In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper that was broadcasted tonight Republican candidate for president Donald Trump berated the reporter for continuing to address polls that shed him in a negative light instead of polls showing his upper-tier status.
“I am leading across the board,” Trump said in the interview. “And then you hit me with this poll that I didn’t see before, where oh, gee, it’s not even that kind of a poll. All i know is I have a very big group of support. And I think one of the reasons.”
“Let me tell you. The people don’t trust you and the people don’t trust the media. And I understand why,” Trump lectured Cooper.
Trump also said the American dream is “dead,” but he will revive it and “make it bigger, better and stronger than ever before.
“Let me tell you. The people don’t trust you and the people don’t trust the media. And I understand why. You know, I have always been covered, fairly, accurately because it was usually a financial press. And you know numbers are numbers and my numbers happen to be great. So, I was always sort of treated fair.
“With the media it’s, not all cases, some, some of the political media is great. And really honest. Even if they’ve don’t want to want to be, they’re really honest. But I find that 60%, 70% of the political media is really, really dishonest.”
A UK law society has stepped up its pursuit of the Sun and its ‘Nazi propaganda’ spouting columnist Katie Hopkins over alleged anti-migrant hate speech, referring both to a powerful international court usually reserved for war criminals.
The Society of Black Lawyers, which originally reported the column written by Hopkins and published by the Sun just hours before 800 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean, has referred the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The SBL’s efforts come after UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the column – in which Hopkins referred to migrants as “cockroaches” – recalled Europe’s darkest days of fascist hate speech and “Nazi propaganda.”
“The case is an exceptionally strong one as the incitement of racial hatred in Hopkins’ unfounded rant illustrated her xenophobic views on the issue surrounding migrants in general,” SBL committee member Shireen Khan told RT.
“This is further portrayed from the numerous articles that are published by the Sun newspaper that are anti-immigrant and majority of the time simply untrue.”
Khan is confident the ICC, which is best known for investigating atrocities in the Balkans and Africa, will take SBL’s referral very seriously.
“I believe that the ICC will take up this case fully as they have a duty to investigate such matters especially the seriousness of this case, which is further emphasized by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ endorsement of our report.
“There is also a strong evidential basis on which SBL have brought this claim. It is quite a sad reality that [the] majority of the time racist abuse is unreported as a crime and secondly is hidden behind the ideas surrounding freedom of speech.”
Khan said the legitimization of anti-immigrant rhetoric under the banner of free speech was a scourge that had become all too common.
She pointed out that Hopkins’ controversial views proved infectious in some quarters, saying they were almost immediately echoed on LBC radio.
“Katie Hopkins’ column was published in the paper but it was then echoed in a viscous, xenophobic and racist tirade on radio, which led to exposure to further parts of society who may be disillusioned in thinking that immigrants are the cause of all destruction our country is facing.
“This has led to some of the most vulnerable people in the world being turned away from the support that they are entitled to under international law. These migrants trying to come to the EU are fleeing persecution, war and death.”
“Immigrants do not deserve to be the scapegoat of this country’s problems and it’s about time we stopped making them it.”
She blasted reactionary anti-immigrant elements within UK politics, arguing they were to blame for creating the political space in which such views could be aired without due criticism.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch says Scottish independence “feels inevitable” and predicts a hung parliament following the UK general election next week.
In a series of Tweets the chairman of News Corp, which owns The Times and The Sun, expressed a range of opinions on British politics, Scottish self-rule, and rising inequality in the UK and US.
Murdoch, 84, suggested “dirty” deals would be made between the political parties after the general election if no party wins a clear majority.
He also predicted Prime Minister David Cameron would be dropped by the Conservative Party if he failed to gain a majority against Labour leader Ed Miliband. He said this was “open talk” among Tories.
The Australia-born press baron has been viewed as a kingmaker in British politics because of the influence he wields through his newspaper outlets.
Murdoch’s tabloid the Sun had a weekly readership of 5.4 million in the UK last year.
Murdoch has previously backed Alex Salmond, former leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), praising him as a cunning politician.
Salmond’s close ties with Murdoch were first revealed in 2012, when private documents were released detailing the extent of their relationship.
Letters published shortly after Murdoch shut down his popular tabloid News of the World exposed how Salmond had more than two dozen meeting with Murdoch or his executives.
The media mogul also commented on the likelihood of no political party wining the general election, a situation known as a hung parliament.
Murdoch also indicated the SNP were “cleverly hurting Miliband” by hinting at their support of Labour in the election.
Cameron’s future as leader of the Conservative Party is at stake in this election, Murdoch suggested.
In a surprise comment for a man estimated to be worth over $14 billion (US), Murdoch also weighed in on the Sunday Times 2015 Rich List, published on the weekend.
His claim that the economic turmoil gripping “advanced” economies has been caused by “regulations and power crazed lawyers” received a barrage of responses on Twitter.
A controversial five-year, R550 million deal between Multichoice and the SABC has drawn sharp criticism from some industry stakeholders
A R550 million deal between Multichoice and the SABC, which will hand over a large deal of control over the SABC’s news operations to the DStv owner, is being challenged by industry stakeholders.
Three groups – Caxton Publishers, Media Monitoring Africa and SOS: Support Public Broadcasting Coalition – have approached the Competition Tribunal saying that the deal is not in the public interest.
In a press statement by Media Monitoring Africa, it said that the deal entered into between the SABC and Multichoice, in which Multichoice acquired control over part of the SABC business, constitutes a mandatory notifiable merger.
Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) started in 1993 and is a non-profit organisation that aims to promote democracy and a culture where media and the powerful respect human rights and encourage a just and fair society.
“We are not aware of any attempt to notify the Competition Tribunal of such a merger. If the deal is proven to be a notifiable merger it will enable us to oppose the merger on the basis that it is not in the public interest for it to take place,” MMA said.
“When news of the deal broke in 2013, both MMA and SOS expressed deep concern as to the nature of the deal. We both believe it fundamentally works against the best and long term interests of the SABC and the people it serves.”
Media Monitoring Africa expressed three main concerns with the deal:
Handing over the SABC archive: The SABC has handed over power and control of its archives to Multichoice. The archives are an invaluable public asset, and giving control and access of the archive to a commercial player SABC has sold off the family jewels.
Encryption turnaround: The SABC effectively ceded its power to determine its policy on set-top box control to a commercial broadcasting entity that is also its competitor.
Best programming veto: The deal sets out terms for a future channel to be developed by the SABC, where Multichoice may veto some programmes and select only the best ones to be broadcast exclusively on the SABC-Multichoice platform. The deal therefore ensures the best future local programming is aired on DStv, and that citizens who do not subscribe to the Multichoice services will be denied viewing of the programmes.
A report by The Sunday Independent newspaper, titled “Diabolical and secret SABC TV deal exposed”, said that the Multichoice-SABC “Commercial and Master Channel Distribution Agreement” has been kept from public view under a confidentiality provision.
The report further stated that even the SABC board was kept in the dark regarding the deal which was signed in July 2013.
However, because it forms part of the Competition Tribunal case, and thanks to the Supreme Court of Appeal ruling in the City of Cape Town versus Sanral case, it is now a public document.
SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago told The Sunday Independent that the SABC would never allow its news operations to be influenced by another broadcaster.
Multichoice in turn said that it has not exerted any influence on SABC news. They added that they have many news channels on its DStv platform, and that performance requirements come standard with such agreements.
Documents posted on the web reveal a high-level anti-Russian propaganda war being waged in south and eastern Ukraine by the US, the UK and NATO on behalf of the Kiev Government, using non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as agents.
According to the Drakula blog, the West is raising its game in its campaign against Russian President Vladimir Putin. While it is — on the one hand — pumping up the military volume by moving NATO and US hardware nearer to the Ukraine and Russian borders, it is also playing a hybrid war by pumping funds into an anti-Russian propaganda war.
NATO documents show that a “co-ordination meeting on StratCom training for Ukraine” was held in Riga, Latvia on February 19, 2015 as part of its “on-going capacity building programme”.
StratCom stands for Strategic Communication, which means dealing with the “inability of Ukrainian media to provide sufficient reach for the south/east of the country; vast reach of media originating from Russia; lack of strong Public Broadcaster; lack of success stories; [and] lack of trust of the population of the south/eastern regions in the central government”.
The NATO document reveals the Kiev Government has a “weak Public Affairs capacity” and sets out proposals to counter Russian influence and tackling what it describes as a lack of cross-government work and co-ordination as well as a lack of understanding of the importance of “national narrative”.
Further documents reveal a project run by the UK Foreign Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence worth $360,500 with the purpose of: “National reconciliation in Ukraine through effective communication for restoring public trust and empowering of the participatory democracy mechanisms using regional media coverage, counteraction to Russian information influence”.
It outlines a pro-Kiev propaganda battle using Ukrainian agencies including the Ukrainian Institute for International Politics (UIIP); the Analytical Center for Geopolitical Studies ‘Borysfen Intel’ (BI); and the Department of the civil-military cooperation, HQ of the armed forces.
The program involves “resuming the communication and community dialog in Eastern and Southern regions of Ukraine using international experience shared by UIIP and BI foreign partners; informational support of national reconciliation ideas through broadcasting and media coverage of Eastern and Southern Ukraine regions by new alternative regional mass-media and Internet resources; and decreasing the Russian information influence in Ukraine, discredit of the Russian political and military leaders.”
The revelations will embarrass the US, NATO and UK who have been at pains to denounce Russia for promoting what they call a ‘hybrid war’ in Ukraine.
The New Age, a government-funded propaganda spout, has decided to withdraw from the Press Ombudsman process according to an opposition party.
The opposition complained about a front page article on February 2 2015, headlined “DA sees conspiracies where there are none”, in which Communications Minister Faith Muthambi defended the government’s advertising in the newspaper.
The party said that The New Age was getting a “disproportionate” amount of government advertising expenditure and complained to the Press Ombudsman.
The CEO of The New Age, Nazeem Howa, wrote to the Ombudsman on 25 February to ‘confirm the withdrawal of The New Age from the Press Ombudsman processes’.
It appears that, to avoid the embarrassment of apologising and retracting the story, The New Age decided to withdraw from the Ombudsman process.
The party claimed that The New Age was considering the appointment of its own ombudsman to deal with complaints against the publication.
CNN International withdraws from Russian cable networks from December 31, 2014, according to a letter from Turner Broadcasting System Europe (CNN owner) TASS learnt about on Monday.
CNN is broadcast by operators of paid cable and satellite television, including Akado, Vimpelcom, NTV+, and others.
A copy of the letter available to TASS notifies Russian paid TV operators that Turner stops broadcasting CNN International in Russia from December 31, 2014. No reasons behind the move are provided.
Turner Broadcasting System’s director general in the CIS, Tatiana Kalita, refused to comment.
Akado and Vimpelcom confirmed they had received such a notification. “Yes, we have received such notification. We hope next year the channel will be back in Russia,” Vimpelcom’s press service said.
The issue of manipulation of news by intelligence services has been in the news recently with revelations that the CIA and German Secret Service (GSS) have long-running programs to influence how media executives and top journalists convey and interpret the news, including direct cash payments.
Here is a translation of Putin’s address at Valdai.
At the Valdai International Discussion Club meeting in Sochi, Russia’s President Putin correctly and justifiably denounced Washington for destabilizing the world in order to serve its own narrow and selfish interest and the interests of the private interest groups that control Washington at the expense of the rest of the world. It is about time a world leader denounced the thuggish neocon regime in Washington. Putin described Washington’s double standards with the Roman phrase: “What is allowed for God [the US] is not allowed for cattle [the rest of the world].”
Curiously, the Russian media has not, at this time of writing, produced an English translation of Putin’s full remarks. Perhaps the Russian media do not realize the importance of Putin’s words. Too much of the Russian media is owned by foreign interests who use the access to Russian readers to attack and discredit the Russian government. It is amazing that the Russian government allows Washington’s propaganda within its own ranks. Perhaps Moscow accepts Washington’s propaganda among Russians in order to protect the broadcasts in the US of RT, RIA, and Voice of Russia. But the balance is uneven. The Russian broadcasts in the West report otherwise unreported news; they do not defame America.
I did not see any reporting of Putin’s address in the US print and TV media. Clearly in the US there is an absence of public discussion of US foreign policy and foreign reaction to it. A country in which propaganda and silence rule out awareness and public discussion is not a democracy regardless of what it calls itself.
Washington long ago learned the dark art of silencing truth with defamation. Washington used defamation to overthrow Iran’s elected leader, Mossadegh in 1953, to overthrow Congo’s prime minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960, to overthrow Guatemala’s President Arbenz in 1954, to overthrow Venezuela’s President Hugo Chevez in 2002, a coup that was cancelled by the Venezuelan people and military who threw out Washington’s stooge replacement and reinstalled Chavez, to overthrow Ukraine’s elected President Yanukovych in 2013, to overthrow Honduras President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 , to overthrow in 2013 Mohamed Morsi, president of the first democratically elected government in Egypt’s history, to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, in ongoing efforts to overthrow Assad in Syria and the government of Iran, and in failed attempts to overthrow Indonesia’s Sukarno, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and Castro in Cuba.
Today Washington’s target is Vladimir Putin. This is the height of folly and hubris. Putin’s public support far exceeds that of any American president in history. Currently, the level of public support for the Obama regime and the US Congress is far too low to be compatible with a functioning democracy. If the US is actually a democracy, it is the most dysfunctional democracy in world history. Practically no one, except the powerful private interest groups who own Washington, supports the US government. Everyone else despises Washington.
As the result of 13 years of murderous destruction of life and property in the Middle East and Africa, a dysfunctional and collapsing US economy, and a display of unrivaled arrogance, Washington has destroyed America’s soft power. Abroad only the deluded few and those paid by US-financed NGOs still have a good opinion of the United States.
In all world polls, the US ranks as the greatest threat to world peace. Washington has made our country a despised nation, and we the people have done nothing about it.
You would never know this from the US print or TV media or even from most of the UK and Western European media. As I reported on October 16, Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of one of Germany’s most important newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has written a best-selling book in which he reports that the CIA owns everyone of significance in the major European media. In his own words Udo Ulfkotte says that he was “taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public.”
As a former Wall Street Journal editor, Business Week columnist, columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, columnist for a German magazine and French and Italian newspapers, I observed and experienced the gradual impoundment of any dissent from Washington’s line. It became clear that the path to journalism success in the West was to lie for the Establishment in Washington, largely a private establishment along with the dark off-budget “security” agencies bolstered by the neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony.
Much of Russian media and Putin’s advisors are fully aware of Washington’s media campaign to defame President Vladimir Putin. The internet site Russia Insider today asked the pertinent question: “Is the CIA Running a Defamation Campaign Against Putin?” As Russia Insider makes clear, the answer is most certainly.
Click the URL above and view the front pages of the UK Sun, Daily Mirror, and Daily Express. I would bet that these are front pages designed in Washington or Langley and are in fact paid ads by the CIA or National Endowment for Democracy or by one of the Republican or Democrat organizations that sponsor Washington’s overseas propaganda.
Of course, these UK rags can be dismissed as sensational junk comparable to the US versions that are for sale at grocery store checkout counters–”movie star abducted by aliens in UFO.” So scroll down the page of the above URL and look at the covers of Newsweek and The Economist. Once these were respected publications. Today I would bet that no one reads them and that they are dependent on CIA subsidies for their existance. Nevertheless, they impact the European, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese media and no doubt the media of other countries on the borders of the US empire. A number of gullible fools still think that America has a free press.
Be sure to notice this section of the report from Russia Insider:
“The issue of manipulation of news by intelligence services has been in the news recently with revelations that the CIA and German Secret Service (GSS) have long-running programs to influence how media executives and top journalists convey and interpret the news, including direct cash payments.
“Here are some examples they point to:
Portraying him [Putin] as a scheming dictator trying to rebuild a repressive empire.
Claiming he personally ordered the murder of a number of journalists, and personally ordered a KGB defector to be murdered with radiation poisoning.
Frequently citing unsubstantiated rumors he is having an affair with a famous gymnast.
Allegations that he has stashed away billions for his personal benefit, without providing evidence.
Recent article in newsweek claiming he leads a luxurious and lazy lifestyle, sleeping late.
Recent article in NYT focusing on a supposed personal arrogance.
Hillary Clinton mentioning in speech after speech that he is a bad guy, a bully, that one must confront him forcefully.
Frequently using pejoratives to describe his person – “a jerk and a thug” (Thomas Friedman this week in the NYT)
Mis-quoting him on his regret about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Articles about a supposed super-luxury villa built for him in southern Russia.
The over-the top headlines in the western media (they were worst of all in Germany) portraying him personally responsible for murdering the victims of MH17.
And soft stuff – magazine covers making him look sinister, monstrous, etc.”
Be sure to read the interview with Saker, which is at the bottom of the article:
Every day readers ask me what they as individuals can do. Some possibly are government trolls who hope I will answer “overthrow the government” so that I can be arrested as a terrorist. My answer to the question is that people are powerless until enough of them are informed. If people become informed and will take a stand, then the people can force the government back under their control. If this does not or cannot happen, democracy in America is dead, and our life as a free people protected by the Constitution and law against the power of the state is finished.
Possibly America is already finished and will now finish the rest of the world in its insane neoconservative drive to establish Washington’s hegemony over the entire world. Russia and China are not going to submit to being Washington’s vassals and India had enough of being a colony under Great Britain. If the crazed hegemons in Washington persist, nuclear war will be the outcome.
American citizens’ confidence in news media has fallen to a historical low. The Gallup polling service reports only 40% of Americans think media can report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly”.
Americans’ trust in mass media has been edging downward. Before 2004 over half of the country’s citizens shared that point of view.
According to sociologists, confidence in media falls in election years which leads to a conclusion that “something in the national elections causes scepticism in news media accuracy.”
Since the fateful dawn of “democracy” in 1994 The ANC kleptocracy continues to gut South Africa, literally selling, stealing, embezzling and pulverizing what is left of the beloved country- what was the powerhouse of Africa- down the river at break-neck speed. They have had plenty of help with generous assistance from the likes of the US and UK liberal political troublemakers and their despicable media whores; all of them complicit in South Africa’s current fragmentation and eventual destruction. There is plenty of South African blood on their hands with well over 400 000 murders since the dawn of “freedom” in 1994. Collaborating insiders now and then give a token acknowledgement of the situation by washing their blood-stained hands in their convenient, overflowing bowl of liberation epithets. This gesture will never absolve them of their complicity in these horrors.
Slick global media, awash with Disneyesque Mandela fairy tales, would have us believe that all is well in the world’s newest democracy. The stark reality is that crime is the principal, overarching context of the ”modern,” ANC-dominated South Africa. Since the ANC takeover general crime and extensive, violent crime pervade every aspect of life in the “rainbow nation.” Christopher Stone notes in his 2006 Harvard University working paper, Crime, Justice, and Growth in South Africa: Toward a Plausible Contribution from Criminal Justice to Economic Growth:
“The distinctive feature of crime in South Africa is not its volume but its violence.5 The homicide rate presents the extent of violence most starkly. Although the rate has declined substantially since 1994 when South Africa recorded 67 murders per 100,000 people; it was last reported through March 2005 to be at 40.3 per 100,000, among the highest national rates in the world. There is some variation among provinces, but the murder rates across all of South Africa are high, especially in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.”
High rates of crime and corruption are crippling the national life and hamstringing normal social activity along with all if not every service inherent in a modern, functioning society. President Jacob Zuma himself has had over 700 charges of corruption laid against him. Crime and corruption from the highest levels of South African government to the very bottom of the public service are destroying any and all hopes for a peaceful and prosperous South Africa in the future.
Based on the available crime statistics and all-pervasive corruption South Africa could easily be confused with any other terrorist shell state. It’s fast becoming another “smoke-and-mirrors” nation going through the motions of a functioning republic but filled with the rotting carcass of a broken and pillaged “post-liberation” administration and further wracked by the funk of a thoroughly crippling post-colonial entitlement mentality . Shell states are filled with factional violence where local and international syndicates join forces to rule the day under the cloak of “nationhood.” They are hot spots for sanctioned theft, international money laundering and transit points for the illegal trade in guns, ammo- and in South Africa’s case a bounty of rhino horn for pals in the East. They are drug transit points and above all they are places awash in the blood of the innocents. The human cost is immense. In many ways South Africa has fared little better than Iraq.
The ANC takeover of South Africa occurred just twenty short years ago. In that period of time almost 70,000 whites and thousands of upon thousands of blacks have lost their lives to violence and murder. South African farmers, particularly Afrikaner farmers, have seen the worst of it. Since 1994 over 3140 South African farmers have been murdered in some of the most horrific and barbaric ways imaginable. That’s one farmer every 2,3 days for the last 20 years. By comparison only 39 farmers lost their lives during the Kenyan Mau Mau. Yet the international media turns its back on South Africa’s gruesome holocaust.
During the past month we have been bombarded by the Oscar Pistorius trial. Oscar, in his fit of paranoia has played into the hands of the liberal social Marxists, the Western and local media and neo-tribalists who are hell-bent on proving that the only kind of man truly morally culpable of any crime in this world is a White man. All other crime “pales” by comparison and is hardly worth a passing mention. From the ferocity of the legal assault on Mr. Pistorius it would appear that all other races are exempt from the Western standards of law and order and are free to rape and pillage at will and with the full approbation of the state.
South African cable TV has a special channel dedicated to the live broadcast and analysis of this ghastly fraud of the South African legal system. The trial has also been given nauseatingly wide coverage by the international media. Officials and local media talking heads openly boast that the world will see the efficiency of the post-Apartheid South African legal system in action.
In reality what the world is watching is a canned hunt, a legal travesty, a torture session where a confessed killer is being brutally probed over his “intent” by state prosecutor, Gerrie “bull dog” Nel. While Nel and his state legal minions are flagellating a confessed killer for propaganda mileage thousands of barbaric perpetrators run amok in the countryside. These are the real criminals that Advocate Nel needs to be contenting with, not some Roman Circus. South Africans know and understand their motives.
The entire post-Apartheid dilapidation of the South African legal system feeds into this perverse roadshow. Truth be told, Gerrie Nell is the state prosecutor of a South African legal and police system so fraught with corruption and criminals itself that it can barely muster the energy to keep law and order on the streets let alone catch, prosecute and incarcerate the masses of high profile violent criminals who infect the land. According to Africacheck:“Between 1998 and 2012, at least 21,785 criminal cases involving police officers were reported to South Africa’s Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD)” .
Since the Mbeki era crime statistics are only released once a year entirely out of fear of tarnishing the image of the ruling party. When arrests are made dockets are stolen or lost and evidence simply disappears for a price and the criminals are back on the streets. Bungling by incompetent South African police officers and investigators on crime scenes is also far too common.
It seems fitting, then that “bull dog” Nel finds himself wasting his substantial legal energies tormenting a man who has already confessed. What a convenient brief. Any coward could preside over the harassment of a caged animal.
South Africa- dialogue derailed…
In 1998 the late, anti-communist South African writer Aida Parker warned of the inevitable economic crises and internal recriminations pecking party which would ultimately engulf the post-liberation South African body politic. The soaring crime, the bread and circuses mentality around corruption and now the impact of the cumulative liquidation of South Africa’s farmers over the last 20 years is beginning to precipitate this very thing.
Censorbugbear reports:
“In April 2011 the TAU (The Transvaal Agricultural Union)said: …that (of the 3,800 whites recorded as having been murdered in rural regions by armed militia-gangs), about 1,780 were commercial farmers – members of the Agri-SA and TLU unions. They have been murdered and terrorised off their farms and smallholdings by these gangs, while the rest of the farmers are facing heavy pressure to ‘sell’ their land deeds to the state. A large number of these farmers who ‘sold’ their land willingly, have thus far also never been reimbursed for handing over their registered deeds to the ANC-government: essentially their land was simply stolen from them.”
“In November 2007, One of South Africa’s most experienced former military commanders and analysts, ret. Maj-Gen Chris van Zyl, warned in a lecture in that the growing Southern African food-crisis was creating massive political unrest throughout the southern African region. People were now on the move by the many millions – mostly into South Africa from the rest of Africa. “This is the largest migration on the African continent now occurring right now in South Africa, where many millions of famished Africans arrive in their desperate search for survival”. The UN-sponsored news agency IRIN reported in May 2007 that many millions of South Africans are struggling to cope with the country’s soaring food prices.”
In short, the compromise and eventual loss of South Africa’s commercial farming sector through violent attacks and haphazard redress makes the country ripe for a full-scale poverty revolution. It’s a national disaster in the making. The flood of migrants pouring in from their own spectacularly botched democratic experiments has only helped to prime the charge.
The West has been on its suicide mission for some time coldly sacrificing, one by one, its Judeo-Christian outposts to phony self-determination, sham democratic “transformation” and revolutionary conflagration without end. South Africa appears to be its most highly favoured poster child. In Aida Parker’s Spring 1998 special publication, Issue No. 221 “Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer” SA’s Bloody Road to Ruin she wrote:
…The most serious problem facing the country gets the least official attention. Nor can there be any doubt that the Mandela government is not playing open cards on this crisis situation. Which brings us to a question of our own: The story, apocryphal or not, goes that Julius Nyerere, visiting China, asked Mao Tse-tung how best he could set about imposing communism on Tanzania. Mao replied: “You must destroy the most conservative strata of society, the farmers.”
Sadly, her words ring as true today as they did sixteen years ago for nothing has changed. All has degraded and the slaughter continues unabated. From the value of the Rand to the average life expectancy South Africa has edged ever closer to the chaotic precipice of the political and social abyss.
Of South Africa’s current president – from the horse’s mouth- the SOWETAN, March 12 2012 says:
Zuma is the first president of the ANC to whom the “the worst shall lead” principle readily applies. He is the worst president of the ANC since 1912.
So true on every level.
In hindsight, at least the Mandela government had the cheek to disregard one of the more damning 1998 NIA reports on farm murders.
Apart from hearing the distant strains of “mshini-wam” – “Bring me my machine gun [so I can shoot the Boers]”- one can scarcely recall when the current ANC “cognoscenti” have uttered one word regarding this genocide. Only now, before a general election, is there any passing mention made in the media of the many butchered and fallen. Perhaps our leaders’ aggregate IQ handicaps them from coherently and openly expressing their concerns and grief over the demise of their fellow citizens or is it, perhaps, a cryptic sign of their tacit approval?
A car belonging to foreign media observing the house of former president Nelson Mandela was towed away for having caused an obstruction in Houghton on Thursday night, Johannesburg metro police said.
Spokesman Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said the Toyota Quantum was towed away for obstruction from 12th Avenue and 4th Street after complaints of a disturbance in the Houghton area.
“Another three minibuses, a double cab and a Toyota Cruiser were left on the pavement in the residential area,” he said.
“The cars are used by foreign journalists who were observing the residence of former president Nelson Mandela. It is important that journalists respect the privacy of other individuals.”
On September 25, President Jacob Zuma said Mandela was responding to treatment while convalescing at his Houghton home.
“Our revered former president continues to respond to treatment at his home,” Zuma said in a speech prepared for delivery at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Mandela was admitted to the Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria on June 8, with a recurring lung infection and was discharged on September 1. – Sapa
The military says Tamer Abdel-Raouf sped through a military checkpoint, ignoring soldiers’ warning shots. A colleague who was with him in the car says he obeyed the soldiers’ orders to turn back, but they opened fire anyway as he was making a U-turn.
The result was the same: The reporter for the flagship Egyptian daily Al-Ahram on Monday became the fifth journalist to die as the media are swept up in the bloodshed roiling Egypt.
Television and radio stations air patriotic songs while a slew of talk show hosts glorify the military that seized power and denounce the Islamist government it overthrew.
This satirical programme on TV has become almost real in Egypt
It’s a sharp turnaround from the challenges these same journalists faced under President Mohammed Morsi’s rule, when reporters were sued by Islamist lawyers for “insulting the president.” After his ouster, his Muslim Brothehrood group openly blacklisted 50 of those media personalities.
Now journalists are facing deadlier perils.
A week ago Mick Deane of the British TV broadcaster Sky News and two Egyptian journalists were fatally shot while covering the violent breakup of protest camps in Cairo. Other foreign journalists are also feeling the pressure, complaining that security forces fail to respect the exemption that allows them on the streets after nighttime curfew.
The tense media landscape is increasingly mirroring the venomous atmosphere, where people are fractured along political lines.
“The whole media scene has been extremely polarized and it’s a reflection of the polarization in society,” said Rasha Abdulla, a media professor at the American University in Cairo.
TV presenters have sung the national anthem on TV and openly cried tears of joy when Morsi was ousted seven weeks ago.
Meanwhile, Morsi’s Brotherhood group has waged its own media campaign online and through its spokesmen on social media websites after channels sympathetic to the group were shuttered last month.
In one, a spokesman posted a picture of dead Syrian children online, claiming they were Egyptian kids killed by police. In clashes that the Health Ministry said killed around 80 people, the Brotherhood’s emails to reporters initially claimed 200 were killed. At another point it claimed the overall death toll was more than triple what the Health Ministry was reporting.
The discrepancies come from both sides, as the death of reporter Abdel-Raouf demonstrates.
A statement by the army said that he sped through a checkpoint after curfew and soldiers fired warning shots.
However, Hamed al-Barbari of Al-Gomhuria newspaper told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists that the two, riding in the car together, were turned back by soldiers at the checkpoint. He said the soldiers then fired at the car as they were making a U-turn, shooting Abdel-Raouf in the head.
Abdel-Raouf had been critical of Morsi’s ouster on Facebook and other social media, though the CPJ said there was no evidence that he was targeted for his views.
Western journalists have come under attack from angry citizens. CPJ reported that during violent protests Saturday, Annabell Van Den Berghe, a freelance journalist with the Belgian public broadcaster VRT, and crew were confronted by people who accused them of being American spies and said Western media were biased. They beat a crew member but did not harm the journalists.
The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network, particularly its channel dedicated to live coverage of events in Egypt, has been the only major Arabic-language outlet for the Muslim Brotherhood’s views. Its Cairo office was raided by security forces last week and two of its journalists detained.
A number of its presenters quit around the time of Morsi’s ouster, saying the station had misled viewers. The network counters that it is covering all events in Egypt with “balance and integrity”
Three Turkish journalists, Metin Turan and Heba Zakaria were arrested over the weekend and Tahir Osman Hamde was reported arrested on Tuesday. It’s not clear whether any have been released.
Senior Egyptian officials have taken to critiquing the foreign media.
The State Information Service released a statement saying some media outlets are “falling short of describing events of June 30 as an expression of popular will.”
Meeting foreign journalists recently, interim Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy expressed his frustration.
“You have a problem of your profession frankly,” he said, saying the limited space to report complex issues makes the journalists “very superficial in what you are doing.” “And frankly,” he added, “many of you have covered the news incorrectly and unfairly.”
Adel Iskandar, author of “Egypt in Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution,” said that under the rule of autocratic President Hosni Mubarak, “The military was untouchable and invisible” and that “the media, both state and private, were obedient because they were censored.
“Now they are willfully on the bandwagon.”
Under Mubarak, bloggers were targeted as well. Mostly liberal, leftist and secular protesters active on Twitter and Facebook were beaten and arrested during subsequent rallies against the military rulers who temporarily took over after he was toppled. Similarly, online administrators of Brotherhood websites and online activists sympathetic to the group are now being arrested, shot at and even killed by security forces at anti-government protests.
Noha Radwan, a scholar of Arabic literature at University of California at Davis, follows events in her native Egypt closely, and says the media is actually driving polarization in the country.
“For the past three weeks media sources on the ground, whether they are the governmental or the independent channels. have been working the public into nothing short of a mass hysteria,” she wrote, blaming both the state media and Islamists.
“Every media source in Egypt is lying, spreading hearsay, and dismissing reports that do not serve their agendas. The result is a frenzied and divided population that is proving uncharacteristically callous to the bloodshed among one group or the other.”
Iskandar said that while Egypt may not be in a state of actual war, the battle lines have been drawn in the media
Egypt, he said, “is in a state of media and rhetorical war.” – AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin has created an anti-CNN for Western audiences with the international satellite news network Russia Today. With its recipe of smart propaganda, sex appeal and unlimited cash, it is outperforming its peers worldwide.
Russia Today uses the source material America supplies to its rivals untiringly and with relish. Even Washington’s relatively minor peccadilloes don’t escape notice. For instance, the show also includes a story about Gabonese dictator Ali Bongo Ondimba, whom US President Barack Obama supports.
Many in the West are also interested in seeing critical coverage of the self-proclaimed top world power. Russia Today is already more successful than all other foreign broadcast stations available in major US cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York. In Washington, 13 times as many people watch the Russian program as those that tune into Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster.
Two million Britons watch the Kremlin channel regularly. Its online presence is also more successful than those of all its competitors. What’s more, in June, Russia Today broke a YouTube record by being the first TV station to get a billion views of its videos.
The station was even more triumphant when it signed Larry King, a legend of American radio and TV journalism who began working for Russia Today this summer. “America’s best known TV interviewer is defecting to the Russians,” wrote the London-based Times in May.
King and his new colleagues have a simple assignment: They are to “break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon mass media,” President Vladimir Putin said during a studio visit a few weeks ago. The Russians’ recipe for success has three ingredients: sex appeal, which has been atypical for most news channel; a rigidly anti-American stance; and a never-ending flow of money from the Kremlin.
The Ministry of Media Defense
Since 2005, the Russian government has increased the channel’s annual budget more than tenfold, from $30 million (€22.6 million) to over $300 million. Russia Today’s budget covers the salaries of 2,500 employees and contractors worldwide, 100 in Washington alone. And the channel has no budget cuts to fear now that Putin has issued a decree forbidding his finance minister from taking any such steps.
The Moscow leadership views the funds going to the channel as money “well invested,” says Natalya Timakova, the press attaché to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “In addition, Russia Today is — and I hope the Germans will forgive me for this remark — significantly more modern than Deutsche Welle, for example, and it also has more money.”
The government has also spent a lot of money on the new broadcasting center in northeast Moscow, which Russia Today moved into in May. The station, citing confidentiality requirements, isn’t willing to quote an exact price tag. On the grounds of a former Soviet tea factory, the broadcaster is now creating programming in Arabic, English and Spanish. In 2009, it rebranded its English- and Spanish speaking divisions as simply “RT.” The evening news is currently focused on the euro crisis, social protests in Portugal and the NSA surveillance scandal.
Margarita Simonyan
Margarita Simonyan is the woman who shaped Russia Today into Russia’s most effective weapon in the battle for influencing the opinions of the global public. In her office on the eighth floor of its headquarters in Moscow, the editor-in-chief has Orthodox icons on her desk and a dozen flickering screens around it. Putin made Simonyan the head of the new station in 2005. At the time, she was only 25 and derided as an unknown reporter from the crowd of journalists that accompany the president at meetings.
Simonyan’s mission is to prevent Russia from ever losing a war of images.
CNN showed images of destroyed buildings, allegedly taken after a Russian bomb strike on the Georgian provincial city of Gori. According to Russia Today, however, they were actually shots of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali after a Georgian attack. “There is no objectivity,” Simonyan says today, “only approximations of the truth by as many different voices as possible.”
Mistrust of the domestic media is also greater than ever in the United States. CNN, for example, is struggling to cope with a massive loss of viewers. – Der Spiegel
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