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Showing posts with label alternative media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alternative media. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

The Puppet Masters of the entire Mainstream Media (MSM) in USA. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and the EU


Below a chart that should show you how misinformed most of us happen to be if we rely on the MSM  for our news.  Just as we require different types of foods to get the maximum benefits from them to lead a healthy lifestyle, so also we require a generous helping of the alternative media to help us make up our own minds on what we choose to believe.  If you like fast food at every single meal (MSM) go ahead, it's your choice.  You want to give a chance to the organic stuff (Alternative media) and take a sip or a nibble  ... you won't be disappointed.  It's an acquired taste - and you won't go back to the fast food stuff  - at least not on a regular basis.

Quite a fascinating article that I recommend you read to its entirety. 


Swiss Propaganda Research at GlobalResearch
The Propaganda Multiplier: How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics



Introduction: “Something strange”
“How does the newspaper know what it knows?” The answer to this question is likely to surprise some newspaper readers: “The main source of information is stories from news agencies. The almost anonymously operating news agencies are in a way the key to world events. So what are the names of these agencies, how do they work and who finances them? To judge how well one is informed about events in East and West, one should know the answers to these questions.” (Höhne 1977, p. 11)
A Swiss media researcher points out:
“The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass media. No daily media outlet can manage without them. () So the news agencies influence our image of the world; above all, we get to know what they have selected.” (Blum 1995, p. 9)
In view of their essential importance, it is all the more astonishing that these agencies are hardly known to the public:
“A large part of society is unaware that news agencies exist at all … In fact, they play an enormously important role in the media market. But despite this great importance, little attention has been paid to them in the past.” (Schulten-Jaspers 2013, p. 13)
Even the head of a news agency noted:
“There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known to the public. Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the spotlight, yet they can always be found at the source of the story.” (Segbers 2007, p. 9)
“The Invisible Nerve Center of the Media System”
So what are the names of these agencies that are “always at the source of the story”? There are now only three global agencies left:
  1. The American Associated Press (AP) with over 4000 employees worldwide. The AP belongs to US media companies and has its main editorial office in New York. AP news is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world’s population every day.
  2. The quasi-governmental French Agence France-Presse (AFP) based in Paris and with around 4000 employees. The AFP sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the world.
  3. The British agency Reuters in London, which is privately owned and employs just over 3000 people. Reuters was acquired in 2008 by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters, headquartered in New York.
In addition, many countries run their own news agencies. However, when it comes to international news, these usually rely on the three global agencies and simply copy and translate their reports......

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Saturday, October 27, 2018

Some of my tweets ... Oct 19 - 25

























































































































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Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Social Media ... Lethal Weapon unleashed with us the users in the role of guinea pigs


Really worth a watch
 
From CorbettReport
Now openly admitted, governments and militaries around the world employ armies of keyboard warriors to spread propaganda and disrupt their online opposition. Their goal? To shape public discourse around global events in a way favourable to their standing military and geopolitical objectives. Their method? The Weaponization of Social Media. This is The Corbett Report.


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Sunday, January 22, 2017

Some Views, News and Opinions from the Alternative Media for week ending January 22


From ADhrb
Bahrain Executes Stateless Torture Victims
Following King Hamad’s Authorization
15 January 2017 – Bahrain today executed three torture victims following authorization by King Hamad. Sami Mushaima (42), Ali Al-Singace (21) and Abbas Al-Samea (27) were executed this morning by firing squad, the first people executed in Bahrain since July 2010, and the first Bahrainis executed since March 1996. The execution came less than a week after the Court of Cassation upheld their death sentence on 9 January. We, the undersigned, condemn Bahrain’s violation of the individuals’ rights to life and their rights not to be tortured, and government’s complete failure to consider and investigate the torture under which the confessions, the basis of their convictions, were extracted.

Events began yesterday, 14 January, when reports indicated that the security forces were preparing to carry out the death sentences. Authorities in the legal department at the Central Jau Prison, where the three are held, called their families on the morning to schedule mandatory visits for later that day. This directive is in accordance with Article 330 of Bahrain’s Criminal Procedure Code, which states that relatives of persons scheduled for execution will be permitted a final visit before the sentence is carried out.

Contrary to standard visitation practice, when the families arrived at the prison they were taken in police cars to a second location and very heavily searched. The families described being surrounded by over fifty police officers. Al-Samea, Al-Singace and Mushaima had not been informed of these procedures and were surprised by the events.....

On Amsterdam


Prof Michel Chossudovsky at GlobalResearch
“Color Revolution” against Donald Trump

What will happen on Inauguration Day?

Anti-Trump protest movements are envisaged alongside a campaign to disrupt.

While there  are “genuine protests” –e.g. those led by the Answer Coalition and Workers World–, the main thrust is coming from an “engineered” campaign supported and financed by the Neocons, which is largely intent upon disrupting the inauguration and destabilizing the Trump presidency.  Several progressive organizations have nonetheless joined the bandwagon of the #Disruptj20 campaign.

The protest movement in fact started on the evening of November 8 prior to the announcement of the election results.  The organizers of this movement are acting on behalf of powerful elite interests. People are misled: the protests are not being led on behalf of the genuine concerns of Americans who oppose Trump’s right wing racist agenda.

The engineered protest ops are coordinated with a relentless propaganda campaign led by the mainstream media, which includes accusations of high treason and sedition directed against Donald Trump, who is portrayed as an instrument of the Kremlin.

Even prior to the November 8 elections, former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leo Panetta had already intimated that Trump is a threat to National Security. According to The Atlantic,  Trump is a “Modern Manchurian Candidate” serving the interests of the Kremlin....

CANVAS  was set up by the CIA as “an International network of trainers and consultants” involved in the “Revolution Business”. Funded by Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well private corporate foundations. CANVAS constitutes a  consulting outfit, advising and training US sponsored opposition groups in more than 40 countries. In this regard, OTPOR played a key role in fomenting the mass uprisings during the Arab Spring in Egypt in 2011. What appeared to be a spontaneous democratization process was a carefully planned intelligence operation. View video below....


Al Jazeera Investigates Part I


Asa Winstanley at ElectronicIntifada
How the Israel lobby fakes anti-Semitism

Undercover video shot by Al Jazeera reveals the lengths to which some leaders of the UK’s influential pro-Israel networks will go to discredit their critics.

Part three of The Lobby, broadcast on Friday night, shows the chairperson of Labour Friends of Israel falsely claiming a Palestine Solidarity Campaign supporter had abused her with anti-Semitism.

Speaking to an undercover reporter who she thought was a pro-Israel activist, lawmaker Joan Ryan claimed the PSC activist had said Labour Friends of Israel was a route to getting a job at a bank in the City, London’s financial district.

“You heard her say … ‘join you lot and you get into Oxford’ or ‘you get into working in the bank,’” Ryan says.



But the film shows that PSC supporter Jean had said no such thing.

“A friend of mine’s son’s got a really good job at Oxford University on the basis of having worked for Labour Friends of Israel,” the undercover footage proves Jean saying at the LFI stall at the Labour Party conference in September.

At no point does the PSC supporter mention banks or the City of London.....

Chris Hedges with Abby Martin and Ben Norton on USA's MSM


Jason Ditz at AntiWar
US Stealth Bombers Kill Over 80 Alleged ISIS Fights in Libya Strikes
Pentagon Claims Slain Were 'External Plotters'
Having declared their military operation in Libya over a month ago, US stealth bombers flew to the Libyan city of Sirte and spent some 30 hours carrying out a massive bombing campaign, dropping over 100 munitions on camps on the city’s outskirts, and killing over 80 people....




From MiddleEastOnline
UN expert tells Saudi to end ban on women driving 

Alston concerned Saudi government is deferring to ‘small portion of conservative voices’, obstructing economic, social progress.
Saudi Arabia's government should end the kingdom's ban on women driving and reform the male guardianship system, a United Nations independent expert said on Thursday.

Philip Alston spoke at the end of a 12-day visit during which he met cabinet ministers, people living in poverty, activists, Islamic experts and others.

"My concern is that the government is in fact deferring to a relatively small portion of conservative voices," Alston told a news conference.

This is obstructing the economic and social progress which the oil-rich kingdom aims to achieve under its Vision 2030 wide-ranging reform programme, said Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights....

part 1



part 2



Jason Ditz at AntiWar
Unannounced Syria Trip

Spokeswoman: Gabbard Met With Several Government Leaders
Long opposed to US attempts to impose regime change in Syria, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D – HI) has made a trip to Syria this week, an unannounced visit which saw Gabbard spending considerable time in the capital city of Damascus “to promote and work for peace.”
Gabbard’s office, citing security, says a lot of the details of the trip are not going to be revealed until she has returned to the United States, and they declined to say if she had met directly with President Bashar al-Assad, though they did confirm she’d met with several government leaders while in Damascus....




Brian Shilhavy at MedicalKidnap  
Snopes Exposed: A Look at the “Fake News” Watch Dogs

After receiving comments from people claiming that Snopes had proven our articles as “untrue,” I researched Snopes.com and wrote an article about their biased coverage of health issues back in 2014:
Can Snopes be Trusted on Health Issues?

It can probably be accurately stated that Snopes upholds the mainstream media propaganda, while attacking anything in the alternative media.

Last June, when we broke the story about the 14 year old rape victim in Alabama who had her new-born infant taken away from her while at the hospital at the time of the birth, the story quickly went viral gaining millions of pageviews nation wide. Health Impact News had their own reporter at the scene who witnessed the entire event, and even captured this

Snopes quickly responded with this:......

First presser from Trump's White House.


From HurriyetDailyNews
Car blast kills two in Libyan capital near Italian embassy

A car exploded on Jan. 21 in the Libyan capital near the Italian embassy killing two people who were inside the vehicle, security and medical sources said.

It was not immediately clear if the blast was accidental or an attack or whether the Italian embassy, which had reopened less than two weeks ago, was the target.

A Red Crescent official in Tripoli said rescue workers pulled two charred and unidentified bodies from the vehicle.
The car exploded on a street located behind both the Italian and the Egyptian embassies, outside the Libyan ministry of planning and near a hotel, an AFP correspondent at the scene said....




Michael Krieger at LibertyBlitzkrieg
You Can’t Resist Trump by Closing Your Eyes

I have serious concerns about a Trump Presidency. I’ve laid these out repeatedly in the past, but to summarize, they center around his authoritarian nature, a disregard for civil liberties, and lastly the fact that many of the people he has surrounded himself with posses an ideology which runs completely counter to the populist message he espouses. As I warned back on November 9th, in the post Americans Roll the Dice With President Donald Trump:

    Trump will be a failure unless he brings the right people into his inner circle. This is of the utmost importance. Indeed, I knew for certain Obama was a total fraud the moment he appointed Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner to key positions within his administration. This is the area I think Trump is most vulnerable to making some very big mistakes.

    Irrespective of my serious concerns, I desperately want Trump to succeed. America needs him to succeed. I’m confident that Trump will never read a single word of this, but it’s also possible someone with access to him will. If so, please consider my observations. The Republic depends on him unifying the people and helping to foster an environment in which every American has a opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I’ve been very disappointed with a large number of Trump’s cabinet picks, and I think the people he has surrounded himself with in general will be a hindrance to populist polices that can help the American public. That said, I acknowledge he hasn’t actually done anything yet as President, so I’ll reserve further judgment for now......




Bahrain is Queen Elizabeth's and her family's favorite Muslim country
Bahrain partially suspends Alwasat, only independent newspaper

Bahrain’s Ministry of Information Affairs (MIA) yesterday issued an order to suspend the only independent newspaper in the country, Alwasat, from using electronic media tools, effectively suspending its online presence. The order comes a day day after the execution of three torture victims and on the day the trial of journalist Nazeeha Saeed started for “unlicensed journalism.” We, the undersigned NGOs, condemn this attack on the freedom of the press and the ongoing harassment to the Alwasat newspaper.

The MIA alleges that Alwasat has been “inciting spirit of division and harming national unity,” but  provided no further basis for this accusation....
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Monday, January 9, 2017

Views, opinions and news from the Alternative Media ... week ending Jan 8


From DemocracyNow
Craig Holman: Trump Administration Gearing Up to Be 
"Most Scandal-Ridden in History"
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump refused to disclose his taxes, and now Public Citizen’s Craig Holman says the Trump administration is a scandal in waiting because of the vast number of conflicts of interest he brings. "If steps are not taken to manage these conflicts, the Trump administration is likely to become one of the most scandal-ridden in memory," Holman argues.

.....CRAIG HOLMAN: Donald Trump is setting the tone on this. You know, when I wrote about the Trump administration is likely to be the most scandal-ridden administration in history from top down, I was talking just about the executive branch. Now it looks like it’s spreading into Congress, as well. Donald Trump has shirked his ethics responsibilities. He has decided not to disclose his taxes. He is waffling on whether or not he’s going to set up a genuine blind trust and divest himself of the conflicts of interest that Richard Painter was just talking about. He is basically shunning his responsibility of complying with the ethics rules. And that tone has now reached into Congress.

You know, part of the reason why I’m so surprised that the Republican Conference in the House of Representatives repealed or have neutered the OCE is because they are going to receive a great deal of negative publicity on this. But clearly, they are looking at Donald Trump shirking his ethics responsibility, and thinking, if he can get away with it, they can get away with it. So, yes, we are likely to see the most scandal-ridden federal government, not just Trump administration, that we’ve seen, you know—the most scandal-ridden we’ve seen in history. This does not bode well for the next few years......





Matt Kennard at PulitzerCenter
The Cruel Experiments of Israel’s Arms Industry 

Round the back of Ramallah’s main hospital lies the house of Iyad Haddad, a 52-year-old human rights investigator. His home office is the shopfront of a decrepit building and at first glance it looks like a bric-a-brac shop. But the objects placed out on the tables are not household trinkets. The surfaces are, in fact, cluttered with spent ammunition, tear gas canisters, sponge bullets and shell casings.

Haddad has spent the past three decades documenting the violence of the Israeli forces occupying his people’s land. These ugly little pieces of memorabilia are his testament to that process.

Many of these weapons have been fired on peaceful demonstrators protesting against Israel’s wall and settlements in the occupied West Bank. The villages of Nilin, Bilin and Nabi Saleh have been organizing regular protests for years. To my surprise, Haddad does not approve of those demonstrations.

“Sometimes they are using us so they can know how to use each kind of weapon,” he said. “For me, these kinds of activities by the Palestinians become helpful to the Israelis because it makes this area into a laboratory to test their weapons, to develop them and make it a commercial industry in order to sell them to other countries.”....




Salman Rafi Sheikh at journal-Neo
NATO vs NATO: Turkey Lambasts US Role in Syria

While it may seem too much to say at this point of time that NATO, given the gravity of the situation triggered by the out-going US president’s nebulous foreign policy, is disintegrating, what is happening is that the Western military alliance is facing an unprecedented crisis. This crisis is certainly as unusual and dramatic as any Shakespearean tragedy. More than a strong military alliance, NATO is at its worst and looks like a house divided against itself. It looked like this when Turkey, second biggest military power in the western alliance, point-blank accused the Obama administration of covertly supporting ISIS and other terror outfits, which are bent upon destroying Iraq and Syria and are now likely to target Turkey too.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan alleged, giving the Obama administration a ‘new-year-surprise’, on last Wednesday, December 28 that Turkey is in possession of “confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos” of the US’ support to ISIS.

While Erdogan had previously lambasted the US for supporting Gulen, Erdogan’s enemy number one and a potential terrorist according to Turkish officials, this time he took it to the next level and blamed the US, for the first time ever, for continuously supporting Daesh and Kurds.

We already know that the US has been officially supporting certain ‘moderate groups’ in Syria and that this support has directly contributed to the intensification of the conflict in Syria. What we know now is the support US has been providing to the most devastating terror groups the world has ever seen.

Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the US Defence Intelligence Agency (and National Security Advisor-designate in the Trump administration), had himself claimed last year in a TV interview that the rise of the IS was a “wilful decision” by the Obama administration in furtherance of its agenda to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad....

Diana Buttu & Gideon Levy


Philip Ragner at TacticalInvestor
Philip Ragner at TacticalInvestor
Seven Most Discrediting Media Screw ups of 2016
Before we get to the article at hand many might ask why we cover political and health issues when our main focus in the stock markets and the financial arena.  The short and simple answer is that all these fields are connected; we don’t have free market forces anymore. Everything is manipulated; from the food, you eat to data you are provided.
If you are aware of this you can plan accordingly. Identifying the problem is over 80% of the solution and this is why most people don’t know what to do because they don’t really understand the problem. Now you know why we are the only financial website that covers such a wide array of topics that on the surface appear to be unrelated but are in fact, deeply interwoven.  Mass psychology is a very powerful tool and if employed correctly can help you spot the grotesque levels of manipulation the masses are subjected to. We strongly suggest that you view or read or view Plato’s allegory of the cave.  You might also find the following article to be of interest:......




From ZeroHedge
Ron Paul Sums Up Nobel-Peace-Prize-Winning 
President Obama In One Short Sentence

Following our discussion of the unprecedented bombing-fest that has been undertaken during President Obama's reign...

Seven years after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," despite having been in office for less than one year and having pretty much no actual, tangible foreign diplomacy accomplishments at the time, President Obama will depart the White House having dropped 26,171 bombs on foreign countries around the world in 2016, 3,027 more than 2015.

According to an analysis of Defense Department data from the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-partisan think tank, the majority of Obama's 2016 bombs were dropped on Syria and Iraq.  Meanwhile, Afghanistan, a country President Obama vowed U.S. troops would evacuate completely by the end of his Presidency, was also bombed over 1,300 times, a 40% increase over 2015.  Per McClatchy DC:........

Turkey...


From MishTalk
McCain has Blood on his Hands
If there was ever any doubt who perpetual warmonger, Senator John McCain, wanted for US president, this headline explains: Russian cyberintrusions an ‘act of war’

Today, CCN writer Frida Ghitis repeats McCain’s claim with Putin’s ‘act of war’ against American democracy.

    “Moscow’s influence campaign,” as the intelligence report calls it, blended a variety of means, including covert cyberactivity by Russian intelligence operatives, along with “with overt state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or ‘trolls’.”

Hysteria Continues

It would behoove fools like Ghitis to stop and think. Anyone who takes CIA allegations as facts has mush for brains.

The CIA Liars, Torturers, Murderers are worse than useless.

Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham want tougher sanctions against Russia following the hacking scandal.

In a show of solidarity, McCain Visited Frontline Ukraine Troops in Anti-Putin Gesture on New Year’s Eve.

“We stand w/them in their fight against #Putin’s aggression,” McCain wrote in one tweet.

The irony is staggering. Ukraine is a mess because of US meddling.It’s not Russia than started or was responsible for Crimea and the war in Ukraine that ensued, it was the US.

On April 30, 2014, the Guardian reported It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war.........

From Ingaza
Aleppo: How US & Saudi-Backed Rebels Target ‘Every Syrian’:
 War diary by Western journalist Eva Bartlett on the truth about Aleppo
In early November, Fares Shehabi, a member of the Syrian parliament from Aleppo, organized a trip to Aleppo for 13 Western journalists, including myself, with security provided by forces in the Syrian Arab Army.While I had traveled to Aleppo independently as recently as July and August, for many others in the delegation, it was their first visit to the city or their first visit since the war on Syria began in 2011.

On previous visits to Aleppo, I met with the Aleppo Medical Association and saw a maternity hospital hit twice by rocket and mortar attacks by militants under Jaysh al-Fatah (the Army of Conquest), a loose alliance of anti-government terrorist groups. I met with members of a branch of the Syria Civil Defense and Christian and Muslim religious leaders. Just north of the city, I visited Nubl and Zahraa, towns besieged for more than three years by the Free Syrian Army, the Nusra Front, and other affiliated terrorist factions before the Syrian Arab Army drove them out in February of this year. I saw the liberated region of Bani Zaid and the al-Layramoun industrial district. I interacted with civilians in public parks, streets, and markets.

Ahead of my trip earlier this month, I was interested to see what might have changed following the liberation of still more areas by the SAA. I also hoped to speak with civilians who had fled the terrorist-held areas of Aleppo’s eastern districts since I had last visited, during which time eight humanitarian corridors had been established for civilians and members of terrorist factions willing to relinquish their arms or to accept safe passage to areas in Idlib and government-secured parts of western Aleppo.

However, on Nov. 4, no one fled terrorist-held areas of Aleppo. Family members of .....

From ZeroHedge
"We Regret The Error": CNN Apologizes 
To Assange For Pedophilia Accusation, Issues Retraction
It didn't take much for CNN to fold after Wikileaks threatened to sue it for defamation.

As reported on Wednesday, the whistleblowing organization threatened to sue CNN after the biased, pro-Clinton news organization aired an interview with Phil Mudd, in which the paid analyst and ex-Deputy-Director of the CIA called Julian Assange a pedophile. CNN’s counterterrorism "analyst" made the on-air statement on Wednesday while discussing WikiLeaks. Mudd boldly declared that “there's an effort to protect WikiLeaks (and) a pedophile who lives in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.”

Shortly after the lawsuit threat, CNN promptly apologized for the segment and conceded that “CNN has no evidence to support that assertion." ....

CrossTalk


From RT
Germany sued in US for massacring over 100K people
in Namibia in early 1900s
 In the US, descendants of Namibia’s Herero and Nama tribes have reportedly filed a compensation lawsuit against Berlin over the tens of thousands of people slaughtered by German troops in the African state early last century.

The legal complaint was filed Thursday with the US District Court in New York over an “incalculable damages” that were caused, Reuters reports. The plaintiffs claim that even if any reparation will be paid to Namibia, there’s no guarantee of any compensation to the victims.
“There is no assurance that any of the proposed foreign aid by Germany will actually reach or assist the minority indigenous communities that were directly harmed,” the descendants’ lawyer Ken McCallion wrote in an email as quoted by Reuters. The exact amount of proposed financial compensation for the plaintiffs has not been published by the news agency.

Over 100,000 Herero and Hama are estimated to have been killed between 1904 and 1908 during the uprising against German colonial rule in South-West Africa as the territory was called at the time. The unrest was started by the Herero who were joined by the Hama tribe a year later. The rebellion was viciously suppressed by German troops. After facing massive resistance from both tribes, German commander Lothar von Trotha called on his soldiers “to shoot every Herero with or without weapon within the German [colonial] borders.” ....

From 21stCenturyWire
‘Ghost Banning’ on Facebook & Twitter? 
Dangers of Corporate Censorship
For anyone who has been active on social media platforms, especially in the controversial field of trying to get the truth out, stories of being banned, posts disappearing, and selective censorship are nothing new. The only difference this year is that certain social media gatekeepers might genuinely believe they have been given some sort political mandate, or social license to carry out the routine task of shutting-up or disappearing political speech or challenging information which they believe is either ‘fake news,’ or ” Russian propaganda.”

Anyone who thinks this is OK just because it suits their present partisan or ideological agenda – is really endorsing a new type of corporate tyranny. By definition, this is fascism.

Here’s one pundit’s take on what seems to be an ever more common occurrence in 2016 and 2017…..

Peter Lavelle
The Duran

We are told it is called “ghost banning” – meaning you are present, though invisible in plain sight, and the user is completely unaware. The goal is frighteningly obvious: deny an “offending” website traffic to the point that it disappears from public view. We suspect The Duran is among the many sites targeted in this new form of censorship.

This is the new business model of the old art of controlling what is considered acceptable speech by the power-that-be. As a result, legacy news outlets that comprise of the world of corporate mainstream media are propped, crowding out alternative views and dissent. Freedom of speech faces an existential threat.

Craig Murray comments on personally being ‘ghost banned’:

“I had never heard of ghost banning until I was ghost banned by Twitter. That of course is the idea – they censor you without realising you are censored. People no longer get notifications when I post, and the tweet only turns up in the twitter line of followers who happen to be logged in at the time my tweet goes out. Those logging in later will no longer see tweets I issued while they were away. Most of my tweets no longer show up on twitter searches, and further restrictions are applied when people retweet my tweets.....

Hidden history


Rania Khalek  at Fair
In Syria, Western Media Cheer Al Qaeda
The Syrian government—a dictatorship known for imprisoning, torturing and disappearing dissidents—is easy to vilify. And over the last five years of Syria’s civil war, it has committed its share of atrocities. But there is more than one side to every story, and US media coverage has mainly reflected one side—that of the rebels—without regard for accuracy or basic context.

As the Syrian government recaptured East Aleppo from rebels in recent weeks, media outlets from across the political spectrum became rebel mouthpieces, unquestioningly relaying rebel claims while omitting crucial details about who the rebels were.

Almost always overlooked in the US (and UK) media narrative is the fact that the rebels in East Aleppo were a patchwork of Western- and Gulf-backed jihadist groups dominated by Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra)—Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria—along with its ally, Ahrar al-Sham (Daily Beast, 8/8/16; Foreign Policy, 9/1/16). These groups are explicitly anti-democratic and have been implicated in human rights violations, from mass execution and child beheadings to using caged religious minorities as human shields.

In the absence of any desire to evoke a political response, US media would surely have identified East Aleppo’s rebels by the name of the most famous militant group in the world—Al Qaeda. Yet press reports regularly referred to the militant forces dominating East Aleppo simply as “rebels.”

“Women in Aleppo Choose Suicide Over Rape,” declared a headline at the Daily Beast (12/12/16). The source of this very serious claim was Abdullah Othman, a member of Jabhat Al-Shamiya, or the Levant Front, an umbrella group whose membership consists of several jihadist rebel factions. So far no evidence has been presented, at least not publicly, to substantiate Othman’s claim. But that didn’t stop his story from spreading like wildfire across social media and being picked up by Commentary (12/13/16), Mic (12/16/16), Elle (12/13/16) and Foreign Policy (12/16/16), among others.....






From Yenisafak
Additional footage of gunman behind Istanbul attack released
New footage of the gunman responsible for Istanbul's New Year's Eve terror attack emerges
New footage of the gunman responsible for Istanbul's New Year's Eve terror attack at the Reina nightclub in Ortaköy has emerged.

In footage obtained by Yeni Safak daily, it has been revealed that the gunman left his house at 10:49 p.m.

The identity of the gunman has not been made known to the public. The gunman is allegedly Uyghur, and moved to Konya with his family in November 2016. His family has been taken into custody.....




From GlobalResearch
U.S./UK Paid “White Helmets” Help Al Qaeda Blocking Water To 5 Million 
Thirsty Syrians
The blockade of water from Wadi Barada to 5 million people in Damascus is taking an interesting turn. The U.S. and UK financed White Helmet organization seems to be directly involved in it. This increases the suspicion that the illegal blockade of water to civilians in Damascus is part of a organized campaign under U.S. command. The campaign is designed to block utilities to government held areas as revenge for the liberation of east Aleppo.

As we described it yesterday:

    After the eastern part of the city of Aleppo was liberated by Syrian government forces, the local rebels and inhabitants in the Barada river valley were willing to reconcile with the Syrian government. But the al-Qaeda Takfiris disagreed and took over. The area is since under full al-Qaeda control and thereby outside of the recent ceasefire agreement.On December 22 the water supply to Damascus was suddenly contaminated with diesel fuel and no longer consumable. A day later Syrian government forces started an operation to regain the area and to reconstitute the water supplies.

    Photos and a video on social media (since inaccessible but I saw them when they appeared) showed the water treatment facility rigged with explosives. On Dec 27th the facility was blown up and partly destroyed.

The Syrian government is ready to send repair teams to rehabilitate the water flow to the millions of civilians in Damascus. But access to the site is denied and the Syrian army is now trying to push al-Qaeda and its allies away from it.....
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