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U.S. Propaganda is Embarrassingly Bad (and Why it Matters)

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When you want to see what U.S. deep state propagandists are up to, all you have to do is take a glance at what meme corporate media happens to be pushing any given week. It’s been almost a decade since I started observing and analyzing the corporate press on a daily basis, and I can now say unequivocally that the quality of American imperial propaganda has gone completely down the crapper.

The believability of some of the stuff being pushed these days defies all logic and is easily dispelled with an ounce of critical thought, yet there it is, in our face on a daily basis almost taunting the intelligence of the U.S. population. Indeed, it appears the current strategy is no more sophisticated that proclaiming any and all dissent as being the result of “Russia operations.” This is done to prevent any actual debate on subjects of grave national importance since the U.S. government knows its claims don’t hold up to any real scrutiny. Why look into the veracity of a deep state claim when we can just dismiss alternative viewpoints as “Russian operations.”

To see what I mean, take a look at some excerpts from a recent article published by ABC News, Behind #SyriaHoax and the Russian Propaganda Onslaught:

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Meet the Lawyer Who’s Suing Saudi Arabia for Financing the 9/11 Attacks

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I’ve stopped calling what our government has done a cover-up. Cover-up suggests a passive activity. What they’re doing now I call aggressive deception.

– Former Senator Bob Graham, co-chair of Congress’s 9/11 Joint Inquiry

With the recent arrival of our new baby daughter, free time for reading has been in extremely short supply as of late. That said, I did find some time yesterday while she was napping to read a fascinating and infuriating article published at Politico about a New York attorney’s mission to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its role in financing the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Longtime readers will be aware of the fact that I’ve never accepted the U.S. government’s fairytale story about how the 9/11 attacks went down, and my suspicions of deep Saudi involvement were confirmed by last year’s release of the infamous “28 pages.” Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote at the time from the post, The 28-Pages Are Way Worse Than I Thought:

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My Strategy For Confronting and Defeating the Status Quo

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There’s one main reason the vast majority of Americans continue to lose and suffer, while a very small percentage of people continue to win and prosper, and it can be summed up with one word, unity.

I know this sounds corny and cliché, but that doesn’t make it untrue. There’s a reason a small group of vested parties are able to run this country in their interests alone while the general public gets scraps, and it’s not simply money. A big part of the problem lies in ourselves and our inability to form mass movements that cross political lines on issues of tremendous importance. The “elite” don’t suffer from such divisiveness, which is how they are able to hold on to power despite repeated failures spanning decades.

A perfect example of how the status quo comes together when their collective interests are threatened was on full display during the 2016 election. Many of us stood in shock with our mouths open in horror as corporate Democrats, neoconservative Republicans and the corporate media formed a total alliance in opposition to Donald Trump. Those of us who pay attention to the world knew this had nothing to do with Trump’s comments about Mexicans or Muslims. All of that was merely a smokescreen for what really concerned them. What really got them terrified was the prospect that Trump would reverse course on the reckless late-stage imperial foreign policy that has been relentlessly pursued since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

To see what I mean, watch the following video of General Wesley Clark describing the days after 9/11:

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Disturbed Intelligence Analysts Express Concern Over Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Syria Moment

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Robert Parry of Consortium News has become an invaluable news source for me over the past several months. In case you are unfamiliar with his work, Robert is an investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He writes extensively on politics and geopolitics. His latest piece, Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment, is a must read.

Much of the post focuses on the ridiculous notion that Assad would have intentionally gassed his own people at the exact moment he was most secure in his position after years of brutal internal conflict. He notes:

Trump immediately won plaudits from Official Washington, especially from neoconservatives who have been trying to wrestle control of his foreign policy away from his nationalist and personal advisers since the days after his surprise victory on Nov. 8.

There is also an internal dispute over the intelligence. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province.

But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.

The above is far more likely to be accurate than the fairytale narrative being spun by the corporate media and Washington officialdom.

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Prepare for Impact – This is the Beginning of the End for U.S. Empire

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Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

Before I get into the meat of this post, I want to revisit something I wrote back in January.

From the post, Very Powerful People in the U.S. Government Want War – This is Their Sales Pitch:

We need to understand that those who want this war will be absolutely relentless. The sales pitch will not end until they get exactly what they want. This is where all of us critical thinkers need to play a key role. We must be prepared to diligently analyze all unsubstantiated official claims, and push back against the war-mongers, because we know for certain the oligarch-owned corporate media won’t. We must be prepared to inform our fellow citizens about what’s happening so that we don’t fall victim to a cheap sales pitch with devastating consequences. Unfortunately, we must also be prepared for a possible deep state false flag if the current sales tactic falls on deaf ears.

America cannot win a global war of such a scale if it is based on false pretenses and in the absence of exceedingly strong public support. This support does not exist. Will this serve as a necessary restraint against the masters of war and their devious plans? It’s too early to tell, but I do know that if we are unnecessarily pushed into a global conflagration, it will not end well for us. If this is the road our twisted status quo insists on taking us down, let us never forget who they are and the self-serving motivations behind their actions.

Four months later, the deep state got exactly what it wanted. Trump’s weaknesses have been identified and exploited, and he’s successfully been manipulated into neocon foreign policy like George W. Bush and Barack Obama before him. I’ve spent much of the past several months warning about exactly what happened last night, but the die is now cast. There’s no turning back from the path we’re on.

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Goldman Sachs and the Deep State Have Taken Over the Trump Administration

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The writing is on the wall and the message is not good. Trump will likely expand the war in Syria and increase tensions with Russia. The American empire is likely to implode under Trump’s watch, as he once again betrays many of the people who voted for him.

Hillary or Trump, we’d be getting the same thing. We had no real choice, and empires don’t reform. Prepare for impact.

– From yesterday’s post: The Imperial War Machine Marches Forward Under Donald Trump

The takeover of the Trump administration by Goldman Sachs has been obvious for months now. The takeover by the deep state has taken a bit longer, hence the non-stop Russia hysteria, which was clearly intended to back him into a corner. If Trump takes military action against Syria, we’ll know for certain the deep state coup is complete.

Fortunately, some Trump supporters are starting to wake up, with former lead investigative reporter for Breitbart, Lee Stranahan, being one of them. Lee recently recorded an extremely important video message, and I ask all of you to listen to it in full and share. He knocks the ball out of the park, and while I was never a Trump supporter since I felt he would act precisely like he’s acting, I applaud Trump voters willing to admit betrayal.

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The Imperial War Machine Marches Forward Under Donald Trump

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Last month, I wrote a piece titled, Is Donald Trump About to Massively Expand America’s Imperial Wars?, in which I warned:

Many people voted for Donald Trump based on his pledge of “America First.” The idea behind this partly relates to the very legitimate concern that the U.S. Empire and its military-industrial-contractor benefactors have been squandering an enormous amount of treasure and tax money on foreign adventurism, funds which could be of much greater use at home helping struggling Americans, fixing our broken economy and infrastructure. I’m starting to become increasingly concerned that rather than winding down America’s foreign adventures, Trump and his team are preparing to expand them.

Given Trump’s statements on Syria this morning, I’m moving from “becoming concerned,” to nearly convinced that Donald Trump will not only expand America’s idiotic, ongoing wars, but at the same time, start some new ones.

In case you missed his comments from earlier, watch the first 2 minutes of this.

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Noam Chomsky Calls Obsession With Russia Conspiracy Theories ‘A Joke’

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During a recent interview with Democracy Now, Noam Chomsky demonstrated what everyone with a clear head and capacity for critical thought should already know. Just because you have a strong dislike for Donald Trump, doesn’t mean you latch on like a lunatic to every nonsensical Russia conspiracy theory because you’re still crying about Hillary’s loss.

As Noam Chomsky accurately states:

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Noam Chomsky, I’d like to ask you about something that’s been in the news a lot lately. Obviously, all the cable channels, that’s all they talk about these days, is the whole situation of Russia’s supposed intervention in American elections. For a country that’s intervened in so many governments and so many elections around the world, that’s kind of a strange topic. But I know you’ve referred to this as a joke. Could you give us your view on what’s happening and why there’s so much emphasis on this particular issue?

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s a pretty remarkable fact that—first of all, it is a joke. Half the world is cracking up in laughter. The United States doesn’t just interfere in elections. It overthrows governments it doesn’t like, institutes military dictatorships. Simply in the case of Russia alone—it’s the least of it—the U.S. government, under Clinton, intervened quite blatantly and openly, then tried to conceal it, to get their man Yeltsin in, in all sorts of ways. So, this, as I say, it’s considered—it’s turning the United States, again, into a laughingstock in the world.

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Video of the Day – Roger Stone Claims Jared Kushner is Surreptitiously Throwing Steve Bannon Under the Bus

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This is an absolutely fascinating interview. It proves something that many of us have speculated on for some time, namely that there’s a major battle going on within the Trump administration between the Goldman Sachs, establishment-type parasites and the economic-nationalists.

Who wins this battle will determine the fate of the Trump administration.

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If What Susan Rice Did Wasn’t Illegal, It Should Be

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We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.

From the 2013 post, Martin Luther King: “Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was Legal”

The fact that most of the debate surrounding the unmasking of Trump personnel revolves around whether it was legal or not highlights just how superficial and ethically deranged our culture has become. If what she did was indeed legal, this is an enormous problem in the first place, one that privacy advocates and opponents of Big Brother surveillance have been warning about constantly since the gulag spying panopticon was put in place following 9/11. For the purposes of this post, let’s assume that what Susan Rice did was legal.

If her actions were indeed totally by the books, we need to use this incident as a rallying call to reform the laws immediately. Likewise, Donald Trump should be pushing such reform tirelessly from his bully pulpit, but given his authoritarian nature I doubt he will. Fortunately, Rand Paul is heeding the call.

As reported by The Hill:

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