran. On January 30, she took to Twitter/X to announce that she’d received “permission” to publicize a message from a “student” in Tehran who declared: “We are all getting ready to take to the streets and seize important centers as soon as America attacks.”

As critical observers began to suggest the 30,000 death toll was likely inflated, Parent took to social media to declare that despite being a journalist, she was under no obligation to prove the claims she had printed. The only thing that mattered, she insisted, was that “decision makers” were moved to take action.

“We don’t need to convince anyone about the massacre the IR [Islamic Republic] has carried out on innocent civilians in Iran,” she wrote, since, “decision makers don’t see trolls’ tweets, they see verified accounts and reports.”

Just a day later, however, Parent apparently had a change of heart, and produced an “anonymous doctor” who she claimed had confirmed the figure after all. This person, who Parent referred to by the pseudonym “Dr Ahmadi,” had somehow “assembled a network of more than 80 medical professionals across 12 of Iran’s 31 provinces to share observations and data,” she insisted. Lo and behold, the number calculated through this murky network coincided perfectly with the guesstimate put forward by an Iranian monarchist operative in Germany who had been the lone source for the figure of 30,000 dead.

The ‘big lie’

Since TIME Magazine published its January 25 article asserting without clear evidence that Iran killed 30,000 protesters in two days, the figure has become an article of faith among regime change activists and their journalistic backers. Co-authored by a Persian contributor to the Times of Israel, Kay Armin Serjoie, the TIME article’s dubious data reverberated throughout corporate media. TIME claimed to have received this number from “two senior officials of [Iran’s] Ministry of Health.”

Though the outlet admitted it could not verify the figure, TIME claimed to have confirmed the death toll by insisting it “roughly aligns” with a count prepared by a German eye surgeon named Amir Parasta.

TIME did not inform its readers, however, that Amir Parasta was a hopelessly compromised source. Indeed, Parasta is a close associate of and lobbyist for the self-described “Crown Prince” Reza Pahlavi – the son of Iran’s deposed Shah. Based in Potomac, Maryland, Pahlavi urged Iranians to carry out violence across their country this January. When that campaign failed, he clamored for “anyone” to launch a military assault on the country he left as a young boy with millions of dollars in stolen wealth.

Parasta openly serves as an advisor to NUFDI, the main US-based lobbying group working to realize Pahlavi’s dream of re-establishing himself and his family as Iran’s monarchs.

In much of the Western world, the ‘big lie’ appears to be working as intended. On January 28th, as the massive new purported death toll was being dutifully disseminated by mainstream media, a European outlet wrote that it had been informed that the revised body count had been enough to convince Italy and Spain to finally agree to sanction Iran’s IRGC.

“The brutality of what we see has made ministers and capitals reconsider their positions,” an anonymous senior European diplomat reportedly told Euro News.

The official described the decision by Italy and Spain – the last two major holdouts on EU sanctions against the IRGC – as “an important signal towards the Iranian government and an expression of support for the Iranian diaspora,” who the diplomat noted “have called for this for a long time.”

As The Grayzone has reported, mainstream outlets have relied virtually exclusively on Iranian diaspora groups closely tied to the US government for the ever-growing death toll they attribute to Tehran.

Parent was no different, frequently citing one of the organizations The Grayzone profiled, which operates under the name “Human Rights Activists in Iran.” The group receives extensive funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cutout created under the Reagan Administration to distance Washington’s covert regime change efforts from discredited US intelligence agencies.

The Guardian’s Parent relies on State Dept-funded “fact checker”

Parent relied on a similar source for her claim that Iran had killed “30,000” citizens during the unrest in January, when she claimed The Guardian had obtained photographs showing “bodies with close-range gunshot wounds to the head that had been transferred from hospital morgues while still attached to catheters, nasogastric tubes or endotracheal tubes.” Though Parent freely acknowledged The Guardian had “not independently verified the photographs,” she nevertheless claimed they had been “verified by [an] Iranian factchecking organisation” known as “Factnameh.”

By its own admission, however, Factnameh is not Iranian. On its website, Factnameh describes itself as a subsidiary of “ASL19, a private company registered in Toronto, Canada.”

More importantly, Factnameh is not actually a neutral factchecking organization, but instead another node in the vast network of US government-sponsored entities seeking to depose the government in Iran. Public records show that between 2022 and 2023 alone, Factnameh received nearly $2.9 million from the US State Department.

While Parent launders her regime change advocacy behind The Guardian’s reputation, she has been more unguarded about her views on social media. Challenged on Twitter/X on whether Iranians who disagree with their government actually want to be bombed by Israel, she fired back: “They prefer freedom from the Islamic Republic & they were being killed by the regime’s forces already.”

Original article:  thegrayzone.com