Hide the Photos of the Maimed and the Dead, so the War Looks Sterile, Glorious and Successful.

They hide the dead to help the "fight for freedom." Most corporate news organizations have been cheerleaders for the wars waged by the party in power.  They curate the experience for you to spare you the trouble of thinking.  Think of Afghanistan. And see here.  Raw photography would end almost every war, so that's why you are not permitted to see the photos, especially photos of up-close suffering, maiming of civilians and death, in the corporate media. Not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran or anywhere else that the US fights for "freedom." Robert Fisk, Robert Fisk (1946–2020) was a highly regarded British journalist and author:

I always remember when Madeleine Albright announced that Israel was under siege. For a brief moment, I asked myself, if there were Palestinian tanks in Haifa. How do we reach a stage where we so distort reality that we actually have a lethal effect on the conflict itself? The worst example of this, I'm sorry to say, is television, the way in which, unless an Iraqi is obliging enough in a war to die romantically beside the road in silhouette with all his arms still attached, you do not see the dead for viewers of television, not in the Arab world, I might add that in the West we do not see the dead, and thus our leaders, all of whom at the moment have ZERO experience of real war--the journalists do, but not our leaders in the West--they are able to present, to the public, war as a bloodless sand pit. War as something primarily to do with victory and defeat rather than death, which is exactly what is about on a large scale. War represents the total failure of the human spirit.

And I had a perfect example of this in 2003 I was in Baghdad. I was trying to get down to Basra. I got halfway, and then I was so frightened I could hardly write. And were so many bombs dropping from my own Air Force, among others, that I turned back to Baghdad. But Al Jazeera were in Basra, and they got back the same day to Baghdad with their video film, and I sat with them in their little tent. You probably realized that in a war, many of the big agencies pool their material, especially the television companies. So it was being sent through the satellite to Reuters in London, whose job was to edit the film. So of course, this was film of a civilian hospital. There were some soldiers brought in wounded and dead, but most of the pictures were of dead and wounded, women and children. They had been killed and wounded by British artillery fire in Basra. The British were besieging Basra while the Americans took the highway to claim Baghdad. And what was particularly revealing was, as they showed the film, I listened to the remarks coming back from London. You know, there were terrible scenes. It was one of a child holding its intestines and a woman with part of her hand missing. And there were screams and cries and lots of blood on the film. And the voice from London said, "You know, we can't really show this. You can't show this to people at tea time." And by this moment, I had my notebook out for The Independent, my newspaper. THIS was going to be tonight's story. So [Al Jazeera] said, "Please, please. Please, we risked our life for this. Just let us put out a little bit more of the film. Maybe you can use it." And of course, there were more pictures of blood and wounded children and dead children. And then the voice came back and said, "This is obscene. We can't put obscene pictures like this on Western television." They pleaded again by now, of course. My pen was skidding over the pages. These were great quotes, because this is what was wrong. And then the voice came back for the third and final time. "We can't show these pictures because we must respect the dead." Now you get the point. We didn't respect them when they were alive. We didn't respect them when we blew them to bits. But when they're dead, by God, we have to respect them.

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US Corporate Media’s indifference to Netanyahu’s Support of Hamas

Again, things aren't what they were reported to be by the US corporate media. This video clip is from the 2024 documentary The Bibi Files (directed by Alexis Bloom, produced by Alex Gibney), which uses leaked Israeli police interrogation footage from 2016–2018. I asked Grok to double-check the translations of the letter to Qatar and the verbal statements of Netanyahu. Here's the important point: According to major U.S. corporate media outlets (such as The New York Times, CNN, NPR, and others), Israel's policy of approving and facilitating Qatari cash transfers to Gaza (under Hamas control) was not prominently explained to the American public in the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks. Instead, the focus was overwhelmingly on the Hamas attacks themselves, the scale of the violence, Israel's response, and initial hostage negotiations. AM.png" alt="" width="474" height="560" />

Netanyahu's statement (in the video) translated: AM.png" alt="" width="474" height="560" />

Netanyahu (in Hebrew, with English subtitles/narration in the documentary):“This is confidential and can’t be leaked, okay? We have neighbors here, sworn enemies. I’m constantly passing them messages. I confuse them, mislead them, lie to them, and then hit them over their heads.

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More on the Nord Stream Pipeline

Mike Benz: "Now even Blob Media is admitting Ukraine commandos blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, the CIA knew it and even coordinated with them in advance, then the Biden State Department lied to your fuckin face and told you Russia did it."

Here's the background.  Here and here:

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Iran NOT in the News . . .

This is a collection of some posts I made on X today:

I'll start with John Cleese:

It would be simple if US corporate media would simply tell us what's going on, but that's not what they consider their job to be. They have gone almost completely silent because they're trying to figure out how to spend this because the inconvenient to their ideology.

Tonight in Iran:

Elon Musk comes to the rescue with Starlink

How the Corporate media has covered past revolutions:

And all of a sudden this happens. The DNC must have sent out the memo that it's now a good thing for Democrats to criticize Hamas. Incredible lock-step obedience in one of the least organic 180s I've ever witnessed.

[More . .. ]

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The Gymnastics many “News” Providers Do with Verifiable Facts

Journalism is not merely about providing the facts. There are so many ways to manipulate, censor and palter even though one is using verifiable facts. This is an excellent post by Michael Nayna:

There are three information filters that allow journalists to bend reality using verifiable facts.

#1 – Story selection. Each day offers thousands of stories, and editors typically highlight those that align with an ideological perspective. Politically inconvenient events can be ignored or buried with minimal coverage.

#2 – Fact selection within stories. The amount of details within a particular event is massive, and a journalist needs to choose which ones are relevant. I once worked with a journalist who had been covering a series of attacks on Indian students on public transport. The outlet’s interest was in the racial angle, but an interviewee mentioned other victims. She asked about their nationality, then chose not to pursue those attacks in detail because the victims were Australian. A single vague line made the final cut, and the piece implied racial motive when it couldn’t have been.

#3 – Framing facts with emotive conjugation. For instance, if I’m covering someone I don’t like, he’s cheap; if I’m neutral, he’s frugal; if I like him, he’s thrifty. Someone can be passionate, emotional, or hysterical; careful, hesitant, or cowardly; they can glisten, perspire, or sweat. This is subtle, but once you notice it, you’ll find that even though there’s better and worse news, none of it is purely objective.

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