Major Media Organize to Rig Web-Search Results
by Eric Zuesse at Strategic Culture
The New York Times, as Robert Parry has pointed out, “Cheers the Rise of Censorship”, but only of censorship of any allegations that expose the fraudulence of the NYT’s allegations. The Washington Post, Google, the TV networks, and practically all of the famous providers of ‘news’, have joined forces in order to block from the internet any statements that contradict, or especially any evidence that disproves, what they collectively define to be ’true’; and, while they do this, they add a lie: that their sole aim in doing this rigging of web-search results is to prevent ‘misinformation’ from polluting your mind.
They use as an excuse the existence of some flagrantly fabricated reports on obscure websites, but if the mainstream press can ban reports such as those, then they can also ban real news reports, which expose the mainstream’s own lies. In other words: they are implementing their collective power to block you from being able to know that they’re systematically lying. Will the public trust them with this power?
Parry says that if this effort by them is allowed to proceed, then we shall be fully in the Brave New World, of 1984 — and, of course, he is correct in that, which means that everyone should unsubscribe and not pay a cent to all of the ’news’ media that are trying to block the public from having access to evidence and allegations that contradict what these bullies in the ‘news’ media pump as being their mutually-agreed-upon ‘truth’.
Is this a religion that they’re proselytizing, or is it the press in a democracy? Is what these people are trying to impose, upon the public, in accord with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Consider the Amendment carefully:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
There is no “free exercise” at all, if this religion — this faith in the infallibility of some allegedly inerrant scripture (in this case: whatever these ’news’media are saying) — is being imposed. Is the First Amendment intended to protect the right of the owners of the press, these people who own the media; or is it instead intended to protect the right of the public to have access to all sides of every public issue so that they will be able to vote in elections in an honestly informed way, which may have some falsehoods in it (because perfection does not exist in any societal enterprise), but which has been selected by each voter instead of imposed upon the voter (canonized as ‘holy scripture’, even if not overtly alleged to be such)? And, is this “the press” intended to be some portion of the press, that is somehow rightfully empowered to crush all the rest? Is what America’s mainstream ‘news’media are trying to do here, not only a flagrant violation of their most solemn responsibility to the public whom they are supposed to be serving, but also a form of real treachery against the nation itself?
What happens if a portion of the press bullies the rest of the press and blocks their ability to report ‘inconvenient truths’? (This is what’s now being put into place, by the effort to prevent discordant allegations and evidence from being carried on the internet.) If Congress were to pass a law to prohibit that bullying, would doing this support the aim and spirit of the First Amendment, or instead violate it? You decide — and then, once you decide, maybe contact your Senators and Representative to outlaw any such bullying. How many politicians would allege that the First Amendment protects the right of some media-owners to block news-reports from other media-owners? It wouldn’t fly.
The passion that the owners of the regular ‘news’ media (who prohibited the publication of the evidence that George W. Bush was lying about ‘WMD in Iraq’ in order to invade) have to deceive the public, is getting out of control, now. Their arrogance is running away with them. Why? Could it possibly be because more and more Americans are coming to distrust the American press? Are the presslords becoming desperate now?
They want you not to know that they are lying when they allege that clear and convincing evidence has been presented that Bashar al-Assad perpetrated a sarin gas attack on April 4th — and not to know that President Trump was lying when he bombed Syria saying that clear evidence had been presented to him showing this to have been proven.
They want you not to know that they lied when saying that Assad was behind the 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack which was Obama’s “red line” to invade Syria, and which was actually perpetrated by the ‘rebels’ (Al Qaeda allies in Syria) whom Obama was backing to overthrow Assad.
They want you not to know that in February 2014 the Obama regime perpetrated a coup that overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine and replaced his government by a racist-fascist, rabidly Russian-hating, regime, right on Russia’s borders, to place U.S. missiles there against Russia.
They want you not to know that Obama’s sanctions against Russia for accepting Crimea back into Russia, of which Crimea had been for hundreds of years a part until the Soviet dictator arbitrarily transferred it to Ukraine in 1954, are punishing Russia when the actual villain in the entire affair was Obama himself.
They want to force you to believe what they publish to be reality, and that what you are reading here and in the linked-to sources here, is merely ‘fake news’. If it is news of any type, it is real history, because those media-bullies didn’t report it when it was news. Instead, they hid it from you. Now, after-the-fact, it has become history, but when it was news, it was being hidden from you, and they would have called it ‘fake news’ if they had mentioned it at all.
Do you trust those ‘news’ media? If so, why? And what will be the end-result of their success in what they are doing, if not World War III and nuclear annihilation?
Some of them (such as “Democracy Now!”) pretend to be ‘progressive’, even while pumping lies for the aristocracy. Their audience are deceived into thinking that the main source of funding for such sites is these poor idealists themselves, so they donate, not imagining that billionaires are actually the main funding-source behind such ‘news’ sites.
The aristocrats who got Hitler into power were no more obsessed to control the world than are America’s aristocracy today; and, this time, the results could be even worse.
This is deadly serious. But to America’s aristocrats, it’s only a game that they are dead-set on ‘winning’.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Google has threatened one of my publishers, which depressed him, but he ultimately decided that truth is more important than ‘success’. Another, which happens to be in Germany, likewise resists, and is also being forced, by both Google and Facebook, to beg for donations from readers, in order to be able to keep going. And those are just two examples. This operation by the major media and its advertisers, etc., is what today calls itself ‘the free press’, in ‘the free world’.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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The Grauniad is now in cahoots with ultra-right warmongering madman James Crapper.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/14/james-clapper-donald-trump-russia-james-comey-firing
[ In case anyone still thought the Guardian was some kind of lefty publication.]
I remember as a kid seeing and old black and white film based on H.G.Wells dystopian short story ‘The Time Machine’. In the novel/film our time traveller goes far into the future and discovers a world where the human race has bifurcated into two distinct species: the morlocks and the elois. The morlocks, descendants of the proletariat, keep the whole show on the road and live underground and keeping the surface dwellers, the elois, descended from the bourgeoisie, alive. However there is a catch, the morlocks have degenerated into a cannibalistic, carnivore species, who periodically feast of the elois. The elois themselves are pretty useless, brainless and self-centred creatures (I hesistate to say humans) whose sole purpose is to satisfy the appetite of the morlocks.
There is one interesting scene where the sirens, a relic of the old atomic wars, start to wail. At this the elois walk obediently into the fallout shelters and are subsequently served up as the morlocks meal de jour.
One wonders are a species of elois now being ideologically and biologically engineered by the powers-that-be. It could be, as Orwell speculated, that a breed of humans is being produced that doesn’t want freedom justice and liberty, or even reason, in the same way as it has been possible through selective breeding to produce short-horned cattle.
Not sure you can “breed” for social behavior, though you certainly train for it, through indoctrination. What must be seen is that freedom and liberty (& that cute democracy) are unnatural. The natural world is fiercely totalitarian, oppressive and violent, the way out masters want it. Social values must be inculcated and maintained, which’s hard, heady work that most people shun.
I fear Bertrand Russell was right: “Most people would rather die than think; in fact they do.”
“This is deadly serious. But to America’s aristocrats, it’s only a game that they are dead-set on ‘winning’.”
This is absolutely true. We in the glorious West are on the cusp of a kind of indirect liberal fascism. The argument they are using is basically: “In order to “save” democracy from imaginary enemies we must destroy what remains of it!”
It’s a ludicrous situation…and deadly serious. And yet people shuffle along like nothing has changed. “You shouldn’t take things so seriously” I am told time and time again. It’s a horrible feeling…like the world is gong mad, but it’s the people who are pointing out this madness that are labelled as “too serious”.
It’s like the entire west has traded belief in illusions (and delusions) where once “truth” and “facts” held some sway. Now “truth” is conflated with “opinion”. Language itself is being corrupted.
During the American election campaign I mentioned to a friend that while I am no fan of Trump for Hillary Clinton to play the righteous feminist and accuse him of being a misogynist is stunningly hypocritical. I mean Just look at Bill Clinton’s sordid history as a sexual predator and Hillary’s “feminist” role as his defender, shaming and belittling his accusers. My friend’s response? “No, I can’t believe that.” But it’s a matter of public record I said. “No I can’t believe that” she repeated.
In a conversation with another friend who was upset at Trump’s travel ban I mentioned Obama’s history of killing Muslims and how strange that this is never mentioned in the media. I went on to list some of Obama’s betrayals and broken promises to which he replied “But I like Obama”.
These are not stupid people. But what to say when they simply reject inconvenient truths out of hand? This is the thing. And there are many many people like them. It’s not that they present a counter-argument, which would be great, they refuse to engage at all. This is frightening because there is no getting through to people who psychologically trick themselves like this and block out facts that make them uncomfortable.
The same phenomenon was on display during the “fall” of Aleppo. No matter how much evidence there was to discount the propaganda about massacres by the SAA and allies people simply refused to consider that maybe the media is lying to them. After all, it’s happened before as even they would have to admit. But truth and facts mean nothing to a growing number of people.
This is the pattern I see: For something to be acknowledged as “real” it has to get mass media coverage…if it’s in the media, it must be “real”. If the media does not cover it, it may as well not have happened at all. The mediascape not only defines reality, it is becoming reality itself for many westerners. This is crazy. It is a nightmare become real. And there is no waking up and sighing in relief that it was only a dream.
“And there is no waking up and sighing in relief that it was only a dream.”
Sure there is … once you’re dead!
Actually Seamus, surely waking up is not a death sentence – but the start of a transcendent life sentence?
Yes Eric, but in a previous incarnation – before you dropped your middle name (Arthur) – didn’t you write “in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act?” Keep up the good work, it’s not you – it’s the rest of them that are mad!
I think the left has an unfortunate tendency to see the world and human behavior far too rationally and mechanistically. I imagine this is kind of hangover from vulgar Marxism. The media functions like a church and increasingly the journalists are what amounts to a priesthood, an order or cult that really thinks it knows the difference between the Truth and Lies and is uniquely qualified for this important task. At least in the past one had the possibility of not going to church and hearing the sermons. Today the sermons and the church occupy our own homes and it’s difficult to escape the news. Of course when I mention this to journalists and people who teach journalism, they recoil in absolute horror and I suddenly know what a heretic must have felt like in the Middle Ages faced with the wrath of the Church.
I think everyone has to assume they know the difference between truth and lies otherwise it’s hard to see how they could even function. The problem with journalists is that they fail to see – or more likely they do not want to see – that they are only reporting what they are allowed to report. It’s a familiar experience. You know what you need to do to get ahead or even to merely keep your job. And if you need to deceive yourself to maintain self-respect then you are willing to do so.
I would also add science to the list of “churches” that subdue the masses with “objective truths” that cannot be questioned. The media and “scientism” are the modern version of the medieval church.
Americans constantly referring to their constitution and how this and that act goes against this or that amendment is on the same level as leftists who are still shocked that the media tells lies. The constitution means nothing to those in power and sometimes the earnest bleating of constitution enthusiasts gets irritating. How many times can one be “outraged” at the powerful ignoring the laws of the land before realizing they will never respect the same laws they expect the little people to follow.
You’re assuming that a rational or reasoned view of the world is an impediment to understanding how it works? How would we know if people were telling lies and spreading misinformation and propaganda if we did not have the ability to reason and use logic, and to insist on evidence-based argument?
This is not some hangover from whatever “Marxism” may or may not have existed. What does “Marxism” mean anyway? The way everyone throws that word around has made it meaningless. Likewise, “left” and “right” in their political sense have become drained of meaning. The way you use the terms “Marxism” and “left” reveals your bias which in turn inhibits your understanding of the Western MSM. The church analogy might apply to some media outlets and journalists but not necessarily to all of them … and I doubt that several hundred years ago people in most European countries had the option of not going to church and hearing sermons.
It is similar or virtually a form of ‘rational’ or secular religion. The worship of ‘universal’ western, liberal, values and principles, also known as Democracy. The Truth is what ‘we’ agree it is. The holy consensus that comes out of Washington. It’s incredibly dangerous, people setting themselves up as the arbiters of what is True and Right, Real and not Fake, and that Facts are truly sacred, even when they are Lies in the service of aggression and war.
You are making too much of an issue out of the rational/religious dichotomy. It isn’t a question of “worship” of certain values or whatever. It’s a question of using whatever jargon will be effective. If e.g. “democracy” is a word that gets support for the elite in Washington then they’ll happily use that word.
I don’t think I am, making too much of it. If I thought these people were merely cynics manipulating and using language for temporary advantage, I’d be overjoyed. Only I don’t think that. One can appeal to a cynic’s objective interests and ‘cut a deal’ to quote Trump. It’s another story entirely to convince dogmatic true believers that they’re wrong, because they actually believe what they are saying and that’s what makes them so dangerous, their sincerity.
Any thoughts on Duck duck go as a search engine?
Good question. I use it myself but ask myself how it’s “funded”… But the bottom line is “does it really matter” when everything you type and everything you read can be filtered and altered in-flight? Maybe I’m cynical. But it’s probably still a lot safer to exchange ideas in the pub.
Any thoughts on Off Guardian as a web site? 😉
” I use it myself but ask myself how it’s ‘funded’ …”
Good question. I use it, too, but I’ve always been curious. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Business_model
This is Eric Zuesse. Off-Guardian is rock-solid honest. The integrity of its three principals is unsurpassed anywhere. I submit each of my articles to all major ‘news’ sites and to almost all of the minor ones that have any significant audience, and Off-Guardian is one of only around a dozen sites that has the courage to publish any of them. Each one of these sites is honestly trying to present only the best researched highest quality articles to its readers, without any ideological or pecuniary “filters.” If even one of the major new-media were so rock-solid honest, politics in our countries would be very different. Nobody makes a profit from providing a top-quality news-medium. There’s no substantial market for it. The few top-quality sites are all hobbies, none is a business, and this includes that none is a non-profit business — there are no backers for any such thing amongst the aristocracy anywhere. This type of thing is a calling, not a business of any sort.
So where do you suggest I search for info?
There should be a public outrage against this form of censoring free speech, with a legal claim to the highest Court in the USA and elsewhere for the right to hold opinions however diverse to those of the ” ruling oliarchy ” now, at once.
Just stop using Google for any searches whatever. Same with Bing. No users means no advertising revenues equals belly up in three years.
I wish that it were that simple. Google is far from being a high quality search-engine, but none is, and duckduckgo and startpage and bing and others are even worse. It’s like other software, such as Apple’s, and Microsoft’s, and Facebook, and twitter: all of them are extremely sub-optimally designed, but that’s all there is. Unfortunately, this is the reality. The only thing with Google is that they’re gung-ho to crush media that present high-quality dissenting articles and sites — like this one. That’s an ethical no-no, in my book.