Day: May 8, 2019

The West: Full Spectrum Dementia By Stephen Sefton

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8 May 2019 — Internationalist 360°

“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
Henry Wallace, New York Times, April 9th 1944.

Journalism has never been free of propaganda. News has always been produced and marketed like any other commodity, satisfying and shaping consumers’ opinions, loyalties and taste. Over the last thirty years, the US elites and their allies have effectively eliminated conventional journalism in favor of propaganda and counter-propaganda serving their relentless war on the majority world. Integral to that war in recent years has been the purposeful manipulation of social media so as to usurp and compromise any remnants of orthodox news reporting.

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Fracking industry and resigning tsar Natascha Engel hit full media spin cycle on quake rules By Melissa Jones

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8 May 2019 — Spinwatch

Fracking industry and resigning tsar Natascha Engel hit full media spin cycle on quake rules

As an exercise in coordinated media spin, it was a tour de force. UK shale gas commissioner Natascha Engel’s resignation last weekend just seven months into a two-year taxpayer-funded appointment had astute industry PR gloves all over it.

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South Africa: What about the workers? By Terry Bell

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8 May 2019 — Terry Bell Writes

While there has been much media debate about what “black middle-class” voters will do today, there has been nothing about where the votes of unionised workers may go as South Africa completes its sixth non-racial election. This is perhaps because it is widely assumed that, in terms of labour voting patterns, nothing much has changed in the 25 years since the transition from apartheid.

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A Military Psy-Ops Campaign in the Heart of Washington is Directed at U.S. Citizens by Pat Elder

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8 May 2019 — Dandelion Salad

A Military Psy-Ops Campaign in the Heart of Washington is Directed at U.S. Citizens by Pat Elder + Abby Martin on Failed April 30th Coup in Venezuela

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Republished with permission from David Swanson at World Beyond War

I’ve been studying the Pentagon’s use of psychological tactics in the way it recruits youth into the armed forces for 20 years, so I have a sense of the lack of boundaries practiced by the US government through its military. Now I can report on the psychological tactics employed by the State Department through the Secret Service Police. I spent a week in the besieged Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, and I was exposed to a relentless psychological operations campaign (psy-ops) orchestrated by my government to drive peace activists like myself from the embassy.

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Trump’s Encircling of Venezuela: A Fool’s Errand By Wayne Madsen

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8 May 2019 — Strategic Culture Foundation

Relying on the advice of neo-conservative war hawk John Bolton, pompous Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Iran-Contra scandal felon Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump has embarked on the containment encircling of Venezuela. Trump is engaged in a fool’s errand of relying on the support of fascist leaders of Venezuela’s neighbors to pressure Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro to turn over power to a motley collection of Wall Street puppets who want to reverse the Bolivarian socialist policies of Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

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Iran to even the nuclear score with US By M.K. Bhadrakumar

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7 May 2019 — Indian Punchline

It is going to be 30 years in another six months since the USS Abraham Lincoln, named in honour of the 16th US President, was commissioned on Nov.11, 1989 as the 5th Nimitz-class aircraft carrier of the American Navy. Now, as it leaves Croatia and heads toward the Persian Gulf, the carrier would have mixed emotions.

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What is the SRWP’s Vision for South Africa? By Pavan Kulkarni

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8 May 2019 — Internationalist 360°

https://peoplesdispatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/MG_8531.jpg

Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party launch in Johannesburg, South Africa. Photo: Rafael Stedile

With the slogan “Equality, Work, Land!”, the newly-founded Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) of South Africa is set to contest the general election scheduled on May 8. The party aims to use parliamentary institutions to complement mass struggles, with the slogan “socialism and nothing else”. It has unveiled a radical agenda for the country, including abolition of private property rights and free education and healthcare.

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Venezuela Newslinks 7-8 May 2019

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8 May 2019 14:22  — The New Dark Age

There may be some duplication due to cross-posting

‘Duly elected leader’: Pompeo echoes falsehood about Venezuela’s Guaido
https://www.rt.com/news/458754-pompeo-guadio-duly-elected/

Failed ‘Coup’ Actually a Corporate Fake News Story Designed to Trick Venezuelan Soldiers and the Public
https://thiscantbehappening.net/failed-coup-actually-a-corporate-fake-news-story-designed-to-trick-venezuelan-soldiers-and-the-public/ Continue reading →

Will the U.S. Start a War Against Iran? By Vijay Prashad

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7 May 2019 — Asia Times

On Sunday, May 5, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton announced that the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force had begun to make their way from the Mediterranean Sea toward the coastline of Iran. Iran, Bolton said, had made “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.” He was, characteristically, not specific. It was enough that Bolton—who has a history of making hazardous statements—had made these comments from the perch of the White House in Washington, D.C. “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime,” he said rather incredulously. After all, what is the arrival of a massive war fleet on the coastline of a country but a declaration of war?

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