Over the past few weeks since Trump’s election victory, a dangerous campaign has begun — initiated by the Democratic Party leaders and Hillary Clinton campaign hacks who lost this election by corruptly denying the nomination to Bernie Sanders (who would have defeated Trump handily), and backed by Obama-appointed leaders in the CIA and other intel agencies. This campaign seeks to shift blame for Trump’s win from the Party establishment onto independent online news sites, which these corrupted losers claim (on the basis on no evidence) acted in support of an alleged vast Russian conspiracy to subvert the US election.
Thanks to corporate media — itself also culpable for the Clinton nomination and the Trump victory — happy to promote this same fraudulent conspiracy theory of “false news” and of an internet filled with news sites allegedly working hand-in-glove with Russian propagandists, we’ve now seen Congress pass, and President Obama sign into law (over the holiday weekend) a new Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act. This act sets up a new commission tasked with ferreting out so-called “false news” and “propaganda sites,” which, acting as a revivified House Un-American Activities Committee, will precipitate a new McCarthy era once Trump and the Republicans take over Washington. The basis for this new McCarthyism will be a list published by an anonymous website, PropOrNot, elevated to authoritative status by the Washington Post — a list that includes as alleged propaganda organs such important independent news organizations as TruthDig, Consortium News, Truthout, Counterpunch, Antiwar.com, etc.
While our site, ThisCantBeHappening!, was not on this list, one of our articles, published Sept. 29, and republished on Counterpunch, was cited as a justification for including Counterpunch on the enemies list or propaganda sites. The article’s “crime”: honestly reporting that the report released a day earlier by a Dutch agency investigating the 2013 shoot-down of a Malaysian jumbo jet was a biased probe that only looked at evidence provided by Ukrainian intelligence and military sources, rejecting evidence offered by Russia, and not even asking for US satellite imagery and NSA telecom and internet monitoring evidence. That article, by TCBH! founder Dave Lindorff, despite being based entirely upon the report itself and western news reports, was labeled “absurdly pro-Russian propaganda” by PropOrNot’s “analysts.”
These are clearly dangerous times we are heading into. Now more than ever, independent sources of honest news are going to be critically important. Please contribute whatever you can to support our work to keep providng you with that news.
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