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.

A new fascism for a new century

One thing easy to miss during the last two years, as our "free press" was incessantly waving the Russiagate hoax at the public, is how the purveyors of fake news are incrementally shutting down our ability to access news that comes from alternative sources.

The Washington Post gave acres of free publicity to an outfit called PropOrNot in late 2016. PropOrNot claims to be working diligently to ferret out "Russian propaganda" on the internet. They compiled a handy list of websites to shun if one wishes to avoid having one's thoughts contaminated by "fake news." I'm a regular visitor to a number of those sites, and I like to think I'm intelligent enough and sufficiently well read to decide for myself when I'm reading bullshit.

PropOrNot would prefer that I not imbibe the propaganda to be found on sites like Global Research or truthdig. Frankly, my bullshit detector has to work a lot harder when I'm reading the Washington Post than when I'm reading those sites.

Similarly, the Integrity Initiative was a UK government effort to steer the public away from "fake news." It is beyond ironic that the fakery of the Integrity Initiative was exposed by one of those fake news sites we're supposed to avoid.

That concept of a "network of networks" detailed in the RT story clarifies a lot of things. It goes a long way to explaining the White Helmets' journey from al Qaeda auxiliary to Hollywood, and eight-year-old Bana al-Abed's journey from Aleppo to the Oscars.

Unfortunately, the powers that be are working overtime to make those alternative news sources harder and harder to find. Our tech overlords are joining with governments and the corporate media to restrict our access to information that might be upsetting to the establishment narrative. The Facebook-Twitter-Google crowd are all-in for making sure that your delicate sensitivities will be spared inconvenient facts.

It's all for your own good, of course.

In Albert Speer's Spandau prison memoir, the former Hitler deputy observed that if the Nazis had had television, they would have been unstoppable.


The new fascists have way more than television.

Democracy dies in darkness

That howler was adopted as a slogan by the Washington Post about a year and a half ago, just months after they released the manifestly fake ProporNot list of 200 fake news sites.

I must admit I don't understand how any thinking person can read that slogan without arching an eyebrow or two. The Washington Post has long been regarded as the unofficial mouthpiece for the CIA, and that was long before it was purchased by the world's richest man, whose connections to the CIA are a matter of public record, at least some of them.

Note how they've painted themselves as champions of press freedom since the untimely demise of their occasional contributor Jamal Kashoggi. That's every bit as hilarious as Erdogan claiming that mantle. Kashoggi was a reliable pro-Kingdom stooge for his entire journalism career, until the palace coup that brought in MBS. Suddenly the Kashoggi clan were on the wrong side of KSA history, and Jamal decided to self-exile himself to DC, there to do whatever he could to further the cause of his side in the internecine struggle for the rulership of the Kingdom.

That's why he's dead now. The irony of his having become a posthumous symbol of journalistic freedom seems to be lost on the public at large. One gets the impression that the vast majority of those shocked and appalled at the Kashoggi murder are folks who can't wait for Assange and Snowden to face "justice" in the American judicial system.

The fact that the WaPo is promoting Jamal as a martyr for "press freedom" tells you that the CIA is, at least for the moment, throwing their weight behind the old guard in the Kingdom.

Having said that, it's good to see that at least some US media outlets get the bigger picture. Unfortunately, those outlets are hemoraging money and won't last much longer...

Sooner or later the CIA will buy them too.