[…]

But rarely do we have examples of propaganda so flagrant from our “free press” that it is hard for readers not to notice them. This week the state-corporate media made my job a little easier. Over the past few days, it has reported on two closely comparable events that it framed in entirely different ways. Ways that all too clearly serve state-corporate interests.

The first such event was an Israeli air strike last Saturday on a school in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians, including children, had been sheltering from months of a rampaging Israeli military that has slaughtered many tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed most of the enclave’s homes and infrastructure.

The massive scale of death and destruction in Gaza has forced the World Court to put Israel on trial for genocide – not that you would know from the media coverage. The genocide case against Israel has been largely disappeared down the memory hole.

The second event, on Monday, was a Russian air strike on a hospital in Kyiv. It was part of a wave of attacks on Ukrainian targets that day that killed 36 Ukrainians. Let us note too that, despite huge numbers of Palestinian women and children being killed each day by Israeli missiles, the news media largely stopped covering the carnage in Gaza months ago. The BBC’s main evening news barely reports it.

The fact alone that the killing of 36 Ukrainian civilians attracted so much attention and concern from the western media, in a war that’s more than two years old, when there is a far larger daily death toll of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, which our governments have been directly aiding, and the slaughter is of more recent origin, is telling in and of itself.

So how did our most trusted and progressive media outlets report these comparable events, in Gaza and Ukraine?

The headlines tell much of the story.

[…]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Cook

After nine months of an Israeli mass murder campaign in Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has confirmed what my colleagues Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada (EI) and Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone reported back in October: that Israel invoked the Hannibal Directive and killed its own citizens on Oct. 7th.

According to one Israeli military source, Israeli forces were ordered to turn the boundary area around Gaza into a “killing zone” — thereby knowingly killing Israelis in that zone. Under the Hannibal doctrine, Israel’s aim was to kill its own people rather than let them be traded in a future exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons. The Israeli military has suppressed this killing of its own people on Oct. 7th all while manufacturing support for its rampage in Gaza ever since.

The same establishment media outlets that have long ignored this aspect of Oct. 7th smeared my independent media colleagues at Grayzone and EI for reporting it. This includes two hit pieces in the Washington Post, and even more brazenly, three pieces in Haaretz — which is now acknowledging what it has repeatedly attacked Max and Grayzone for reporting.

• Scahill: I’m leaving The Intercept and starting Drop Site News
• Ryan Grim: This is an email I never thought I'd be sending

There seems to be a rash of exoduses from The Intercept going on. Two months ago, Ken Klippenstein quit for The Grayzone: Why I'm Resigning From The Intercept

Some may recall Glenn Greenwald’s exit in 2020.

• My Resignation From The Intercept
• Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept

Emphasis original:

[NYT’s Cecilia] Kang’s thesis [link] was premised on years’ worth of media and policymaker fearmongering that TikTok user data was susceptible to surveillance by the Chinese government (BuzzFeed News, 6/17/22; Forbes, 10/20/22; Guardian, 11/7/22). According to Kang’s colleagues, the law’s enactment was prompted by “concerns that the Chinese government could access sensitive user data” (New York Times, 4/26/24). In 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte sought to prohibit TikTok throughout his state on the grounds that “the Chinese Communist Party” was “collecting US users’ personal, private and sensitive information” (Montana Free Press, 5/17/23). (Gianforte’s attempt was later thwarted by a federal judge.)

If such fears were officials’ genuine motivation, one could hope that broader data-privacy regulation might follow. Yet, as the Times neglected to mention, the spying accusations are tenuous—and deeply cynical. As even US intelligence officials concede, apprehensions about China’s access to TikTok user data are strictly hypothetical (Intercept, 3/16/24). And, despite its bombshell headline “Analysis: There Is Now Some Public Evidence That China Viewed TikTok Data,” CNN (6/8/23) cautioned that said evidence—a sworn statement from a former ByteDance employee—“remains rather thin.”

Given their dubious nature, it’s hard to see these data-privacy claims as anything other than a pretext for the US to throttle TikTok. By forcing either divestment or a ban, the US, at least in theory, wins: It transfers a tremendously lucrative and influential company into its own hands, or it prevents that company from serving as a platform—albeit one with plenty of problems—on which people can engage in and learn from discourses that are critical of US empire.

Hans-Georg Moeller is a professor at the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at the University of Macau, and, with Paul D'Ambrosio, author of "You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity".

https://fah.um.edu.mo/hans-georg-moeller/

My research focuses on Chinese and Comparative Philosophy (specifically Daoism) and on Social and Political Thought (specifically Social Systems Theory).

Moeller’s bibliography (Google Books)

The speaker discusses Ray Epps, who allegedly incited the January 6 Capitol assault. Tucker Carlson from Fox News is accused of promoting a conspiracy theory about Epps. Lawyers representing Epps plan to sue Fox News for defamation. The speaker questions why Epps, who encouraged people to enter the Capitol, hasn't been arrested, suggesting he may have been an FBI informant. The FBI denies orchestrating the riot but doesn't provide a clear answer. The speaker believes Epps was a fed acting to discredit the MAGA movement. The media's sympathy for Epps is questioned, implying a cover-up. The transcript ends with tour promotions.

Ambitious... bold...?

This is so on-the-noose promotional in tone, more obviously a PR than many other interviews. I am not sure who can take is as an interview, and not a documentary :-)