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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?

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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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From the truth about who really killed Diana to the depraved world of government officials sexually abusing children and the subsequent cover-up, it is now clear that nearly all major stories are either blocked from publication or rewritten by Soviet-style propaganda agents working for the British deep state.

Virtually nothing you read in British newspapers about security, defense, and wars is honest journalism. Instead, it is propaganda crafted by a new secret UK military department tasked with rewriting journalists’ copy or, in some cases, simply ensuring their articles never see the light of day.

That is the shocking conclusion of a new investigation by The Grayzone, which obtained secret documents exchanged between the UK and Australian governments over Canberra’s plans to adopt Britain’s “off-the-shelf” operation and incorporate it into its own government practice for handling journalists.

The impressive reporting by Kit Klarenberg and William Evans reveals, in short, that the UK military has created its own censorship department. It either blocks journalists from exposing major stories of public interest or, more commonly, redrafts the thrust of journalists’ pieces to present a different version to the gullible public.

A trove of secret communications reveals how the secretive Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee censors the output of British journalists while categorizing independent media as “extremist” for publishing “embarrassing” stories. What sounds like an account of secret police operations in Eastern Europe during the Soviet era, the documents show that this army intelligence department regularly blocks journalists from continuing to investigate a subject through a formal system called “D Notices” – which, remarkably, journalists almost always respect.

“The DSMA imposes what are known as D-Notices, gag-orders systematically suppressing information available to the public,” The Grayzone report states.

The files provide the clearest view to date of this underground committee’s inner workings, exposing which news items the state has sought to shape or keep from public view over the years. These include “the 2010 death of a GCHQ codebreaker, MI6 and British special forces activity in the Middle East and Africa, the sexual abuse of children by government officials, and the death of Princess Diana,” the report reveals.

British media, it seems, is in a crisis it never anticipated. Its journalists are, in reality, no longer working as journalists but as propaganda agents of the state. Under this system, which nearly all journalists sign up to, when a reporter wants to pursue a story, they must consult this department, which then effectively controls both the journalist and the story from that point forward. The absurd practice of ‘copy approval’ – where journalists send their final draft before submitting for publication – is routinely enforced.

This practice, a milestone in the death of British journalism, comes as no surprise to me. For decades, I have sent questions to the UK’s Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, only to become a victim of the comical, if not pathetic, game that follows. A spokesperson asks for your deadline and then, mysteriously, 30 minutes before that time, you receive a “response” meant to serve as a quote from a senior official. It not only looks computer-generated but is often irrelevant to the subject. This is Britain – a country once seen by the whole world as a beacon of freedom and democracy, now operating like a cheap West African dictatorship, pumping out lies and manufacturing consent on an industrial scale.

That such a secret censorship department exists and flourishes should shock no one. In 2023, my own investigation discovered that UK and US weapons were being resold on the dark web. It wasn’t exactly a great scoop, but the hard work lay in substantiating the story with expert opinions and forensic analysis of photos and website postings. I was amazed as weeks passed while I badgered the Daily Mail’s absurdly young Defense Editor to run the story. He played every trick in the book to avoid it until finally he and others agreed to publish – but watered it down so much, removing all the top quotes from hardcore military and political experts that supported the story’s thrust. Clearly, he and others were under the control of these DSMA censor agents, who could not allow a piece alleging that shoulder-mounted rocket systems used by both the US and UK armies were being openly sold on the black market.

A second, much more detailed investigation – which supported the belief that barely a third of all UK military kit was actually reaching frontline Ukrainian soldiers – I didn’t bother sending to the Daily Mail but published on Patreon. One of its chief findings was that a senior Conservative MP admitted to me in a WhatsApp exchange that the UK had, in fact, installed tracking devices in some of the more expensive equipment, like Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs), but at a certain point these devices were simply switched off and disappeared from the screens. It also revealed the bombastic stupidity of the then–UK Defence Minister, Ben Wallace, who conveniently chose to ignore a UN report identifying the influx of cheap Western-made assault rifles into the Libyan arms bazaar as a main reason for the spike in terrorism in the Sahel region – while insulting the Nigerian president who had made the claims, saying he “probably watches RT television.” When I suggested to Mr. Wallace that a simple way to verify these claims would be to send agents to Libya to conduct their own surveillance, his reply was, “Why don’t you do that?” before blocking me.

Wallace’s extraordinary rudeness shocked me at the time. But it was clear he was used to a much more servile, sycophantic manner from UK journalists who didn’t ask difficult questions – and that I was obviously breaking from tradition. Clearly, the DSMA department controls all those Westminster-based hacks, their stories, and even their story ideas, so it’s understandable that his rage boiled over.

The Grayzone’s findings make for depressing reading for anyone old enough to remember when British journalism was the finest in the world. But they also raise other questions, chiefly: Who is actually behind British titles? Or more specifically, who is funding them? Most UK newspapers don’t make any money, so it’s understandable that a new relationship with the deep state might help them remain relevant – especially now that the news is being baked for them, ready to be served. This has changed the role of the British journalist: no longer the baker, but relegated to the delivery boy on the moped.

Yet where the big titles get their revenue to stay in business remains a mystery. Is part of the same deal on censorship and copy control that the state funds them through surreptitious, murky channels – perhaps via companies with close links to the heart of power? Follow the money.

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By turning its back on Western values, Europe is on a fast track to suicide, to extinction, to rejecting all the values that have evolved over thousands of years to create Western civilization.

The most fundamental right necessary for a free society is freedom of speech — the right to express thoughts, beliefs, and ideas without fear of reprisal.

The listener is then free to either agree or disagree and give his reasons.

But that doesn’t apply to today’s European union. Earlier this month European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likened free speech to a virus.

“Research has shown that pre-bunking is much more successful than debunking,” she said.

“Perhaps if you think of information manipulation as a virus: instead of treating an infection once it has taken hold — that is debunking — it is much better to vaccinate so that the body is inoculated. Pre-bunking is the same approach,” von der Leyen explained.

So the right to speak freely is a virus, and censorship is the vaccine to prevent free speech.

Free speech and debate was a central element at the beginning of Western civilization in ancient Greece and Rome, under the belief that the best method of arriving at the truth was through open debate.

In von der Leyen’s world, however, the people should rely on the government to tell them what to believe and what is false.

And she’s put that principle into action by fining Elon Musk‘s “free speech” social media platform he calls X (formerly Twitter) 120 million euros (more than $141 million) for non-compliance with transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The day before the European commission announced the fine, Vice President JD Vance asked them to reconsider.

“Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship,” he wrote. “The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage.”

But they either didn’t listen or didn’t care.

It’s not just Europe that’s veering away from freedom — the United Nations is also, in particular U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

She repeatedly sides with Hamas terrorists over Israel, and discounts anything coming from the United States.

UN Watch reported in June numerous lies she’d published. She claimed that the United States was “a nation founded upon genocide,” the “CIA and Mossad carried out the Paris attack” launched by ISIS terrorists, and that America is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”

She appealed to the United Nations over the weekend to isolate the United States from the UN.

“The international community is made of 193 states, and this is the time to give the U.S. what it has been looking for — isolation,” she said.

Hen Mazzig, senior fellow at The Tel Aviv Institute, posted the video of Albanese’s plea and said, “I hope America answers.” One part of America did — award-winning conservative feature film actor James Woods.

“If Trump ever does anything in his life, let it be at this moment,” he said.

“You want to ‘isolate’ the United States? Great. Goodbye. Take your out-stretched palms, get the hell out of our country, and GFY. We will happily turn the UN building into a homeless shelter.”

Woods closed with “Good riddance.”

That sounds like a great idea with but one revision — don’t just “turn the UN building into a homeless shelter,” turn it into a shelter for homeless veterans.

Ronald Reagan once remarked that he never left the Democratic Party: rather, the Democratic Party left him by becoming too extreme.

We’ve been hearing that a lot lately: Former Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. All former Democrats.

Same with the United Nations in that event: We won’t leave them; they’ll leave us. And as James Woods says, “good riddance.”

But all things considered, it would be far better for Europe to wake up and reconsider the path they’re taking, lest they self-destruct like the Democratic Party is doing here.

It would make for a safer, freer world.

Original article:  www.newsmax.com

Bruno VOLPE

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Ormai siamo alla follia. L’UE non si limita più a censurare le voci scomode, ma ha iniziato a stilare vere e proprie liste di proscrizione, utilizzando lo strumento delle sanzioni – nato come misura commerciale – per mettere di fatto “fuori legge” semplici cittadini colpevoli di avere opinioni divergenti dalla narrazione di regime. Era già accaduto a tre giornalisti tedeschi. Ora, con l’ultimo pacchetto di sanzioni, è toccato anche al noto analista ed ex colonnello svizzero Jacques Baud, accusato di fare “propaganda filorussa” per il solo fatto di avere una lettura del conflitto in Ucraina diversa da quella ufficiale (e – addirittura! – di aver concesso interviste a canali d’informazione russi).

Per questo – in un salto logico che lascia esterrefatti – viene ritenuto “responsabile delle azioni della Federazione Russa”. È evidente che ci troviamo di fronte a un attacco alla libertà di espressione e allo Stato di diritto senza precedenti nell’Europa del dopoguerra. Né sorprende che dietro questa deriva vi sia l’UE, che da oltre trent’anni rappresenta il principale strumento di smantellamento della democrazia nel continente.

È importante sottolineare che le sanzioni dell’UE non sono comminate da alcun tribunale. Si tratta di punizioni emanate direttamente dal potere esecutivo, nei confronti di individui che non sono stati giudicati colpevoli di alcun reato da nessuna corte: l’elaborazione e la proposta delle misure fanno capo all’ufficio di Kaja Kallas. Le conseguenze per i sanzionati sono devastanti: non solo viene loro impedito l’ingresso e il transito nel territorio dell’Unione – il che significa, per chi si trovi già in un Paese UE, non poterne uscire – ma, cosa ancora più grave, subiscono il congelamento dei beni e dei conti bancari.

Se non ci ribelliamo a questa terrificante deriva totalitaria, presto potrebbe essere troppo tardi per farlo.

Articolo originale lafionda.org

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You can literally just be sitting there not saying or doing anything and still find yourself getting arrested and prosecuted for an antisemitic hate crime. They have the authority to do this presently, under the laws that already exist.

A mentally disabled Australian woman is being prosecuted for antisemitic hate crimes after accidentally pocket-dialing a Jewish nutritionist, resulting in a blank voicemail which caused the nutritionist “immediate fear and nervousness” because she thought some of the background noises in the recording sounded a bit like gunshots.

We’re being told we need more of this. There’s “hate speech” legislation presently in the works to make this worse. Australia’s controversial Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill appears to be explicitly crafted to dramatically increase the scale, frequency and consequences of the exact sort of dynamics we’re seeing in this case, and to eradicate opposition to Israel throughout the nation.

This is how overextended Australia’s freakout over “antisemitism” already is. You can literally just be sitting there not saying or doing anything and still find yourself getting arrested and prosecuted for an antisemitic hate crime. They have the authority to do this presently, under the laws that already exist. The argument for this bill is that our present horrifyingly tyrannical and abusive system is insufficiently authoritarian and tyrannical, and that prosecutors need more power to police speech far more forcefully.

Australians are being asked to trust a system that would take a woman with an intellectual disability to prosecution in a court of law over an accidental butt-dial to a person of Jewish faith with the authority to send people to prison for years over their political speech. And this is happening after we just spent years watching Australian authorities roll out authoritarian measures to stomp out criticism of Israel and quash protests against an active genocide.

This is madness, and it needs to be brought to a screeching halt. Immediately. This entire country has lost its damn mind.

The Bondi attack isn’t the reason, it’s the excuse. All these laws being rolled out to stomp out criticism of Israel in Australia were sought for years before the shooting occurred.

Immediately after the attack last month I tweeted, “Not a lot of info about the Bondi shooting yet but it’s safe to assume it will be used as an excuse to target pro-Palestine activists and further outlaw criticism of Israel in Australia, as has been happening to a greater and greater extent in this country for the last two years.”

They could have proved me wrong, but instead they’ve spent this entire time proving me one hundred percent correct. The frenzied efforts to crush anti-genocide protests and silence speech that is critical of Israel and Zionism in these subsequent weeks has plainly established this.

There is no connection between pro-Palestine demonstrations and the Bondi attack. None. It had nothing to do with Palestinians, and it had nothing to do with anti-genocide demonstrations. It’s a completely made-up claim that Israel’s supporters have been circulating in Australian consciousness through sheer repetition. They’re just pretending to believe it’s true in order to promote the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state.

Israel’s supporters need to use propaganda, deception, censorship and oppression to promote their agendas, because it’s all they have. They don’t have truth. They don’t have arguments. They don’t have morality. All they have is brute force. They are shoving support for Israel and its atrocities down our throats whether we like it or not, and if we refuse what we’re being force-fed they will punish us. That’s the only tool in their toolbox.

This needs to be ferociously opposed. The more Israel and its supporters work to assault our right to oppose their abuses, the more aggressively we need to oppose them. We are no longer fighting against war and genocide in the middle east, we are fighting against an assault on our own civil rights. It’s personal now. They’re coming for us directly.

Original article:  caitlinjohnstone.com.au

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Riley Gaines had just debuted as a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture’s new milk-mustache ad campaign when she made her first appearance in the White House press briefing room Thursday afternoon.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was overjoyed to see the former collegiate swimmer–turned–conservative commentator in attendance and, after addressing the escalating protests in Minneapolis, directed the first question of the day to her.

“I’m surprised it took us a year to get you here but I’m very happy to see you,” Leavitt said before personally promoting Gaines’ new podcast. “So, thank you, and you brought a beautiful baby and husband too, so thank you so much for joining and why don’t you kick us off.”

As Gaines’s husband Barker wrestled with the pair’s 3-month-old baby Margot, who was wrapped in a bulletproof blanket due to “death threats,” the former swimmer immediately began reciprocal praise of Leavitt: “First and foremost, congratulations to you, being a girl mom will change your life in the best way possible,” gushed Gaines. In Trump’s new press corps, flattery increasingly comes before real journalism.

Amid a packed news cycle—the seizure of another oil tanker in the Caribbean, another night of volatile protests in Minneapolis, and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado arriving at the Capitol—the first question of the day landed elsewhere. It concerned transgender athletes, an issue being currently weighed by the Supreme Court.

Leavitt couldn’t have been happier with the line of questioning, as was evident by her blissful reaction to Gaines, responding in a tone that sounded closer to that of a third-grade teacher praising a student for getting the correct answer. The happy-go-lucky exchange stood in stark contrast to what was to come when Leavitt was forced to field a tough question from a real reporter only a few moments later.

Niall Stanage, a White House columnist for the Hill with decades of experience across major outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, drew criticism from Leavitt after he challenged the Trump administration’s characterization of the death of the 37-year-old Renee Good, an American citizen and mother of three, who was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross during a confrontation in Minneapolis last week.

“Earlier, you were just defending ICE agents generally,” Stanage began. “And earlier on, Secretary Noem spoke to the media and she said, among other things, that they are doing ‘everything correctly.’ Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year. A hundred seventy U.S. citizens were detained by ICE, and Renee Good was shot in the head and killed by an ICE agent. How does that equate to them doing ‘everything correctly’?”

“Why was Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?” Leavitt snapped back at Stanage.

“Because an ICE agent acted recklessly and killed her unjustifiably,” replied Stanage.

“Oh OK, so you’re a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion,” replied Leavitt.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Stanage incredulously.

“Yeah, because you’re a left-wing hack, you’re not a reporter, you’re posing in this room as a journalist, and it’s so clear by the premise of your question,” Leavitt said. “And you, and the people in the media who have such biases but fake like you’re a journalist, you shouldn’t even be sitting in that seat. But you’re pretending like you’re a journalist… and the question that you just raised and your answer proves your bias.”

In the aftermath of the exchange, the White House X account was celebratory. “Leavitt DESTROYS a ‘Left-Wing Hack’” read the caption above video of the pair’s back and forth. And though a cursory scan of Stanage’s X account does show a left-of-center (but hardly militant progressive) bias, and though his description of the ICE-involved shooting was adversarial, his question was not unreasonable. The many visual angles provided of Good’s death have left ample room for questioning of ICE’s actions, especially when the result is a dead American, regardless of her openly anti-Trump politics.

Leavitt’s aggressive tenor on Thursday tracked perfectly with the second Trump administration’s general tone regarding the long-tenured journalists who have covered the ins and outs of Washington DC and its presidents in the 21st century. Podcasters and influencers who speak glowingly of Trump and his allies are received as heralded heroes while anyone who dares question the merits of any of Trump’s admittedly singular policies are met with stern gazes and animated anger.

Leavitt’s fiery encounter with Stanage came on the same day that Pentagon officials announced they would assume editorial control of the long-independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes, citing a desire to curb what they called “woke distractions.” In a post on X, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the department would “modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.” Part of curbing “woke distractions” now includes a pledge of allegiance to Trump as new applicants are being asked how their coverage would distinctly advance the agenda of the Trump administration.

The decision to promote right-wing commentators, influencers, and podcasters who reliably amplify the Trump administration has been consistent since Leavitt took ownership of the James S. Brady Briefing Room in January of 2025. More than 30 “new media” outlets, most outwardly and proudly right-wing in nature, have rotated through the briefing room in the year since Trump took office. (Somewhat inscrutably, The American Conservative, which is almost a quarter-century old, was invited to a press briefing as a “new media” outlet.) And though to some degree it can fairly and accurately be argued that the American press has shifted increasingly leftward in its coverage since the Second World War, especially on social and cultural issues, the blowback against journalists who dare question the policy positions of the second Trump administration raises questions about what exactly the point of the exercise is.

In a Trump era that claims to prize merit and accountability, the administration has adopted a press strategy that rewards loyalty over rigor and access over expertise. Experience is no longer a credential; it is a liability if it produces questions the administration would rather not answer. The result is a briefing room where affirmation is mistaken for fairness and scrutiny is dismissed as sabotage. Anyone who values a free press should be concerned not only about how this administration treats reporters today, but about the precedent it sets for administrations to follow.

Original article:  www.theamericanconservative.com

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There is a direct link between our establishment’s struggle against social media and ‘fake news’ and the growing perception of politicians as dishonest.

As a critic of Germany’s 19th-century censorship regime warned in 1901, “Police meddling with art are like bulls in a china shop.”

A modern version, following last week’s shocking statements by Daniel Günther (CDU), Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein, might read: “Politicians meddling with press freedom are like sparks in a powder keg.”

Exposing his censorious instincts during a talk show, Günther indicated he would like to see alternative news platforms banned. It began with him ranting for minutes about the influence social media now has on politics. Mentioning specifically the pro-populist news portal Nius, he spoke of “enemies of democracy.” Articles by Nius, he claimed, were “completely devoid of facts,” adding that “as a rule, nothing in the articles concerning me is true.” When the presenter asked whether these portals should be “regulated, censored, and in extreme cases even banned,” he replied, “Yes.”

Günther’s comments were so inflammatory that even many in the mainstream felt embarrassed. He is a well-meaning man who wanted to do the right thing but expressed himself clumsily, they claim. Those on the other side disagree: He’s a dangerous authoritarian who shouldn’t be in a position of responsibility—”an arsonist dressed up as a respectable citizen who has declared war on press freedom,” argues lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel, who has filed a lawsuit against him. Since the next election in his state isn’t due until 2027, it will be a while before Günther’s voters get a final say.

Naturally, he sees the well-deserved backlash against him as vindication of his statement about social media. Yet the outcry shows that the times are over when politicians, following the arrogance of power, could believe they’d get away with playing themselves up as arbiters of truth and guardians of democracy (“our democracy,” as they like to call it). Thank goodness for social media, we should add.

Germany’s censorship problem runs deep

The problem, however, is that Günther’s statements, extreme as they were, are hardly exceptional. Germany is already deeply entrenched in state censorship and attacks on free speech.

Since 2021, it has had a particularly nasty and repressive lèse-majesté law: German Penal Code (StGB) Article 188 targets defamation (üble Nachrede) or insults (Beleidigung) against “persons in the political life of the people” (politicians and state officials) when done publicly or in media. It has led to thousands of citizens being dragged to court and even sentenced for alleged insults. Günther’s delusion that his rants and complaints about disrespectful media would be well-received is surely a result of the logic this law creates.

The trouble for our self-pitying political class, however, is that the more thin-skinned and censorship-prone they become, the more their authority—or what little remains of it—melts away. Put otherwise: the louder the complaints about “insults,” “lies,” or “falsities,” the more persistent and widespread the feeling that our politicians are not to be trusted and not up to their job.

The Enlightenment knew better

It was during the Enlightenment that the futility of censorship was highlighted by those fighting against it. “One can be sure no book or publication will entice more readers than when the press announces it has been banned, and that those who purchase it will be heavily fined; for one immediately suspects that it must speak the truth, otherwise they wouldn’t confiscate it,” noted a German brochure written in 1775.

Tellingly, one of the worries of those defending Günther is that many more people will now want to know what Nius says and writes. With his “misunderstandable” statements—as the head of one of Germany’s state broadcasters, Andreas Schmidt (NDR), likes to call them—Günther did Nius a big favor: “He provided grounds for a legal dispute and made the right-wing portal even better known than it already was,” Schmidt writes.

And indeed, people should be interested in what Nius and other government-critical outlets have to say—if only because the self-assessments by our politicians are often wrong. Ironically, the penchant to censor has put the age-old question of what is truth, and who holds the key to truth, back on the political agenda.

Who defines democracy?

Consider the accusation that Günther poses a threat to democracy—an accusation that he would undoubtedly dismiss as one of the many untrue things said about him on social media. If it were really wrong, Günther would correct himself in a credible way in an attempt to win back the trust he lost by exposing his censorious instincts. Instead, he continues to sulk and insult his critics, thereby confirming their views.

The self-defeating irony of censorship was revealed in another famous case last April. David Bendels, the editor-in-chief of the AfD-affiliated Deutschland Kurier, received a seven-month suspended prison sentence for sharing a satirical meme showing then-Interior Minister Nancy Faeser holding a sign that read “I hate freedom of speech.” The image was fabricated and, according to many, an especially nasty piece of “fake news.” However, by enforcing the sentence, the true essence of the meme was highlighted even more. As Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yücel—a man who was imprisoned in Turkey for speech crimes—aptly noted, by failing to condemn this verdict, Faeser effectively confirmed that she hates free expression. Only this week, a German court acquitted Bendels, ruling that the photomontage fell under the category of protected freedom of expression.

A pattern of dishonesty

There is a direct link between our establishment’s struggle against social media and fake news and the growing perception of politicians as dishonest. For example, when it emerged in December that Chancellor Merz had filed hundreds of complaints for insult under §188 prior to being elected, this only reinforced the perception of him as a two-faced politician. Was this the same Merz who had, at least apparently, criticized his predecessors for their thin-skinned persecution of citizens?

Other examples include when Berlin’s mayor, Kai Wegner, was exposed for lying just hours after one of his government spokespersons had urged the public not to trust social media and to rely only on government reports. This appeal came amid discontent with the government’s handling of the crisis during last week’s horrendous blackout in Berlin. When asked why he had taken so long to appear in public, the mayor said he had been coordinating emergency measures in his office all day. However, it later emerged that he had actually been playing tennis. The incompetence and the lie itself were bad enough, but this arrogant and ill-advised attempt by the government to present itself as the only authoritative source of information infuriated many Berliners even more.

As is prone to happen in such situations, there was certainly overheated speculation and questionable content on social media. However, the notion that our embattled political class can and should protect us from falsehoods and fake news is absurd and dangerous.

The real source of distrust

“It’s not the media who are responsible for the lack of trust, but it’s the fault of our politicians who have not earned the trust of the people,” said journalist Henryk Broder, and he’s right.

Nius can pride itself on being in good company. In the late 19th century, the highly influential German weekly Simplicissimus—known for its biting social and political critique and iconic red bulldog logo—was also threatened with a ban. The paper had published a brilliant poem by the famous Frank Wedekind mocking the Kaiser’s trip to the Holy Land. Arrest warrants were issued against the publisher, the cartoonist, and the poet himself (who spent six months in prison).

Many had hoped that those days were long over, but it has become more important than ever to speak truth to power. It’s good that there’s been such outrage against Günther. We must keep up the pressure to defend social media and the free press, even though our authoritarian elites would prefer to see them disappear today rather than tomorrow.

Original article:  The European Conservative

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A new documentary about the journalist Seymour Hersh uncovers the pathologies of U.S. imperialism.

Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s new film Cover-Up is more than a documentary about the legendary journalist Seymour Hersh—it is an inadvertent chronicle of the pathologies of American empire. As a foreign policy analyst who has long advocated for realist restraint in U.S. international engagement, I find this film both vindicating and deeply troubling. It documents, through one journalist’s extraordinary career, the pattern of deception, overreach, and institutional rot that has characterized American power projection for over half a century.

What makes Hersh’s reporting invaluable from a realist perspective is that it consistently exposed the gap between stated intentions and actual policy outcomes. CIA domestic surveillance, the My Lai massacre, the secret bombing of Cambodia, Abu Ghraib—each revelation demonstrated what realists have long understood: that idealistic rhetoric about spreading democracy and protecting human rights often masks cruder calculations of power, and that unchecked executive authority in foreign affairs inevitably leads to abuse.

The documentary’s treatment of Hersh’s Cambodia reporting is particularly instructive. Here was a case where the American government conducted a massive bombing campaign against a neutral country, killing tens of thousands of civilians, while lying to Congress and the public. This wasn’t an aberration, but the logical consequence of what happens when a superpower faces no effective constraints on its use of force abroad. In exposing the scandal, Hersh also documented how empire actually functions when stripped of its legitimating myths.

Where Cover-Up excels is in revealing the architecture of official deception. Watching archival footage of government officials denying what later became undeniable, one sees the machinery of the national security state at work. These weren’t rogue actors—they were operating within institutional incentives that reward secrecy, punish dissent, and systematically mislead democratic oversight.

From a realist standpoint, this raises fundamental questions about American foreign policy. If our interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere were justified through systematic deception, what does this tell us about the nature of these enterprises? Realism suggests that states act according to their interests, but when those interests must be concealed from the public through elaborate cover-ups, we must question whether these policies serve genuine national interests or merely the institutional imperatives of the national security bureaucracy.

The film’s examination of Hersh’s Abu Ghraib investigation is devastating. What began as a story about individual soldiers torturing prisoners became, through Hersh’s reporting, an indictment of a policy apparatus that had systematically authorized abuse. The documentary shows how torture wasn’t an accident of war. Rather, it was deliberate policy, approved at the highest levels and then denied when exposed.

This validates a core realist insight: hegemonic projects, particularly those involving regime change and nation-building, create perverse incentives that corrupt institutions and individuals. The George W. Bush administration’s Iraq war, launched on false pretenses and executed with imperial hubris, produced precisely the kind of moral catastrophes that realists warned against.

The documentary is less successful in addressing the legitimate controversies surrounding Hersh’s later work, particularly his reporting on Syria and the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. As someone who believes the U.S. should be far less involved in Middle Eastern affairs, I’m sympathetic to questioning official narratives. However, the epistemological challenges of relying on anonymous sources while contradicting extensive documented evidence deserve more rigorous examination than this film provides.

This isn’t to dismiss Hersh’s skepticism toward official accounts—realists should always question the state’s narratives about its foreign adventures. But the documentary would have been strengthened by a more thorough engagement with these critiques. Even iconoclasts must be subject to scrutiny, especially when their reporting has significant geopolitical implications.

What Cover-Up illuminates, perhaps unintentionally, is the deterioration of the institutional ecosystem that made Hersh’s journalism possible. The New Yorker’s willingness to support lengthy investigations, to back reporters against government pressure, and to publish material that angered powerful interests—these conditions were products of a specific historical moment. Today’s fragmented media landscape, where institutional backing has weakened and partisan sorting has intensified, makes such work increasingly difficult.

This matters because realist foreign policy critique depends on investigative journalism to pierce official narratives. Without reporters like Hersh, the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes easier to maintain. The decline of this form of journalism coincides with—and perhaps enables—the persistence of failed policies in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and beyond.

The most powerful moments in Cover-Up are the intimate ones: Hersh describing meetings with sources who risked their careers and freedom to expose wrongdoing, the personal toll of challenging the national security establishment, the isolation that comes with being proven right in ways the powerful never forgive. These moments humanize what could otherwise be an abstract discussion of policy failures.

But they also highlight something crucial: Individual courage, while necessary, isn’t sufficient. Hersh exposed My Lai, yet the war continued for years. He revealed CIA abuses, yet the agency faced minimal accountability. He documented Abu Ghraib, yet the architects of the Iraq war faced no consequences. This pattern suggests systemic dysfunction that transcends individual malfeasance.

From a realist perspective, Cover-Up offers a sobering lesson: American foreign policy has been consistently characterized by overreach justified through deception. Whether in Vietnam, Iraq, or countless covert operations, U.S. policymakers have systematically misled the public about the nature, costs, and outcomes of military interventions.

This isn’t a partisan critique—the pattern spans administrations of both parties. It reflects structural features of how American power operates: an imperial presidency with minimal congressional oversight, a national security bureaucracy with institutional interests in threat inflation, and a foreign policy establishment committed to global primacy regardless of costs or consequences.

Hersh’s greatest contribution, documented powerfully in this film, was in providing the empirical record that supports a realist critique of American foreign policy. His reporting demonstrated that idealistic justifications for intervention—spreading democracy, protecting human rights, combating terrorism—often mask more cynical calculations and catastrophic failures.

Cover-Up is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand American foreign policy in the post-World War II era. It’s not a perfect documentary—the pacing occasionally lags, and it’s insufficiently critical of some of Hersh’s more controversial recent work—but its core achievement is significant: It documents how one journalist, through dogged investigation and institutional support, repeatedly exposed truths that powerful interests desperately wanted hidden.

For realists who have long argued for restraint in American foreign policy, this film provides historical validation. The pattern Hersh documented—overreach, deception, failure, cover-up—has repeated itself with depressing regularity. The question is whether contemporary institutions still possess the capacity to hold power accountable in the way that Hersh’s reporting once did.

In an era when American foreign policy debates remain dominated by interventionist assumptions, Cover-Up serves as a crucial reminder of where such thinking leads. It deserves the widest possible audience, particularly among those who shape and influence U.S. foreign policy. The lessons it documents remain urgent and, tragically, largely unlearned.

Original article:  www.theamericanconservative.com