For the first few hours after any new “bombshell” Russiagate story comes out, my social media notifications always light up with poorly written posts by liberal establishment loyalists saying things like “HAHAHA @caitoz this proves you wrong now will you FINALLY stop denying Russian collusion???” Then, when people start actually analyzing that story and noting that it comes nowhere remotely close to proving that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election, those same people always forget to come back afterward and admit to me that they were wrong again.
This happens every single time, including this past Tuesday when the Guardian published a new “bombshell” report saying that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had had secret meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. When experts all across the political spectrum began pointing out that the story contained no evidence for its nonsensical claims and was entirely anonymously sourced, nobody ever came back and said “Hey sorry for calling you a Russian propagandist, Caitlin; turns out that story wasn’t as fact-based as I’d thought!” When evidence for a single one of the article’s claims failed to turn up for a day, then two days, then three days, nobody came back and said “Gosh Caitlin, I owe you an apology for mocking you and calling you Assange’s bitch; turns out WikiLeaks and Manafort are suing that publication and its claims remain completely unproven.”
And of course they didn’t. They weren’t meant to. They were meant to absorb the Guardian‘s false claims as fact, add it to their Gish gallop mountain of false evidence for Trump-Russia-WikiLeaks collusion, and then be shuffled onward by the relentless news churn of the corporate propaganda matrix like always. But I’m never going to let them forget that this happened, and neither should you.
https://twitter.com/pierpont_morgan/status/1068118764602961921
If it wasn’t obvious to you last week that there is an unelected power establishment which needs above all else to control the public narrative about what’s going on in the world, it should certainly be obvious to you this week. The Guardian hit piece was so spectacularly desperate in its over-reaching to advance a narrative which has been used to manufacture support for longtime CIA/MI6 agendas like arresting Julian Assange, stopping WikiLeaks, censoring the internet and subverting Russia that it completely exposed itself as the establishment psyop firm that it is.
If that wasn’t evidence enough, in the wake of the Guardian controversy Politico took the downright shocking step of allowing an anonymous former CIA officer to publish a lie-filled article speculating, on no evidence whatsoever, that if the story proves untrue it will be because false information was fed to the Guardian by Russia-linked operatives. The article’s anonymous author claims that there are exactly two main possibilities here: (1) that the article is 100% true and will be vindicated, or (2) that the article is based on disinformation which was planted in “an attempt to make [Guardian author Luke] Harding look bad.”
This is obviously absurd for two reasons. The first reason is because no Kremlin operative could possibly make Luke Harding look worse than Luke Harding did in his pathetic, fumbling attempts to argue his case for collusion while promoting his book Collusion to a less-than-sycophantic interviewer in December of last year, in which Harding grew frustrated and hung up on his own interview. The second reason is that there is another far more likely possibility than the two offered by Politico‘s anonymous spook.
My latest: The Guardian's latest vilifying of Julian Assange without offering a shred of evidence for its claims was no mistake. It fits a pattern by the paper of damaging those who threaten to disrupt the entrenchment of the existing neoliberal order https://t.co/YiMjfOHxEh
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 28, 2018
Former Guardian employee Jonathan Cook explains that from what he learned while working at the outlet, the most likely explanation is that the editors permitted the article to be published because its anonymous sources came from within an intelligence or defense agency. As we’ve seen time and time again, from the Iraq WMD narrative to the Russian hacking narrative, western mass media outlets have a ubiquitous standing policy of printing assertions by opaque, dishonest, unaccountable government agencies as objective fact. When asked why she unquestioningly printed a false assertion that real social media users who deny any connection to Russia were Russian “bots”, the Guardian’s own political editor Heather Stewart unapologetically stated, “It’s not my analysis – as the piece makes quite clear – it’s the government’s.” As long as it comes from the government, the mass media stenographers will print what they’re told to print. But tell me more about how awful RT is because it’s “state media”.
Cook writes as follows:
“I worked for the Guardian for a number of years, and know well the layers of checks that any highly sensitive story has to go through before publication. In that lengthy process, a variety of commissioning editors, lawyers, backbench editors and the editor herself, Kath Viner, would normally insist on cuts to anything that could not be rigorously defended and corroborated.
“And yet this piece seems to have been casually waved through, given a green light even though its profound shortcomings were evident to a range of well-placed analysts and journalists from the outset.
“That at the very least hints that the Guardian thought they had ‘insurance’ on this story. And the only people who could have promised that kind of insurance are the security and intelligence services – presumably of Britain, the United States and / or Ecuador.
“It appears the Guardian has simply taken this story, provided by spooks, at face value.”
It's not my analysis – as the piece makes quite clear – it's the government's. https://t.co/50C7Ozhv8m
— Heather Stewart (@GuardianHeather) April 20, 2018
The claims made by Luke Harding and the Guardian will never be proven true, and they know it. They knowingly printed claims that they were one hundred percent aware they’d never be able to provide proof of, and the clicks their viral story generated rewarded them with a shower of cash. Their fake story was then passed along by news outlets everywhere, including an MSNBC panel which hilariously kept informing its readers that if this Guardian report is confirmed it would be the first ever actual evidence linking Trump to WikiLeaks in a meaningful way.
We must never forget that this was done. We must keep bringing up the undeniable fact that the Guardian published false claims about a longtime target of western intelligence and defense agencies, then was backed up by a longtime insider from one of those agencies who was permitted to publish anonymously in an ostensibly unrelated outlet. This is one of those jaw-dropping glimpses behind the puppet stage we must never permit the world to forget, much like the time CNN knowingly staged a fake interview with a Syrian girl reciting scripted war propaganda. We must keep bringing this up at every opportunity in our efforts to give people glimpses behind the propaganda curtain, continuing to remind them next week, next month, next year, and ten years from now.
Forgiveness is overrated. Forgiveness is a key foundational element in most abusive relationships, wherein the abusee is manipulated or bullied into forgiving the abuser again and again, without ever holding a grudge. This is true of a battered spouse, and it is true of an oppressed populace. The ability to hold a grudge is therefore of paramount importance in fighting the propaganda machine on which our rulers have built their oppressive empire. Otherwise we will be shuffled forward in the news churn, just like the goldfish-brained Russiagaters who are moved along from one false story to the next into the amnesia of the endlessly spewing news churn.
Forgiveness Is Overrated
"From the Pope down, we’ve been anesthetized with this mind-virus that in order to be good people we just put our head down, work hard, die poor, and let God do the judging. How convenient for power is that story?"https://t.co/8ONzKpc2BM
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 6, 2018
Don’t forget. Remember this one. Remember it, and keep bringing it up.
____________________________
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16 responses to “Never, Ever Forget The Guardian/Politico Psyop Against WikiLeaks”
Hello Caitlin, This link is important!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/08/climate-summit-language-reveals-real-but-hidden-agenda/
Is this the only way we can deliver interesting links to you, do you have an email that we can send to?
“For climate change, there are many scientific organizations that study the climate. These alphabet soup of organizations include NASA, NOAA, JMA, WMO, NSIDC, IPCC, UK Met Office, and others. Click on the names for links to their climate-related sites. There are also climate research organizations associated with universities. These are all legitimate scientific sources.
If you have to dismiss all of these scientific organizations to reach your opinion, then you are by definition denying the science. If you have to believe that all of these organizations, and all of the climate scientists around the world, and all of the hundred thousand published research papers, and physics, are all somehow part of a global, multigenerational conspiracy to defraud the people, then you are, again, a denier by definition.
So if you deny all the above scientific organizations there are a lot of un-scientific web sites out there that pretend to be science. Many of these are run by lobbyists (e.g.., Climate Depot, run by a libertarian political lobbyist, CFACT), or supported by lobbyists (e.g., JoannaNova, WUWT, both of whom have received funding and otherwise substantial support by lobbying organizations like the Heartland Institute), or are actually paid by lobbyists to write Op-Eds and other blog posts that intentionally misrepresent the science.”
https://thedakepage.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/how-to-assess-climate-change.html
Hello Caitlin, This link is important!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/08/climate-summit-language-reveals-real-but-hidden-agenda/
Is this the only way we can deliver interesting links to you, do you have an email that we can send to?
Mary Ballon in Ladner BC
It’s pretty simple – all Western “news” agencies are now just blatant obvious propaganda. It’s a complete waste of time to comment on them or read them.
Rule is simple – if you aren’t allowed unfettered feedback to an article, it’s propaganda. Follow this rule, and it’s easy to spot propaganda versus actual news, even if the actual news may turn out to be incorrect.
The original Star Trek used an old saying ….
“Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Any news outlet that you know openly tells you lies should never again be trusted. Or at least without a much publicized change of owners with a purge of the previous editors and staff that lied to you.
To me, a news media outfit has only one thing to offer, that is their credibility. If you know an outfit is likely to lie to you, why on earth would you waste your time reading, listening or watching them? The only thing they have to offer is that they have credibility with you and that you trust them, at least enough to give them some of your time and your attention. Once they lie to you, and you know it (and I’m not talking about a mistake because we are all human and make them) then there is no reason to pay any attention to them at all.
For me, The Guardian had gone on the suspect pile when they reversed course of their anti-war stance to shifting to a support-the-war stance once the Iraq War had begun. Since then, they’ve gone steadily downhill. By the point where they were letting British intel destroy harddrives with the Snowden data on them and Glenn Greenwald had left, the Guardian was firmly on my pile of pure garbage and my only goal has been not to track their bleep into my home.
Sometimes, I think just the headline is the only goal.
How many times does a reader scan a list of headlines before deciding what to click on and read. Thus, just having the headline in the list does get into the consciousness of people who don’t actually click on the essay and read it. Especially true because if there is a topic that interests me, then I am more likely to click on the article.
For the topics that don’t interest me all that much, I am more likely to just digest the headline, not read the article, and continue on. Then later, I’m about to type in some comment something that refers back to that headline. I have to stop myself and tell myself that you never actually read the piece and perhaps I should before I start shooting off my big mouth about it. Thus, its fascinating how just the headline perused by just reading a list of headlines can suffice to get the message implanted into a brain.
Well done!
I do not hold a grudge. I just love truth.
Video proof that Vlad (The Impaler) rasPutin is testing horrific weaponry on his own people
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri7YIGk_qOI
“It’s not my analysis – as the piece makes quite clear – it’s the government’s. https://t.co/50C7Ozhv8m — Heather Stewart (@GuardianHeather) April 20, 2018″
I can’t find the gov content that Heather claims exists, I just checked the link above and may suggest, Heather is either mistaken or a liar!
Great stuff Caitlin, this dirty whore of a newspaper, the Guardian proves they are nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Global establishment, and a SHIT one at that!
On another dirty whore, “Leaked Google Emails Reveal Internal Discussion On Burying Articles From Conservative Outlets”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-30/leaked-google-emails-reveal-internal-discussion-buring-search-results-conservative
that was supposed to say tried and true, not tired and true, sorry!
Right. On. Point! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for remaining the perennial skeptic and zeroing in on the truth of each and every situation! Call me impressed, both by your professionalism, but mostly on your tired and true honesty in journalism, bravo!
I am one opposed to the Russiagate nonsense, but did see the article the other day in which the Guardian was forced to halfway walk back responsibility for Harding’s article.
I have never actually, to the best of my knowledge, actually read anything published in the Guardia., I just thought it a good source, since Greg Palast was blackballed by ‘legitimate’ outlets in the U.S. and was forced to leave the States and to publish via the Guardian. I have no idea whether Palast still is employed by the Guardian but, when news of Harding’s fraudulent article arose, I sent an email to Greg, asking about the situation, since the Guardian still appears (in parenthesis) at the bottom of his communications.
To date, I have not received a reply.
I am posting this information because I have followed Greg since the late 1990s, but lost contact for awhile. I have always maintained that he is the greatest investigative reporter of my lifetime since, no matter how difficult, he goes out and finds the proof (if it can be found), rather than wait for it to come to him, as was the case with Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame.
In a world where money can buy most things and most people at the light speed of electronic bank transfers, it is not wise to hold set opinions. People can be bought. After all, the sums of money available to the buyers is far beyond what a normal person needs to live for years if not a lifetime. But most especially, media companies and outlets can be bought. If not openly, then they are open to the influence of money like everything else is a profit-or-die capitalist economy.
This just means the careful user of news needs to be aware that what was once a useful site has now massively changed. And since the Capitalist Pigs are on the lookout for sites that influence opinions that oppose them, the technique of buying a site or publication that used to have a decent reputation and then using it to the pure advantage of the Capitalist Pigs while the world slowly catches up to the fact that it is now a sticking Pig trough is often used.