Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
September 28, 2021

To Disparage Taliban NYT, CNN Quote Hoax Twitter Account, Create Fake Story

Gareth Porter has described how Corporate media stirred global terror hysteria to push postwar hostility toward new Afghan govt:

Following the Taliban’s victory over the U.S. military, U.S. corporate media has churned out a new narrative about the imminent threat of terrorism from Afghanistan that sets the stage for future military interventions. Blasted out in a stunningly disciplined fashion, the media has demonstrated as clearly as ever its coordination with the national security state and advancements of its interests.

The badmouthing of the Taliban government continues.

Today the New York Times as well as CNN ran a fake story intended to put the Taliban into a bad light:

New Taliban Chancellor Bars Women From Kabul University

Tightening the Taliban’s restrictions on women, the group’s new chancellor for Kabul University announced on Monday that women would be indefinitely banned from the institution either as instructors or students.
“I give you my words as chancellor of Kabul University,” Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat said in a Tweet on Monday. “As long as a real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first.”
The new university policy echoes the Taliban’s first time in power, in the 1990s, when women were only allowed in public if accompanied by a male relative and would be beaten for disobeying, and were kept from school entirely.

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The CNN story, published later, says:

"As long as real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first," Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat said on his official Twitter account.

When I read the NYT story this morning I checked the account and found that its was an unverified account, created this month under the name of the new chancellor of Kabul University. The account had curiously used mostly English in its tweets and seemed unusual rough in its wording. The tweet in question, which the NYT quoted incomplete, started with "Folks!"

Something with the account was obviously off so I checked a bit more. It soon turned out that several Afghans had immediately pointed out that the account is a hoax and that the whole story thereby fake.


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Wardak Media @wrdakmedia - 22:02 UTC · Sep 27, 2021

Students at Kabul University have rejected new claims that women have been banned after a major news outlet fails to verify tweets by a fake parody account.
Locals have urged reporters to uphold journalistic ethics and standards by thoroughly fact checking and verifying news.

Obaidullah Baheer @ObaidullaBaheer - 9:33 UTC · Sep 28, 2021

Students from #Kabul University tell me that female faculty and students have been accessing the university as per usual. #NewYorkTimes should really verify their stories before publishing them. University #Chancellor refuses to give interviews. Directives from above I suppose.

The University of Kabul says that its chancellor does not have Twitter or Facebook accounts.


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The Twitter account which the NYT and CNN quoted and linked no longer exists.

But nineteen hours after the New York Times, and later CNN, were told by Afghans that the story is fake they still carry their uncorrected false stories.

The NYT story was written by Cora Engelbrecht and Sharif Hassan and the CNN story by Karen Smith and Tara John. Obviously neither of these persons, who disparage a country with stories based on unverified hoax tweets without further checking, should be called a journalist.

Nor are their editors, who allowed the stories to be published based solely on a unverified tweet, qualified for their jobs.

Posted by b on September 28, 2021 at 17:44 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Zero Hedge was pushing this story, but now it suddenly returns 404 (it should have been properly retracted)

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/talibans-newly-appointed-chancellor-kabul-university-bans-women-working-or-studying

Good job exposing it being fake

Posted by: Norwegian | Sep 28 2021 17:56 utc | 1

Just shocking that the NY Times didn't do basic fact checking.

Well, not.

Posted by: Jay | Sep 28 2021 18:01 utc | 2

Thanks for the posting b

The shit show continues until its not supported anymore in spite of the ongoing brainwashing and narrative control by the empire's media

The empire's media bears no resemblance to journalism and those that work for those organizations are deluded acolytes of the God of Mammon religion just like most of the current politicians in Western countries

We are seeing the demise of empire that no longer can sustain Might-Makes-Right control globally. The unipolar world of global private finance centered empire has met its match in the growing China/Russia, et al axis

What b is reporting on is the flailing and gnashing of teeth of a MAD constrained empire that has minimal history of social merit to compare to that of the China/Russia axis. The public is seeing this emperor with no clothes shit show in relation to the visible advances of China and no number of Cora Engelbrecht, Sharif Hassan, Karen Smith and Tara John's will be sufficient Winston Smith's

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 28 2021 18:07 utc | 3

Fake or not, once a story has been published in a major media outlet, its propagandistic purpose has been served. Any subsequent retraction will be seen only by few and ignored by most of them.

Posted by: Rob | Sep 28 2021 18:15 utc | 4

Posted by: Norwegian | Sep 28 2021 17:56 utc | 1

ZH is trash now and has been for many years. The comments section is totally devoured of intelligence and looks more like a online game chatroom for 15 year olds. Everything devolves into dick, mom or racist jokes within 3 replies, flame war then ensures but eventually everyone is able to reconcile their differences and agree its China's fault.

It's editorial slant of pro ru and anti China makes me think the tylers has been farmed out to bangalore.

But someone is definitely making good coins.

btw Nice work b.

Posted by: A.L. | Sep 28 2021 18:19 utc | 5

Not surprised at all.

In many Latin American countries, mass media usually "kisses up" to the main media from "seriuos countries" (USA's NYT or WaPo, France's Le Monde, Spain's El País, etc). Unfortunally, most of the population follows this pattern, so local mass media run hoaxes this way:

1) Local mass media publish a fake news, which gets little attention locally.
2) Mass media from Europe or North America replicates what was published on the Latin Amercan local media.
3) Local media, in turn, announce that "serious articles published by autoritative Western media CONFIRM what we had published" (BS, they just copied what was originally published with no grounds).
4) A politician, lawyer or NGO activist deposes a complain on the local courts, and the Lawfare ball starts rolling.
5) At the time of the public hearings, denouncers claim that the information should be true "because it was published on NYT/WSJ/WaPo/fill-with-your-favourite-presstitute"

A big part of the "battle" is not military but of perceptions and "common sense", on a Gramci's way (who imposes the dominating common sense).

Posted by: Andres | Sep 28 2021 18:28 utc | 6

Posted by: Rob | Sep 28 2021 18:15 utc | 4

Bingo. Just like making inappropriate statements in Congress/parliament/whatever then immediately "retracting" it. It's intentional and the damage is already done. No one cares about the retraction, apologies or errata...

MSM is resting on the assumption of journalistic integrity of yesteryear. It'll only get worst and overtly weaponized. The shitshow will go on until it doesn't.

Posted by: A.L. | Sep 28 2021 18:31 utc | 7

Thanks b. The propaganda machine never sleeps.

Posted by: jo6pac | Sep 28 2021 18:50 utc | 8

Media war is intensifying, RT german channels banned in UTube, for the time being media is a front where empire rules, but slowly losing dominance.

More Afghan news, US asks Russia to provide basing space in its Central Asian bases, while the Taliban asks the US formally to stop intruding into Afghan airspace, until they get good air defense systems it seems unlikely that the US will comply.

The International Penal Court will not investigate US war crimes in Afghanistan after hinting that it would, another institution with a destroyed reputation:

I have therefore decided to focus my Office's investigations in Afghanistan on crimes allegedly committed by the Taliban and the Islamic State – Khorasan Province ("IS-K") and to deprioritise other aspects of this investigation.

I’ll quote one of the bar’s patrons, the shitshow goes on until it doesn’t.

Posted by: Paco | Sep 28 2021 18:53 utc | 9

There you go again doing journalism, b, well done. Propaganda R Us. Maybe the good news is all Empire has left now is propaganda. The tragedy is that so many still believe.

Though I imagine the public's interest in what the Taliban does or doesn't do will be overshadowed by the major supply chain disruptions that will shortly cause empty shelves and consumer panic.

Posted by: gottlieb | Sep 28 2021 18:56 utc | 10

Fact checking in not necessary as long as the story fits the desired narrative of the US and it's lapdogs.
If the US really cared about women in Afghanistan they would have never supported the Mujahideen. Human rights is just another tool (manufactured lies) of the US to exploit other countries assets.

Posted by: Joe | Sep 28 2021 19:08 utc | 11

To Disparage Taliban NYT, CNN Quote Hoax Twitter Account, Create Fake Story

Luckily, Google quickly reacted to these fake NYT and CNN stories by banning RT Deutsch YouTube channel. If NYT and CNN continue to push unverified gossip as facts, Google will have no option but to ban RT en Español as well.

Posted by: S | Sep 28 2021 19:39 utc | 12

“imminent threat of terrorism from Afghanistan that sets the stage for future military interventions”
Say Whaaat? It wasn’t enough they got their butt kicked out the first time? They want to go back in for more butt kicking?

Posted by: Sakineh Bagoom | Sep 28 2021 19:54 utc | 13

Yup, fake story, but to what purpose? Disparage the Taliban, the new Afghan government and all their doings, but why? To re-intervene? I honestly think that ship has sailed.
Maybe the goal is to create an excuse to keep all their looted wealth in the form of Afghan money locked up in US accounts. I say, keep it. A new Eurasia is taking shape in front of our eyes. America has five eyes, and still cannot see what's in front of them. Poor bugger...

Posted by: Hal Duell | Sep 28 2021 19:58 utc | 14

@A.L. | Sep 28 2021 18:19 utc | 5

ZH is trash now and has been for many years.
You find trash everywhere, this place not exempted. There are no "safe spaces". One has to learn how to detect the trash and deal with it. In between trash you may find some marbles.

Posted by: Norwegian | Sep 28 2021 20:08 utc | 15

the Great Wurlizter of the Mainstream Propaganda System (MPS), I mean the great fourth estate, is unfazed these days by such trivia as the veracity of minor details like whether the University of Kabul's chancellor has this account or not, or said such and such a thing or not...

they don't need to verify, either!!

heck, I wouldn't be surprised if someone from the CIA or NSA etc etc created the account, posted that message and then 'alerted' the NYT and CNN about this fake detail on a fake account to make more fake 'news' that is unfit to print.

Posted by: michaelj72 | Sep 28 2021 20:29 utc | 16

You would think bad mouthing the Taliban, (the extremist, narrow-minded, misogynist Gov't and people even too on the nose to even be officially recognised by China, Russia et al.!) on the basis on FACTS, ACTIONS and TRUTH would be the easiest job in the world ... but they couldn't even get that right.

Posted by: Et Tu | Sep 28 2021 20:32 utc | 17

The white Western judeo-Christian mass media cannot be trusted. White racism and judeo Christian bigotry are their motivaters.

It is not a matter of the bigoted New York Times or CNN fact checking or not. They themselves set up the bogus "Kabul University Chancellor" account to cover up their fascist propaganda.

Posted by: Ali | Sep 28 2021 20:46 utc | 18

You know you reached rock bottom when you have to resort to fabricating negative PR against motherfucking Taliban.

Posted by: vk | Sep 28 2021 20:47 utc | 19

BBC is joining in as well:

"Top US General Mark Milley has warned al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan could threaten the US in as little as 12 months."

And Saddam could launch his WMDs in less than 45 minutes...

Posted by: Malchik Ralf | Sep 28 2021 20:51 utc | 20

Something, something democracy dies in darkness something like that...

Posted by: Dogon Priest | Sep 28 2021 21:06 utc | 21

Thanks b. For the MSM the truth can only be created out of whole cloth, and they just keep on spinning it.

Posted by: Michael Crockett | Sep 28 2021 21:07 utc | 22

a) write fantasy and BS for top MSM outlets = will be successful and respected.

or

b) publish accurate sources detailing war crimes perpetrated systemically = the CIA will mark you for liquidation.

The same process takes place in universities on a less dangerous but equally hypocritical scale:

a) publish fashionable guff, reheat old cabbage, or reinvent nuts and bolts = "research track record!"

or

b) spend 10 years producing original criticism = underperforming, unproductive.

The best journalists (e.g., our host), like the best philosophers, work outside the system.

Posted by: Patroklos | Sep 28 2021 21:12 utc | 23

@ Posted by: Dogon Priest | Sep 28 2021 21:06 utc | 21

If democracy dies in darkness, the WaPo is a black hole.

Posted by: vk | Sep 28 2021 21:18 utc | 24

You may find that both sets of reporters checked with the other, and bingo, each double checked their sources.

Posted by: Bart Hansen | Sep 28 2021 21:31 utc | 25

Something positive on russiagate front but barely adequate.
https://mate.substack.com/p/with-clinton-lawyer-charged-the-russiagate
Still waiting for charges for Iraq wmd, bioweapon attacks, chemical weapon attacks, etc, etc, etc...

Posted by: Joe | Sep 28 2021 21:45 utc | 26

NYT is renowned for its lack professionalism:
Judith Miller and nuclear Iraq had been quicky forgotten!
NYT has become a dangerous tabloid...
How can any one still takes it seriously?

Posted by: Virgile | Sep 28 2021 21:53 utc | 27

So if the New York Times is going to be so, ahem, ill-disciplined and unprofessional then what is to stop a reporter from creating a fake twitter account, post something inflammatory in it, and then "report" on that tweet?

Are there any checks and balances at the NYT that would prevent such "journalism"?

Probably not.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | Sep 28 2021 22:30 utc | 28

From what I understand,
NYT works closely with the WH, Dept of State, Pentagon, FBI
So when NYTimes craps out lies, it can be assumed those entities are behind it.

CNN, WaPo, AP, Reuters work closely with CIA.

I’m sure there is some crossover, but all big media is a mouthpiece for intelligence operations.

But I’m sure you guys knew that

Posted by: Cadence Calls | Sep 28 2021 23:08 utc | 29

Freinds and infidels!

I used to have a rather famous parody account on Twitter, @GenghisGobi , which was followed by such luminaries as RT journalist Murad Gazdiev, and in which I (pretending to be an Uighur "rebel" in the "Muhaysinic Emirate of Idlibistan ") made fun of "moderate" Syrian headchoppers and their CIA patrons. It was obviously a fake account and Murad and others never used me as a source in their stories. It takes deliberate effort to not know that one is posting misinformation if one is a journalist.

Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar! Thank.

Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Sep 28 2021 23:30 utc | 30

I think that part of the reason for these "Taliban is Bad' stories are to cover for their defeat.
See how bad things get when we leave.

Posted by: arby | Sep 28 2021 23:41 utc | 31

Alternative media has no way to respond to head line courageous malicious content produced into propaganda and distributed over the mass media to waiting audiences.
The size of the audience allows the media to self fund, because advertisers will pay to reach the audience, content attracts the audience. If counter content is to distributed over Alternative media, Alternative media needs to find ways to develop contents that attract mass audiences.
Controlling content has been a problem for kings, queens and heads of state since China invented the Printing Press and the kings and queens tried to control the press by copyright.

It was the British bankers that invented engineering colonization, regime change, and content produced propaganda.
Propaganda was their weapon, it is a major weapon often used by today's PIGOs (private, imperial global oligarch) to control both the actions or inactions of the politicians in the different nation states they have an interest in raping or destroying. Control how a person thinks allows to own the person.

One the best examples of engineering content and producing it into propaganda for the use and purpose of nation state regime change occured in Czarist Russia over the 20 years leading up to the internal chaos that allowed the Bolshevik Revolution (1919) to happen?

Content engineering is a profession, its product is propaganda, which is distributed over a media to audiences. Examination of the sequenced steps in this process suggest the blame belongs on the content engineer not on the media that distributed it.
What is not clear to me is why the media gets blamed for the content it airs or prints or draws into pictures?

Who engineered the false and misleading content, who produced the engineered content into propaganda (an expression in visible form of the engineering that designed the content)?

Maybe our inquiry for blame placement belongs with the author of the content? Where are the content engineers, who are they, and by what signature do they go? Who pays their salaries? How does this happen? Not sure the advertisers care much about the content, it is the audience the advertisers seek to influence.

Posted by: snake | Sep 28 2021 23:47 utc | 32

Blasted out in a stunningly disciplined fashion, the media has demonstrated as clearly as ever its coordination with the national security state and advancements of its interests.

Now the fuck woulda thought this was the case? Five eyes intel controlling media? nah yah imagining it.
Forgive me , I am pissed and pissed off.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Sep 29 2021 0:07 utc | 33

What would you expect in the Empire of Mendacity?

‘The mainstream media’ is the mouthpiece of ‘the Imperialist system’ and has always been. The assumption that ‘the mainstream media’ is here to tell us the truth or reality is completely unfounded and naive at best.

“Pentagon employs more than 27,000 PR specialists who, with a budget of nearly $5 billion a year, are working the media and circulating targeted manipulations...They manage to stir expectations and spread deceptive scenarios.”

"Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial [& financial] autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters."
– Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check

Mediocrity and mendacity abounds!

Posted by: Max | Sep 29 2021 0:34 utc | 34

PressTV today
Folks!
I give you my words as the chancellor of Kabul University:

as long as real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first.

— Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat محمد اشرف غیرت (@MAshrafGhairat) September 27, 2021

Posted by: Jamie | Sep 29 2021 0:43 utc | 35

Biswapriya Purkayast |
you are an oddball. you dont like the country that destroyed the US takbeer proxies.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Sep 29 2021 0:43 utc | 36

Meanwhile in the real world that exists free from the distracions and stenography of the US msm and its military advretisers there is an interesting debate on a much more significant issue at Strategic Culture.


Brian Cloughley British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan reports on: Nuclear Weapons Must Not Be Permitted in the Middle East

Further, in December 2020 President-elect Biden gave warning that if Iran obtained nuclear weapons then it would be possible that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey might follow its example and “the last goddamn thing we need in that part of the world is a buildup of nuclear capability.”

He is right. And the U.S. should do everything it can to ensure that the Middle East is a nuclear weapons-free zone, although no matter what is claimed by various parties, Iran is nowhere near producing a nuclear weapon. On the other hand, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) records that “North Korea continues to enhance its military nuclear programme as a central element of its national security strategy. While it conducted no nuclear test explosions or long-range ballistic missile tests during 2020, it continued production of fissile material and development of short- and long-range ballistic missiles.”

But then the attention is distracted by some BS tweet from a BS news machine prattling about women in Kabul University. Well I guess that worked.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Sep 29 2021 0:55 utc | 37

Posted by: Jamie | Sep 29 2021 0:43 utc | 35

Got a link?

I just looked at Press TV and there is no such thing that I can see.

Posted by: arby | Sep 29 2021 1:11 utc | 38

The Taliban is acting against women, not enforcing gender equality. Stay home and make babies. That's bad. But not too different from the west, actually. Let's consult the 'good book.'
Genesis 3:16
Unto the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 29 2021 1:16 utc | 39

Distraction politics from the NYT is perhaps a cover for the lunatic mendacity coming out the mouth and hand of the New York Governor Kathy Hochul:

"Vaccines are from God... be my apostles"

From Ron Paul: "Then she signs executive order to fire thousands of nurses - amidst a critical shortage of nurses in NY. Make sense?"

And this NYT fishwrap runs a BS report on Taliban women university ban.... I think it might just be distraction.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Sep 29 2021 1:19 utc | 40

Two words to fix this problem: Ban Twitter!

Posted by: Smith | Sep 29 2021 1:19 utc | 41

B do these individuals/groups who ruin media give you fits yet you try to write objective news pointing out the obvious?

Is this why you left the media company having daily contact with high power individuals? I am happy to be on this site. thanks a lot carry on.


p.s. if you feel you are forced to write about german politics... how about every country? :) jk.

Posted by: jason | Sep 29 2021 1:22 utc | 42

The last week corporate media who have left a few stringers in Afghanistan have been running stories on the genuine hardship and possible famine that could occur there thanks to the coalition of the killing's decision to deny Afghanistan access to their own money and cut off all aid to punish the people for not acquiescing to their brutal occupation.
Natch the msm doesn't put it in those terms but it has been accentuating, sometimes spitefully sometimes sentimentally that if the country is too broke to keep access to enough food and energy for the citizens, there will be many deaths and much misery.

Beat up stories such as the Uni is sexist nonsense, are being used as a way to keep western types, particularly women from getting too upset at the planned USuk created famine (hopefully they dream, to be followed by a colour revolution).
So a litany of seemingly small issues such as the Uni or the one last week where Afghan based ngos were allegedly no longer 'allowed' to keep employing women will get pumped outta intelligence agencies so that no one will make an issue of the horror show about to be visited on that nation.
The next step is likely to follow the occupied Palestine playbook where a surfeit of western journos on the west bank and in Gaza made the most egregious acts of the apartheid regime difficult.
That was solved by pressuring the clan who controlled tunnels bringing allegedly prohibited goods into Gaza who had always worked in co-operation (aka backhanders to) military intelligence, to abduct those western journos operating in Gaza.
As we all know it worked a treat, all the big media organisations hauled their journos out ( back in the noughties there were still some actual journos working for corporate media, many of whom were in Gaza which really upset the apartheid regime).
After that the regime simply refused to give passes to western journos to go to Gaza on the grounds that it was too dangerous. Of course network bigwigs would have been party to this.

The same will happen in Afghanistan no doubt. Something bad will happen to a couple of the stringers, then with only unwhite journos, preferably with strong foreign accents, few will pay attention to any reports about dying afghans - other than the deaths of quislings.

No one to dig out the facts about who was actually murdered by drone, no one to show starving & frozen Afghan children this winter, the war will continue from afar.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Sep 29 2021 1:23 utc | 43

You wont find this getting front page in the NYT: "On 17th September 2021, Xinhua News Agency of the People’s Republic of China reported that on the previous day the country’s Minister of Commerce, Wang Wentao, had sent a formal request to join the regional alliance of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) during a teleconference with his New Zealand counterpart, Damien O’Connor. New Zealand is the depositary of the CPTPP."

"This appeal was not a complete surprise, because in November 2020 Xi Jinping spoke about the possibility to “favorably consider” such a prospect during speeches at a regular video-summit of APEC member countries.

The event is highly noteworthy in the development of the political situation in not just the Indo-Pacific region but also worldwide, as the focus of the globe’s “Great Game” shifted to this region long ago. Apparently, the leaders of the Euro-Atlantic region still haven’t quite grasped this.

Except for the leader among them, that is, which remains the USA. It started to transfer strategic attention from Europe to the Indo-Pacific region in the second half of the 2000s. In particular, the Pacific Command of the US armed forces began to strengthen, and to its name the prefix “Indo” was added. At the moment, a large part of the country’s armed forces are concentrated in this command."

Looks like the Aussies are being encircled and will soon be overthrown by the global goodwill trading company.

Meanwhile the NYT is reporting insane trivia and promoting chadaree chatter and related BS.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Sep 29 2021 1:57 utc | 44

denying access to media on digital is everywhere happening

A new privately owned digital distribution platform is needed.. wonder what it would cost to develop one of our own ? .. a few satellites in the sky, changes in the packet formats and access protocols to avoid the ICANN and avoid the use of domain names, just use IPs. issue IP address directories. Changes in the routers to accommodate a single up/down outdoor satellite capable antenna might not be as expensive as we might think? .. say every person interested in Alternative media were to pay $200 a year. would that be enough?

Posted by: snake | Sep 29 2021 2:16 utc | 45

Lest we forget: "It is amazing what's happening to the discredited media like CNN, MSDNC, New York Times, and Washington Post. . .Their businesses have dropped off a cliff, which is actually a very good thing for the American people, because they are Fake News (likewise the networks, ABC, NBC, CBS).". . .Donald Trump

Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 29 2021 2:45 utc | 46

The women of Libya might be less than pleased with the 'fraternity' of the USA. Given this report was just published on NEO by Valery Kulikov, I can imagine the USAi permanent state doesn't want you to consider what is happening elsewhere in the planet.

It looks like Nerdogan is likely to get his but kicked in Libya once again too. Didn't Khillary have some dealings there as SOS as well?

Against the backdrop of a shaky and uncertain domestic situation in the country, corrupt practices have intensified. For example, in early September, an employee of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) of Libya published documents on the Web confirming the theft of public money, showing that some of the proceeds were criminally transferred to the accounts of European politicians. The published documents include US Ambassador to Libya Richard Norland, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Libya and Head of the United Nations Support Mission Stephanie Williams, top officials of the former Lybian Government of National Accord (GNA) Fayez al-Sarraj and Fathi Bashagha. However, the latter two have been previously repeatedly accused of embezzlement and bribery. According to published data, NOC revenues are supposed to go to the country’s treasury. Still, instead, they are shared among Libyan officials and sent to Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

I can understand why the NYT would need to go into desperate distraction mode by inventing an entirely fake Taliban story. They could at least have whipped up some fear and loathing in regard to 'son of Qaddafi'. But even that was beneath their febrile imagination ;))

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Sep 29 2021 3:15 utc | 47

But the NYT is not alone in its senile mediocrity.

The Daily Beast gets a well deserved fish slap in this brief 'Putin goes to the wilderness' report:

"But, let’s be straight here. The Daily Beast is owned by IAC, which is in turn run by billionaire Barry Diller, the founder of Fox Broadcasting and the real Godfather of corporate owned media in the west. Searching, as I should do in due diligence, I could not for the life of me find Diller doing anything athletic. The only reference I could find on him was the 2021 Sun Valley conference, where it appears he meets up with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook, Warren Buffett, and other rugged American he-men. Funny, none of them seem to fish or fly fighter jets like Putin, though."

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Sep 29 2021 3:51 utc | 48

There's been a lot of hurt feelings in Washington and by the think tanks that the US is losing the "disinformation" wars, that Russia and China excel at disinformation but the US has been ineffective because of bureaucratic retardation. So there is an effort to step up the fake news to help USA, and the MSM is more than happy to chip in. It would be unpatriotic for the media to do otherwise. . ."The first casualty of War is Truth"

Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 29 2021 4:10 utc | 49

I would have thought it obvious that if Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat had a Twitter account, he would be tweeting in Dari, not English.

And if he or the University of Kabul were employing someone to translate his tweets into English, the English-language translations would have a distinct style and flavour to them. Being Taliban, the Chancellor would include invocations such as "God willing ..." or "by the grace of God" into his tweets. See at this link Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei's tweets to get a sense of the style that he uses, even in English translation from Farsi.

But of course the NYT and its ilk don't do any fact-checking and other due diligence, and never have done since sacking their editorial staff back in the early 2000s - because fact-checking was what all those sacked people did.

Posted by: Jen | Sep 29 2021 4:58 utc | 50

Jen: "But of course the NYT and its ilk don't do any fact-checking and other due diligence, and never have done since sacking their editorial staff back in the early 2000s"

can you expand on this institutional change?
I remember the drumming up to the invasion of Iraq and the NYTimes prominent role in that propaganda. I don't see how that had anything to do with fact checking. it reflected not the lack of editorial staff but precisely the interventionist and gatekeeper role of editors in shaping the paper's narrative. ultimately that's what the lead editors there do thry are gatekeepers framing headlines and spinning how the body article should be read

Posted by: mastameta | Sep 29 2021 5:11 utc | 51

"35

Biswapriya Purkayast |
you are an oddball. you dont like the country that destroyed the US takbeer proxies.

Posted by: Peter AU1 |"


What are you even talking about?

Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Sep 29 2021 7:53 utc | 52

What's new, the Fake News champions published more fake news. I would be more surprised if they had officially retracted it .. and in complete shock if they had also apologised.
TEP.

Posted by: TEP | Sep 29 2021 8:00 utc | 53

snake #45
But your satellite could have a bad accident ;/

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Sep 29 2021 8:04 utc | 54

The Dominate Empire requires its Holly Bibles des nous jours to point to and say this is the Truth - written in the deadwood media so it must be believed; As are are the words from the dead eyed prophetesses of porn tv. Why do such newscasters have to be dolled up like crack whores on the make? So that guys listen with their dicks that’s why.

The libertarian slave owners Guardian newspaper in the U.K. with its stable full of such rag sheets, does its equally scurrilous doody for the 5+1 Eyed DS, connected in its death scream in its ever decreasing corner.

Their last throw of the dice - make all their sheeple into fascist dummies and have a bunch of proxy sacrificial ‘tinted’ peoples to die on the front line - looking at you India, Japan, Pacific Islanders and South American’s. The real target being Africa I believe.

It is time to not just target their weapons of destruction but the purveyors and owners of these weapons who make believe they are personally so far from the ‘fronts’ that they are immune from any personal financial or physical discomfort let alone punishment. Their mansions and castles and accounts and super yachts and secret paradise islands and billionaire lifestyles require annihilation before they do it to us. One friendly drones and hypersonic missiles and rid humanity of the cursed barons and all their deeds - let their names and works and progeny disappear forever and become forgotten. They must be named and identified widely. Shame is the first line and these who are shameless must bear the further lines of defence by humanity against their continued contagion.

Posted by: D.G. | Sep 29 2021 10:21 utc | 55

The army of national security trolls is massive and spread across all forms of communicaton. They have to do something to justify their paycheck. When Woodward walked into the Nixon Whitehouse he arrived from naval intelligence. Deep throat my ass, it was fellatio and it continues to this day.

All media is infected. Only the bright glow starry glow of many mushroom clouds will drive them into their holes in the ground.

Posted by: circumspect | Sep 29 2021 10:46 utc | 56

snake @45: "...issue IP address directories."

Uh... that's what DNS (Domain Name Service) is.

"A new privately owned digital distribution platform is needed."

Private ownership is actually what is causing the problem here. A (or many) state-owned social media platform is what is needed.

Why state-owned?

Because state-owned must obey whatever free speech/open access laws are in effect in that state. Privately-owned infrastructure, which Google and YouTube are, operate with more "freedom" in who they can allow or deny access to that infrastructure. It is all about "Terms of Service" in the private sector, and those Terms of Service are always deliberately vague and open to being reinterpreted or rewritten on a moment's notice any way the owners wish.

Put it this way:

Private sector = Rules-based order
Public sector = Laws-based order

The empire wants a rules-based world order only because those rules would be issued by the United States government, which has been fully 100% captured by private business interests. With that said, a publicly-owned media platform in the US would not be able to arbitrarily silence users. They would have to follow due process. The Bill of Rights may be in tatters right now but it still has far more teeth for protecting you than ANY Terms of Service or End User License Agreement offered by any private business.

The private sector is not coming to the rescue... ever. In fact, the private sector is where all of the problems we're seeing, and in particular the ones highlighted by our host above, originate.

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 29 2021 14:29 utc | 57

I'm wondering how many people bombarded with juvenile MSM codswallop and 2nd rate fake videos about the Taliban ask themselves "Is this penis envy or just the usual sour grapes at being out-smarted, again, by a bunch of high-achievers whose skill the Dumbass Yankees and their Euro-trash NATO $lave$ under-estimated, again?"

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 29 2021 15:51 utc | 58

A TV comedian recently summed up the Afghan C/F as "The Americans rushed over to Afghanistan with guns blazing, for 20 years, to get rid of the Taliban and replace them with ...... the Taliban!!"

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 29 2021 16:04 utc | 59

@Hoarsewhisperer 59:

More than that the Amerikastani Empire managed to turn a widely despised Hotak Ghilzai tribal movement in the late 90s into a multi ethnic widely supported national liberation movement 20 years later, even with no major change in its ideology.

That's some achievement, man.

Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Sep 29 2021 16:13 utc | 60

@ William Gruff | Sep 29 2021 14:29 utc | 57 who wrote

"
Put it this way:

Private sector = Rules-based order
Public sector = Laws-based order
"

Exactly! At the top of that Private sector is the cult of global private finance that makes it all happen behind the curtain.....including the propaganda focus of this posting by b

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 29 2021 16:14 utc | 61

uncle Tungsten @ 54.. D.G. @ 55, circumspect @ 56 and William Gruff @ 57
re snake #45

<= ok, satellite accidents can be fixed. The point is to develop competing systems by using different packet size and hardwired routing protocols embedded in chips (no field re-configurable OS or BIOS in computers, routers, or network equipment browsers web clients or email clients allowed) so no field programmable event can interfere.

Change chips at different intervals [users buy the chips from trusted providers], so the protocol in use changes not by software changes installed over the Internet, but by physical change of chip. The chip set functions are hard wired to accommodate proprietary special purpose privacy protocol communications; even the browsers, email clients and servers are hardwired and operate off the Read Only chip.

Operating on a private wireless satellite network with chip set specific private protocols operating outside of PIGO surveillance and control is a competitive must. The array of businesses focused on invading everyone's privacy using standard protocols is astonishing.

I believe small business, given a choice, will strongly support alternative networks once alternative content is made audience friendly. But no one has given small business a choice? to produce that choice, alternative networks need to develop content good enough to attract wide audiences.

Chips are cheap.. can even convert the incoming electrical power supply to a different frequency so the network and user equipment operate at a different power frequencies to further deny unwanted intrusion. This could also slow and maybe halt the serious threat to one's health suggested by research into 5g implementations.

In fact, such an alternative hardwired network system could even create a major set of new industries owned and operated by people today's industries would never employ. Don't forget none of the people who worked on Linux in the early days were paid for their development effort.

Who knows, the demand for truly secure privacy may be great enough to attract large audiences. The larger the audience the more likely becomes advertiser $ support. Media sell access to their audiences to advertisers. Alternative media can do the same if it finds a way to secure its network from competitive interference. Audience size determines the success of media.

I am suggesting PIGO control over mainstream media has not been challenged by competition. Advertisers pay to reach audiences, at the moment the PIGO own all of the significant audiences. Alternative media needs to develop audiences, it needs an independent, secure network to do that with, because it is access to audiences that advertisers pay to reach.

Alternative media, operating on secure networks, could establish a central computer to allow advertisers to buy ads on the private secure network. A central advertising computer could be developed to insert and distribute ads, in ways that would deny advertisers any punitive control or adverse influence over the content, the user, the content provider or the audience.

If humanity wants its freedom from the awesome mostly malicious powers today's PIGO enjoy, humanity is going to have to compete with the PIGO for it. The PIGO choose the digital platform on which to conduct his competition for advertising dollars. Humanity needs to prepare itself, for the coming battle, because advertising support of alternative media is the key to democracy and independence.

Chips are cheap..computer motherboards are nothing but electrically powered sets of networks of chips, each can be programmed and hardwired to handle a different packet and word size and be hardwired programmed to use different protocols.

What search engines spy folks used to store, becomes invisible to them, as everyone on the alternative network, changes the physical chip in their systems.

Establishing systems using different protocols protected from intrusion by hardware over the Satellite, to attract global audiences into alternative media is the future.

If audiences develop <= advertisers will support the providers of the alternative systems and content providers will provide the content needed to compete with the audiences PIGOs currently own. Its the audience stupid.

Basically PIGOs have used advertising revenue to support their extraction of profit from humanity. Only recently has it been understood, that that spying, misinformation, continuous never ending, always abusive updates to software, and disruption of and redirection of information flows all attack and weaken democracy, human rights, and human independence. Alternative media is too weak to defend those infringed rights?

PIGOs want to control the minds and behaviors of their audiences. To do so, the PIGOs have created a network which allows them to manipulate their audience by controlling the variables that determine human behavior and belief.

I know competing with MSM is far fetched.. but it came to me that inventing Linux was far fetched. Yet a few people worked on it, and presto, Linux is the os of choice <= for most back office and network operations. Developing alternative media into an alternative set of networks capable to compete 1 on 1 with MSM delivered content means there will be alternative media for advertisers and audiences to support.

The PIGO (private imperialist global Oligarch) has pushed humanity far enough, its time for competition to weigh in.

Posted by: snake | Sep 29 2021 16:50 utc | 62

If the US persists in bad-mouthing the Taliban government then its interests will be sidelined in deference to the local governments (China, Pakistan, Russia etc) who do find it in their interest to recognize reality, which is ironic since it was the US (Trump & Biden) which created the reversion back to the Taliban.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Sep 29 2021 17:04 utc | 63

snake @62

What is to prevent your "alternative network" from joining your "PIGOs"? That is quite the privileged group that any investors/business owners would love to rise up in the ranks of.

Do recall that the corporate mission statement for Google/Alphabet once was "Do no evil." While there is no way to prove it, I am willing to bet that mission statement was absolutely sincere. In fact, I am willing to bet that the execs at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc sincerely believe that are on the side of goodness and decency when they censor Russian and Chinese viewpoints as well as gag Trump and the "Trumpists". They sincerely believe they are making the world a better place, and from within their own perspective they really are.

Basically, my question is what is the difference between a successful big business owner and one of your "PIGOs"? I don't see any difference.

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 29 2021 17:23 utc | 64

William GRuff @64--

Yes, they see themselves as Hercules slaying the Hydra that threatens their position and differ little from Francis Bacon's desire to wipe out all but the elite as the Hydra of both is Humanity.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 29 2021 17:57 utc | 65

If the fake Twitter account no longer exists, as claimed, why does the link to it still work (as of now)?

Posted by: Mark Mosby | Sep 29 2021 22:42 utc | 66

snake @ 62
Even Linux had a foundation in Berkeley Software Distribution or BSD. I do not think there is anything left to build on. There are just isolated pockets of resistance to clean up. We are entering the new Australian model of global control. Those isolate pockets of resistance include small groups on the right and left which will never cooperate against the system as a whole.

Reagan took out the fairness doctrine. Back then you had two sides shooting it out side by side on the same channel albeit hard right and left. Clinton's deregulation of the FCC wiped out a bunch of independent channels and finalized their consolidation into the big 6 media entities.

John Judge had a great idea. He advocated taking back the frequencies used by the media communicators and reallocated them more fairly. It is public domain rented out to these media barons. A partial solution, a step in the right direction. He had similar ideas to what you are proposing.

The internet was created as a control mechanism for the future. Had some great fun in the early days. Those days are coming to an end.

Posted by: circumspect | Sep 29 2021 22:56 utc | 67

A simple story of why the Taliban won, when the US and its henchmen started killing and injuring civilians on a large scale support for the Taliban went up. The US idiots will never learn ...

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/when-the-raids-came-afghanistan-war-toll-on-one-afghan-family/

Posted by: Roger | Sep 30 2021 0:17 utc | 68

This story is still up on the Times site and the fake twitter site is still up and linked to. Amazing they haven’t taken it down but I guess not that amazing considering the New York Times still has their stories up stating Novichok is something only produced by the Russian military, a lie that was debunked the first day they wrote it years ago.

Posted by: James | Sep 30 2021 5:06 utc | 69

Mastameta @ 51:

There are online articles on how layoffs and redundancies at newspaper publishers - mostly affecting backroom staff such as editors - may be having an effect on the quality and accuracy of the news that papers like the NYT and others print.

The Revolution Will Not Be Proofread

In late June [2017], hundreds of employees of The New York Times staged a walk out to protest the imminent and aggressive layoffs that would disproportionately affect copy-editors at the publication. During the action, staffers carried signs (“Who do you think makes sure it’s fit to print?,” “This sign wsa not edited,” “Invest in us,” ), chanted (“No editors, no piece”), and marched through the iconic red-paneled newsroom and once around the block. I watched intently, in the present meaning of that term, transfixed by my laptop screen, refreshing Twitter obsessively, as journalists and writers expressed solidarity for those who might be affected by the elimination of the newspaper’s traditional copy desk, which, in a letter to all staff in May, Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Managing Editor Joe Kahn described as “a vestige of an assembly-line structure held over from a newspaper-only newsroom built around multiple print deadlines. It is costly and slows us down.” With the money saved from eliminating copy-editing positions, the paper said it hoped to hire more reporters, become a nimbler shop, and turn around news as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Some argued that, in fact, the editorial checks from the copy desk, cumbersome as they might be, were a backstop not only for style and syntax, but for facts and logical inconsistencies, too — crucial during this absurd moment when the President takes to Twitter to gleefully amplify corrections from major news publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times, then accuse them of publishing false accounts and conspiring against him. An internal letter signed from the newspaper’s reporters to management in June also expressed frustration with the disconnect between upper-management’s decisions about restructuring, and what was actually going on within the newsroom. The move to eliminate the positions “had only the barest pretense of transparency,” the letter read. “From where we sit, the editing “experiments” looked like flimsy, brief set-pieces, never truly tested under fire — certainly not something on which to base a whole new system.”...

There's even a Wikipedia article on NYT controversies and one of these controversies is that eliminating copy editors has perhaps led to more errors in NYT articles such as typos and errors in checking facts:

... The New York Times announced plans to eliminate copy editing roles from the production of its daily newspaper and website content in June 2018. Executive Editor Dean Baquet defended the cuts, saying that the Times needed to free up funds to hire more reporters by eliminating editing roles. (The opinion and magazine sections have still retained their copy editors.) The duties of copy editors—checking for style, grammar, factual correctness, tone, as well as writing headlines—were merged into all-purpose editing roles. Editors currently not only edit the content of the stories but also, in many cases, provide the final read before publication.

Many publications, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, have suggested the elimination of copy editors has led to more mistakes, such as typos and factual errors, in the paper ... The journalism research organization similarly suggested in a blog post that the elimination of copy editors would decrease internal expertise and hurt the quality of the daily news report ...

This Poynter article on the NYT's 2018 plan to eliminate copy editing is worth reading as well:
By dismantling its copy desk, The New York Times is making a mistake that’s been made before

Posted by: Jen | Sep 30 2021 6:12 utc | 70

Posted by: circumspect | Sep 29 2021 22:56 utc | 67

If I recall correctly, Linus Torvalds wrote Linux based on Minix, a reverse engineered non copyrighted version of Unix written by a Dutch professor.

Unix was created at Bell Labs and forked at Berkeley as BSD Berkeley Software Distribution. The same Bell Labs team wrote the language C which was used to write Unix.

As Unix could run on different hardware, was ubiquitous and better, supported multiple user accounts and much more it was used throughout the world instead of the hardware companies’ own operating systems.

As in many great innovations it was three or four people who built this amazingly useful toolset.

What held it back was the ironclad licensing model that kept control by AT&T who owned the copyright.

This stranglehold was broken when Linus released Linux under an open source license, permitting anyone to use and extend his code.

Open source comes from Richard M. Stallman who originated the GNU project, reverse engineering many copyrighted tools including C itself, and creating the revolutionary open source license model which allows these tools to be freely used and extended, forever.

He famously said something like, “software wants to be free” meaning that these tools necessary in our Information Age should not be owned by anyone, but free for all to understand and use.

That legal structure is still unchallenged and is a huge innovation in itself.

Posted by: jonku | Sep 30 2021 7:16 utc | 71

jonku @ 71
If I recall correctly, Linus Torvalds wrote Linux based on Minix, a reverse engineered non copyrighted version of Unix written by a Dutch professor.
Your history of Linux is probably much more accurate than my shallow description. It is a great piece of software. The intentions and motivations of the creators were not centered around dollars like Gates and company.

Others need to step forward to break the domination of this small class of destructive people that seem to want planetary control.

Posted by: circumspect | Sep 30 2021 9:53 utc | 72

jonku @71, circumspect @72

Minix was created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum (he always signs his online posts as ast so the "T" is significant) as an academic tool. It was part of his textbook "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation", which really is a must-read for people interested in understanding operating systems. Minix was deliberately kept as concise as possible so that students could learn the code for the entire operating system and experiment with various parts of it. Despite this concision, Minix is a fully functional operating system, and because it can all fit in the head of a single moderately bright student it invites the addition of new features. Tanenbaum has resisted "growing" Minix beyond its current form though as then it would lose the conciseness that makes it such a great teaching tool.

With that said there have been countless operating systems based upon Minix. Linux is just one of the most successful.

Tanenbaum was born in the US, but wisely chose to leave.

While Tanenbaum and Torvalds figure highly in the rise of Linux, the key individual in breaking software free of its corporate overlords and making Linux possible would be Richard M. Stallman (yeah, the "M" is significant because he is so readily recognized as rms online).

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 30 2021 21:27 utc | 73

To circumspect— “respect”

@wg you too

I mean this in the literal Rasta sense

Posted by: jonku | Oct 1 2021 7:04 utc | 74

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