The Shifting Plates of Awareness and Responsibility
The NYT branch of the CIA is running a counter-intelligence operation
[Art by Mr. Fish]
Published: 2024-03-03
Flogging a Dying Horse
The central term in Ray McGovern's useful acronym, MICIMATT, is Media. He emphasizes that its central position is purposeful. It is a key enabler of the imperial project. Recent events are shining a light on its fragility. Can you remember when an hour-plus long interview with a foreign president by any element of the Official Imperial Spinmeister Echo-Chamber (OISEC) generated an audience of 200 million?
Their efforts to control narratives create a counter space. It feels like an echo of the great book by Hofstadter "Gödel, Escher, Bach" in which the concepts of foreground and background are explored. Similarly, Newton's 3rd law of action and reaction seem at play. Each empire defeats itself. Its desire for expansion causes a collapse in the center, at 'home'.
Media analysis seems like a self-serving wank. It is tiresome and boring. One feels like a privileged individual complaining that other people have more privilege. On top of this, around here, people are well aware of just how insane the "legacy media", "MSM', "dinosaur media", OISEC, call 'em what you want, are.
Nonetheless, two events have driven me to flog OISEC's dying horse.
The Flour Massacre
Caitlin 'Goddess of Zeitgeist reading' Johnstone has written an article on how Israel's IDF food-aid bait trap has been 'communicated' by OISEC. The natural descriptor would be ghastly. She chose ghoulish. Both capture the demonic nature of OISEC and their imperial masters.
Johnstone traced the 'verbal gymnastics' used by the three letter agencies of OISEC 'to avoid saying Israel massacred starving people who were waiting for food', with that starvation having been created by them. Outside of OISEC in the independent media, Moon Of Alabama's title drew a box right around the heart of the matter with "Zionists Use Food-Baits To Attract And Kill Starving Civilians".
So demonic is the behaviour of the Zionists that even elements of the empire loyalist media are sticking match sticks under their eye lids. Caitlin's report includes the story of a rhetorical enforcement action within OISEC. The NYT is running an internal leak investigation attempting to identify who spoke to The Intercept about the spiking of an episode for its podcast of spin "The Daily".
The initial 'leak' of the NYT running a Stasi-like operation to get reporters to rat on each other was followed up with another at The Intercept. This brought founder Jeremy Scahill into the team. The follow up article is just about as twisted as the PR issued by OISEC. Its language is domain specific. Its prose aligns itself within the OISEC bubble, and frankly would lose anyone's interest within the first 6 paragraphs. But, other media writers, in this case Vanity Fair's Charlotte Klein, found the article and investigation it describes of interest. This in turn led to a journalist I do respect, Kevin Gozstola, remarking:
The newspaper of record is behaving like a US intel agency, asking staff to rat out colleagues if they have information on any "insider threats."
The NYT is eating itself.
From where I sit, the whole saga began a fortnight earlier when The Grayzone's Blumenthal and Maté published an article informing that they had engaged the NYT's official complaints mechanism for the abuse of journalism which was the article which was to serve as the basis for the spiked podcast. This effort by Blumenthal and Maté was praised in this newsletter's 2024, Week 02 podcast for its use of the official complaints mechanism. Similarly, Emmy Butlin who was highlighted in 'Assange Day-X: A Post Day 1 Discussion' used the BBC's official complaint mechanism. The Beeb, on the morning before Assange's application for an appeal began, had falsely described the charges against Assange for the umpteenth time. One never knows where officially reporting lies can lead.
Shifting Onus
A few days before Vanity Fair's Klein got onto the NYT's 'insider threat' purge, Prof. Diesen held a small event in Norway titled "Media Under the Clouds of War". This, naturally, covered the topic which Johnstone would address in her article, the emotional and cognitive abuse which OISEC fires at its audience.
Col. Macgregor accepted Diesen's invitation to appear as one of the presenters, in an interview (see Sources below). Macgregor re-issued to the Norwegian audience points of clarification on elements of the NATO proxy wars which command OISEC's attention, namely those in Ukraine and the Occupied Territories.
During Macgregor's remarks he repeatedly made an observation which was jarring because of its offensive truth. Following a characterization of US history and then post-WWII European history with which one may wish to quibble he declared a painful truth. One should recall that he is speaking to a European audience. He's just mentioned Charles de Gaulle's statement that Britain is an island and that the US isn't a part of Europe either. To paraphrase his point:
If you think that the US is going to solve either the Ukraine or Gaza conflicts you are deluding yourself. It wont. If you want this solved, stop waiting for the US to do it for you and do it yourself.
There is an implied "and its your continent, and I see no reason why we should save you again". One can take umbrage with various parts of his characterization, but the point stands. He is correct. One could stand around and declare that the US could solve either crisis in an instant, but it aint gonna. So, disabuse yourself of this fantasy and find a more realistic position!
It is this analysis which leads to his prognosis that some grand Arab/southwest Asian alliance is going to contest the Israeli genocide in April/May/June. Because someone has to, and it wont be the US. There is, of course, great risk in this, and none of these nations wish to begin this conflict for it plays into Israel's and the US' demonic leadership's hands.
Lux' Analysis
All of the above lead me to be reminded of a comment by a community member. In response to 'Not So Good News: Transitioning to WW3' Lux Aeterna remarked:
No empire ever has accepted a "ceasefire", so this one too is doomed to crash and burn in flames!
Now it's up to you "westerners" to stand up against "your" governments and protect the future of your children. Neither Russia nor China can help you with that effort...
With which Col. Macgregor appears to wholeheartedly agree.
When will the citizens of the NATO member states and nations of the West realize that it is they who need to wrest control away from the self-interested, psychopathic, megalomaniacal racists who run their nation's foreign policy?
As an aside, the almighty Article 5 of the NATO Treaty compels member states to 'take such actions as they deem necessary' if another is member state is attacked. Such action may be "Well, you've ignored all warnings and behaved like total idiots and your political leadership deserve what's coming. But, here's some food and blankets."
It is clear that Lux is disconnected from OISEC's narratives. Evidence of clear thought is on display. Caitlin's argument is that even members of OISEC itself are starting to realize just how sick the whole game is.
This is entirely unsurprising given the current political chaos. If I may bore you with a select, quick summary of recent events: The British political duopoly just awoke to the nightmare of Galloway returning to parliament, not as an independent, but the leader of a newly registered 'Workers Party of Britain'. People in Norway are being informed that they'll need to solve this one (Ukraine) themselves, in Europe. The Polish farmers just dumped 183 tonnes of grain on the Ukrainian border in protest. In response, Ukraine's government wants them to pay for cleaning it up. Ansar Allah continue to attack Israeli, US and British shipping while the US is happy spending hundreds of millions of dollars to no effect other than giving its Navy something to do. The EU finally called for a ceasefire in Gaza on 2024-01-19, but that contained a totally unrealistic clause that Hamas be "dismantled and that all hostages it holds be released". Meanwhile, Macron is musing on overt military intervention in Ukraine while everybody know that Ukraine is full of NATO mil-intel and special ops people. The US Democrats are trying to work out how to waste another $61 billion to gift to 'Ukraine' while tying the hands of whichever administration wins in November. And to top it off:
Rishi Sunak has claimed extremist groups in the UK are “trying to tear us apart”, in a hastily arranged Downing Street statement hours after George Galloway won a byelection in Rochdale.
As Lux said, the Empire of Chaos is not going to fix itself.
What I'm seeing is both a great unraveling and perhaps, a reuniting of a body politic. Hopium may not be a strategy, but as Caitlin repeatedly asserts, helping others to realize just how much they are continuously lied to helps.
There is a reason that Ray McGovern emphasizes the middle m in MICIMATT. Media is the linchpin, and it is starting to rattle.
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Sources
[in historical order — video excepted]
Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report, Max Blumenthal & Aaron Maté, The Grayzone, 2024-01-10
Week in Review: 2024, week 02, YesXorNo, 2024-01-14
Assange Day-X: A Post Day 1 Discussion, YesXorNo, 2024-02-21
New York Times Puts “Daily” Episode on Ice Amid Internal Firestorm Over Hamas Sexual Violence Article, Daniel Boguslaw & Ryan Grim, The Intercept, 2024-01-28
New York Times Launches Leak Investigation Over Report on Its Israel-Gaza Coverage, Charlotte Klein, Vanity Fair, 2024-02-29
Zionists Use Food-Baits To Attract And Kill Starving Civilians, b., Moon Of Alabama, 2024-02-29
Happy News! Galloway's SMASHED IT in Rochdale!!, YesXorNo, 2024-02-29
Not So Good News: Transitioning to WW3, YesXorNo, 2024-03-01
How the Imperial Media Report on an Israeli Massacre, Caitlin Johnstone, Consortium News, 2024-03-01
Colonel Douglas Macgregor - the complete absence of strategic thinking in Washington (24.02.2024), Prof. Deisen interviews Macgregor, Media Under the Clouds of War [Norway, 2024-02-24], uploaded to Diesen's channel on 2024-02-28
Copyleft: CC0
Well tied up!