Eric Zuesse

On November 30th, Buzzfeed bannered “Intel Officials Believe Russia Spreads Fake News”. Their ‘reporter’ (that is, stenographer of U.S. government propaganda) opened:

“US intelligence officials believe Russia helped disseminate fake and propagandized news as part of a broader effort to influence and undermine the presidential election, two US intelligence sources told BuzzFeed News.

‘They’re doing this continuously, that’s a known fact,’ one US intelligence official said, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive national security issue.

‘This is beyond propaganda, that’s my understanding,’ the second US intelligence official said. The official said they believed those efforts likely included the dissemination of completely fake news stories. …

One intelligence official said, ‘In the context, did Russia attempt to influence the US elections; the aperture is as wide as it can possibly be.'”

Then, there was this:

“One of the intelligence officials who spoke to BuzzFeed News said the lack of clarity had proven to be a challenge in combating the propaganda efforts.

‘The real unanswered question is, why did they do it?’ the second US intelligence official said. ‘Is it because they love Donald Trump? Because they hated Hillary Clinton? Or just because they like undermining Western democracies?’

On this, the official said, there was no consensus.”

Even before the new U.S. President, Donald Trump, comes into office, the U.S. Establishment (of which buzzfeed is a Democratic Party mouthpiece) is trying to de-legitimize him, by alleging that he’s an ‘enemy’-agent, Vladimir Putin’s fool or worse.

This anti-Russian campaign continues the U.S. Establishment’s, and U.S. ‘news’media’s, war for Hillary Clinton (the U.S. aristocracy’s approved agent) and against Donald Trump, which propaganda-campaign during the Presidential contest was exemplified by such ‘news’-reporting as this, on 10 October 2016:

Whatever the actual truth of this matter might be (and it’s certainly not what the U.S. ’news’ media are pumping): trusting the U.S. Government to be delivering that truth would be foolhardy, after, for example, George W. Bush and his Administration having lied this nation into invading Iraq in 2003 and the U.S. propaganda-media such as The New York Times and Washington Post having reported stenographically the Government’s lies and suppressed the contrary known truths — and the U.S. ‘intelligence’ agencies that had pumped the lies became blamed afterward for it all, as if they had originated the ‘errors’ — even the cover-ups were then lies, because the lies originated in the President of the United States and the U.S. ‘news’ media refused to publish the disproofs of them.

Only fools trust the U.S. Government and its ‘news’ media anymore. After all, how many of these ‘news’ media have reported the truth that the Obama Administration perpetrated in February 2014 a bloody coup (fronted by anti-corruption demonstrations) to overthrow the Moscow-friendly Ukrainian government headed by Viktor Yanukovych and replace it with a fascist and even nazi (or racist-fascist) government that blames Russians, instead of (like Hitler’s nazism) Jews (because the U.S. aristocracy hates Russians, not Jews), all in order for the U.S. to be able to place missiles in Ukraine on Russia’s very doorstep? And how many reported the ethnic-cleansing operation by that new U.S.-installed government, to exterminate the residents in the region of Ukraine that had voted 90% for Yanukovych — the Ukrainian President whom Obama had just ousted?

And the entire U.S. Government basis for sanctions against Russia is based upon Russia’s ‘conquest’ of Crimea, which occurred three weeks after Obama grabbed Ukraine and was anything but a ‘conquest’ though Obama called it that and his ’news’ media pumped the lie and ignored the fact that Crimea’s return to being again part of Russia was a direct response by Crimeans against Obama’s theft and replacement of the Ukrainian government that 75% of Crimeans had voted for.

Are the U.S. ‘news’ media and government any more trustworthy now than they were in 2002 — or in 2014?

Many of the U.S.-billionaire-owned and controlled ‘news’ media, both in the U.S. and associated aristocracies, have now officially formed a censorship-operation, called “First Draft News”, to systematize their filtering-out of facts (such as I have here linked to regarding Ukraine and Crimea) that they don’t want their respective publics to have access to.

This issue of press-control has nothing to do with the question of whether Trump was the better candidate (Americans preferred Bernie Sanders, whom the aristocracy blocked from winning the Democratic nomination), but everything to do with Trump’s inheriting a U.S. aristocracy — and its associated foreign aristocracies, and their respective press-operations — that’s hostile not only to him, but to Putin, and hoping to be able to oust both.

In an ‘oligarchy’ (more honestly called an “aristocracy” because it’s not found only in “banana republics”) such as the U.S. Government is, this institutionalized lying is the reality; and the historical background to it can be found here and here. I presented the post-1990 portion of it here. Back in 1992, the BBC did a documentary about the history of it between the end of World War II and the end of the Soviet Union, and that’s here.

On November 30th, Spencer Ackerman and Julian Borger, in Britain’s Guardian, headlined about this ongoing operation, now against Trump: “US legislation proposes new committee to counteract Russian ‘covert influence’: Congress set to review bills to authorize intelligence body to oppose Russian interference and propaganda, which could be at odds with Trump administration.”

The big question now is whether Trump will do the bidding of the U.S. aristocracy, or whether he’ll actually go to war against them and bring crashing down the fascist operation that has controlled the U.S. Government since at least 1990 and which is commonly called “neoconservatism”. The signs on that are not yet clear. Here, from Michael Averko, is the best discussion I’ve found of an important part of that: Trump’s search for a suitable U.S. Secretary of State.

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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.