Eric Zuesse
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
Here will be explained many mysteries regarding public opinion, including (but not restricted to) this very important one: Whereas Russia is widely condemned for having invaded on 24 February 2022 an adjoining country, Ukraine, a country which has clear importance to Russian national security (as being a potential staging-base for U.S. missiles to be placed there a mere 300 miles away from The Kremlin — a threat to decapitate Russia’s central command too fast for Russia’s leader to have enough time to authorize a retaliation), and is being severely sanctioned by U.S.-and-allied countries and their media, for having done so (for having done what Russia needed to do to prevent that outcome); America and some of its allies were not condemned and sanctioned by any countries for having invaded on 20 March 2003 a far-distant country, Iraq, which (in stark contrast to Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine) had no importance whatsoever to U.S.-or-allied nations’ national security. (Only lies about “Saddam’s WMD” etc. had asserted to the contrary. Russia didn’t similarly ‘justify’ by lies its invasion of Ukraine.) America and its invading allies weren’t sanctioned even after their invasion of Iraq became widely known to have been based on entirely fraudulent U.S.-and-allied national-security excuses (such as that Iraq was only six months away from having a nuclear bomb). This glaring, and entirely unjustifiable, inequity in public opinion throughout the world (which was heavily propagandized against Russia for having done what NATO had actually forced it to do, by contemptuously ignoring Russia’s national-security concern about Ukraine), is ignored in the news-media, but it demands an explanation, ESPECIALLY because the news-media themselves censor-out the very subject of this inequity, and pretend that it doesn’t exist — that the public hasn’t been fooled by them into this fear of Russia, such as was exemplified by Sweden and Finland then seeking to join NATO to protect themselves from Russia). Democracy within nations, and the achievement of peace between nations, are impossible unless this subject — this censorship itself — is openly and honestly discussed. Because this censorship is almost universally censored-out, the present article will be presenting the reader with immediate access to key items of its evidence (by means of links to documentation regarding any reasonably questionable allegation herein), so that the reader can judge the evidence on one’s own.
That’s the mystery; the inequity is the mystery; and here is its explanation:
INTRODUCTION
As will be shown here, the U.S. Government controls the Web; and this means that it also indirectly controls the news-media (as is going to be documented here, by the evidence that will be linked-to here). This evidence will make clear the extent, and the methods, whereby the U.S. Government is, by means of censorship, effectively controlling public opinion in all U.S.-&-allied (or vassal) nations, but even to a large extent world-wide outside of the U.S. and its vassal-nations (or colonies, such as are all NATO nations).
Censorship is an essential tool of any dictatorship, and is a mortal danger to any democracy, because censorship enables the controlling owners of news-media — and it enables the Government that those owners also control via their massive political-campaign donations — to control public opinion, and so to shape voting-results and thereby produce ‘democracy’ instead of democracy. Such monopoly control of information to the public, by billionaires, produces the result that every candidate for high public office must choose to serve some billionaires or else will lose the s‘elections’ (selections by billionaires, and then elections by voters from among those pre-selected billionaire-approved nominees). That’s aristocracy (one-dollar-one-vote), instead of democracy (one-person-one-vote).
The U.S. Government (America’s billionaires and their millions of hired agents) currently does have monopoly control over the Web (the world-wide web, the publicly available portion of the Internet (which latter includes also private pages, ones that can’t be viewed by the public). Especially for international news, most people get their news mainly from the Web; so, censorship of the Web is especially important in order to get the public to support the Government’s (its billionaires’) international policies (such as invading Iraq and Libya, and sanctioning Russia, and arming Ukraine and Taiwan).
Furthermore, Google has a virtual monopoly on browsing or searching through the Web and was created jointly by the U.S. CIA and Defense Department; so, not only does the U.S. Government (America’s billionaires) directly control the Web, but it indirectly controls the finds on almost all searches of the Web (and the few competitors to Google are even less good than Google is, and moreover aren’t doing anything in order to provide in their finds the Web-pages that Google’s search-algorithms are especially excluding from their finds). (Anyone who thinks unbelievable that Google manipulates U.S. electoral results should see the 18 September 2023 video explanation “How Google Shifted 6 MILLION Votes To Joe Biden! w/ Dr. Robert Epstein” — also here — in which that extremely prestigious Harvard-educated research-psychologist, who had voted for Biden against Trump, reports his impeccably researched findings, which have shocked himself, and which have caused predictions that there will probably be a Google-paid hit-job against him to stop his research.)
The full extent of U.S. Government censorship will be documented in the following examples: specific censorship-actions by the U.S. Government and its hired agents, will be linked-to so that the reader can see them for oneself. (Consequently, this article, which is being submitted free to all news-media, will be published by few if any of them, and the reader is therefore urged to pass this article along, to others.)
DOCUMENTATION
Following are Orwellian cancellations by the U.S. Government, of news-sources that are at least as reliable and trustworthy as what the U.S.-and-allied Governments and their media publish, but which nonetheless are, as you will see here, being carefully blacked-out from the public, by those agents (agents hired by U.S.-and-allied billionaires):
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GMUF [German Marshall Fund of the United States [a U.S. Government front]]
Alliance for Securing Democracy [imposing dictatorship]
Russian sites sanctioned for spreading disinformation ahead of war in Ukraine
On March 3, 2022, the US Treasury Department sanctioned 26 individuals and seven entities for spreading disinformation ahead of the war in Ukraine and around a series of other geopolitical flashpoints on behalf of the Russian government. The sanctions targeted employees of the Strategic Culture Foundation, InfoRos, NewsFront, and SouthFront — all of which are Russian intelligence-linked sites that were sanctioned in April 2021. Treasury also designated new sites for being affiliated with the Strategic Culture Foundation, including Odna Rodyna, Rhythm of Eurasia, and Journal Kamerton. The outlets New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review were sanctioned for being linked to Russia’s foreign intelligence agency. Sanctions also targeted the sites United World International and Geopolitica, which are connected to the Russian nationalists [that word, “natioonalists,” intended to signify far-right, and maybe Nazi, but it’s a lie, a smear] Darya Dugina and Alexander Dugin.
About This Incident
Threat Actors: Russia
Tools: Information Manipulation [actually far less deceptive than the New York Times and Washington Post]
Incident Metadata
Date: March 2022
Country: Ukraine
PS (from me): I have requested the U.S. Government to supply me with evidence backing up their claims, on each one of those Websites, that it is controlled by Russia’s Government, but never received an answer. I have also asked some of the Websites. None said it was controlled by the Government; but one, SouthFront, said emphatically that it is NOT, and that they have received no support whatsoever from it.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20211225175047/http://strategic-culture.su/
There was no website on the domain STRATEGIC-CULTURE.SU yet, but on 25 December 2021 it started being set up, in preparation for the U.S. Government’s shutting down their existing site (strategic-culture.org).
This page is a copy of the earliest appearance on the Web, of the Website the Strategic Culture Foundation in Russia was then setting up to replace their then-existing site, www.strategic-culture.org, which they knew would be taken down by the U.S. Government, because I and other Americans who had some of our articles published there, were warned in late 2021 that if we continued to have articles published there, we would be potentially fined $325,000 by the U.S. Government, and so we all quit submitting our articles to that site. I told the site then that the FBI had warned me not to submit more articles. This replacement-site was started soon after.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20230721134118/https://southfront.org/
21 July 2023 was the last day of southfront.org, which then switched to southfront.press on 19 August 2023: https://web.archive.org/web/20230819122841/https://southfront.press/.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20230821040540/https://orientalreview.org/
On 21 August 2023, orientalreview.org was cancelled. It switched, on August 25th, to: https://web.archive.org/web/20230825070911/https://orientalreview.su/
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https://twitter.com/RealScottRitter/status/1689990077957476352
Scott Ritter, 11 August 2023, 620.4K Views
@RealScottRitter
When it rains, it pours. The same day that YouTube deplatformed “The Scott Ritter Show”, they deplatformed “Ask The Inspector.” This is a targeted effort by YouTube to remove/minimize my voice, and those of my guests and the people who took the time to ask probing questions about the pressing issues of the day. Those who are behind this should know — you won’t succeed. There is a vast social media world out there beyond YouTube. And for those voices who still use YouTube as the primary vector to your audience, understand this — conform or perish. If you’re doing a geopolitical show, and you’re still platformed by YouTube, ask yourself why. And be willing to live with the answer. More on this later.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20230817072455/https://www.strategic-culture.org/
17 August 2023 was the last day of strategic-culture.com. Then it switched to:
23 August 2023
Dear friends,
Today, our website, strategic-culture.org has been denied access to the .org domain, run by the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry. This comes in the wake of numerous cyberattacks aimed at the website’s infrastructure.
There is no doubt that this act of cyber warfare is an attempt to silence another independent media critical of the American empire.
Currently, all our materials are accessible on Telegram and we will resume the operation of our website soon.
Stay tuned!
Sincerely,
Strategic Culture Foundation
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On 28 August 2023, I headlined “How the U.S. Government Targets Websites for Destruction”, and reported that
This is about the supposedly international organization that controls the internet and thus the Web. It mentions that there are also “other organizations [than ICANN] such as OpenNIC, that are charged with overseeing the name and number systems of the Internet.” However, if one clicks onto that “OpenNIC” it explains that “Like all alternative root DNS systems, OpenNIC-hosted domains are unreachable to the vast majority of Internet users, because they require a non-default configuration in one’s DNS resolver.” In other words: ICANN, which is controlled by the U.S. Department of Commerce (SouthFront is correct about that), has a global monopoly over the internet and Web. So: not only are they violating the U.S. Constitution, but they are violating the entire world. In order to break that U.S.-imperial monopoly, a new internet/Web must be constructed. Who will do that? (It would be a service to the entire world, if the U.S. empire ends; but at least it would be a service to the publics in all non-U.S.-empire — or non-U.S.-‘allied’ — countries, otherwise; and the result of that would be much faster improvement of the non-U.S.-empire countries.)
This is above and beyond any direct actions by U.S. Government agencies, such as by the FBI and U.S. Department of ‘Justice’. But here are merely a few of the Web-sites that used to publish me but that the U.S. Government has directly shut down, via those two agencies:
Three site-cancellation notices were shown there, for: American Herald Tribune, Press TV, and One World Press. All were high quality sites that contradicted lies that are commonly spread in U.S.-and-allied media.
ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) from the U.S. Department of Commerce, is the master-authority that actually controls the Web. It can remove any site it wants (such as those). The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia, which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved, provides the Orwellian description, that “ICANN’s primary principles of operation have been described as helping preserve the operational stability of the Internet; to promote competition; to achieve broad representation of the global Internet community; and to develop policies appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.[8]” However, despite a number of legal challenges, culminating in 2016, to ICANN’s monopoly power, there has been no real change except added legalese to muddy up the waters and add yet more obscurity, hiding that U.S. Government monopoly power. This “bottom-up” remains actually top-down from the U.S. Government, which almost certainly won’t ever willingly cede control over it.
In addition, there exist ‘independent’ ‘fact-checking’ corporations (such as ‘NewsGuard’), which likewise ‘police’ truth (and accept without question, and tolerate no variance from, Establishmentarian opinions) and have no accountability, and which further police against writers and speakers on the Web who contradict the presumptions in the U.S. Government’s propaganda, and which virtually force the owners of news-sites on the Web, to either terminate dissident writers and speakers, or else to become terminated themselves — financially squeezed out-of-business, either by drying-up the advertising income that keeps the site going, or else by otherwise driving down the market-price of the site if its owner is aiming to sell it — but, in either case, forcing it out-of-business unless it will comply with that ‘truth’-police’s demands. (In that instance concerning ‘NewsGuard’, the site’s owner was forced to not only remove an article from me, but to remove all of the hundreds of articles that had previously been published there from me — and truth had nothing actually to do with this; the threat by ‘NewsGuard’ had everything to do with it.)
Behind censorship stand only gangsters, no truth. They war against open public debate, and use ‘truths’ from the powers-that-be (typically coming ultimately from some billionaire or group of billionaires) in order to disempower the public to determine individually on their own whom is telling only the truth, and whom is instead lying or otherwise misrepresenting reality so as to fit those billionaires’ agenda. Any statement might be true and might be false, but no external ‘authority’ should be empowered to evaluate that — only each individual has a right to determine, for him or her self, what is true, and what is false. Otherwise, democracy can’t even function, at all. But, of course, that’s the very point of censorship, isn’t it — to prevent democracy?
How, then, can ICANN be replaced? I don’t know enough technically to be able to say. I know only that it MUST be replaced — not merely ‘fixed’ (such as has been attempted during decades now). The U.S. Government continues to block the required change, because the required change is to replace ICANN altogether — to end the U.S. Government’s choke-hold over the Web. The U.N. keeps debating what to do about this. Perhaps the BRICS nations will simply DO it.
A physicist whom I know, responded to this article by saying: “All the BRICS/Russia could do is create a parallel Internet, with all this entails (and it entails a lot, from satellites to its own namespace to gargantuan server farms to time).” To that, I replied: “Sounds right to me, and it would be worth far more than the expense and time to do it; it would transform the world politically; so, why isn’t it being done?” If it’s not for Russia to do, then perhaps it is something for China to do. Or: What about Russia and China together, doing it? Or a consortium of BRICS countries? If the U.N. can’t do anything about the matter, because of its U.S.-&-‘allied’ members, then maybe the BRICS will have to create a competitor to the U.N. Isn’t that what the U.S. and its ‘allies’ are forcing to happen, anyway, by means of their sanctions? So: the sooner it starts to happen, the better that will be for the whole world — the sooner to end the American empire before it ends all of us in a WW III.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The Internet is of major strategic value to the US, so it won’t give up on controlling it. All the BRICS/Russia could do is create a parallel Internet, with all this entails (and it entails a lot, from satellites to its own namespace to gargantuan server farms to time).
Then censorship would suddenly be unveiled: you’ll notice instantly if you are not allowed access to the “other” Internet.
Your “All the BRICS/Russia could do is create a parallel Internet, with all this entails (and it entails a lot, from satellites to its own namespace to gargantuan server farms to time).” sounds right to me, and it would be worth far more than the expense and time to do it; it would transform the world politically; so, why isn’t it being done?
I’ve just now added a closing paragraph that includes this idea. Thanks, Steve!
American internet and English language internet in general is very free compared to Europe. I would never dare to write the same comments I occasionally write here in English in my language.
Every difficulty often has some seeds within it that helps us overcome that difficulty and then some. This gradual increase in censorship will not end. There is no way, unless RFK is elected POTUS (or something like that) which is impossible because a powerful authoritarian state will never give up power it already has without risking destruction. The current (Deep) State can only end and something new emerge. Therefore it is essential to establish a virtual samizdat which will call on people to each take action to pass essential information to others thus promoting a spiritual/moral revival within the culture.… Read more »