Israel Propagandists Are Uniformly Spouting The Exact Same Line About The Bondi Shooting.

they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.

Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 17, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-propagandists-are-uniformly?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=181835001&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Looks like some kind of memo went out or something, because pro-Israel outlets and individuals are all loudly amplifying one specific talking point about the Bondi Beach shooting.

Here are some examples:

“Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like”
~ Bret Stephens, New York Times

“The Intifada Comes to Bondi Beach”
~ David Frum, The Atlantic

“The Intifada Comes to Australia”
~ Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal

“Shooting at Bondi Beach is what a globalized intifada looks like”
~ Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post

“The Intifada Comes to Australia”
~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Free Press

“Welcome to the global intifada”
~ David Harsanyi, Washington Examiner

“Palestinian propaganda has globalized the intifada”
~ Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner

“Bondi Beach massacre is what globalizing the intifada looks like”
~ Vivian Bercovici, National Post

“Chanting ‘globalise the intifada’ leads to Bondi Beach”
~ Danny Cohen, The Telegraph

“I have a simple question for leftists after the antisemitic shooting in Australia. What do you think ‘globalize the intifada’ means?”
~ US Senator Ted Cruz

“That attack in Sydney is exactly what it means to ‘globalize intifada.’ We saw the actual application of the globalization of intifada in Sydney.”
~ New York City Mayor Eric Adams

“These are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the anti-Semitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ that were realized today.”
~ Gideon Sa’ar, Foreign Minister of Israel

“When you refuse to condemn and only ‘discourage’ use of the term ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ you help facilitate (not cause) the thinking that leads to Bondi Beach.”
~ Former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt (addressing New York City Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani)

“What on earth do you think globalise the intifada means? And can’t people see the link between that kind of rhetoric and attacks on Jewish people as Jewish people? Because that’s what really struck at the heart of Jewish people in our country today — an attack on Jewish people organising around Hannukah, coming together as Jewish people.”
~ UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting

“Why is it still allowed? What is the meaning of globalise the intifada? I’ll tell you the meaning… it’s what happened on Bondi Beach yesterday.”
~ Ephraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom

“Calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ and chants of ‘from the river to the sea’ are not abstract or rhetorical slogans. They are explicit calls for violence, and they carry deadly consequences. What we are witnessing is the inevitable outcome of sustained radicalisation that has been allowed to fester under the guise of protest.”
~ Israeli embassy in the UK

“This is what happens when you ‘globalize the intifada.’”
~ Newsweek editors

“This was not an isolated act of violence — it was the culmination of ‘globalise the intifada’ rhetoric that has been building around the world since October 7.”
~ Yoni Bashan, The Times

“For those who’ve been marching these past few years demanding to ‘globalise the intifada’ this is a barbarous anti-Semitic consequence of their pro-Islamist stupidity.”
~ Former BBC anchor Andrew Neil

“When people call to ‘globalise the intifada’, this is what they are calling for: dead Jews, terrorism and families shattered forever.”
~ Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesperson

“Taking a stand against antisemitism after Bondi Beach should begin with an unequivocal recognition that ‘intifada’ rhetoric is hate speech.”
~ The Bulwark’s Cathy Young

“It would be great if those who have been shouting ‘Global Intifada’ would revisit that phrase right now. It is not a ‘harmless left wing slogan.’ It is a call to blame — and kill — Jews who have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the Israeli government.”
~ Spiritual guru and former US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson

Of course, these outlets and individuals do not actually care about the phrase “globalize the intifada”. If pro-Palestine activists had never chanted that slogan, pro-Israel spinmeisters would be focusing on a different line today. They are not trying to stop chants which they perceive as dangerous, they are trying to stomp out criticism of Israel’s genocidal atrocities.

As The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard wrote regarding the aforementioned Bret Stephens piece, “It’s all done in the name of fighting antisemitism by conflating the worst kinds of violent anti-Jewish bigotry, like what we saw in Bondi Beach, with any criticisms of Israel and its actions. To so much as say Palestinians ought to have basic human rights, in this view, becomes a deadly attack on Jewish safety.”

The term “intifada” means to “shake off” and “rise up”, and as Middle East Eye’s Craig Birckhead-Morton and Yasmin Zainab Bergemann explained last year, intifadas have historically included nonviolent resistance. Saying “globalize the intifada” isn’t calling for people to massacre Jewish civilians around the world, it’s advocating resistance to the power structure which incinerated Gaza and continues to inflict abuse upon Palestinians and any other population which doesn’t bow to the interests of the empire.

And the people scaremongering about this phrase know this. They’re fully aware that they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.

As Em Hilton wrote for the Israeli outlet +972, “It is obscene how quickly the right has seized on this horror to advance an Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian agenda. And it is disgusting to see Israel’s politicians almost gleeful at the opportunity to distract from their genocidal onslaught in Gaza by using our pain and grief as a political weapon.”

December 20, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | Leave a comment

Using the Slain: Israel Exploits the Bondi Beach Shootings

17 December 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/using-the-slain-israel-exploits-the-bondi-beach-shootings/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely passes an opportunity to comment upon the way Jews in other countries are treated. While the manic hatred directed against Jews remains one of history’s grotesque legacies, opportunism in the Netanyahu government is a ready instinct. With a customary sense of perversion, Netanyahu has managed to mangle Israeli policy, his own political destiny and the interests of Jews in a terrible, terrifying mix. The broad stroke charge of antisemitism is the front name of this venture, and it conveniently presents itself whenever Israeli policy requires an alibi when pursuing particularly unsavoury policies: massacre, starvation and dispossession of Gazans; the continued destruction and intended eradication of a functional Palestinian entity; efforts to prevent criticism of its settler policies in other countries.The slaughter of 15 people enjoying the festivities of Hanukkah on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach by the father-son duo of Sajid and Naveed Akram, presented a political opportunity. Having already accused Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews” earlier in the year, Netanyahu readied another verbal lashing. In prickly remarks made at a government meeting in Dimona, the Israeli PM accused his Australian counterpart of being a leader who had “replaced weakness and appeasement with more appeasement.” His “call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.” It had rewarded “Hamas terrorists” and emboldened “those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”

Other Israeli politicians also decided that an unmeasured though monstrous antisemitism stalked the island continent, spawning the Bondi killings. “We felt and experienced the intense antisemitism directed against the Jewish community in Australia,” claimed Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli thought it appropriate to send “a delegation of experts in emergency response” to Australia, promising to “stand with the Jewish community in this difficult time and to ensure that we, as the State of Israel, are giving them everything within our ability.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had a list of lecturing points for his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong. There had to be, he stated with a teacherly certitude, “a real change in the public atmosphere.” This required culling phrases and expressions that had been expressed on behalf of the Palestinian cause in public debate and protest. “Call such as ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ ‘From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free,’ and ‘Death to the IDF’ are not legitimate, are not part of the freedom of speech, inevitably lead to what we witnessed today.”

In Australia, the acceptance of such positions, and the watering down of the Palestinian cause, was rapidly normalised. A procession line of commentators proceeded to state begrudgingly that Israeli government policy could be criticised only to demonstrate how slim such latitude was. This firm, excruciating delineation was offered by Jeremy Leibler of the Zionist Federation of Australia: “Australians can criticise Israeli government policy, Israelis do it loudly and fiercely themselves. But delegitimising Israel’s right to exist, or slipping into a moral equivalence between a liberal democracy defending its citizens and a terrorist organisation that targets civilians, is something else entirely.”  

Leibler’s semantic technique is important here, forcibly linking those who claim Israel has no right to exist to critics of Israel’s policy of self-defence after October 7, 2023 that has left 68,000 Palestinians dead, Gaza pulverised and an enclave on life support. At the instigation of South Africa, it is a policy that is being scrutinised by the International Court of Justice as being potentially genocidal. It is a policy that has been deemed genocidal by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory along with a clutch of notable human rights organisations, including the Israeli outfit B’Tselem. Arrest warrants have also been issued by the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Establishment voices from a long moribund press class are also of the view that not enough has been done by the Albanese government to combat a supposedly mad blight of antisemitism, seemingly unique from the other jostling hatreds. (Islamophobia, anyone?) The massacre, according to the unevidenced observation of veteran journalist Michelle Grattan, was “the horrific culmination of the antisemitism epidemic that has spread like wildfire in Australia.”

She noted, with grave disapproval, the failure to “formally” respond to the combative strategy proposed by the antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, one that openly accepts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s stifling definition of antisemitism. Any official embrace of that definition – a point made by that definition’s originator, Kenneth Stern – would be a fashioned spear against free speech, censoring genuine criticism of Israeli policies. The Jerusalem Declaration, by way of contrast, notes that hostility to the Israeli state “could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian feels on account of their experience at the hands of the state.”

Like most journalists wedded to the holy writ press brief and arid political interview, Grattan shows no sign of having been to a single protest condemning the murderous death toll in Gaza, or any gathering advancing the validity of Palestinian self-determination. Woolly-headed, she freely speculates. “Most of us did not recognise this fact, but this anti-Jewish sentiment must have been embedded in sections of the Australian community – the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 was the spark that lit the conflagration.” Her travesty of an effort to understand the attacks in Bondi becomes evident in cod assessments of various protest marches and demonstrations across Australian university campuses. Without even a suggestion of evidence, she claims that “university encampments” proved “intimidating for Jewish students and staff.” Those Jewish students and staff more than willing to engage in those encampments mysteriously warrant no mention. Efforts on the part of cloddish university managers to harass, suspend and censor students expressing pro-Palestinian causes don’t seem to interest Grattan either.

With laziness, she snacks on the propagandistic samples provided by Israel’s publicity relations buffet, referring to unspecified “others” who believed that the Albanese government’s recognition of a Palestinian state stoked local antisemitism. Foreign Minister Wong’s failure to “visit the sites of the 2023 atrocities when she went to Israel early last year was much criticised in the Jewish community.”  

Thus far, Israeli propagandists have shamelessly badgered their opponents down under into accepting a streaky narrative that would fail to survive judicial, let alone historical scrutiny.The agenda is clear enough: the inoculation of Israel against international opprobrium. Much will now depend on Albanese’s fortitude, if he, and his ministers, can find it.

December 20, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | Leave a comment

Ah, Good Old War Propaganda

Reporters come to understand that there are certain lines they need to color within if they want to get articles published and continue advancing their careers, so they either learn to toe the imperial line or they disappear from the mass media industry.

Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 02, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/ah-good-old-war-propaganda?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=180465025&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Just as the news breaks that Trump has issued Maduro an ultimatum to leave Venezuela immediately if he wants to escape with his life, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has published an amazingly brazen war propaganda piece titled “How Venezuelan Gangs and African Jihadists Are Flooding Europe With Cocaine.”

“Venezuela has become a major launchpad for huge volumes of cocaine shipped to West Africa, where jihadists are helping traffic it to Europe in record quantities,” the article begins, going out of its way to note that “the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro — who it asserts is heavily involved in drug smuggling — has brought global attention to the country’s role in the drug trade.”

The propaganda piece is plainly aimed at Europeans as well as Americans, emphasizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s quip last month that the Europeans “should be thanking us” for blowing up alleged drug boats coming from Venezuela because he says some of those drugs are winding up in Europe.

It’s got everything. Whipping up international support for a regime change war. Fearmongering about “jihadists”. The evil, scary dictator. The whole war propaganda sales package.

The mass media do this every time the US empire gets war-horny. And the Murdoch press are always the most egregious offenders.

Reminds me of an old tweet by a man named Malcolm Price:

“I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, ‘We must do something about this monster in Iraq.’ I said, ‘When did you first think that?’ He answered honestly, ‘A month ago’.”

Price’s friend had been swept up in the imperial war propaganda campaign that had recently begun, just like countless millions of others. Month after month after month western consciousness was hammered with false narratives about weapons of mass destruction, forced associations of Saddam Hussein with 9/11, and stories about how much better things will be for the people of Iraq once that evil tyrant is gone.

Normally it never would have occurred to the average westerner that a country on the other side of the planet should be invaded and its leader replaced with a puppet regime. That’s not the sort of thing that would have organically entered someone’s mind. It needed to be placed there.

The most common misconception about the free press of the western world is that it exists. All the west’s most influential and far-reaching news media publications are here not to report factual stories about current events, but to manufacture consent for the pre-existing agendas of the US-centralized western empire.

They report many true things, to be sure, and if you acquire some media literacy you can actually learn how to glean a lot of useful information from the imperial press without losing your mind to the spin machine. But reporting true things is not their purpose. Their purpose is to manipulate public psychology at mass scale for the benefit of the empire they serve.

This doesn’t happen through some kind of centralized Ministry of Truth where sinister social engineers secretly conspire to deceive people. It happens because all mainstream press institutions are controlled either by plutocrats or by western governments in the form of state broadcasters like the BBC, both of which have a vested interest in maintaining the imperial status quo. They control who the executives and lead editors of these outlets are, and those leaders shape the hiring and editing processes of the publication or broadcaster. Reporters come to understand that there are certain lines they need to color within if they want to get articles published and continue advancing their careers, so they either learn to toe the imperial line or they disappear from the mass media industry.

If people had a clear understanding of everything that’s really going on in our world, they would tear the empire apart brick by brick. If they could truly see how much evil is being done in their name and really wrap their minds around it, and if they could understand how much wealth the plutocrats are getting out of the imperial status quo compared to how little they themselves benefit from it, there would be immediate revolution. So the oligarchs and empire managers shore up narrative control in the form of media ownership, think tanks, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, imperial information ops like Wikipedia, and now increasingly through billionaire-owned AI chatbots to ensure that this never happens.

The entire empire is built on a foundation of lies. The whole power structure is held together by nonstop manipulation of the way westerners think, speak, act, shop, work, and vote. If truth ever finds a way to get a word in edgewise, the entire thing would collapse.

We know this is true because the oligarchs and empire managers pour so much wealth and energy into manipulating our minds. They’re not doing this for fun, they’re doing it because they need to. If they didn’t need to, it wouldn’t be happening.

So what they are doing is intensely creepy and destructive, but it’s also empowering, because it shows us right where their weak spot is. They’re pouring all this energy into controlling the dominant narrative because that’s the weakest point in the armor of the imperial machine.

What we need, then, is a grassroots effort to help truth get a word in. Help people understand that they’ve been propagandized and deceived about the world by western media and by their power-serving education systems every day of their lives, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. Sow distrust in the imperial media and institutions. Open people’s eyes to the fact that they’re being lied to, and help them learn to see the truth. Anywhere the empire is sowing lies and distortions — whether that’s in Venezuela or Gaza or somewhere else — use that opportunity to help more people unplug their minds from the propaganda matrix.

A better world is possible. The first step in moving toward it is snapping people out of the propaganda-induced coma which dupes them into settling for this dystopian nightmare instead.

December 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | Leave a comment

The Seven Richest Billionaires Are All Media Barons.

“we all have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.”

No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class

Mint Press News, Alan McLeod, 25 Nov 25

Trump loyalist and CIA contractor Larry Ellison’s purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world’s second-richest individual. But Ellison is not alone. Indeed, the world’s seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion.

Media Monopoly

Paramount Skydance– an Ellison-owned company– is in pole position to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery, a conglomerate that controls gigantic film and television studios, streaming services like HBO Max and Discovery+, franchises like DC Comics, and TV networks such as HBO, TNT, Discovery Channel, TLC, Food Network, and CNN. This lead is largely due to Ellison’s proximity to President Trump, who will ultimately have to sign off on such a deal.

Ellison has already spoken to senior White House officials about axing CNN hosts and content that Trump is said to dislike, including anchors, Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. It is this willingness to completely reorientate the network’s political direction that has made him the White House’s preferred purchaser of Warner Brothers Discovery. He is reportedly so wealthy that he can afford to pay in cash

Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the platform’s security and operations, giving the world’s second-richest man effective control over the platform that more than 60% of Americans under thirty years of age use for news and entertainment. Trump himself stated that he was extremely pleased that Oracle would be controlling the platform. “It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” he said.

Israel’s Biggest US Donor Now Owns CBS

Billionaire David Ellison just bought CBS with Trump’s blessing. His father, Larry Ellison—the top US funder of the Israeli military—backs the move. Bari Weiss is set to reshape the newsroom. Media independence is on life support.

The Ellison family’s sudden venture into the realm of media and communications has shocked many, with senior media figures sounding the alarm. Longtime CBS News anchor, Dan Rather, warned that “we all have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.” “It is a particularly tough time for anybody working at CBS News,” he stated, citing pressure to change coverage to be more pro-Trump. “I think if [the Ellisons] were to buy CNN, it would change CNN forever, and it might be another very serious wound to CBS News,” he concluded.

Billionaire Capture

Rather is correct. No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class – a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. Today, the world’s seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of. This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of the United States and Israeli governments.

Sitting on a fortune of over $480 billion, Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in world history, and is projected to, within the next decade, become the planet’s first trillionaire. In 2022, Musk purchased Twitter, in a deal worth around $44 billion. The South-African born tech magnate quickly set about turning the platform into a vehicle for advancing his own far-right politics. In 2024, for example, he was a key figure in promoting an attempt to topple Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, spreading misinformation about the country’s election, and even threatening Maduro with a future in the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

He has also very publicly rewritten his generative AI chatbot, Grok, on multiple occasions, so it would produce more conservative responses to users’ questions. One result of this was that Grok began to praise Adolf Hitler.

Musk overtook Jeff Bezos last year to become the world’s richest man. And like Musk, the Amazon founder and CEO has made several moves into the world of media. In 2013, he bought The Washington Post for $250 million, and quickly began exerting his influence on the newspaper, firing anti-establishment writers and hiring pro-war columnists. This came just months after he bought a minority stake in Business Insider (now rebranded to Insider).

One year later, in 2014, Amazon paid nearly a billion dollars to purchase Twitch, a streaming platform which hosts around 7 million monthly broadcasters. Amazon also owns a wide range of other media ventures, including movie studio MGM, audiobook platform, Audible, and movie database website, IMDB.

French billionaire, Bernard Arnault, meanwhile, has been buying up large swaths of his country’s media outlets. The chairman of luxury conglomerate, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) and the world’s seventh-richest man now sits on a media empire that includes daily newspapers such as Le Parisien and Les Echoes, magazines such as Paris Match and Challenges, as well as Radio Classique.

The remaining three individuals rounding out the top seven list all owe their wealth primarily to their media empires. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are collectively worth over half a trillion dollars. Google has become the dominant force in today’s hi-tech economy, and is also a major player in social media, having bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Thirty-five percent of Americans use the video platform as a primary source of news.

Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, owes his $203 billion fortune to his social media and tech ventures, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Like YouTube, Zuckerberg’s companies are major players in the modern news landscape, with 38%, 20% and 5% of Americans relying on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for their news and views.

MAGA Mouthpieces

Many of these wealthy individuals have joined forces with President Trump, in an effort to support Republican policies and push a conservative worldview. Chief among these is the Ellison family, who quickly announced significant changes as CBS News, promising “unbiased” coverage and more “varied ideological perspectives”– widely understood as a shift towards right-wing, pro-Trump coverage.

Larry Ellison holds deeply conservative views, and became a top donor and fundraiser for the Republican Party, and a close Trump confident………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Pentagon Contractors

A key factor in the rise of many of the world’s top seven richest individuals is their proximity to the U.S. national security state, with many of their companies growing wealthy in part due to feeding from the trough of Pentagon contracts. Today’s wars and espionage rely as much on hi-tech computing equipment as tanks and guns, and in 2022, the Department of Defense awarded Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle a $9 billion cloud computing contract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The Pentagon is Recruiting Elon Musk to Help Them Win a Nuclear War

With billions in defense contracts, Musk’s SpaceX is helping turn Trump’s nuclear vision into reality, threatening to dismantle decades of global nuclear deterrence., AI hypersonic missiles, Castelion SpaceX connection, Elon Musk military contracts, Musk nuclear war plans, Pentagon missile defense, SpaceX Pentagon contracts, Starlink military applications, Trump AI warfare, Trump nuclear defense plan, U.S……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Arming and Supporting Israel

Another key attribute that many of the world’s richest individuals share is their passionate support for Israel and its expansionist project.

Nowhere is this more evident than with Ellison, who has made it his life’s goal to advance the Jewish State’s interests, both at home and abroad……………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-seven-richest-billionaires-are-all-media-barons/290572/

December 1, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | Leave a comment

The Unseen Battle: Why Access to Alternative Media is a Modern Necessity.

28 November 2025 Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/the-unseen-battle-why-access-to-alternative-media-is-a-modern-necessity/

In an age where information is power, a silent war is being waged for the mind. The landscape of public discourse is increasingly curated, with gatekeepers – both state and corporate – determining which narratives are amplified and which are silenced. In this environment, the role of alternative media transforms from a simple option to an urgent necessity. It has become the essential immune system for our democracy, fighting not only to disseminate information but to protect our fundamental right to a full and honest picture of the world.

The High Stakes: More Than Just News

To understand the critical importance of alternative media, one must first recognise what is at stake when a single narrative dominates.

The Weaponisation of Information: Mainstream media, often intertwined with powerful political and corporate interests, can be used to manipulate public sentiment. History provides a stark lesson: the powerful newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst famously cabled an illustrator in Havana, “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war,” demonstrating how media can be used to inflame public opinion and make conflict inevitable. This manipulation taps into deep-seated tribal emotions, a “militant enthusiasm” that can be mobilised on a huge scale for political ends.

The Distraction Economy: While the world faces unprecedented challenges – from the threat of thermonuclear war and catastrophic climate change to rising economic inequality – the mainstream media often offers a diet of pop music, sports, and sit-coms. This functions as a modern-day “bread and circuses,” numbing the public into political passivity and distracting from the severe, systemic issues that demand our immediate attention and action.

The Right to Information Undermined: According to the United Nations, the rise of disinformation is a direct threat to human rights, as it politically polarises populations and hinders people from meaningfully exercising their civic duties. When the information environment is flooded with false or misleading content, our very ability to discern truth is compromised, rendering the right to information meaningless.

The Vacuum of Censorship: Where Misinformation Thrives

A government’s attempt to restrict access to information, particularly under the guise of protection, is not a solution; it is a catalyst for a more profound problem. Limiting exposure to diverse perspectives does not create a well-informed citizenry; it creates an information vacuum.

The Rise of Unchecked Narratives: When official channels curate or suppress information, they create a void. This vacuum is rapidly filled by misinformation (false information shared without malicious intent) and disinformation (deliberately false information spread to deceive). Without the robust, competing frames provided by a healthy alternative media ecosystem, these false narratives can take root unchallenged.

The Illusion of Protection: Shielding any age group, especially the young, from complex political and world issues is a dangerous fallacy. It assumes that without exposure to challenging topics, individuals remain “safe.” In reality, it only ensures they lack the critical tools to analyse information when they inevitably encounter it through other, less reliable means. The lack of media literacy becomes a vulnerability, not a shield.

Challenging the Status Quo: A Skill for All Ages

The manufacturing of unquestioning consent is the goal of any authoritarian system. Breaking this requires a conscious, society-wide effort to foster critical thinking from childhood through adulthood.

Children as Critical Thinkers: The development of “mental state talk” – the ability to attribute thoughts, feelings, and intentions to others – is a cornerstone of understanding different perspectives. Narratives and stories are ideal contexts for children to develop this skill, as they practice connecting a character’s actions with their internal motivations. When children are encouraged to deconstruct stories, they are honing the very skills needed to later deconstruct political narratives.

Education, Not Indoctrination: Teaching media literacy is not about telling people what to think, but how to think. This involves equipping them with simple, effective tools like the “ESCAPE” method:

• Evidence: What facts are provided?
• Source: Who created this?
• Context: When and why was it made?
• Audience: Who is it meant for?
• Purpose: Why was it created?
• Execution: How was it presented?

The Role of Alternative Media: While mainstream media often operates with a top-down, “sedimenting” function – stabilising a single interpretation of events – alternative media can make an “explosive dent in the political culture of the moment.” It is vital for organising social movements, providing a platform for reflection and debate, and correcting the distorted picture provided by the mainstream.

The Path Forward: Reclaiming Our Cognitive Sovereignty

The battle for a healthy information ecosystem is not a lost cause. It requires a multi-faceted approach that defends alternative voices while empowering individuals.

Defend Alternative Media: Support and engage with independent media outlets. Their survival and growth are crucial for a balanced discourse, as they often give life to, and are given life by, social movements that challenge power.

Demand Media Literacy: Advocate for the integration of robust media literacy education at all levels of schooling. This is not a niche subject but a fundamental skill for navigating the modern world, helping individuals become discerning consumers and creators of media.

Embrace Critical Inquiry: As a society, we must move beyond the comfort of passive consumption. We must cultivate a culture where questioning the status quo and challenging state-manufactured narratives is not seen as subversion, but as the duty of every engaged citizen.

The trend towards restricting information and manufacturing consent is indeed dangerous. It addresses no real-world problems; it only hides them. In the face of this, the mission of alternative media and the critical, questioning citizen has never been more vital. It is a race between education and catastrophe, and we must ensure that the immune system of our democracy is strong enough to prevail.

This article synthesises key insights from academic and research sources to build a compelling case. It frames the issue not just as a matter of media preference, but as a fundamental requirement for democratic health and individual autonomy.

November 29, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | Leave a comment

Corporate Media Parrot Dubious Drug Claims That Justify War on Venezuela

Ricardo Vaz, November 19, 2025, https://fair.org/home/corporate-media-parrot-dubious-drug-claims-that-justify-war-on-venezuela/

Since August, the US has been amassing military assets in the Caribbean. Warships, bombers and thousands of troops have been joined by the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, in the largest regional deployment in decades. Extrajudicial strikes against small vessels, which UN experts have decried as violations of international law, have killed at least 80 civilians (CNN, 11/14/25).

Many foreign policy analysts believe that regime change in Venezuela is the ultimate goal (Al Jazeera, 10/24/25; Left Chapter, 10/21/25), but the Trump administration instead claims it is fighting “narcoterrorism,” accusing Caracas of flooding the US with drugs via the Cartel of the Suns and Tren de Aragua, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

Over the years, Western media have endorsed Washington’s Venezuela regime-change efforts at every turn, from cheerleading coup attempts to whitewashing deadly sanctions (FAIR.org, 6/13/22, 6/4/21, 1/22/20). Now, with a possible military operation that could have disastrous consequences, corporate outlets are making little effort to hold the US government accountable. Rather, they are unsurprisingly ceding the floor to the warmongers.

Fabricating ‘tensions’

Despite Washington ominously amassing naval assets and issuing overt threats against Caracas, Western journalists often talk of “tensions” between the two countries (Fox, 11/17/25; ABC, 11/18/25), or even a “showdown” (Wall Street Journal, 10/9/25; Washington Post, 10/25/25). This is conceptually similar to the framing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a “conflict” with Hamas (FAIR.org, 12/8/23), except in this case the media does not have an equivalent of October 7 to rationalize all the atrocities by the US and its allies.

Though the Trump administration has largely abandoned the traditional US exceptionalist discourse of promoting “freedom” and “democracy,” that has not stopped corporate journalists from relentlessly demonizing the Venezuelan government.

Journalists are quick to label Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, currently facing hundreds of Tomahawk missiles pointed at his country, an “authoritarian” (Guardian, 11/14/25; New York Times, 10/15/25😉 or an “autocrat” (Wall Street Journal, 11/5/25; Washington Post, 10/24/25). In contrast, the same pieces place no labels on the Trump administration despite its authoritarianism both at home and abroad (Guardian, 10/16/25; CNN, 8/13/25).

Articles in the Guardian (11/6/25, 10/22/25) describe US operations in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989) as success stories, fawning over special operations forces while ignoring the deadly impact. The Panama City neighborhood of El Chorrillo became known as “Little Hiroshima” after civilians were massacred there during the US invasion.

Very few outlets recall more recent US interventions, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, which according to Brown University’s Costs of War project have killed an estimated 4.5–4.7 million people over the past two decades. Such “accumulation by waste” has seen $8 trillion transferred to the military-industrial complex, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Hiding the evidence

Washington’s steady escalation in the Caribbean has evoked memories of the buildup to the Iraq War, when Washington also counted on crucial support from the media establishment to manufacture consent for imperialist war (FAIR.org, 2/5/13, 3/22/23).

At that time, corporate media parroted White House claims about Iraq’s hidden arsenal, despite evidence that Iraq had destroyed its banned weapons arsenal, in contradiction to the White House’s case for war (FAIR.org, 2/27/03). Fast forward more than 20 years, and once more there is ample information undermining the administration narrative, this time about “narcoterrorism.”

Reports from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have consistently found Venezuela’s Eastern Caribbean corridor to be a marginal route for US-bound cocaine trafficking, with former UNODC director Pino Arlacchi estimating that only around 5% of Colombian-sourced drugs flow through Venezuela (L’Antidiplomatico, 8/27/25).

These findings have been corroborated by the DEA itself. For instance, the agency’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment report does not even include the word “Venezuela.” The 2025 report only has a small section on the gang Tren de Aragua, which dismisses any ties to the Venezuelan government and places its drug trafficking activities “mainly at the street level.”

Yet these glaring flaws in the Trump administration’s casus belli are often overlooked by Western media. Several outlets reporting on potentially imminent US strikes mention the White House’s declared anti-narcotics mission but conveniently omit the fact that, even according to US agencies, fewer drugs flow through this region than many others (Guardian, 11/11/25; Washington Post, 11/14/25; Bloomberg, 11/14/25; New York Times, 11/14/25)

Former UNODC director Arlacchi pointed out that “Guatemala is a drug corridor seven times more important than the Bolivarian ‘narco-state’ allegedly is.” He accused Washington of hypocritically driving the anti-Venezuela narrative due to interest in its massive oil reserves.

‘Maduro denies’

With the “narcoterrorism” accusations against Maduro and associates, Western journalists absolve US officials of the burden of proof (New York Times, 11/4/25; Financial Times, 10/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 11/5/25). There has never been any public evidence about Maduro, or other high-ranking Venezuelan officials indicted by the US, being involved in drug trafficking via the Cartel of the Suns, while a leaked US intelligence memo rejected the notion of government ties to Tren de Aragua.

The Cartel of the Suns’ very existence is far from established, with subject experts contending that, while drug trafficking may be entwined with corruption in Venezuela’s military, there is no evidence of a centralized structure going all the way up to the president (InSight Crime, 11/3/25, 8/1/25; AFP, 8/29/25).

Instead of exposing the unfounded accusations and providing data from experts and specialized agencies, Western outlets either let Trump’s case for war go unchallenged, or merely present a dissenting opinion from Maduro, whom they have systematically demonized (New York Times, 10/06/25; DW, 11/14/25; NPR, 11/12/25; CBS, 10/15/25; CNN, 11/14/25).

This behavior is certainly not new, as Western outlets have consistently pushed the unfounded “narcoterrorism” narrative, going back to the first Trump administration (FAIR.org, 9/24/19). Similar unfounded accusations of drug trafficking were made against Nicaragua in the 1980s (Extra!, 10–11/87, 7–8/88; FAIR.org, 10/10/17), which served to justify US attempts to overthrow the Sandinista government through the CIA-backed Contras.

Warmongers to the stage

In his typical style, Trump has sent mixed signals over whether he wants to strike targets inside Venezuela, with contradictory on-record and unofficial statements going back and forth. When asked if the White House is seeking regime change in Venezuela, Trump has been noncommittal (Wall Street Journal, 11/4/25). It is worth recalling that in June, Trump similarly sent all sorts of inconsistent messages before ultimately attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

True to form (FAIR.org, 2/9/17, 4/13/18, 7/3/20), many liberal establishment outlets have been more bellicose than the US president they have occasionally chided for murdering scores of civilians in the Caribbean (The Hill, 10/30/25; Foreign Policy, 11/7/25). The New York Times’ Bret Stephens (1/14/25, 10/10/25, 11/17/25) has advocated for a regime-changing military intervention for months (FAIR.org, 2/12/25). Quite tellingly, Stephens does not regret supporting the Iraq War (New York Times, 3/21/23).

The Washington Post published an editorial (10/10/25) after the recent Nobel Peace Prize award to far-right Venezuelan leader María Corina Machado, arguing that US interests would be “better served” by someone like Machado, a firm endorser of US-led regime-change (FAIR.org, 10/23/25). But with the war drums beating louder, the Jeff Bezos–owned paper granted a column (11/12/25) to John Bolton, a former Trump adviser whose main criticism was that the administration is not being efficient enough in overthrowing Maduro.

Bolton, an architect of the Iraq War, and of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela during Trump’s first term, bemoaned the White House’s “inadequate” explanations about the ongoing lethal boat strikes and international quarrels as damaging the “laudable goal” of throwing Venezuela into chaos.

Bolton went on to urge the administration to create a better “strategy,” which includes “greater efforts to strangle Caracas economically.” The Washington Post is happy to platform a call for escalating measures that have already caused tens of thousands of deaths (CEPR, 4/25/19).

Finally, the former Trump official says that “we owe it to ourselves and Venezuela’s people” to violently oust the Maduro government, despite opinion polls showing that such a military intervention is widely rejected both in the US and in Venezuela.

Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas (11/4/25) went one step further by saying the quiet part out loud: “Venezuelan Regime Change May Open Oil’s Floodgates.” Blas rejoiced at the prospect of a “US-enforced change of ideology” that would install a “pro-Western and pro-business government,” which would do wonders for energy markets in the long run.

Unfazed by the human cost of a military intervention, the corporate pundit was only concerned about the possible impact of Venezuela’s current 1 million daily barrels of oil being wiped out. Who cares about millions of Venezuelans when a “brief military campaign” could drive oil prices down and secure a steady supply in the 2030s?

Complicity with war

The White House’s military build-up and illegal strikes have drawn widespread condemnation and opposition, even from within the US political establishment (NPR, 11/5/25; Intercept, 10/31/25). US politicians have also raised alarm bells about a potential military intervention in Venezuela without congressional approval (New York Times, 11/18/25; Politico, 11/6/25), but these voices feature much less prominently than the administration’s.

There is hope that a combination of Venezuelan defense deterrence with domestic and international pressure, coupled with Trump’s own unpredictability, might ultimately avoid yet another US regime-change military assault.

But should the worst come to pass, the media establishment will have once again done nothing to stop yet another deadly US foreign invasion. Over weeks of military buildup and threats, corporate outlets elected to ignore the evidence disproving Trump’s claims and to platform warmongers. They will not wash the Venezuelan people’s blood off their hands.

November 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | 1 Comment