Getting to the bottom of the bullshit at the Global Conference on Media Freedom

Paul Waldie has another report on the Global Conference on Media Freedom in the Globe and Mail today. Once again, we need not invoke the name "Assange" in covering a conference on "press freedom" in London, because after all, Assange is not a journalist.

Instead, we meet Maria Ressa, whose plucky anti-Duterte website "The Rappler" is fast becoming a darling of the mainstream "press freedom" warriors. Oddly enough, up until Duterte's election in 2016, nobody in the capitals of the West ever gave a shit about democracy or the lack thereof in the Philippines, let alone how free the press might be there.

So what changed with the election of Duterte? He's threatened to follow an independent foreign policy and forge better relations with Russia and China. That's why "democracy" and a "free press" in the Philippines are suddenly top of mind.

Waldie informs us that a Pierre Omidyar "charity" has taken Ressa under it's wing. Omidyar is the  billionaire founder of eBay, and, like so many of his billionaire buddies, has taken to investing his spare time and spare hundreds of millions dabbling in politics and journalism.

A quick scan of his Wikipedia page reveals that Omidyar has lots of fun collaborations with like-minded super-rich. He's on the advisory board of Berggruen Institute, a vanity project of billionaire Nicolas Berggruen, son of billionaire art dealer Heinz Berggruen and fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, the grand-daddy of America-uber-alles think tanks.

He also funds, along with George Soros and others, the Poynter Institute, a non-profit "journalism" school which recently provided the public with a list of over five hundred "fake news" outlets. Alas, their list was quickly exposed as being fake news, and was taken down in a matter of days, in a replay of the Washington Post's (another billionaire plaything) ProporNot scandal.

Waldie quotes Ressa as claiming that Google and Facebook are "the real threats to media freedom because they've provided an accelerant for populism to take hold across Europe and Asia." Nevertheless, a few paragraphs later we learn that Ressa is now "working with Facebook in the Philippines."

So apparently that plucky website The Rappler has Facebook AND a bunch of billionaires in its corner. That should give Ressa the immunity card she needs to take on Duterte.

As for Facebook, let's not forget they were also a partner in the Integrity Initiative, a UK government attempt to shape what "news" your eyes get to light on. Ironically, the Integrity Initiative was exposed by RT and Sputnik - the two media outlets banned from the Global Conference on Media Freedom in London, because they "spread disinformation."

So, did I get to the bottom of the bullshit? Hell no!

But I think I can make a preliminary conclusion about the Global Conference on Media Freedom. When the likes of Jeremy Hunt, Chrystia Freeland, and Facebook are looking out for media freedom, at a conference where uttering the name of Assange is verboten, it's probably already too late.

Protecting "media freedom" while burying Assange

I notice that CBC is reporting on the "Faux Free Press Conference" in London while dutifully avoiding any mention of Julian Assange. Paul Waldie managed the same disappearing trick while writing about the conference in the Globe and Mail yesterday.

Jeremy Hunt has made no secret of his contempt for Assange. The kind of "free press" being celebrated in London is the kind that sticks to authorized government-approved talking points. Rogue journalists who reveal government lying and criminality are not "real" journalists at all and must face the full force of the law.

It's interesting to see that the Russian news sites Sputnik and RT have  been banned from the conference for spreading disinformation about the Skripal affair. That's unintended confirmation that those outlets probably came a lot closer to the "truth" of that debacle than anything you might find in the Telegraph or the Guardian.

That ban is also sweet revenge of sorts for Chrystia Freeland, who was quick to blame "Russian disinformation" when the true story of her family's collaboration with the Nazis emerged (the actual real Nazis marauding all over Europe 75 years ago - not the wannabes supposedly lurking all over the internet today).

It's hard to fault RT for their response to the ban;

"It takes a particular brand of hypocrisy to advocate for freedom of press while banning inconvenient voices and slandering alternative media."

Russiagate: the hoax lives on

When we read news on RT or Sputnik, most readers will take it with a grain of salt. After all, those outlets, financed by the Russian government, will no doubt be putting a pro-Russian spin on their stories.

If, however, we read a story published by NATO, there is no salt required. Of course not! NATO is us... the good guys! Not NATO nor anyone in our media would put a pro-Western slant on a story. It's strictly objective truth and nothing but the truth!

The CBC has a story on view regarding Russian Twitter trolls.  A NATO "academic journal" has unearthed more proof that the Ruskies were meddling in the 2016 election! Writer Kaleigh Rogers reminds us that "the goal of the Russian campaign was not to sway voters one way or the other, but to stoke debate and division among Americans," as if Americans need outside help becoming more divided.

In the first place, it's a pretty lame-ass election-meddling strategy the Ruskies have cooked up if its goal wasn't to sway voters.


More importantly, if encouraging debate and division is election meddling, isn't that what the Americans have been doing with Radio Free Europe since 1949?

Orwell lives!

I see where Chrystia Freeland's never-ending Vixen of Virtue tour is scheduling a "Press Freedom Summit" in London this summer, but I'm not sure why. After all, Canada ranks 18th world-wide in press freedoms, according to Reporters Without Borders, while the UK ranks 40th. Isn't that a bit like Angola and Cuba co-hosting a World Hockey Summit?

I've a hunch that as we lurch towards our autumn election the media will be ramping up the booga-booga about Russian meddling. Maybe our recently announced Critical Election Protocol Group can get some pointers on sniffing out Ruskie monkey business from the pros at Britain's "Integrity Initiative."

Unfortunately, when you get to their website you find a message saying all content has been removed pending an investigation into data theft that was intended to undermine their work in defending the free world from disinformation.

The good news is that their stolen stuff is now readily available on Russian websites RT and Sputnik! Sure makes for some interesting reading. The guardians of democracy seem to be long on initiative but dangerously short on integrity. They've been busy beavers planting their chosen "experts" (Bill Browder tops one such list) in major media across all platforms and smearing the government's political enemies!

In short, it's basically an anti-Russian propaganda outfit, funded by the British government and NATO, and one thing it certainly is not about is press freedom.

Sarah Kendzior; disingenuous, misguided, or just plain stupid?

I like Sarah Kendzior. Back when she was a freshly minted Dr. Phil who found herself squeezed off the tenure track, she used to write about that. The writing was heartfelt and convincing because she knew what she was talking about.

She has yet to find that track, but she may no longer care. Check out the brand she's built. This woman is going places! She's one 60 Minutes profile away from becoming a serious public intellectual!
 
But when I consider that, and when I read of the various accolades she has won over recent years (Foreign Policy named her one of the 100 people you should follow on Twitter to make sense of global events - as if Twitter is required to make sense of global events...), I have to marvel at the fact that the bar has been set so astoundingly low.

Take her latest effort as "op-ed columnist for the Globe and Mail" for example; Gutting net neutrality is a death knell for the resistance.

Ah yes, "the resistance!"

That one word conjures all sorts of imagery of heroic anti-Nazi derring-do in occupied Europe during the '40s. The French resistance. The Dutch resistance...

The Greeks and Poles resisted too. In every case we saw courageous citizens, infinitely out-manned and out-gunned, standing against the Nazi behemoth.

Although she is fully aware that's the image you'll carry in your mind's eye when you read the word "resistance," that's not the resistance Kendzior is talking about. No, she's talking about the resistance to Trump's election victory. This is not a resistance led by courageous partisans hiding out in the woods and risking their lives for a cause.

It is a resistance led by Hillary Clinton and a Democratic Party elite that a year ago lost an election in spite of having more Wall Street money behind it than any previous campaign in US electoral history.

It's not the resistance of the oppressed.

It is the resistance of an entitled ruling class clique who are pouting because another, perhaps slightly less entitled ruling class clique, grabbed the steering wheel out of their hands.                    

I can see why they'd be pissed.

At the same time, the claim that the Dem Party establishment or any of the mainstream media platforms Kendzior regularly appears on are even remotely threatened is beyond hokum.

Seriously?

Some players in the internet ecosystem want to squash net neutrality so they can make more money, not because they want to silence the Globe and Mail and the US news sites the Globe reflexively parots, the Washington Post and the NYT.

Pretty sure they're not interested in silencing Kendzior either.

As you know, all those platforms are vehemently anti-Trump.

What's being silenced are media platforms that question the narrative of Kendzior, Dem Party elites, and the "resistance," sites like RT and Sputnik and Michael Chossudovsky's Global Research.

So relax, Sarah... so long as you continue to faithfully toe the official DNC line, you've nothing to worry about!

Can Savior Macron save Trump?

So what's up with the fresh new breeze wafting through the halls of power in the Nations of Virtue? Looks like Manny "The Redeemer" and Donny J are spending the day doing touristy stuff in the City of Light. Isn't this the same Macron who was just recently praised to the heavens for standing up to Trump?

What goes on here?

This is especially intriguing given the completely opposite treatment these two alleged political neophytes have gotten at the hands of mainstream Western media. On the one hand, Macron has been received with near universal adoration. He is the fresh new face of a new politics that is neither of the left or the right, or so we are lead to believe.

Trump, on the other hand, has endured a non-stop torrent of loathing and vitriol from the same media.

So what gives? Could it be that one flim-flam artist has recognised a kindred spirit in the other?

Or is there something more sinister afoot?

Recall that a mere six weeks ago Macron was being loudly lauded for standing up to Putin. The new kid gave Bad Vlad a stern finger wag over everything from election interference to Syrian chemical attacks to the nefarious propaganda that Russian state media outlets Sputnik and RT have been aiming at gullible dupes in the West. Yes, Macron was unflinching in his anti-Putin stand.

Yet when the two men met again at the G20 last weekend, the tone was much more muted. Hardly a month after their first meeting, Macron has noticed a tangible change in Russo-French relations and is "ready to move on to a new phase..."

Well, that about-face wasn't long in coming!

Could it be that the Russians have a dossier on Macron too?

Corruption in American politics is so deeply embedded that we barely notice the ripples on the surface

It was a busy day. In between planning home renovations and napping, I had occasion to peruse a few of my favourite news sites.

I like the Guardian. Nice middle of the road perspective, generally speaking. One of the first stories to catch my eye was a missive by Kevin Watkins about corruption in Africa.

Kevin built his story around certain revelations revealed in the "Panama Papers." Seems a whole lot of those African despots are crooks out the ying-yang. Yup, same old same old. African leaders are crooks... no news there! Hey, even my hero Dan Gertler got a passing mention in the story!

Elsewhere in my day, I read a story that Junior forwarded, about HRC's collusion in the Honduras coup of 2009. Not only does Hillary compromise the entire USA intelligence apparatus with her private (as in wide open to every semi-competent intel service in the world) e-mail accounts, but then she posts in her e-mails all the back-stabbing anti-democratic shenanigans that America's Secretary of State is conniving in!

Heck, that's corruption and incompetence on a scale that would leave those African despots wide-eyed with wonderment!

But wait, we're not finished yet...

A little further on in the Guardian, I come across this American crime thriller. Seems a certain Guerrero Chapa has been the de facto leader of the Gulf Cartel since 2003. As I'm sure you appreciate, Cartel leaders have many enemies; the law (but maybe not so much), rival cartels, ambitious underlings, and so on. Ten years after becoming the de facto leader of the Gulf Cartel, our man Chapa gets rubbed out in true gangster fashion while shopping with his wife in Dallas Texas.

But here is the sentence, dropped incongruously many thousands of words into our story, that caught my eye;

Guerrero Chapa lived legally in the US and was an informant for American authorities.

Say what?

The leader of the Gulf Cartel lived legally in the US and was an informant? The leader of a Mexican drug cartel is allowed to live legally in the US and continue running his cartel in return for what? Information on rival cartels? Which would make the entire "War on Drugs" infrastructure complicit in the drug trade they have allegedly been doing battle with, would it not?

How far up the hierarchy do you figure that rot has spread?

No wonder that after forty years of a supposed "war on drugs" your kids can still buy dope at their school playground.

And we're not done yet. Those drug cartels are small fry compared to the big dogs like Lockheed Martin. Here's a story from Sputnik about how the military-industrial complex has been cleaning out the US treasury while lining its own offshore accounts to the tune of billions while fobbing off unworkable crap like the F-35.

And it's all done in the name of the flag and patriotism and defending our freedom, don't ya know! Hell, they'll be lucky if they get approval to fly those duds over a NASCAR invocation, nevermind taking on an actual enemy.

But we see none of that. We're too busy rooting out corruption in Africa!