November 2023 Propaganda Report: 60 Minutes Strikes Again...and Again...and Again!

Now that I’ve begun to dip my toes back into the cesspool of propaganda, I’m once again coming to the grim realization that I don’t have to walk far to find those putrid waters.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I stumbled upon an episode of the CBS dinosaur 60 Minutes and was shocked/amused at how shamelessly it peddled propaganda against Russia, China and Iran, no doubt in the hopes of convincing gullible Americans into believing some Manichean ideal about us being the good guys, and them being the bad guys, and how we must righteously annihilate them in a world war.

In the weeks that followed, 60 Minutes has kept up its relentless propaganda pace with astounding consistency. In fact, since 60 Minutes started its 56th season on September 17, 2023, over the course of eleven episodes the show has run an astonishing twelve segments either directly or tangentially accusing Russia, China and/or Iran of various evils and nefariousness. This relentless cavalcade of propaganda pieces has been entirely devoid of nuance or journalistic integrity, filled with false assumptions, decidedly one-sided, egregiously vacuous and transparently contrived.

The 60 Minutes episode from November 12th is a perfect example of the type of vapid-to-the-point-of-inane propaganda now common place in American media. The topic on this episode was…shock of shocks…the evil of those nefarious Iranians and Russians!! How original.

The first segment was about an alleged Iranian government program to kill or kidnap American officials, citizens and Iranian dissidents on U.S. soil, which is a nmcie companion piece to the 60 Minutes segment I previously wrote about which dealt with an Iranian-American arrested for espionage in Iran, who was eventually part of a recent prisoner swap.

Leslie Stahl, sporting her trademark physics-defying hairstyle that is best described as Andy Warhol run through a nuclear Cuisinart and a turbo wind tunnel, started off the festivities by reading a list of U.S. officials allegedly targeted. The list included such world-class asshats as Mike Esper, Mike Pompeo and to top it all off, John fucking Bolton.

Bolton and Stahl sat down for one of the more contrived sequences in 60 Minutes history, which is quite an accomplishment, and Bolton, as is his wont, talked tough while looking like a constipated Seussian character. Bolton is one of the more blood-thirsty and maniacal hawks in recent U.S. history, again…quite an accomplishment, and he is completely devoid of any credibility on issues revolving around Iran, Russia, China, the Middle East, Europe, Asia or anywhere else in the world, but Stahl, of course, lapped up his braggadocio bullshit and never once pushed back against his false bravado or his claims…nor did she…you know…show any actual evidence to back up the FBI’s claims of an Iranian kidnap/assassination program.

Stahl then interviewed Masi Alinejad, an Iranian dissident woman living in Brooklyn whom the FBI claims was targeted by this Iranian kidnapping/assassination plot.

Alinejad came to the U.S. fourteen years ago and has been an outspoken advocate for women in Iran, and routinely confers with women in Iran and posts videos online of them not wearing a headscarf in defiance of Iranian religious law.

To be kind, Alinejad comes across as absolutely batshit crazy. She is hyper emotional and seems like the type of person you’d see wandering the streets of Brooklyn talking to neighborhood squirrels while wearing an ornate Kentucky Derby hat and a vintage wedding dress.

Alinejad shared her story of how Iran hired an Azerbaijani man in New York to buy a gun and track down Alinejad, then kidnap her and take her to Iran for trial.

Stahl’s reaction to this story is as revealing as it is pretty funny, as she says it “sounds implausible”. No shit Leslie…maybe it “sounds implausible” because it is, in fact, implausible.

Apparently, the kidnap plot against Alinejad crumbles and so the Iranians pivoted and told this criminal from Azerbaijan to skip the kidnapping and just kill her. The criminal allegedly stalks her, then goes up to her front door and “tries to get in” her house.

What’s weird about this claim of this guy trying to break in to Alinejad’s house is that 60 Minutes shows door cam footage of him on her porch meant to prove the claim, but the video doesn’t show him actually trying to get in to her house at all…in fact he never touches the door. He wanders back on forth on the porch looking at his phone, like a delivery man wondering if he has the wrong address. If there was footage of him actually trying to break in, which would be pretty damning…60 Minutes would’ve shown it. But apparently, they don’t because they didn’t.

According to the story, the alleged assassin then leaves…apparently because he couldn’t get in the house – no doubt held back by the fact that he never touched the door, and then is pulled over by cops for “running a stop sign”, and the police find a rifle in the trunk of his car.

Let’s unpack this shall we…the guy has a weapon, which the FBI alleges he was going to use to kill Alinejad at the behest of Iran, but for some inexplicable reason he decides not to take the weapon with him when he goes to kill her and ends up just standing around like a dope on her porch. What was he going to do, meet her, introduce himself and then tell her to hold on while he runs to his car and gets his rifle?

Also, never believe coincidences in cases like this. This guy wasn’t pulled over by the cops by happenstance…he was marked and everyone knew what he was doing. A strong indicator of this is that if you or I run a stop sign, the police are not going to search the trunk of our car. They will give you a ticket and that will be that. This is why I assume that this alleged assassin from Azerbaijan was actually either an intelligence agency asset or an informant of some kind, and that the entire plot was manufactured by the feds.

Now why would I assert such a crazy thing? Well because this 60 Minutes story also reveals that the man who allegedly wanted to kidnap or kill John Bolton hired a hitman online (yeah…ok) and that hitman wasn’t really a hitman…he was…you guessed it…an FBI informant.

The FBI has lots of informants and they get up to lots of nefarious stuff for their fed paymasters. For example, that 2020 kidnap plot against Michigan governor Whitmer…the vast majority of people involved were actually working for the FBI. If you look at many big-name cases, particularly in the wake of 9-11, the same is true. Hell, at the very least two of the 9-11 hijackers were living with an FBI informant in San Diego right before the attacks.

So, take all of this nonsense from the FBI and 60 Minutes about a vast Iranian assassination/kidnap plot with a gigantic grain of salt.

That said, governments and their intelligence agencies do kidnap and kill citizens of other countries. You know how I know that? Because 60 Minutes unironically shows a video in this segment where an Iranian citizen confesses to assisting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard with their kidnapping and assassination program. The Iranian man, a smuggler who was allegedly given carte blanch in his illegal business if he cooperated with the Revolutionary Guard, confesses in a video MADE BY ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE AGENTS IN THE BACK OF A CAR AFTER THESE SAME ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE AGENTS KIDNAPPED AND FORCEFULLY INTERROGATED THE GUY. Ms. Stahl fails to recognize the irony of using a confession video obtained through an Israeli kidnapping plot to prove the villainy of Iranians for their kidnapping plots.

Speaking of other governments kidnapping people…that sounds sort of like…I don’t know… the U.S. government rendition program under the Bush regime.

And speaking of assassinations of other country’s government officials…that sounds a lot like the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Not to mention the cavalcade of scientists assassinated in Iran by Israeli intelligence in the last decade.

Stahl does bring up the Soleimani assassination but fails to see any similarities as the Iranian General was a “terrorism mastermind”. As always, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder, as U.S. foreign policy over the last 75 years has killed and terrorized infinitely more people, especially Iranian people, than the “terrorist” Soleimani could ever dream of matching. Bolton, Pompeo and the entirety of the George W. Bush administration are at a minimum, equals to Soleimani on the terrorism chart.

Speaking of dead Iranians…does anybody remember the 290 Iranian murdered by the U.S. in 1988 when the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down Iranian Air flight 655 over Iranian airspace? Well…I’m sure Iranians do, and they probably think of it as a terror attack. The George H.W. Bush was president at the time and he refused to apologize to Iran because America never apologizes….typical terrorists behavior.

Stahl goes on to recount the FBI allegations against Iran saying that in order to keep a legal distance, Iran uses “proxies” from the criminal world to do their dirty work.

This sounds quite similar to how the U.S. intelligence community uses criminals to run guns and drugs into the U.S. from Central and South America in order to fund their black budget projects…like, ironically enough, Iran-Contra.

It is also similar to how prior to the war in Afghanistan, poppy production in that country under Taliban rule had fallen to nearly zero…but after we went on the hunt for Bin Laden by starting a war there, poppy production skyrocketed, followed by a flood of heroin into the U.S. and Europe. The same thing happened during Vietnam, when the CIA would run heroin from Thailand through Vietnam and into the U.S. Not surprisingly, Leslie Stahl didn’t bring any of this uncomfortableness up.

Also not surprisingly, when Stahl spoke of Iran using proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah to fight their wars and foment dissent in other countries, she failed to mention how the U.S. has famously used such stand-up good guys as Al Qaeda and ISIS as proxies in the Middle East against various enemies, such as the old Soviet Union and modern-day Syria.

60 Minutes’ allergy to the truth and addiction to establishment propaganda didn’t stop with the inane Iranian kidnapping story. Up next on the same episode was even more WWIII drum banging in the form of a story about Russia’s “cultural genocide” in Ukraine.

In a previous episode, 60 Minutes did a segment about Russia’s “quiet invasion” in Georgia and now they’re doing a segment on Russia’s “cultural genocide”…how sneaky of those Russians to do “quiet” invasions and “cultural” genocides, instead of those noisy invasions and actual genocides like Israel is doing in Gaza.

The main thrust of this segment was that Russia is targeting Ukrainian churches, libraries and museums in order to wipe out Ukrainian culture and identity.

The specifics of the charges against Russia in this case are…well…almost irrelevant considering the dubious sources with incentive to manufacture any story they want with no journalistic resistance to it. That said, I don't doubt in the least that churches, libraries and museums have been destroyed in Ukraine.

What I find fascinating though is that as this story aired another war is raging…this time in Gaza, and lots of churches, including the third oldest Christian church in the world, St. Porphyrius, and hospitals too, have been deliberately targeted, as have civilians.

You can bet your ass that 60 Minutes will not run a story on the cultural genocide of Christians by Israel…and that’s because when Israel commits cultural genocide, or any other kind of genocide, it’s good, but when Russia does it, it’s bad.

To be fair, it isn’t just Israel that gets a free pass…we give a free pass to ourselves as well. Remember when the Iraqi museum under U.S. military control was looted during the Iraq War, and Donald Rumsfeld’s response was to scoff at the charges and then to declare that “stuff happens”?

I certainly do not condone Russia’s military destroying Ukrainian churches, museums and libraries, nor do I condone their alleged looting. But I must say that these charges would be more impactful if western media outlets hadn’t already run with vacuous accusations of Russian rape camps and massacres, both of which have been shown to be scurrilous charges and empty propaganda talking points.

What I find so deplorable about establishment media’s modern war coverage is, whether it be in Ukraine, Syria, or Israel, the manufacturing and hyping of false atrocity stories.

War is bad enough as it is that you don’t need to gin up phony furor over fake rape camps or beheaded babies and the like. War is an atrocity all its own, it doesn’t need any help. And frankly, these stories only further to coarsen and dehumanize the public…which is already pretty coarse and inhumane.

The following Sunday, November 19th, 60 Minutes kept the propaganda train rolling with a segment titled “The Disappeared”, which was a shameless appeal to emotion that was so devoid of journalistic integrity as to be egregious.

The segment told the story of how Russia is “abducting” Ukrainian children from Ukraine and taking them into Russia. 60 Minutes reports that according to the Ukrainian government, the “official” number of children “abducted” by Russia is 19,000 but that they think the “real” number is 300,000…that’s quite a range…one might even say it is “highly improbable”. Just so everyone knows, 60 Minutes makes abundantly clear throughout the segment that all of this “abducting” is a “war crime”.

The story follows a “brave” Ukrainian grandmother, named Paulina, as she “rescues” her nine-year-old grandson Nikita who was “abducted” by the Russians. This story is…ummm…complicated to say the least.

So, Paulina’s grandson Nikita has special needs and was attending a boarding school for disabled students in Ukraine. His parents are completely out of the picture, but why that is, is never revealed in the story, we only learn that the grandmother is “in the process of filing for guardianship of her grandson”. Curious considering that Nikita was “abducted” nearly 8 months ago…which indicates he had no family member as his guardian prior to the “abduction”.  

Also curious is that Paulina lives far away (in Poland) from Nikita, as she works and has to pay for the boarding school….or so 60 Minutes tells us. The reality is that Paulina hasn’t seen Nikita in a long time and it has nothing to do with the Russians. In fact, she is in such close contact with Nikita that she only finds out he has been “abducted” by the Russians, when his picture is posted on social media by a Ukrainian activist group.

The host of the segment, Cecilia Vega, then informs us that over the seven months Nikita was “held captive”, the Russians played a “cruel game of hide and seek”, moving the child three times in eight months.

In an attempt to expose the villainy of the Russians, a digital map is used to show the long journey Nikita was taken on “post-abduction”. First, he is taken out of Ukraine to Crimea, then to Russia proper – but still close to the border, and then…astonishingly…he is taken back to Ukraine not all that far from where he was originally “abducted”. Cecilia Vega’s voice-over sums up this journey by simply declaring that the child was taken “deep into Russian-held territory”.

Paulina then works with an activist group in Ukraine dedicated to “rescuing” the children “abducted” by Russia, and they hatch a plot to get Paulina to Nikita.

We are told by a former Ukrainian politician who now runs the non-profit activist organization that “rescues” these children, that each child who returns to Ukraine is :a witness to a war crime”…which is a strange thing to say since it will just signal to Russia not to release any more children…right? Ms. Vega never asks that question because it would complicate the shallow sound-bite she is so eager to get and the Manichean narrative she has pledged to uphold and propagate.

Then we hear about Vlad, a 16-year-old Ukrainian boy, who recounts his tale of being taken from his home in Ukraine by Russian soldiers and put in a “camp”, which sounds an awful lot like a school. Among the tortures he endures are that he has to say the Russian national anthem every morning (the horror!!).

Vlad also tells us that speaking Ukrainian was forbidden in the “camp”, which means he got to experience exactly what every ethnic Russian Ukrainian citizen experienced after the U.S.-led coup in 2014 in Ukraine. The post-coup government banned the Russian language, Russian media outlets, opposition political parties and even Russian Orthodox Churches…and some Ukrainian ones too.

Vlad, being a teenager, lashes out at these ridiculous restrictions and tears down a Russian flag in anger. He is then put in the detention facility part of the “camp” and is held in “isolation”. 60 Minutes acts like this is the most barbaric thing to have ever occurred, and I concur, that children, even 16-year-olds, should not be put in isolation. Unfortunately, in the U.S. 35% of all prisoners held in youth detention facility are held in isolation at one point during their incarceration. Celia Vega never mentions that fact.

Vega did mention that the Russians were “indoctrinating” children in these “camps” by telling them “repeated lies” like “Ukraine lost the war”. By all observable metrics, Ukraine has lost the war though, and the indoctrination charge is pretty rich coming from 60 Minutes – which does nothing more than indoctrinate its viewers with the most pernicious of propaganda.

As for Vlad, his story is a sad one, but he did get back home, so Russia’s “abduction” campaign seems very, very ineffective. Considering that the Ukrainian military routinely “abducts” teens and old men off the street and uses them as forced conscripts, which they then throw into the meat grinder at the front line to be slaughtered, it’s safe to say that Vlad was lucky to be in a Russian school instead.

And that is really the point of all this. The notion that Russia is moving children out of a war zone for the safety of the children is only absurd and ridiculous if you have a cartoonish and comic book understanding of Russia and Russians. You don’t have to think Russians are the good guys to believe that they don’t want to massacre children.

And considering the fact that Israel has slaughtered more civilians and children in just over a month of war in Gaza, than Russia has in two years in Ukraine, speaks to this reality.

Another piece of evidence backing this notion is that Paulina makes it to the school where Nikita is living under Russian control. Despite the fact that she has no legal guardianship of Nikita, Russian officials, including Maria Mlova-Balova – the woman who is “accused of war crimes” by Ukraine (and 60 Minutes) for her work running Russia’s Child Services, Paulina is allowed to leave with Nikita.

Mlova-Belova, or as 60 Minutes identifies her “the accused war criminal”, tears up with joy at the reunion of Paulina and Nikita. Mlova-Belova – “the accused war criminal”, then gives gifts to Nikita and says to Paulina, “would like you like to stay in the Russian Federation with us maybe? We can give you some money, maybe a car?”

Paulina declines, as Mlova-Belova calls the reunion a “joy” and wishes Paulina and Nikita a “happy life”. Paulina and Nikita then leave for the long journey back to Poland.

Just think about this for a moment…Mlova-Belova –“the accused war criminal”, greets a Ukrainian grandmother with gifts and an offer of citizenship and financial aid, and then allows her to come take her grandson and leave, despite the fact that the Ukrainian government official running the rescue operation says every returned child is a witness to a war crime, and this “war criminal” woman puts the entire interaction on video and shares it with the world.

Does this sound like some nefarious, child-stealing enterprise being run by a “war criminal”? Does Maria Mlova-Belova sound like a monster who wants to harm Ukrainian children? In addition to that, is a nine-year-old boy with special needs some great prized possession or piece of war booty the Russians covet? Or is the more likely scenario that Mlova-Belova is a Russian bureaucrat doing her best to find a safe place or safe home for children in great peril in a very complex and difficult situation? We know what 60 Minutes wants you to think, but the facts of this scenario speak to a much more nuanced and complicated situation.

(This is not to even mention the fact that as this story ran, Israel is waging war in Gaza and making no effort to avoid killing many, many children – according to some reports, over 5,500. It would seem Russia is doing a much more humane thing by removing children from an active war zone. I’ll let you decide.)

On Sunday, November 26th, 60 Minutes ran yet another propaganda segment titled “Rise”, which was about a former American Marine Corps officer who runs a program which brings Ukrainian war widows and their children to the Swiss Alps for a week in order to climb mountains and confront their psychological trauma of having lost a husband/father.

The segment was hosted by a weepy, teary-eyed Scott Pelley, who introduced us to Nathan Schmidt, the former Marine who served three brutal tours in Iraq and has the psychological scars to prove it.

Pelley repeats the terms “Putin’s invasion” and “Putin’s unprovoked invasion” like mindless mantras throughout the segment, just so everyone knows that subtlety and nuance are not welcome on 60 Minutes, despite those declarative condemnations being, at best, disputed. To state aloud that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked” is to prove yourself uninformed to the point of illiteracy in the recent history of Ukraine and America’s involvement.

There is a certain irony in the fact that Schmidt, who is so obviously torn up about what he witnessed and experienced in Iraq, helping Ukrainians heal from the psychological wounds of war, when the Iraqis, whose country he invaded, are apparently left to fend for themselves when it comes to dealing with the immense trauma, he and his nation inflicted upon them.

When hearing the very sad stories of the Ukrainian war widows and their children, I couldn’t help but wonder…where are the ethnic Russian Ukrainians who lived in the Donbas who were left widowed and orphaned by the Ukrainian government’s bombardment of thei towns and villages post the 2014 coup – a coup which was instigated and sponsored by the U.S.? Ukraine killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbas…so there are lots of war widows and orphans to choose from for a healing mountain climb. Why weren’t they invited?

And where is the healing mountain climbing for the relatives of the 48 ethnic Russian Ukrainian citizens who were burned alive in the union house in Odessa in 2014 by Ukrainians and backed by the U.S. installed Ukrainian government? I’m sure they’d like to climb a mountain and forget their troubles too.

This 60 Minutes segment is the heartstrings portion of the propaganda program, similar to the previous segment on the “disappeared” children. It is meant to overwhelm you with raw emotion, which will short circuit your brain and your critical thinking ability. Facts? We don‘t need facts! We need feelings!!

The thing that bothers me the most about this wave of 60 Minutes propaganda pieces is not the shamelessness, but the obvious venality, vacuity and malignant intent of it all.

This 60 Minutes anti-Russian/China/Iran propaganda isn’t meant to inform, it is meant to inflame. Its goal is to misinform, disinform and blind the populace to reality and dull their ability to think critically while aggravating their emotions, all in the hopes of ginning up support for a massive war against the new Axis of Evil.

War is undoubtedly a racket, and 60 Minutes is a critical part of that racket’s infrastructure. The dupes and dopes who buy into the bullshit that 60 Minutes and the neo-con American government are peddling, will ride the wave of their incuriosity and righteousness, and flag-wave us into a world war and our own annihilation.

I know Quixotically waving my red warning flags will make no difference in the long run and will do nothing to stop the inevitable, but at least it gives me something to do while the dogs of war howl louder and louder and 60 Minutes keeps the beat by incessantly banging their war drums.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Propaganda Watch - Ireland Edition

This past Thursday, a man stabbed and seriously injured five people, two women and three young children, at a school in Dublin, Ireland.

Anti-immigration protests broke out in response to the attack, which many believed to have been committed by an Algerian immigrant (a claim which has not been officially confirmed), and escalated into a riot, with police being assaulted, buildings and vehicles being burned, and stores looted.

The preceding two paragraphs are my simple attempt to describe in as journalistically neutral a way the calamitous events of November 24, 2023 in Dublin, Ireland. It could certainly use a few more drafts and an editor, but it is professional enough to be passable.

It wasn’t that hard to write those two paragraphs, and yet, perusing the coverage of the terrible events in Dublin on Thursday in the leading newspapers here in the U.S., one finds some egregious journalism, insipid bias, and blatant propaganda on display. When compared to these newspaper’s coverage of similar incidents, it reveals an ingrained bias and insidious level of propaganda that is alarming but not shocking.

Let’s start with the “paper of record” The New York Times.

The New York Times headline on its original article about the Dublin incident reads, “Rioters Clash With Police in Dublin After Children are Hurt in Knife Attack”.

At first glance this seems to be accurate, but when you read between the lines you realize the headline, and the story beneath, are a minefield of managed propaganda.

Let’s start with the phrase “children are hurt in knife attack”. This phraseology is intentionally meant to diminish the horror of the attack. Notice, the children are “hurt”, which is a passive descriptor, and the term “attack” is not a verb here, and is also passive.

Another way to write the headline would be to describe the incident as “children wounded in knife attack” or “children attacked by knife-wielding man”. Those descriptions create a much more visceral response regarding the attack, as opposed to the Times headline which tries to create the visceral reaction in regard to the riot which followed.

It's similar to how establishment media describe death in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Israelis are “killed” (viscerally charged language – killing is ugly and brutal and the people who kill – the Palestinians – are to be regarded as actively evil) while the Palestinians “die” (passive – as if it’s a quiet and sterile act of God). There’s also the phrasing of Hamas releasing Israeli “hostages” while Israel releases Palestinian “prisoners”. How the establishment media wants you to react to a story is signaled in the semantics of the story.

Speaking of semantics, the term “rioters” is also a very distinct choice that intentionally carries with it a stigma and negative connotation meant to convey judgement and condemnation, placing the reader in opposition to the “rioters” and their cause. But is the term “rioter” the accurate choice?

A riot certainly broke out in Dublin on Thursday, so describing the people doing the fighting with police and burning and looting as rioters would seem accurate…except it didn’t start as a riot, it started as a protest and then escalated/spiraled out of control into a riot. An accurate description would be to say that “protests devolved into riots”.

The New York Times was not alone in their use of the term “rioters” and “riot” as both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal did the same.

The Washington Post headline ignored the attack on women and children altogether and simply declared, “Far-Right Protestors Burn and Loot in Dublin in Worst Violence in Decades”. You’d be hard pressed to find a more biased headline than that to describe the events of November 24, 2023 in Dublin.

The Post article then goes on to describe how “…rioters, some wielding metal bars, smashed windows and looted shops in the city center.”

The Wall Street Journal opened with, “Ireland witnessed its worst civil disorder in decades after rioters marauded through Dublin city center looting shops and setting buses and police cars on fire in a spate of violence…”.

“Rioters marauding” is quite the creative flourish, and would make for a great band name or album title.

The picture painted by the Times, Post and Journal is pretty clear, that the “riot” and the “rioters” are much worse than the “incident” where five people were stabbed. Hell, The Washington Post ignored the attack in favor of the riots in their headline. These corporate media outlets make it even more clear of their intention by only quoting police and government authorities in their stories.

There are quotes from Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who deemed the “rioters” to be “thugs”. And from Irish Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, who stated, “a thuggish and manipulative element must not be allowed use an appalling tragedy to wreak havoc…”.

There are numerous quotes from police officials, who blamed the riots on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology”.

What was missing from every single article I read, and not just in the big three newspapers mentioned above, was a quote from someone who was actually attending the “riot” and/or participating in it.

As someone interested in journalism, it seems to me that finding out why these people are crazed enough to riot would be a pivotal piece to the story…but apparently not.

That’s not to say that the “rioters” motivations are ignored, they aren’t, as every article claims, without evidence, that the “rioters” are “far-right”, “anti-immigrant” hooligans. The only source for those claims are police and government officials.

You may be thinking, what is wrong with any of the preceding examples of journalism I have presented? Well, when seen in context with the establishment media’s coverage of other similar incidents, it tells quite a story.

Back in May of 2020, George Floyd died while being forcefully detained on a street by multiple Minneapolis Police officers. Floyd’s desperate pleas for his life and subsequent death were captured on video and quickly spread through social media, igniting outrage and protests, which descended into a riot which involved violence, burning and looting.

The previous paragraph is a passable paragraph describing the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent civil unrest with a minimal amount of bias injected. The term “killing” could replace the word “death” in the second sentence, but at the time it was not entirely clear what killed him…and frankly it’s still pretty murky to this day. That said, it is relatively accurate.

The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, were all very clear in describing the “rioters” in Dublin the other day. Interestingly enough, they never used the term “riot” or “rioter” to describe what happened in the wake of George Floyd’s death (now deemed a murder).

The headline of the Times’ article on Dublin blared, “Rioters Clash with Police”, but the Times’ headline regarding the unrest following Floyd’s death reads, “Fiery Clashes Erupt Between Police and Protestors”.

Notice how the story in Dublin is framed? “Rioters Clash with Police” makes it clear who is instigating – the “rioters”…not to mention the term rioters makes clear they and their cause are to be perceived negatively and with disdain.

In contrast, the violence between police and “protestors” in Minneapolis appears to simply be an act of nature, like a volcano, as “fiery clashes erupt”.

And of course, the rioters in Minneapolis are described as “protestors” throughout the reporting and never as rioters, thus giving them and their cause nobility and not tainting it with criminality, like the term “rioters” implies.

The Washington Post did the same, with their headline stating, “Protests Continue to Rage”.

The Post article features this astonishing paragraph, “Protesters broke windows and charged over fences to breach a police precinct station in Minneapolis and set it on fire late Thursday as officers retreated from violent confrontations that boiled over days after George Floyd died in police custody.”

The actions described, breaking windows, charging over fences and setting a police station on fire, are all very clearly acts that occur in a riot, and not at a protest…and yet the Post, as well as the Times and the Journal, never, not once, refer to the people who commit these acts as “rioters”. The “rioters” in Dublin all broke windows and lit things on fire, and were called “rioters” for it.

The Post article also quotes one of the “protestors” inside in the police station who is actively lighting it on fire. The quote reads, ““We’re starting fires in here so be careful,” one man shouted as sprinklers doused protesters who had burst inside. Flames began to rise from the front of the building as hundreds of protesters looked on, and soon smoke was billowing from the roof.”

Quoting this man, and the particular quote they use, is an obvious attempt to humanize the man, the “protesters” and the “protest” movement. You see, this “protestor” is concerned for human life and wants to make sure everyone is safe as he burns the police station to the ground. (I actually believe that this quote is manufactured by the reporter as it is just too perfect…but I cannot prove that) Why did the reporter use only that quote and not another? Curious.

Of course, the Post didn’t get any quotes from the protestors/rioters in Dublin, because that would illuminate their motivations and maybe even humanize them, something which apparently is anathema since it is so dangerous to hear their point of view.

The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and is right-wing, was no different in its coverage of the Floyd “protests”. The Journal’s original article says, “…protesters walked for 2½ miles to a Minneapolis police precinct. Some damaged windows, a squad car and sprayed graffiti. Police in riot gear formed into a line to confront the protesters and fired tear gas…”

The Journal never labels the “protestors” as “rioters”, despite the fact that the police were wearing “riot” gear….which is pretty funny. Why didn’t the police put on “protest” gear?

Another interesting comparison between the Dublin “riots” and the George Floyd “protests” is that these big three establishment media outlets all use police and government officials as sources and for quotes regarding Dublin, but not with regard to the Floyd “protests”.

These police and Irish government official’s claims are taken at face value and never questioned. When these officials call for “law and order” and declaring the “rioters” “thugs” and “hooligans”, it is seen as a positive and their actions noble in a fight against rampant hate and criminality.

In contrast, none of these three mainstream newspapers got quotes from police officials in their articles on the “protests” in the wake of George Floyd’s death. The only government official quoted was Trump who was painted as a tyrannical demagogue for calling the “protestors”, “thugs”.

Regardless of what you think or feel regarding the “riots” in Dublin or the “protests” about George Floyd’s death, the important thing to understand, and why I am writing this article, is that you are being relentlessly manipulated. How you think and feel is not a function of you rationally examining and weighing evidence. It is a result of you being emotionally manipulated through the use of subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, propaganda techniques.

The news you read or hear or watch, is manufactured and is a tool to manipulate you to into feeling how the ruling elite want you to feel.

In the case of Dublin, the globalists want you to decry anti-immigration sentiments and to see anyone who resists unfettered immigration as a “far-right”, racist villain, even though these Irish “rioters” may, in the case of Ireland (which has never been a colonizer – only colonized), be in an existential war to save the country and culture their ancestors fought for, and died for, for centuries.

The same manipulation is true regarding the George Floyd “protests”. The ruling elite want you to believe, and polls show an overwhelming majority of liberals do believe, that police are slaughtering unarmed blacks by the thousands every year. That is demonstrably false even though it “feels” correct according to media coverage.

Hyper-racialization and mass immigration are among the most valuable weapons used by the ruling elite to divide, conquer and pillage…and most of the people fall for it most of the time.

The bottom line is that, to quote the great George Orwell, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Unfortunately, with attention spans and I.Q. dropping like flies in our insatiably emotionalist, social media saturated culture, fewer and fewer have the ability, or the will, to see what is in front of their nose and to sniff out the insidious and insipid establishment propaganda that is hiding in plain sight.

So, if you open your eyes and engage in the struggle, you’ll clearly see the mountains of bullshit in which they are currently rubbing your nose.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

This Week in Propaganda - 60 Minutes Edition

PROPAGANDA WATCH - 60 MINUTES

As the world has rapidly deteriorated over the last few years I have steadfastly stayed away from writing about politics and world affairs for the sole reason that it felt like a Quixotic quest to tackle such toxic topics.

Propaganda has, in this age, become so all-encompassing in our daily lives that my job of dissecting it in my writing became an entirely fruitless exercise, like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.

The reality is that no matter how many articles, news segments or political comedies I could have eviscerated for being obvious propaganda meant to mis or dis-inform the masses, nothing would change. Echo chambers and information silos are too air-tight nowadays, making critical thinking all too uncommon, and when attempted, much maligned. As a result, no one would wake up from their establishment media trance just because little old me was desperately trying to knock the scales from their eyes so that they could see the Truth.

The simple fact is that it is too late. The blood-red dye has been cast in regards to our nation and the world and the best-case scenario for me was simply to keep saying over and over again, “I told you so”, which, despite what Gore Vidal’s insistence that they’re the four most beautiful words in our common language, is incredibly depressing.

Staying away from the noxious environs of corporate news and vapid political comedians like John Oliver, Bill Maher and the excruciatingly awful Late-Night hosts, was a very pleasant experience, as forcing myself to watch all of that vacuous garbage felt exceedingly masochistic.

But now, after roughly two years respite, and as the world stumbles blindly into world war and our nation into well-earned collapse, I find myself, much to my chagrin and frustration, charging headlong into the breach once more.

My reenlistment into the unwinnable propaganda war happened quite by chance as a little over a week ago I had just watched a football game and was distracted…and then the old CBS Sunday night stalwart 60 Minutes started and I got lulled in to watching the first segment. This segment, hosted by Scott Pelley, featured the domestic intelligence chiefs of the “five eyes” countries (US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia). To say that this segment was ridiculous to the point of absurd would be a colossal understatement.

Then I watched the second segment, which was about Emad Shargi, an Iranian-American convicted of being a spy in Iran and imprisoned until he was part of a prisoner and cash swap orchestrated by the Biden administration. This second segment was a laugh out loud piece of unintentional comedy that made the first segment seem tame. I bailed on the final segment of the episode, which was about the pop singer Pink because…well…it was about the pop singer Pink for fuck’s sake.

I did not write about my 60 Minutes experience all week, adhering to my pledge to stay away from such topics…but then the following Sunday I saw one segment of the next 60 Minutes episode, which featured a segment on Georgia (the country, not the state)…and well…here we are.

The first thing to understand is that it is not by coincidence or accident that as the ruling class malignant neocons try to convince Americans to go to war across the globe, that 60 Minutes runs three inane and insane, manufactured propaganda segments in back-to-back weeks vociferously declaring that China, Iran and Russia are evil incarnate and pose existential threats to the US, democracy and the “West”.

Let’s start with the segment on Emad Shargi, the Iranian-American recently released from an Iranian prison. This segment was so obscenely slanted and perversely propagandized as to be the ultimate in anti-journalism.

The “reporter” running the segment was Margaret Brennan who has the uncanny ability to always look like she is about to cry.

Brennan walks us through the tale of Emad Shargi, an Iranian who immigrated to the US as a teen before the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s. Shargi went to school in the US and became a chemical engineer and started his own business. Good for him.

During the Obama presidency, in the wake of the “Iran deal” which Trump would later rescind, Shargi thought it would be ok to go back to Iran…so he did…even though his father warned him not to.

He is then arrested and charged with being a US spy.

This is where things get pretty interesting…or funny…depending on your perspective.

In recounting his story, Shargi, who is such an obvious phony as he is acting from start to finish everytime he’s on camera, tells of armed revolutionary guards coming to his home in Iran in the middle of the night. These police hold him and his wife at gunpoint and refuse to tell him for what crime he is being charged.

Margaret Brennan, with eyes swollen with tears, is shocked and horrified by the tyrannical brutality of these Iranian police behaving in such a manner. I had a different thought…namely that this exact thing happens dozens, if not hundreds, of times every day in another country…the United States of America, where police routinely raid people’s homes with guns drawn and whisk them off in the dead of night with no explanation of the charges. Apparently, Ms. Brennan is blissfully unaware of this reality.

Shargi then goes on to explain that he was taken to the “most feared” prison in Iran, Evin prison, and put in the “intelligence” wing ruled by the fearsome Revolutionary Guard.

Shargi recounts how he was put in a small room to be interrogated and a big man came in and yelled and threatened him and then another man came in…as Shargi called him “the good cop”, who promised to make it all stop if Shargi just confessed. Shargi refused because he said, with a wry smile, that he wasn’t a spy.

Brennan then jumped in and in typical 60 Minutes fashion fed a line to Shargi, by saying “…and then the torture began”. The funny part of it was though that Shargi responded by saying, “yes…threats of torture”. If you were paying attention, you’d notice that “threats of torture” is not exactly torture.

Shargi then went on the explain that he was “tortured” by being threatened with physical violence, waterboarding and a wide array of terrible treatment. How quaint. I know of hundreds, if not thousands, of American prisoners who would have loved to only have been threatened with physical violence and waterboarding.

As for Shargi’s interrogation…he was treated exactly like countless American prisoners interrogated in police houses across the country every night. The good cop-bad cop routine is so well known as to be Hollywood cliché at this point.

As for Shargi’s fear of the notorious Evin prison…you think low level criminals sent to Riker’s Island feel the same way Shargi did going off to Evin prison? Yeah…they do. Is Evin any worse than San Quentin? Holman? Pelican Bay? Angola? Sing Sing? Attica? Folsom? ADX Florence? I think not.

Shargi then tells an incredible part of the story that gets completely ignored by the spectacularly inept Ms. Brennan. Shargi tells of how, while out on bail, he is approached by someone who tells him he should escape from Iran while he has the chance. He is then aided in an escape attempt but is caught 30 miles from the Iranian border.

Let’s unpack this shall we? So, Iran is such a despotic, draconian tyranny that it lets out suspected spies on bail? That would seem to contradict the narrative that Shargi, Brennan and 60 Minutes is trying to push…which is why they never adequately address the issue.

Secondly, who is this mysterious person who counsels Shargi to escape and aids them in doing so? More on that in a bit.

Once Shargi is captured and returned to Evin prison, he is sent to see, as he describes him, “a hanging judge”. 60 Minutes then shows a picture of this judge and it’s like something out of comedy sketch, as it is the worst picture of this man ever taken as he looks menacing and angry…like a “hanging judge”. Nice tabloid touch there for 60 Minutes.

Here's the thing regarding this “hanging judge”. First of all, every judge is considered a “hanging judge” by the people being judged by them. Secondly…and most importantly…this “hanging judge” oddly enough doesn’t sentence Shargi to hanging…which is strange since he’s supposedly a “hanging judge” and Iran does hang people. No Shargi is sentenced to ten years in prison…which is no cake walk but it also isn’t being hanged, nor is it as bad as say twenty years in prison. Go to any prison in America and you’ll find lots of people who’d be thrilled to only get ten years from a “hanging judge”.

Shargi then tells the story of a riot that breaks out at Evin prison, during which prisoners are lighting fires and guards are shooting at them. A frightened Shargi decides to stay in his cell and risk asphyxiation rather than be shot by the brutal Revolutionary Guard.

But then a funny thing happens…the Revolutionary Guard rescue Shargi and take him out of harm’s way. Or as Brennan describes it, the Revolutionary Guard saves Shargi because he was “more valuable to them alive than dead”. What kind of twisted logic is that? People save someone’s life and their only motivation is because he must be worth more to them alive than dead? This is classic dehumanizing propaganda as plain as day, reducing Iranians to heartless, soulless devils who only ever have bad intentions and are incapable of doing something good….and if they do do something good it is for bad reasons.

But here’s the thing…what is so fascinating about the Shargi segment is that it ends with Shargi back home in the US in his very nice home doing regular things with his wife. You’ll never guess where this gorgeous home is located…the Washington D.C. area. Washington is a strange place for a chemical engineer to plant his flag and make his home. It’s also a strange place for a chemical engineer who hasn’t worked in well over five years to have such a nice home, as real estate is extremely expensive.

It's also curious that Shargi when he went to Iran was working for a “Dutch firm” as a consultant. As a chemical engineer working for a mysterious “Dutch company”, Shargi would have been compelled to make contacts with Iranian chemical engineers and scientists...all of which seems like something an intelligence agent or asset would be doing. The “Dutch company” is a standard cover for this type of intelligence operation, and Shargi’s being a “consultant” gives him one more layer of cover.  

Now back to the mysterious person who encouraged and aided Shargi in his escape attempt. It seems more likely than not that that person, who not only whispered in Shargi’s ear that he should escape but also had a support system in place designed to help him do just that, was Shargi’s intelligence handler who was trying to get his asset out of a hostile nation for fear of the whole network being exposed or captured.

In conclusion, it seems to me that Emad Shargi, despite his denials, was an American intelligence agency asset or agent, and may have been working for the US intelligence community for quite some time even before he went to Iran.

You would never even consider such a blatantly obvious idea if you listened to Margaret Brennan and her ilk at 60 Minutes, but if you read between the lines, it becomes pretty clear that Emad Shargi is not what he says he is.

Speaking of frauds, the segment on the “five eyes” intelligence chiefs in that same episode was chock full of them. As Scott Pelley, with propaganda boner fully engorged, was so proud to say in the segment, this was the first time in history that the five eyes intel chiefs had ever appeared together on television….and they did so because we are in so much great danger.

Watching FBI head Christopher Wray and his collection of vile intel whores gathered around a table was like watching a meeting of midwit bureaucrats at the Lollipop Guild.

The main takeaway from this segment was that China is really, really bad. The main reason China is bad is because they don’t play by the rules of international capitalism….the horror!

These morally and ethically obtuse idiots went on and on about how China is the biggest evil in the world because they cheat at capitalism by stealing intellectual property. They also claimed that China interferes in US elections (that familiar claim again!)…funny…they never mentioned Israel’s relentless and obvious interference in US elections though.

One of the main points was made by Wray when he said that China stealing intellectual property from US corporations isn’t “just a Wall Street problem, it’s a Main Street problem” because it costs Americans jobs. How cute…so Wall Street, corporate America and the investor class rape and pillage the working class and obliterating unions for decades by sending their jobs overseas to China on the free trade express…and now we’re supposed to give a shit that American companies are being fucked in the ass by China? Cry me a river asshole. That ship sailed back in the 80s with Reagan, 90s with Clinton, and 00s with Bush, if you cared about the American people you would’ve stopped China back then when it mattered and could be contained. You didn’t. Instead, you took the short end money and gutted the U.S. manufacturing base and working class…so fuck you if the beast you let loose on poor and working people is now devouring you.

And then there was this week’s episode of 60 Minutes, which featured the segment on Georgia and Russia. The main takeaway from this segment was…shock of shocks…Russia is bad!! It even includes an interview with an old lady to prove it!

The segment starts by pointing out that Russia is “occupying” a portion of Georgia after a flare up of hostilities in 2008, and then goes on to make a big deal of Russia’s “quiet invasion” of Georgia through immigration. I wonder if 60 Minutes has ever done an aggressive bit of journalism on how the US is occupying 25% of Syria (the land being occupied is…shock of shocks…resource rich)? I doubt it.

The main thrust of the piece after that is that Georgia, which borders Russia, is angry that so many Russians are coming to their country, many to avoid military service, and are remaking the nation.

The president of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, is furious about it and adamant that Georgia, for its protection, be allowed to join the EU. Ummm…Mrs. President Lady…if you’re worried about waves of unwanted immigration changing the face of your nation, you’ve got as big surprise coming to you if you join the EU…just ask Sweden.

If Georgia joins the EU they’ll get the privilege of being swamped by a tsunami of immigrants from a variety of third world shitholes in Africa and the Middle East. You think Russians are bad? Russians are driving up apartment prices and starting businesses in Georgia because they bring money and education to Georgia. Wait ‘til you get unemployable military aged men from Africa and the Middle East demanding free government services and committing crime at astronomical rates coming to your country instead.

Speaking of which, if 60 Minutes wants to do a story on how immigration, in this case illegal immigration, can destroy a culture and turn a first world nation into a third world nation, I have a scoop for them that will require absolutely no overseas travel at all. They won’t even have to travel to Texas to see it…they can just walk outside of 60 Minutes’ New York City offices.

In conclusion, 60 Minutes is, in their own self-righteous, journalistically vapid way, banging the drum for World War III by putting out these rather ridiculous and obviously manufactured segments touting Russia, China and Iran as the new “axis of evil”...and there are plenty of dupes and dopes in this country who will march right along with that tired old beat. Idiots who demand we keep throwing our hard earned money at Ukraine and Israel will demand we send our young men (but never their young men) to fight and die for those insidious countries when our money alone isn’t making enough of a difference. The same will hold true when China takes Taiwan.

As General Smedley Butler once astutely observed, “war is a racket”, and this new world war is going to be no different. 60 Minutes is just a delivery boy for the true villains of this story, the evil neocons and the venal charlatans in our government and their equally vile Zionist paymasters.

World War III isn’t coming…it’s already here and has been since at the very least the charade of the Maidan and U.S. led coup in Ukraine in 2014. If you don’t know that, then that is on you. If you want to stop it, I have bad news….you can’t…it is inevitable. Flailing empires in steep decline do not go quietly into that goodnight, and our empire will be no different, but probably considerably more violent than the ones that preceded it into the scrap heap of history.

Expect to see, in the coming days, weeks and months, some catastrophic event…a major false flag and/or green flag terror attack on US or European soil or an attack on US military installations, ships or troops, or something like that, which will completely silence any anti-war voices and rally the mindless masses to send their young men into the unwinnable meat grinders awaiting them in the Israel/Middle East, Ukraine/Eastern Europe and/or Taiwan/Asia.

In these troubled times the bullshit piles up so fast you need wings to stay above it…so do what I intend to do…keep your head up and start flapping your arms…it’s the only chance you have to try and keep a keen eye on the Truth and maintain your sanity, integrity and soul. Good luck.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023