In Surprise Upset, Egyptian Military Dictator Wins 97% of "Vote" In "Presidential Election"

Barely a peep out of U.S. establishment media about it. Which provides a stark and very politically revealing contrast with how they went on and on about the "so-called election" of Putin, just concluded. Putin ran against 7 opponents, and received 76% of the vote.  Sisi imprisoned and intimidated all of his opponents, and ran against a ringer who said he was supporting Sisi!

It's true that there were reports of ballot box stuffing in Russia. And the West's choice for Russian president, Viktor Navalny, was barred from voting. However there is no reason to doubt that Putin would have won in a fair election against Navalny, if by a less impressive margin.

Western media gave Putin another demerit for the "low" turnout of 64% in Russia. (It was only 40% in Egypt- of course that was lightly skated over.) I suppose the media hacks forgot that turnout in U.S. presidential elections is only 54-55%!

The elephant in the room here is how U.S. media barely mentioned the Egyptian pseudo-election, and the ongoing, horrible repression in Egypt. It is another example of the blatant, hypocritical, double standards Western media apply. The lack of objectivity is what distinguishes journalism from propaganda.

U.S. Media Looking Down the Barrel of the Most Media-Hostile Presidential Regime in History

The U.S. media better prepare itself for a rough ride for the next 4 years- those elements that aren't willing to grovel and become Trump sycophants, that is. (I exclude from consideration fascist agitprop and overtly racist pseudo-media. They are thrilled by Trump's election, which should tell you how ominous Trump's attainment of presidential power is.)

Trump is a thin-skinned narcissist who reacts explosively to any perceived slight. He believes any criticism of himself at all is grossly "unfair," even "nasty." And he has already demonstrated repeatedly that he will have no tolerance for media reportage of him and his regime that displeases him.

During his campaign, Trump frequently directed vitriol at the media from the stage, and pointed out media people in the arena. He would egg the crowd on to menace and intimidate the press people.

Even before getting "elected" by a minority of the citizens voting (and fewer than Clinton received), Trump blacklisted  over a dozen media organizations, barring them from his events, including major media organs, because their coverage failed to be sycophantic towards him.

Post victory, he doesn't allow media to fly on his plane, a break with established practice.

Trump's first reaction to the protests against him when he was deemed president-elect was to tweet that the media was to blame for creating the protests.

Nixon is going to look like a media-lover compared to Trump.

Well, the media created Trump in many ways, from NBC making him a TV star with his awful show, "The Apprentice," based on abuse of people, to the billions of dollars worth of free air time. CBS boss Leslie Moonves giddily bragged, infamously, about how much money CBS was making by its grotesquely over-saturated "coverage" of Trump, saying Trump may be bad for America, but he was great for CBS. [1]

On the other side of the ledger, the media almost totally blacked out Bernard Sanders, to the extent of airing an empty Trump podium instead of a live Sanders speech. The media gave billions of dollars of free TV time to every Trump tweet, while virtually ignoring Sanders. Then,  after Trump won the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) nomination, the media elites panicked and skewed their coverage to favor Clinton and try to undermine Trump.

But it didn't work. With the FBI's help, Trump closed the gap and came close enough to win a majority of Electoral College votes. [2]

The media made its bed. Now it has to lie in it. Unfortunately so does everyone else on earth.


Two of the jackasses who brought us Donald Trump: Media czars Leslie Roy Moonves (CBS) and Jeffrey Adam Zucker (formerly of NBC, now CNN Worldwide).

Jeffrey Adam Zucker

                                                                  

 Zucker yuks it up with his Creation, the Creature from the Mar-a-Lago Lagoon.

 Leslie Roy Moonves
"Hey, I'm making so much money! My shareholders will be pleased! Who cares if America goes to hell in a handbasket?"

 Moonves doesn't want any doubt about who runs CBS so he himself holds all three top positions: Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer of CBS Corporation. "Big Ego? Who, Me?"

The Man Who Knifed the Democrats By Dredging Up Clinton's Emails Again: FBI secret police chief and registered Republican James Brien Comey Jr. (Thank Obama for appointing this Bush regime apparatchik to his post! What is it about Democrats? They long for Republican love. Bill Clinton also had a bad habit of appointing Republicans. Do Republicans ever appoint Democrats to top power posts? I can't think of any.) [See footnote 2.]

1] "Jeff Zucker’s singular role in promoting Donald Trump’s rise," Washington Post, October 2, 2016.

Moonves in February, 2016, at a Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, said, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." "Donald's place in this election is a good thing." "What can I say, the money is rolling in." "I've never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going."

Audio on youtube.com

Link to articles in establishment media on Moonves comments here.

2]  After the release in October of videotape of Trump bragging about sexually molesting women, it seemed that he was destined to lose. He trailed Hillary Clinton by 14% in national polls, a huge deficit so close to the election November 8. Then on October 28, eleven days before the election, FBI chief James Comey lobbed a bomb into the campaign. He sent a letter to 8 Congressional chairs saying the FBI found more Clinton emails in an unnamed, unrelated investigation. It transpired that in persecuting the hapless, sexually compulsive Anthony Weiner, the FBI found some Clinton emails as they seized devices used by his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top Hillary Clinton confidant and operative. Irrationally, this caused the polling gap to evaporate immediately. Trump ultimately won enough states to win in the Electoral College, even though he actually lost the "popular" vote (what is called the "vote" in every other country on earth). See my previous essay for a discussion of that, below.

["In the Self-Proclaimed "World's Greatest Democracy," the Candidate With the Most Votes Just Lost."]

For my earlier analysis of the tempest-in-a-teapot email "scandal" redux, see " Much Ado About Emails: FBI Stirs the Pot Again Over Clinton Private Computer Server."

Decoding U.S. Vocabulary

"Stability”- maintaining a status quo the U.S. favors, which usually comes down to backing repressive regimes.

“Instability”- a potential threat to some repressive regime the U.S. supports.
 
“Promoting stability”- installing or strengthening U.S. influence and dominance in a nation or region.
 
“Promoting instability”- a rival power attempting to increase its influence in a nation or region or trying to install a regime friendly to it.

Iran Making Major Concession on its Nuclear Program: Not “Newsworthy” To U.S. Media

U.S. corporate establishment propagandists have a host of ready-made, specious justifications for their suppression of important news. “The public isn't interested” is one. (Of course, that doesn't stop the propagandists from hammering away at things “the public” isn't interested in when they have a covert political or ideological agenda to promote. And the propagandists know how to make things “interesting,” that is, attention-grabbing. They also fill their airtime and pages with mountains of trivia which they think people are interested in.) “We already covered that,” is another excuse- meaning they once made a tiny, fleeting mention of an important fact or significant event.” “It's complicated,” implying it's too hard for us to cover, is another pathetic alibi they offer for themselves at public panels on “the media.” And then there's the “not newsworthy” line, an all-purpose contemptuous brush-off.

Iran is redesigning its nearly-completed heavy-water Arak reactor to reduce by 80% the amount of plutonium it can produce. This will delay the start of operations by three years. (The U.S., which is waging economic warfare against Iran, which it forces foreign nations and companies to participate in, isn't paying for the expensive alterations of course- Iran is.) Iran claims the purpose of the reactor is to produce medical isotopes. (Yeah, that sounds fishy. Spend billions of dollars to produce something that could be purchased abroad for probably tens of thousands of dollars a year? For “national pride”? Maybe for insurance, to be able to make nuclear weapons the next time the U.S. instigates some nation to attack Iran, as it did when it got the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. Or to be able to deter Israel and/or the U.S. from attacking Iran, which Israel constantly threatens to do, and which commits assassinations and sabotage inside Iran.)

But the 80% reduction in plutonium-production capacity isn't good enough for the U.S. and its fellow travelers; they want a near-zero plutonium-production capacity. (Plutonium can be used to make atomic weapons, as can enriched uranium.)

The reactor is open for inspection and verification by international experts from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN organization dominated by the U.S., especially under its current boss, a Japanese stooge very obedient to U.S. orders. Iran also posted a video on a government website about the reconfiguration.

Given all the hysteria over the so-far-imaginary Iran “nuclear threat,” a media propaganda campaign that has assiduously promoted the Israeli-created lie that “Iran has threatened to blow Israel off the face of the earth” and that ignores repeated findings by the U.S. “intelligence community” that Iran DOESN'T HAVE a nuclear weapons program, but a uranium-enrichment one (which produces concentrated forms of uranium that can be used as reactor fuel for energy production or, with further enrichment, as material for atomic bombs), one would think that the story of a major reconfiguration of the Arak reactor, whose dismantlement the U.S. has demanded (Israel prefers the U.S. bomb it), and a reduction in its projected plutonium output to only one-fifth it was previously, not to say a three year delay in the reactor coming online, would at least be worthy of being reported by U.S. media. But for the most part, no. It hasn't been mentioned on any New York City radio stations, for example. (NYC being the “media capital of America.”) Nor on the U.S. government's domestic propaganda network, NPR. (Nor, for that matter, on the BBC, the British government's main propaganda arm, at least not on its “world service,” the stuff it broadcasts abroad.)

The common establishment propaganda response to someone pointing out such glaring omissions is to sneer “conspiracy theorist,” by which they mean “crackpot.” But facts are not disproven by mere ridicule. And this isn't a conspiracy. It is lock-step political and ideological discipline imposed by the managers of the corporate media. Why would such obviously relevant and significant news, related to an issue this media has made such a big deal about over a period of years, be in effect suppressed?

Some establishment “media critics” promote the alibi that “the” media in such cases is just being “lazy,” or “careless,” or “failing to do its job.” At best such idiotic and implausible explanations are naive. There may be more venal or sinister explanations for why such “critics” invent these ridiculous excuses for the corporate propaganda system's obvious suppressions and blackouts of important information. How could all these different corporations all be lazy? All be careless? All “fail to do their job”? (I should say, “virtually all,” as there are a handful of exceptions, speaking generally. McClatchy's Washington bureau has consistently reported damning information about the U.S. government, for example, that the rest of the corporate media refuses to tell anyone about.) These pet critics ignore the obvious political and ideological motives and agendas that easily explain the “oversights” and “lapses.”

In this case, since the policy of the U.S. corporate oligarchic establishment, including its government and media, has been to present Iran as a devil country starting in 1979 with the overthrow of the dictator the U.S. installed in the CIA coup of 1953, the “Shah,” (“King”), showing Iran making large concessions simply won't do. That doesn't make Iran look “bad.” Likewise, Israel is determined that the U.S. should wage war on Iran, and large swaths of the U.S. media are in thrall to Israel (as is the U.S. government).