Message from Michael Shellenberger About the Censorship Industrial Complex
Michael Shellenberger is looking for whistle-blowers:
Bad Leakers and Good Leaks.
A recent document leak on Discord shows that the U.S government is lying to Americans. The contents of this leak make it clear that U.S. troops are already on the ground in Ukraine, a situation that dramatically increases the risk of direct confrontation of the U.S. and Russia, which could be cataclysmic given the current situation, already hair-trigger dangerous. The U.S. corporate news is refusing to discuss the new revelations, both the White House dishonesty and the danger on the ground in Ukraine. Why? It's entire predictable.
When the corporate news media likes the content of a leak, they don't give a rat's ass about who leaked it. On other occasions, the corporate news media finds the leak content inconvenient, in which case they zero in, laser-like, to destroy the reputation of the leaker, harping on the illegality of the leak and simultaneously suppressing the content of the leak. This protocol is in their standard playbook, as discussed by Glenn Greenwald in "The Same Establishment Playbook is Used to Malign the Character of Leakers and Distract Attention From the Substance of the Revelations."
On a virtually daily basis, one can find authorized leaks in The New York Times, The Washington Post, on CNN and NBC News: meaning stories dressed up as leaks from anonymous sources that are, in fact, nothing more than messaging assertions that the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Pentagon have instructed these subservient media corporations to disseminate. When that happens, the leaker is never found or punished: even when the leaks are designated as the most serious crimes under the U.S. criminal code, such as when The Washington Post's long-time CIA spokesman David Ignatius in early 2017 published the contents of the intercepted phone calls between Trump's incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Most of Russiagate was constructed based on authorized leaks, a generous way of describing official propaganda from the U.S. Security State laundered in the American corporate press.
But when it comes to unauthorized leaks -- which result in the disclosure of secret evidence showing that the U.S. Security State lied, acted corruptly, or broke laws -- that is when the full weight of establishment power comes crashing down on the head of the leaker. They are found and arrested. Their character is destroyed. And now -- in a new and genuinely shocking escalation -- it is the largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post, that actually do the FBI's work by hunting down the leaker, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest.
This playback is always used in such cases and is easily recognized. The point is to shift attention from the substance of the embarrassing and incriminating disclosures onto the personal traits of the person who exposed them, so as to make the public forget about what they learned and come to see the leaker as so unlikeable that they want nothing to do with the disclosures themselves.
Glenn's System Update Episode #70 further explores the media's treatment of the Discord leaker.
NYT Forced to Acknowledge U.S. Spy Efforts due to Third Party Release of Leaked Documents
In Daniel Ellsberg's day, the NYT was seen as a place friendly to whistle-blowers and those who have documents exposing secret government activities. No longer. Further, the NYT refuses to post a link to the leaked documents, only linking to its own hand-wringing articles. Nowadays, secret documents are leaked elsewhere and the NYT needs to play catch-up, coupling its reluctant acknowledgement with a warning about the damage that could be caused by leaks about secret U.S. activity:
The leak has the potential to do real damage to Ukraine’s war effort by exposing which Russian agencies the United States knows the most about, giving Moscow a potential opportunity to cut off the sources of information. Current and former officials say it is too soon to know the extent of the damage, but if Russia is able to determine how the United States collects its information and cuts off that flow, it may have an effect on the battlefield in Ukraine.
The leak has already complicated relations with allied countries and raised doubts about America’s ability to keep its secrets. After reviewing the documents, a senior Western intelligence official said the release of the material was painful and suggested that it could curb intelligence sharing. For various agencies to provide material to each other, the official said, requires trust and assurances that certain sensitive information will be kept secret.
On the other hand, if you are part of the U.S. security state, the NYT is more than happy to post your propaganda, as it did in the case of the Nord Stream Pipeline. Unbelievably, knowing that it's "explanation" of the pipeline destruction is bullshit, the NYT suggests it's not a good idea to dig further into who destroyed the pipeline:
It's a good day to celebrate the immense good fortune of NYT reporters who get to draw big salaries while not having to do the difficult work of actually practicing journalism.
Proposed new Mission Statement for the New York Times: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.
Joe Biden promised to disable the pipeline prior to its destruction:
Biden's neocon crony, Victoria Nuland, helped to lead the post-destruction cheerleading, as Aaron Maté reminds us, but, again, Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.
No wonder the corporate media and their U.S. government partners hate Twitter 2.0...
The Little Sailboat that Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline
1. Joe Biden promises he will make Nord Stream pipeline inoperable. Someone then destroys the pipeline. Biden then denies that he had anything to do with this act of war. 2. Next, Seymour Hersh publishes detailed investigative article showing how the U.S. destroyed the pipeline. 3. Germany, co-owner of the pipeline, displays what has got to be the most vivid case of Stockholm Syndrome in human history. 4. U.S. news media ignores the Hersh story. 5. The CIA cooks up an absurd alternative story that not-Joe-Biden destroyed the pipeline. The pipeline was destroyed using "Pro-Ukrainian" group that uses a 49 foot sailboat. 6. The NYT, which has now begrudgingly acknowledged Hersh's blockbuster story, laps up the CIA story. 7. Seymour Hersh destroys the NYT-CIA story with a handful of simple questions.
Excerpt from Hersh's newest story, "THE NORD STREAM GHOST SHIP: The false details in the CIA's cover story":
My initial report received coverage around the world but was ignored by the major newspapers and television networks in the United States. As the story gained traction in Europe and elsewhere abroad, the New York Times on March 7 published a report quoting US officials asserting that American intelligence had accumulated information suggesting that a pro-Ukrainian group sabotaged the pipelines. The story said officials who had “reviewed” the new intelligence depicted it to be “a step toward determining responsibility” for the pipeline sabotage. The Times story got worldwide attention, but nothing more has been heard since from the newspaper about who did what. In an interview for a Times podcast, one of the three authors of the article inadvertently explained why the story was dead on arrival. The writer was asked about the involvement of the alleged pro-Ukrainian group: “What makes you think that’s what happened?” He answered: “I should be very clear that we know really very little. Right?”
Coca-Cola’s Tactics to Keep Sugary Coke Freely Flowing to Unhealthy People.
Shocking disclosures by whistle-blower Calley Means, interviewed by Tucker Carlson. The things that soft-drink manufacturers do to make sure that their sugar-water is widely available and that Americans are lead to believe that sugar-consumption is healthy. Here's one of Means' disclosures that stood out: Coke and processed food companies spend 11 times more on nutrition research than the NIH. Coca-Cola pays big money for peer-reviewed studies by elite institutions, studies that conclude that sugar does not cause obesity.