Little to no intelligence at the top of the U.S. media and government

By Martin Love

NORTH CAROLINA - The tippy top of the U.S. journalism food chain is arguably The New York Times, and the best known “journalists” at the Times are probably the names most readers have seen for decades such as columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman, and some of his colleagues at this strongly Zionist oriented newspaper (allegedly the paper of record whatever that means exactly when it is supposed to mean the most accurate and honest, but it has never been so) are well paid writers (or maybe shills) who consider themselves “intellectuals” of a sort, except that they are not very bright and are propagandists for the most part.

Friedman recently came out and defended the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and said he would do it all again. He defended the invasion and subsequent battles that killed probably two million or maybe three million people (very low-ball estimates are about one million) and maimed millions more, and the suffering goes on in Iraq from depleted uranium, wrecked clean water sources, destroyed infrastructure, ruined lives…you can name ANY horror and Iraqis have seen it over the past 30 years.

One thing hard to fathom is WHY the U.S. has any credibility in Iraq (it has none in Syria or Iran and is losing it in Jordan and even Egypt) and WHY the U.S, has not been kicked out of Iraq and diplomatic relations severed. In fact, the problem in the Arab or the Muslim world is, as it has long been, disunity and pandering to the West, especially the U.S., for gratuities and faux “protection” of one sort or another. But what is especially galling in Friedman’s attitude is his condescension to towards the Muslim world generally.

Friedman, and he’s worth focusing on because his views reflect the views of many others in positions to influence policy in Western countries, has written that on 9/11 the U.S. got hit with all the “distilled pathologies” of the Arab/Muslim world and if this culture does not open itself to religious and gender pluralism, it is going to die and “Israel is going to be surrounded by complete and utter chaos”. This is worth parsing:

It is not yet been established who was behind 9/11. The CIA and the Mossad probably did have a role and knew what was coming before 9/11 arrived, and the official U.S. 9/11 investigation report is a joke that explains none of the anomalies at the scene of the crime – lower Manhattan, particularly the collapse of the towers and Building 11. So whose “pathologies” is Friedman addressing? And it is fair to say that the Zionists have ALWAYS benefitted from chaos in surrounding countries. Zionists literally thrive on Arab and Muslim disunity, and are terrified of Muslims and Christians speaking with one voice.

The countries that WERE destroyed or nearly destroyed by the U.S and its allies, if they still exist as functioning polities, do not have the surfeit of the pathologies Friedman cites most often: a lack of gender pluralism and a lack of religious freedom. In fact, the U.S. has supported and funded and armed the MOST reactionary, illiberal, anti-social religious nutcases the world has ever witnessed: this includes ISIS, the Saudis, an-Nusra (al-Qaeda) and others. And it has underwritten exactly the kind of chaos (faudhaa) that Friedman falsely claims to abhor.  The U.S. has also twisted the arms of OPCW to falsify reports that Basher Assad used chemical weapons on his own citizens, this to justify attacking Syria by the U.S. and allies. But let’s carry this further.

Which countries are the least “democratic” and oppressed in the Middle East? Certainly not Iraq as it was even under Saddam Hussain – the Ba’athists were secular even if free elections were frowned upon to support Saddam. Same with Syria under the Assads, where women, aside from constraints that may be imposed by their families, are little different than women in the U.S. And same with the Libya that was (before Hillary Clinton directed the destruction of that country (once the most prosperous in Africa) with Obama, and bragged about Qaddafi’s horrible murder by bayonet. Yeah, the countries WITH the “pathologies” that Friedman cites are precisely the most oppressive and least “democratic” in the Middle East and the closest U.S. allies: Israel and Saudi Arabia primarily, but also Egypt under Sisi.

Friedman supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq because he claimed the establishment of a democratic Arab state in the Mideast would force other countries to modernize and liberalize. Nope. This did not happen. U.S. allies, cited above, became LESS liberal and less ideologically “modern” even while Syria has struggled to avoid being destroyed by terrorists funded and armed by the U.S., the West and the Saudis. Friedman was and even today is either lying or incompetent and ought not be writing for any media or have any kind of public platform.

Iran has long been demonized for its alleged lack of religious and social freedom, but which largely Muslim country with Muslim religious leaders in power allows the same degree of religious and social freedom as the Islamic Republic? Not the Saudis for sure. And which country has the second largest Jewish community in the Middle East? Iran. Iran is certainly a unique country, and it does have some internal points of contention that eventually might be addressed by all of Iran’s citizens in a climate where it is not being attacked by outsiders. But the Islamic Republic is not and should not fall apart because of the U.S. threat and hostility and sanctions. The mere fact that the Trump Administration has supported the MEK (a terrorist group labeled as such by the U.S. in the past) or even anyone related to the Pahlavi (puppets) tells one all that’s needed to know about the idiocy of U.S. thinking.

Virtually all the world, aside from the U.S. warmongers and resource rapists and the backward Saudis and the Zionists, literally BEGS that Iran remain steadfast and get through this difficult time intact and strong of spirit. Iran is a country that is going to emerge as a world leader in some respects if only the world can become truly “multi-polar” and dispense with the destructive hegemonic pretensions of the U.S.

Journalism in an Era of Delusional Politics

Wayne MADSEN

There are several correlations currently being made between the current move by the US Congress to impeach Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors and a similar action that resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon as a result of the Watergate scandal. However, there is a major difference between then and now: The Internet and the dissonant cacophony of polemics from non-journalists whose sole goal is to muddy the informational waters with far-out conspiracy theories and libelous prose.

During the Watergate scandal, newspaper, radio, magazine, and newspaper journalists all relied on the same tried and true standards to report from Congress, the White House, and federal courts on the scandal and its aftermath. The reportage included who, what, when, where, why, and how. Opinions were relegated to the editorial pages and television and radio news segments that were clearly identified as commentary, not hard news. The media has not always done a very good job of policing itself. The “yellow journalism” of William Randolph Hearst that led the US into a needless war with Spain in 1898. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has assumed the Hearst role with regard to covering Trump.

There were scandalous newspapers, newsletters, and flyers published during the Watergate era. These included the “National Review,” “Human Events,” and “American Opinion,” which delved into whacky “left-wing” and “Communist” conspiracies about those who were responsible for investigating Nixon, but these publications and their diatribes were well known as being untethered to reality. Although “Human Events” was read widely by conservative Republican circles in and around Washington, DC, it had little circulation outside the capital. It was these publications that primarily circulated conspiracy theories about Watergate. Moreover, the flyers distributed by the far-right John Birch Society, co-founded by Fred Koch – the father of Trump billionaire political financiers Charles and David Koch – made outlandish claims about Nixon’s opponents. Along with declaring that Nixon was being targeted by a “Jewish Communist” conspiracy, the favorite bogeyman for right-wingers, the John Birch Society made wild claims about laetrile curing cancer, fluoridation of the public water supply, and “international bankers,” the latter a thinly veiled codeword for Jews.

Today, the new purveyors of right-wing conspiracies include a bevy of websites, including 4Chan and Gab. Some far-right conspiracy platforms, including “The Gateway Pundit,” Salem Radio, “The Federalist,” and “Human Events,” have possessed White House press credentials. Credentialing those who engage in libelous activity was a purposeful decision by Trump. It was intended to give them the same or greater degree of credibility than recognized media outlets, many with several decades of acting as the recognized scribes and chroniclers of American and world history.

In July of this year, Trump held a White House summit meeting of the leading “alternative news” websites, including those who promote such outrageous theories as there being “staged” mass shootings with no actual victims, Adolf Hitler being a “Communist” and not a Nazi, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg being dead, that former First Lady Michelle Obama is a man, and that South Africa’s government is behind the mass murder of white farmers. Some of these sites go even further, suggesting that the Apollo moon landings were all fakes and that the Earth is actually flat. One common thread among these various websites is that the Holocaust never occurred. Astoundingly, these theories, including the one about Hitler being a Communist, have adherents like Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, “The Federalist” write Paul Jossey, and Republican US Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama.

Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have tried to limit such vitriolic and hateful content. Some recent mass shooters have been inspired by racial and religious polemics they have read on such websites. Some associated with far-right websites defended by Trump marched in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, an event where neo-Nazis and white supremacists committed acts of violence on counter-protesters, resulting in one counter-protester’s death and injuries of several others.

Trump has attacked Twitter and Facebook for violating the US Constitutional First Amendment rights of free speech and the free press. Trump told his alternative media summit, “To me free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposefully write bad. To me that’s very dangerous speech and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech.” Trump’s lack of understanding of the Constitution, to which he took an oath to uphold, has been on full display. The Second Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The framers of the Constitution included no provisions governing the private sector’s right to limit content of a libelous and untrue nature. Editors and publishers in 1789 were just as cognizant of the need to separate themselves from the conspiracy-laden flyers and gossip of their day as legitimate media is today.

The effect of confabulation of news events has served to discredit legitimate investigative journalism that delves into mostly Republican-led criminal conspiracies. These include the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy; Nixon’s dalliance with South and North Vietnam to ensure the defeat of Hubert Humphrey, his 1968 Democratic opponent; Watergate; the 1980 “October Surprise” that sealed President Jimmy Carter’s chances for a second term; the Iran-Contra affair; and 9/11, which boosted George W. Bush’s chances for a second term. The same strategy is now at work for the 2020 presidential election by Trump and the Republicans.

Trump is fond of attacking “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post.” While these newspapers have made their fair share of errors, there has been a mechanism to public corrections in errata segments. This does not occur with regard to the far-right media. They are in the very business of disseminating false information. Trump, whose knowledge of history is shallow to the degree of a millimeter, does not likely know that the co-founder of “The New York Times,” Henry J. Raymond, is considered the “godfather of the Republican Party.” Frank Hatton, the editor and second co-owner of “The Washington Post,” was a leading Republican figure during the late 1800s. The Post’s more recent 20th century owner was Eugene Meyer, also a Republican.

Several far-right websites are fond of hurling around accusations that certain targeted individuals are pedophiles. This is seen in the on-line rants of nebulous groups like “QAnon,” whose members are among Trump’s most ardent supporters. While there is absolutely no basis for their attacks, there is ample factual material that suggests Mr. Trump has had provable connections to pedophiles, including the late financial investor Jeffrey Epstein, who Trump, for several years, considered his “good friend.” It was the father of Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, who played a part in hiring Epstein, who possessed no college degree, as a teacher of youngsters at Manhattan’s exclusive Dalton School.

More recently, Richard Ciccarella, a US Army staff sergeant with the White House Communications Agency and attached to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted of uploading improper images of children to the Internet. Ciccarella’s sentencing memo contained astounding information about his responsibilities. In operating the White House switchboard in Washington, Ciccarella was “responsible for making and placing calls for the President, Vice President and senior White House Staff,” in addition to being “responsible for setup and maintained all of the communications for the President at Mar-a-Lago.” Epstein had once been a frequent Mar-a-Lago guest and he recruited at least one of his underage female “sex slaves” from the health spa at Mar-a-Lago.

George Nader, a Trump transition team adviser on the Middle East and a previously convicted pedophile, was charged on January 17, 2018 with “transporting visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct” after arriving at Dulles International Airport in Virginia on his way to Mar-a-Lago, where Trump was present.

Actual journalists rely on court filings, trial and deposition transcripts, interviews, and discovery documents to report factual news. It is a far cry from the far right-alternate media, which, although highly prized by Mr. Trump and his associates, obtains its delusional information from thin air.

Wayne MADSEN

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

Two Opposite Ways of Interpreting Wars and International Relations

Eric ZUESSE

In the US-and-allied nations, the standard way of interpreting wars and international relations is archetypally exemplified by the internationally respected award-winning American war-journalist Marie Colvin, of the London Sunday Times. Her career was stellar, if not absolutely unmatched: she won the “Journalist of the Year” award from the Foreign Press Association, plus five other international journalism prizes, for herself and her publisher. This “consummate war reporter” had started out from a military family, and then Yale, and then UPI, and then interviewed Muammar Gaddafi in 1985 and subsequently, and was clearly on her way up to the top of her profession. But the first really big event in her career was the event that caused her to live the rest of her life with a black eyepatch over her blinded left eye.

It all started in that same year of 1985, but not in Libya. She was also covering in that year the separatist war by the Tamil Tigers, to break off, from Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the far-northern and far-eastern sections of that country, so as to create an independent nation, which would be controlled by Tamils, and no longer be merely a region within the nation of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is not Tamil-majority, but is instead overwhelmingly Sinhalese population. Marie Colvin was embedded there, along with the anti-Government fighting forces, Tamil separatists, anti-Sinhalese fighters who were at war against Sri Lanka’s Government. This was a Tamil-versus-Sinhal war, and she was reporting it, from the standpoint of the separatist-Tamil rebels.

Her much-celebrated career ended 27 year later, with her own death, on 22 February 2012, in Homs Syria, while she was embedded with anti-Government forces there, who were trying to overthrow Syria’s Government, instead of to overthrow Sri Lanka’s or Libya’s Government.

In all three of those instances — from the very start, to the very the end, of her illustrious career — she was embedded along with, and her articles were in support of, anti-Government forces that the UK-US aristocracy supported, in order to break up countries that this aristocracy were hoping to ‘free’, so as to take control over them, away from the existing independent Governments there. This was her constantly recurring pattern, from her start, to her widely lionized end, as being a promoter of US-UK international empire: journalism that embraces and unquestioningly accepts and endorses imperialism, while never indicating to its audience that it has any connection whatsoever to imperialism.

In between her Sri Lankan start and her Syrian end, she prominently reported several times from Libya, likewise from the standpoint of opponents of that independent nation’s Government. Libya had previously been a vassal state of Turkey (Ottoman Empire), then of Italy (Italian Empire), then was an ‘independent’ nation within the UK-US Empire. And, then, finally — as a result of Libya’s Revolution, which was led by Gaddafi in 1969 — Libya actually did win its independence. Gaddafi became killed in 2011, from forces that had been unleashed by the US-UK Empire and France. That successful assassination happened on 20 October 2011, and America’s Secretary of State promptly and publicly exulted about it, by bragging “We came, we saw, he died — ha ha ha!.”(The Democratic National Committee and its duped voters rewarded her with their Presidential nomination five years later in 2016 because she was ‘the most experienced candidate’, having had lots of such disastrous ‘experiences’, which the duped voters were misled to think to have been an asset, instead of a liability.) Thus, ‘democracy’ was finally being brought to Libyans, by that country’s former foreign imperial masters, plus their agents, Al Qaeda and other local proxy-forces against Gaddafi.

What all of Colvin’s reporting exemplified was ‘journalism’ by a ‘reporter’ who is embedded along with the fighting forces that were being propagandized for by her own nation’s aristocracy — and, though she was American, she was in the employ of American vassals, UK aristocrats. This US-UK aristocracy wanted those countries to become either broken up, or else taken over by themselves entirely; and she was a ‘journalistic’ agent for that, though she was unaware of the fact, and was actually proud of her work, because of her obliviousness to the broader and deeper reality around her.

Here are some crucial details of her career-highlights, in this regard:

—

The Tamil Tigers constituted the fighting force of Sri Lanka’s 18% minority of the Sri Lankan population who were 74%-majority Sinhals. Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka’s) Sinhal population had been ruled by the British Empire through that 18% minority of Tamils as UK’s local agents, until Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was finally released from British bondage, and won independence in 1946, when the British Empire was breaking up.

A key Sri Lankan law that passed in 1956, the Sinhala Only Act, made Sinhalese language replace the British-imposed English language as Sri Lanka’s official language. Though the Tamil language had never been Sri Lanka’s official language, many Tamils, who had been accustomed to ruling the land for their British masters, were infuriated that the ‘inferior’ Sinhal people now ruled the land. One of those Sinhals was their own leading aristocrat, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the progressive who became elected Prime Minister in 1956 and won passage of the Sinhala Only Act and of other laws to actually end British control, but he was assassinated in 1959 by a Buddhist monk because Bandaranaike had just then signed an agreement with the leader of the main Tamil party to bring some degree of local autonomy to the Tamil minority, who were concentrated in the far north and far east. Bandaranaike’s wife, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was then elected as Prime Minister in 1960, and she not only tried to increase political participation by Buddhists, but she firmly established democratic socialism (or progressivism) as the Government’s policy. But then, the Marxist (dictatorial socialist) Lanka Sama Samaja Party eroded popular support for her government, which became resoundingly defeated in the general election of 1965. Sirimovo became re-elected back into power in 1970. However, her Government’s support of Buddhism and of the Sinhalese language alienated the country’s large Tamil minority, 80% of whom are Hindu (the others: 13% Muslim, 2% Christian, 2% Sikh, and only .8% Buddhist). By contrast, 93% of Sinhals are Buddhist. According to the US Library of Congress in 1988, “93 percent of the Sinhala speakers were Buddhists, and 99.5 percent of the Buddhists in Sri Lanka spoke Sinhala.” (By contrast, the entirety of Sri Lanka is 70% Buddhist, 13% Hindu, 10% Muslim, and 7% Christian — very different from the Tamils.) So: Sri Lanka’s political split was along religious lines — mainly Tamil Hindus versus Sinhal Buddhists — in addition to being along tribal lines; and the Tamils represented, in both respects, supporters of the Hindu caste-system, and of the former British aristocracy, which are America’s vassals, against the Sri Lankan public.

In 1976, the militant separatist Tamil Tigers were born, basically as a reaction against the 1946 freeing of that country from its former colonial British masters.

Starting in 1985, the Tamil Tigers “forcibly occupied more than 35,000 acres of Muslim residential, agricultural and cattle farming land. The government did nothing to help Muslims regain their properties based on title deeds, government permits or the paddy cultivation register. During the ethnic conflict in 1983, 1985, and 1990, more than 12,700 Muslim families were chased out by” the Tiger forces. Wikipedia’s article “Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern province by LTTE” calls the October 1990 portion of that sequence an “ethnic cleansing,” of Muslims, from the north Sri Lankan, Tiger-controlled, city of Chavakachcheri.

Colvin’s ‘news’-‘reports’ were strongly pro-Tamil, anti-Sinhal, but she seems to have known nothing about the country from which she was reporting (at war), and to have cared even less about it. (She even said [12:00-] “The history, and the ability to put into context anything in a war … It didn’t mean anything,” because “it never happens the way you think it’s going to.” She exhibited no interest whatsoever in understanding the background of a war. To her, for example, the war in Chechnya was simply bombings by Russia, “an indiscriminate bombing of Chechen villages,” and she had no curiosity as to why whatever was occurring was actually happening.) Instead, she was obsessed by, and focused only on, the immense suffering that civilians on the US-UK-backed side experienced. Of course, the owner of her newspaper, Rupert Murdoch, probably knew the historical background in this former British colony of Sri Lanka, but her employers never told her about that, and she apparently never asked them about it. They simply couldn’t find any other journalist who was stupid enough to do their bidding in their bosses’ former Empire and who was willing, indeed eager, to accept the pay that they offered to do it. This well-intentioned, but willingly ignorant, employee lost an eye — and was nearly killed — because of her being embedded there, with what were actually (though she never knew it) UK proxy-forces. She thought that she was helping ‘the good guys’ (Tamils) in a war against ‘the bad guys’ (the Government). She was the archetypal star-‘journalist’, having faith in ‘our’ side. She is beloved, by her ‘journalistic’ colleagues, as if she hadn’t been merely the empire’s most effective war-propagandist.

—

In 2011, in Libya, she was accepted again into Gaddafi’s tent for an interview, even though she despised him as one of the ‘bad’ guys. (This doesn’t mean “bad” as Hillary Clinton was bad, but instead ‘bad’ as one of the Clinton-Biden-Obama regime’s many victims who all were ‘bad’, in her view. And, of course, the US-UK aristocracy are all ‘good’, in that view: the imperialists’ view.)

In 2012, in Syria, at the conflict in Homs, she was telecasting to CNN, and other TV networks, regarding how evil Bashar al-Assad was for bombing the enclaves there that, in fact, were cooperating with Al Qaeda (though Colvin didn’t report that they were such). It was on 22 February 2012, and Britain’s Telegraph  bannered “Marie Colvin: Britain summons Syria ambassador over killing.” This newspaper reported: “In her broadcasts on Tuesday night, Colvin had accused the Syrian Army of perpetrating the ‘complete and utter lie that they are only targeting terrorists.’ Describing what was happening as ‘absolutely sickening’, Colvin said: ‘The Syrian army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.’” When the US and UK had done more-widespread, entire-city, bombings in World War II, it was fine, in this view; but, now, when Syria’s Government were doing more-targeted versions of that, in order to prevent a takeover of Syria by the US, and a subsequent hand-over of Syria to the Sauds, it wasn’t okay. And, of course, the Western ‘press’-corps, of US-UK invasion-propagandists, place Colvin upon a pedestal, as having constituted the ‘ideal’ ‘ war journalist’.

That’s one way of interpreting wars and international relations — the way that Colvin memorialized.

An excellent docudrama movie about Marie Colvin’s reporting from Sri Lanka in 1985, and Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2012, is the November 2018 “A Private War”. It provides an honest portrayal of her. (Some incompetent critics downgraded the movie because of what actually were deficiencies — basically Colvin’s stupidity and shallowness — in the real person herself. Other incompetent critics, such as at the neoconservative Washington Post, praised it largely because they shared Colvin’s neoconservatism. It’s just an honest, and very skillfully done, biopic.) On the basis of its strictly cinematic values, I consider it a superb film.

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The opposite way — the anti-imperialist viewpoint — of reporting about war and international relations, has been embodied, to cite two prime authentic journalists — NOT propagandists (such as Colvin was) — by Vanessa Beeley, and also by Eva Bartlett. Both of these authentically great reporters have also covered the war in Syria. Here, from them, is this opposite way of interpreting war and international relations:

——

“Western media lies about Syria exposed (Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett)”

VIDEO, 19 mins., Eva Bartlett, 10 December 2016, U.N.

——

https://www.rt.com

“‘They know that we know they are liars, they keep lying’: West’s war propaganda on Ghouta crescendos”

Eva Bartlett, on 21 March 2018

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“Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett & Patrick Henningsen Exposes the White Helmets”

VIDEO, 27 mins., 7 October 2016, rt.com

——

21stcenturywire.com

“Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception – Part I”

Vanessa Beeley, 23 October 2015

——

21stcenturywire.com

“Part II – Syria’s White Helmets: War By Way of Deception ~ ‘Moderate Executioners’”

Vanessa Beeley, 28 October 2015

——

21stcenturywire.com

“WHO ARE SYRIA’S WHITE HELMETS (terrorist linked)?”

Vanessa Beeley, 21 June 2016

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21stcenturywire.com

“EXCLUSIVE: The REAL Syria Civil Defence Exposes Fake ‘White Helmets’ as Terrorist-Linked Imposters”

Vanessa Beeley, 23 September 2016

——

mintpressnews.com

“Faux Humanitarian Irwin Cotler, the White Helmets, and the Whitewashing of an Appalling Agenda”

Vanessa Beeley, 1 August 2019

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Those journalists DON’T win awards from the Foreign Press Association, etc., and AREN’T hired by mainstream ‘news’ media, but they are vastly superior to the ones who do.

Eric ZUESSE

American writer and investigative historian

False Identities Become the New Weapon: War with Iran Promoted by Fake Journalists

By Philip Giraldi

One of the claims made about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election was that Kremlin-controlled entities were using fake identities to create dissension and confusion on social network sites. This should surprise no one, if it is true, as intelligence operatives have been using false names since Sumerian times.

The concern over fake identities no doubt comes from the deception involved, meaning that if you are dealing with a real person you at least have some handle on making as assessment of what something means and what is likely to occur. A false persona, however, can pretend to be anything and can advocate or do something without any yardstick to measure what is actually taking place. In other words, if Mike Pompeo says something you know that he is a liar and can judge his words accordingly but if it is someone otherwise unknown named Qwert Uiop you have to wonder if he or she just might be telling the truth. You might even give them the benefit of the doubt.

A prime example of a false internet persona has recently surfaced in the form of an alleged “activist” invented by the Iranian terrorist group Mojahedin e Khalq (MEK). MEK is a curious hybrid creature in any event in that it pretends to be an alternative government option for Iran even though it is despised by nearly all Iranians. At the same time, it is greatly loved by the Washington Establishment which would like to see the Mullahs deposed and replaced by something more amenable to western and Israeli worldviews.

MEK is run like a cult by its leader Maryam Rajavi, with a number of rules that restrict and control the behavior of its members. One commentary likens membership in MEK to a modern day equivalent of slavery. The group currently operates out of a secretive, heavily guarded 84 acre compound in Albania that is covertly supported by the United States, as well as through a “political wing” front office in Paris, where it refers to itself as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

MEK, which is financially supported by Saudi Arabia, stages events in the United States in Europe where it generously pays politicians like John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and Elaine Chao to make fifteen-minute speeches praising the organization and everything it does. It’s paying of inside the Beltway power brokers proved so successful that it was removed from the State Department terrorist list in 2012 by Hillary Clinton even though it had killed Americans in the 1970s. MEK also finds favor in Washington because it is used by Israel as a resource for anti-Iranian terrorism acts currently, including assassinations carried out in Tehran.

MEK’s fake journalist, who has recently been exposed by The Intercept, is named Heshmat Alavi. He, or if you prefer “it,” has very successfully gained access to a considerable body of generally conservative mainstream western media, including Forbes, The Hill, the Daily Beast and The Federalist. Alavi has placed scores of articles as “an activist with a passion for human rights,” aimed at discrediting Iran and its government while also subtly praising MEK as an alternative to the current regime. His bona fides have never been questioned, even by Forbes, which placed no less than 61 articles under the name between April 2017 and April 2018. The pieces appearing allegedly by Alavi are reportedly composed at a “troll factory” as a so-called “group account” in Albania where MEK members who belong to the organization’s “political wing” toil under tight security.

Alavi’s contribution to the damning of Iran has not been insignificant. An article written by him/it that appeared in Forbes claiming that the Mullahs had been able to increase their military budget due to having money freed up by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement. The article reached the White House and reportedly helped convince the Trump Administration to withdraw from the pact.

A March of Folly Toward Iran

*(MEK members working in the ‘Twitter troll factory’ in Manez Camp, Albania)

To supplement the Alavi propaganda effort, MEK’s Albania operation uses banks of computers manned by followers, some of whom are fluent in English, who serve as bots unleashing scores of comments supporting regime change in Iran while also directing waves of criticism against any pro-Iranian pieces that appear on social media, to include Facebook and Twitter. By one account,more than a thousand MEK supporters manage thousands of accounts on social media simultaneously. The objective of all the chatter is to convince the mostly English-speaking audience that there is a large body of Iranians who are hostile to the regime and supportive of MEK as a replacement.

While the Iranian government and MEK might well be regarded by most Americans as a far-away problem, there was considerable shock expressed even by congress and the media when it was learned shortly before The Intercept’s revelations that the United States government had been fundinga so-called Iran Disinformation Project that was employing tactics remarkably similar to those of MEK in an attempt to control the discussion over Iran policy.

 YouTube ‎@YouTube

Saeed Ghasseminejad

✔@SGhasseminejad

Hooshang Amirahmadi, @tparsi's former boss, told @AbdolrezaDavari:
"Yes, Zarif put together NIAC – honestly, sincerely - and gave it strong support, politically and non-politically."
Amazing that no journalist asks Amirahmadi & Parsi & writes about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQN2_xbZcZA …

364

10:05 PM - May 31, 2019

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The project, run by the State Department’s global engagement center, consisted of a trolling campaignwhich targeted online American citizens critical of the government’s Iran policy, labeling them as disloyal to the United States and tools of the Iranian government. It used, for example, the website IranDisInfo.org and the hashtag #NIACLobbies4Mullahs. Iranian-American activist and long-time State Department contractor Mariam Memarsadeghi headed the program, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars to “relentlessly attack critics of the Iran policy on social media…accusing them of being paid operatives of the regime in Tehran.” In all, the “Iran Disinfo” operation received over $1.5 million through the Memarsadeghi contract entity the oddly named E-Collaborative for Civic Education.

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Mariam Memarsadeghi@memarsadeghi

“Constant studying & constant reading”—how @nikkihaley tells @CliffordDMay she got herself so very ready & able to take on everything, not least the tyrants, represented at the UN. So much respect for her. @FDD #FDDSummit

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8:03 PM - Aug 28, 2018

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The investigation of Iran Disinfo also revealed that the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has been leading the charge for war with Iran, had at least one employee working with E-Collaborative. FDD, which has been advising the Trump White House on a more aggressive policy towards Iran, has also been actively involved in the State Department effort and cross-posting material from the Disinfo campaign.

FDD has long been targeting Iran. It received $3.63 million in 2017 from Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot. Marcus is a hard-core Zionist who hates Iran and once referred to that nation as “the devil.” FDD has also received billions from Las Vegas casino mega billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the GOP’s largest individual donor, who has advocated dropping a nuclear bomb on Iran to send a message. The link between major Republican donors supporting FDD and an increase in FDD quasi-overt cooperation with the Trump Administration in demonizing Iran should not surprise anyone.

Even though the State Department operation was relatively insignificant compared to similar initiatives undertaken by Israel, the idea that an ostensibly democratic government should propagate lies to defend its own policies was definitely unsettling. Some might think that disinformation on Iran is of little importance, that it has little impact on actual policy, but they would be wrong. Bad information that is allowed to circulate freely creates its own reality. Most Americans believe that Iran actually threatens the United States, though they would be at a loss to explain exactly how that could be the case. Dubious stories that originated with Reuters about corruption in Iran have been used by Mike Pompeo to justify sanctions against the regime on humanitarian grounds, measures which have ironically hurt average Iranians disproportionately. The same story was also used in at least four books to discredit the Iranian leadership.

To be sure, the mainstream media is itself largely at fault, as it was with Heshmat Alavi, for not vetting their sources more carefully, particularly when a story is clearly providing unique information or representing a point of view that might be considered controversial. In some cases, of course, the news outlet wants the story to be perceived as true even when it knows that it is not, so it becomes an accomplice in the propaganda effort. A recent attempt to create a mechanism to establish standards by determining the reliability of online news content has, in fact, been little more than a neoconservative scheme to discredit sites that do not support the neocon point of view.

Since governments and various non-governmental constituencies now, by their own admission, are heavily into the game of providing false information and discrediting critics, most Americans will completely tune out of the process, meaning that there will be little or no measurable difference between truth and lies. One already hears complaints from all across the political spectrum that most news is fake. When one reaches the point where such skepticism becomes the consensus, both elections and democracy itself will be rendered pretty much meaningless.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.