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Netanyahu’s re-election a vote against Biden

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https://asiatimes.com/2022/11/netanyahus-re-election-a-vote-against-biden/Netanyahu expected to roll back Israel’s support for Ukraine and deflect Washington’s pressure to cut ties with China
By DAVID P. GOLDMAN
November 3, 2022


NEW YORK – Israelis didn’t vote for Benjamin Netanyahu on November 1 as much as they voted against the Biden administration.

Caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid gambled his career on close relations with Washington – denouncing Russia for “war crimes” six weeks into the Ukraine war and accepting Washington’s instructions on matters ranging from tactical directives for the operations of Israeli security forces in the West Bank to negotiations with Lebanon.

Netanyahu, who previously served as prime minister for 15 years, is a thick-skinned nationalist who maintained excellent relations with Vladimir Putin and cordial relations with China while remaining in the good graces of the Trump administration most of the time.

With nearly 90% of votes counted at 17:00 GMT, Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc appears to have won 65 of the Israeli Knesset’s seats, the strongest majority of any government in years. The ruling coalition will include Israel’s two Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties as well as the Religious Zionism party.

Netanyahu’s own Likud party polled 32% of the popular vote, versus 24% for Lapid’s Yesh Atid. The Religious Zionism Party came in third at 14%.

Two of Israel’s hard-left parties, the peace-at-any-price Meretz Party and the Arab party Balad, haven’t met the 3.25% threshold for representation and will drop out of the Knesset.

Israel’s unwieldy proportional representation system produces complex coalitions. Four previous national elections since 2019 produced razor-thin majorities, as voters split evenly between the traditional right allied to religious parties and the center-left coalition headed by Lapid.

The last government left Lapid and former Netanyahu ally Naftali Bennett as “alternate prime ministers,” an odd-couple arrangement between two political enemies. Bennett will quit the government after this election.

What made this national election different from the last four is Israeli voters’ antipathy to Washington’s arm-twisting.

Netanyahu returned to office despite ongoing trials for alleged corruption, on charges that his supporters claim were fabricated by political enemies in Israel’s Justice Ministry. For years, he loomed so large in Israeli politics that he “blotted out the sun.”

One of his strongest assets is a longstanding personal friendship with Putin, who he described in a recent book as “smart, sophisticated and focused on one goal – returning Russia to its historical greatness.”

In an October 21 interview with USA Today, Netanyahu offered to mediate the Ukraine conflict. Putin is “guided by his vision of reconstituting a great Russian realm,” he said, “and I hope he’s having second thoughts about it. But I don’t want to play psychologist. I want to be in the position of being prime minister, getting all the information, then making decisions on what and if we do anything in this conflict beyond what has been done so far.”

Ukraine repeatedly asked Israel to provide its Iron Dome short-range air defense system, a step that the Lapid government refused to take.

Netanyahu spoke about Russia and Ukraine in an October 22 interview with Jewish News Service:

There are two issues. One is Israel’s relationship with Russia vis a vis our conflict with Iran over the skies of Syria. We’re flying side-by-side with the Russian air force. Our pilots and Russian pilots literally see each other through their cockpits. So we want to avoid a conflict with them and we’ve taken pains to avoid that, for the good.
On the Ukraine matter, I think there is no question that there is a horrible tragedy taking place there. It shouldn’t have happened, but it is happening…I can say that the question that will come to my desk if I become the prime minister would be the question of Israel’s arms. I’ve said that I will look into that when I sit behind that desk.
Netanyahu has spoken bluntly about his travails with Democratic administrations in Washington.

In the same Jewish News Service interview, he said, “The American administration has tried to intervene” in Israeli politics, “especially against me. Clinton openly admitted it. And again, under President Obama, the State Department gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to NGOs working openly to topple my government in an election campaign.… I would advise them not to do it. I don’t intervene in American elections, they shouldn’t intervene in ours. We’re a free society”

The Biden administration angered many Israeli voters by imposing an agreement that cedes maritime gas fields claimed by Israel to its northern neighbor Lebanon, which harbors the Iranian-controlled Hezbollah militia. The agreement, signed in late October, accepted virtually all of Lebanon’s demands.

“There was no reason to give up all of the disputed maritime areas,” wrote Israeli strategist Efraim Inbar of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. “Israel did not take advantage of many years of American support for a compromise proposal that would have given Israel almost half of the disputed territory. Israeli diplomacy failed to preserve American support for this compromise despite Jerusalem’s great efforts to mute the differences with Washington over the nuclear negotiations with Iran.”

Caroline Glick, a prominent Israeli commentator and Netanyahu supporter, wrote on her website on October 30 that the “US veto over Israel’s foreign and defense prerogatives has since spread to Israel’s dealing with Hezbollah and the Palestinians. Under the maritime deal Lapid signed with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, Lapid and [Defense Minister Benny] Gantz ceded Israel’s territorial waters and sovereign natural resources to the terror state to its north. The terms of the agreement were Hezbollah’s terms. And Israel’s capitulation was dictated by the Biden administration.”

Glick added: “As for the Palestinians, reports over the past several weeks revealed that the Biden administration is interfering in Israel’s military operations in Judea and Samaria down to the company and squad level through its embassy in Jerusalem.”


In addition, Glick wrote:

The government has endangered all of Israel’s interests and security imperatives in its derelict administration of Judea and Samaria. Illegal Palestinian construction has increased 80 percent in Area C, where 500,000 Israeli citizens live and where Israel’s military installations, including the eastern frontier, are located. This land theft imperils the lives of Israel’s citizens and impedes the IDF’s ability to perform its duties.
By facilitating the land grab, Gantz is eliminating the need for a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. Gantz is establishing a Palestinian state de facto, while endangering Israel’s core strategic interests and the lives of the half million Israelis who live in the areas and the millions more who work and travel through Judea and Samaria.
Gantz does this to advance his world view, which abjures Israel’s national rights and interests in favor of defining Israel’s national security interests as whatever the Biden administration says they are.
Washington is pressuring Israel to cut economic ties with China, but most Israelis do not want to become an instrument of America’s less-than-effective efforts to contain Beijing.

A January 2022 Pew Survey found that 74% of Israelis polled said that China’s international influence is growing, while only 26% of respondents said that the American influence is. The same poll found that 53% of Israelis aged 18 to 29 had a favorable opinion of China.

Israel is a small country and reluctant to make an enemy of a great power whose presence in its neighborhood is growing.

The Israelis are not alone in their anti-Biden resentments. Don’t be surprised if what we are seeing is a global “red wave” that began with Italy’s September 25 general election and that culminates in a Republican sweep of both Houses of the US Congress on November 8.
 
Israeli has had 5 elections in four years. I suspect the reason for this vote has more to do with domestic policies than the US.
What do you think of the Democrats election interference in Israel?

Is it ok for us to put our thumb on the scales in other democracies?

“The American administration has tried to intervene” in Israeli politics, “especially against me. Clinton openly admitted it. And again, under President Obama, the State Department gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to NGOs working openly to topple my government in an election campaign.… I would advise them not to do it. I don’t intervene in American elections, they shouldn’t intervene in ours. We’re a free society”
 
What do you think of the Democrats election interference in Israel?

Is it ok for us to put our thumb on the scales in other democracies?

“The American administration has tried to intervene” in Israeli politics, “especially against me. Clinton openly admitted it. And again, under President Obama, the State Department gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to NGOs working openly to topple my government in an election campaign.… I would advise them not to do it. I don’t intervene in American elections, they shouldn’t intervene in ours. We’re a free society”
Did you object when republicans in congress directly and openly expressed their support for Bibi?

its weird how republicans seem to enjoy supporting corrupt politicians.
 
Did you object when republicans in congress directly and openly expressed their support for Bibi?

its weird how republicans seem to enjoy supporting corrupt politicians.
I prefer any politician to be straightforward with the public about their preferences, so the public can decide whether or not to elect them with the most information.

Do you equate a Congressman expressing support for a foreign politician with spending U.S. tax dollars to interfere in foreign elections?
Is that really the same thing?

Is it acceptable for the U.S. government to interfere in foreign elections?

Are there countries that you would find acceptable to interfere in our elections?
 
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What do you think of the Democrats election interference in Israel?

Is it ok for us to put our thumb on the scales in other democracies?

“The American administration has tried to intervene” in Israeli politics, “especially against me. Clinton openly admitted it. And again, under President Obama, the State Department gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to NGOs working openly to topple my government in an election campaign.… I would advise them not to do it. I don’t intervene in American elections, they shouldn’t intervene in ours. We’re a free society”
We give them enough money, I actually don't have a problem with is trying to influence their elections. After all, when we're sending resources and offering protection, we should want a government to use it correctly.

There's a reasonable debate to be had whether taxpayer dollars should be used by the government to influence elections, and I can argue either side, but the knee-jerk answer is "no."

If it were me, I'd try to figure out which party is less likely to drag us into a war and support them.
 
We give them enough money, I actually don't have a problem with is trying to influence their elections. After all, when we're sending resources and offering protection, we should want a government to use it correctly.
That is an attitude appropriate toward a vassal.
I just don't want an American empire.
 
I prefer any politician to be straightforward with the public about their preferences, so the public can decide whether or not to elect them with the most information.

Do you equate a Congressman expressing support for a foreign politician with spending U.S. tax dollars to interfere in foreign elections?
Is that really the same thing?

Is it acceptable for the U.S. government to interfere in foreign elections?

Are there countries that you would find acceptable to interfere in our elections?

When an entire political party is siding with a specific politician from another country; I’m not sure that’s better than your alleged contributions per your article.

Republicans and Bibi have turned support for Israel into a political issue and have convinced too many that support for Israel = support for Bibi.
 
What do you think of the Democrats election interference in Israel?

Is it ok for us to put our thumb on the scales in other democracies?

“The American administration has tried to intervene” in Israeli politics, “especially against me. Clinton openly admitted it. And again, under President Obama, the State Department gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to NGOs working openly to topple my government in an election campaign.… I would advise them not to do it. I don’t intervene in American elections, they shouldn’t intervene in ours. We’re a free society”
One - I take what Bibi says with a grain of salt. It’s my understanding that there were advertising funded by private groups. If there was direct American government influence, I don’t think that should occur. But Bibi has enriched himself and his friends at the expense of the Israeli people and I would support private American groups making that known in Israel
 
It’s my understanding that there were advertising funded by private groups. If there was direct American government influence, I don’t think that should occur.
JPost
The Obama presidential election team has set up camp in Tel Aviv with the mission to defeat Netanyahu in our upcoming election.
The “Anyone but Bibi” mission is headed by Jeremy Bird, Obama’s National Field Director in his successful presidential campaigns.
Under Bird, a group called “Victory 15” has been set up. It has recruited the young activists from Israel’s 2013 social protest movement and will man a massive social network and personal contact campaign to defeat Bibi. V15 is financed by an NGO called “One Voice” whose motto is to be “the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians.” Research finds that One Voice is funded by John Kerry’s State Department.
In its press release, V15 calls itself “non partisan” which is clearly a lie. Its aim is solely to defeat Bibi,
Can we really call that “non partisan”?
In its 2014 annual report is describes its actions as “promoting popular resistance, state-building, and the Arab Peace Initiative, while advocating for an end to the conflict and a two-state solution along the 1967 borders.”
Does Israel really need this outsider that advocates “popular resistance” to impose the Arab Peace Initiative on to Israel? There is grave danger in the intent of this American interference into our political system.


WPost
Under the auspices of Chairman Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) has released a report today confirming allegations that an NGO with connections to President Obama’s 2008 campaign used U.S. taxpayer dollars attempting to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015.
 
JPost
The Obama presidential election team has set up camp in Tel Aviv with the mission to defeat Netanyahu in our upcoming election.
The “Anyone but Bibi” mission is headed by Jeremy Bird, Obama’s National Field Director in his successful presidential campaigns.
Under Bird, a group called “Victory 15” has been set up. It has recruited the young activists from Israel’s 2013 social protest movement and will man a massive social network and personal contact campaign to defeat Bibi. V15 is financed by an NGO called “One Voice” whose motto is to be “the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians.” Research finds that One Voice is funded by John Kerry’s State Department.
In its press release, V15 calls itself “non partisan” which is clearly a lie. Its aim is solely to defeat Bibi,
Can we really call that “non partisan”?
In its 2014 annual report is describes its actions as “promoting popular resistance, state-building, and the Arab Peace Initiative, while advocating for an end to the conflict and a two-state solution along the 1967 borders.”
Does Israel really need this outsider that advocates “popular resistance” to impose the Arab Peace Initiative on to Israel? There is grave danger in the intent of this American interference into our political system.


WPost
Under the auspices of Chairman Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) has released a report today confirming allegations that an NGO with connections to President Obama’s 2008 campaign used U.S. taxpayer dollars attempting to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015.

So, does a connection to obamas campaign mean it was done after consulting with or directed by Obama?
 
JPost
The Obama presidential election team has set up camp in Tel Aviv with the mission to defeat Netanyahu in our upcoming election.
The “Anyone but Bibi” mission is headed by Jeremy Bird, Obama’s National Field Director in his successful presidential campaigns.
Under Bird, a group called “Victory 15” has been set up. It has recruited the young activists from Israel’s 2013 social protest movement and will man a massive social network and personal contact campaign to defeat Bibi. V15 is financed by an NGO called “One Voice” whose motto is to be “the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians.” Research finds that One Voice is funded by John Kerry’s State Department.
In its press release, V15 calls itself “non partisan” which is clearly a lie. Its aim is solely to defeat Bibi,
Can we really call that “non partisan”?
In its 2014 annual report is describes its actions as “promoting popular resistance, state-building, and the Arab Peace Initiative, while advocating for an end to the conflict and a two-state solution along the 1967 borders.”
Does Israel really need this outsider that advocates “popular resistance” to impose the Arab Peace Initiative on to Israel? There is grave danger in the intent of this American interference into our political system.


WPost
Under the auspices of Chairman Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) has released a report today confirming allegations that an NGO with connections to President Obama’s 2008 campaign used U.S. taxpayer dollars attempting to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015.
It appears that One Voice used its government grants properly. Then when the grant terms ended, proceeded to campaign against Bibi. The objection was that V15 vis-a-vis One Voice's funding built the infrastructure to initiate its anti-Bibi campaign with the government grants. Somewhat ticky-tacky, but as a general matter US funds should not be used to campaign against one party in favor of another.
 
Just patiently waiting for the anti-Israel left wingers show up to spew the usual antisemitism. You know who you are. Hint: Santa.
 
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Lol, Netanyahu came to address congress against the wishes of our sitting president….he can take a hike when talking about election interference.
 
Attention grabbing title and first line, but I wonder why the author didn't end up making the case for it. Oh well.
 
Do you consider the Congress subordinate to the President?
Of course not, but when it comes to foreign relations, POTUS absolutely is first in line there. GOP inviting Bibi without the consent or consult of Obama was absolutely raising a middle finger to Obama.

Are you trying to contend Obama was unaware of this effort?

I don’t know, I’m asking the question is all. Do super PACS domestically consult with their candidate of choice when they run new ads and such?

Simply asking whether or not it’s possible this group acted without telling Obama.
 
https://asiatimes.com/2022/11/netanyahus-re-election-a-vote-against-biden/Netanyahu expected to roll back Israel’s support for Ukraine and deflect Washington’s pressure to cut ties with China
By DAVID P. GOLDMAN
November 3, 2022


NEW YORK – Israelis didn’t vote for Benjamin Netanyahu on November 1 as much as they voted against the Biden administration.

Caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid gambled his career on close relations with Washington – denouncing Russia for “war crimes” six weeks into the Ukraine war and accepting Washington’s instructions on matters ranging from tactical directives for the operations of Israeli security forces in the West Bank to negotiations with Lebanon.

Netanyahu, who previously served as prime minister for 15 years, is a thick-skinned nationalist who maintained excellent relations with Vladimir Putin and cordial relations with China while remaining in the good graces of the Trump administration most of the time.

With nearly 90% of votes counted at 17:00 GMT, Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc appears to have won 65 of the Israeli Knesset’s seats, the strongest majority of any government in years. The ruling coalition will include Israel’s two Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties as well as the Religious Zionism party.

Netanyahu’s own Likud party polled 32% of the popular vote, versus 24% for Lapid’s Yesh Atid. The Religious Zionism Party came in third at 14%.

Two of Israel’s hard-left parties, the peace-at-any-price Meretz Party and the Arab party Balad, haven’t met the 3.25% threshold for representation and will drop out of the Knesset.

Israel’s unwieldy proportional representation system produces complex coalitions. Four previous national elections since 2019 produced razor-thin majorities, as voters split evenly between the traditional right allied to religious parties and the center-left coalition headed by Lapid.

The last government left Lapid and former Netanyahu ally Naftali Bennett as “alternate prime ministers,” an odd-couple arrangement between two political enemies. Bennett will quit the government after this election.

What made this national election different from the last four is Israeli voters’ antipathy to Washington’s arm-twisting.

Netanyahu returned to office despite ongoing trials for alleged corruption, on charges that his supporters claim were fabricated by political enemies in Israel’s Justice Ministry. For years, he loomed so large in Israeli politics that he “blotted out the sun.”

One of his strongest assets is a longstanding personal friendship with Putin, who he described in a recent book as “smart, sophisticated and focused on one goal – returning Russia to its historical greatness.”

In an October 21 interview with USA Today, Netanyahu offered to mediate the Ukraine conflict. Putin is “guided by his vision of reconstituting a great Russian realm,” he said, “and I hope he’s having second thoughts about it. But I don’t want to play psychologist. I want to be in the position of being prime minister, getting all the information, then making decisions on what and if we do anything in this conflict beyond what has been done so far.”

Ukraine repeatedly asked Israel to provide its Iron Dome short-range air defense system, a step that the Lapid government refused to take.

Netanyahu spoke about Russia and Ukraine in an October 22 interview with Jewish News Service:


Netanyahu has spoken bluntly about his travails with Democratic administrations in Washington.

In the same Jewish News Service interview, he said, “The American administration has tried to intervene” in Israeli politics, “especially against me. Clinton openly admitted it. And again, under President Obama, the State Department gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to NGOs working openly to topple my government in an election campaign.… I would advise them not to do it. I don’t intervene in American elections, they shouldn’t intervene in ours. We’re a free society”

The Biden administration angered many Israeli voters by imposing an agreement that cedes maritime gas fields claimed by Israel to its northern neighbor Lebanon, which harbors the Iranian-controlled Hezbollah militia. The agreement, signed in late October, accepted virtually all of Lebanon’s demands.

“There was no reason to give up all of the disputed maritime areas,” wrote Israeli strategist Efraim Inbar of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. “Israel did not take advantage of many years of American support for a compromise proposal that would have given Israel almost half of the disputed territory. Israeli diplomacy failed to preserve American support for this compromise despite Jerusalem’s great efforts to mute the differences with Washington over the nuclear negotiations with Iran.”

Caroline Glick, a prominent Israeli commentator and Netanyahu supporter, wrote on her website on October 30 that the “US veto over Israel’s foreign and defense prerogatives has since spread to Israel’s dealing with Hezbollah and the Palestinians. Under the maritime deal Lapid signed with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, Lapid and [Defense Minister Benny] Gantz ceded Israel’s territorial waters and sovereign natural resources to the terror state to its north. The terms of the agreement were Hezbollah’s terms. And Israel’s capitulation was dictated by the Biden administration.”

Glick added: “As for the Palestinians, reports over the past several weeks revealed that the Biden administration is interfering in Israel’s military operations in Judea and Samaria down to the company and squad level through its embassy in Jerusalem.”


In addition, Glick wrote:


Washington is pressuring Israel to cut economic ties with China, but most Israelis do not want to become an instrument of America’s less-than-effective efforts to contain Beijing.

A January 2022 Pew Survey found that 74% of Israelis polled said that China’s international influence is growing, while only 26% of respondents said that the American influence is. The same poll found that 53% of Israelis aged 18 to 29 had a favorable opinion of China.

Israel is a small country and reluctant to make an enemy of a great power whose presence in its neighborhood is growing.

The Israelis are not alone in their anti-Biden resentments. Don’t be surprised if what we are seeing is a global “red wave” that began with Italy’s September 25 general election and that culminates in a Republican sweep of both Houses of the US Congress on November 8.
And Brazil?
 
Bolsinaro’s defeat in Brazil, the Iranians protesting their theocracy, and the first world United against Russia are votes against MAGA.

Am I doing it right?
You bringing up Brazil again reminds me of this gem:

Greenwald backs fascists like Bolsinaro and Putin, but “opposes censorship.”
Did you ever bother to learn the truth? That Greenwald’s fearless reporting on Brazilian corruption actually got Lula freed from prison?
Or are you still spreading disinformation about Greenwald supporting Bolsanaro?
 
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Okay, if Israel won’t have our backs, we shouldn’t have theirs. Good luck.
 
You bringing up Brazil again reminds me of this gem:


Did you ever bother to learn the truth? That Greenwald’s fearless reporting on Brazilian corruption actually got Lula freed from prison?
Or are you still spreading disinformation about Greenwald supporting Bolsanaro?
Glen Greenwald's baby daddy over here.
 
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Greenwald is a Russian bought and paid shill


MSNBC Does Not Merely Permit Fabrications Against Democratic Party Critics. It Encourages and Rewards Them.

The network routinely allows outright lies to stand if aimed at critics of Democrats, especially fabricated allegations of being Kremlin agents. The latest is Malcolm Nance.
Glenn Greenwald
July 8 2018, 7:19 a.m.

DURING THE 2016 primary and general election campaigns, various MSNBC hosts were openly campaigning for Hillary Clinton. One of the network’s programs featured Malcolm Nance (pictured above), whose background is quite sketchy but is presented by the cable network (and now by NBC News) as an “intelligence expert” and former intelligence officer for the U.S. Navy.
On August 20, 2016, weekend host Joy Reid asked Nance about the supposed “affinity” for Russia harbored by Jill Stein supporters. In response, Nance told MSNBC viewers: “Jill Stein has a show on Russia Today.” You can still watch the video of this claim here on MSNBC’s own website or see it here:



Whatever your views might be about Stein and her third-party candidacy, there is no disputing the fact that Nance’s statement was a falsehood, a fabrication, a lie. Stein did not have a show on RT, nor did she ever host a show on RT. What Nance said was made up out of whole cloth — fabricated — in order to encourage MSNBC viewers to believe that Stein, one of the candidates running against Clinton, was a paid agent of the Kremlin and employee of RT.
Reid allowed Nance’s lie to stand. Perhaps she did not realize at the time that it was a lie. But subsequently, a campaign was launched to urge MSNBC to correct the lie it broadcast, based on the assumption that MSNBC — which is part of NBC News — was a normal news outlet that functions in accordance with basic journalistic principles and would, of course, correct a false statement once that was brought to its attention.
The media watchdog group FAIR repeatedly documented the lie told by Nance and urged MSNBC to issue a correction. The Intercept wrote about this falsehood on several occasions and also noted that MSNBC was refusing to issue a correction of what everyone knows is a false — but an obviously quite significant — claim. Multiple tweets were directed at NBC News, MSNBC, Nance, and Reid asking them to correct the fabrication to their viewers:




To date — almost two years later — neither NBC News nor MSNBC, nor a single journalist who works for either one of those media outlets has corrected this significant falsehood, despite obviously knowing that it was broadcast to their viewers. In other words, NBC News and MSNBC know that they told viewers something that was materially false, and yet refuse to correct it. Please, defenders of this network: Tell me what that says about its integrity, about its real function, about whether it is a real news outlet.

Worse, not only was Nance never sanctioned in any way for the lie he told, but he was rewarded: He has since gone from “MSNBC contributor” to “MSNBC intelligence analyst,” and is far more pervasive on the network, and its hosts have spent the month aggressively promoting his new book on how Vladimir Putin is destroying U.S. democracy.

On MSNBC, lies are not corrected; they are rewarded, provided the lies are designed to smear the reputations of Democratic Party critics. Is this not definitive and conclusive proof of that: that this is not a news outlet but a political arm of the Democratic Party? What else could possibly explain, let alone justify, behavior like this? I’m asking that earnestly.

I BRING THIS UP again now not because I think MSNBC will ever correct its lie — it has made clear that lies designed to destroy the reputations of Democratic Party critics are perfectly permissible — but because a very similar event happened on Friday night involving the same MSNBC analyst.

This week, I traveled to Moscow to meet with Edward Snowden, as well as to participate in a cybersecurity conference, on a panel regarding “fake news” that included Alexei Venediktov, famous in Russia as a fierce critic of the Putin government in his position as editor-in-chief of Ekcho Moskvy radio station, along with Giovanni Zagni, head of an Italian website dedicated to checking politicians’ statements who is working with Facebook to determine “fake news.” (The Intercept paid for my travel and I was paid no fee for the trip).

The panel was moderated by RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and also included Sergey Nalobin, acting deputy director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Given the presence of harsh Putin critics on the panel, the discussion included severe criticisms of both the U.S. and Russian governments, their propensity to lie, and their desire to control the internet.

After Nalobin claimed that Russia was the victim of disinformation and “fake news” campaigns, I responded by pointing out that while this was true, Russia is also the perpetrator of such campaigns, and that in general, the history of the Cold War has continued through today: whereby the U.S. and Russia both use the same tactics against one another while claiming to be the victim.

After the event, there were camera crews from numerous media outlets wanting to interview some of the panel participants. I spoke to all of them. One of them was RT, which published the full transcript of the three-minute interview, as well as selected video clips. The primary point I made that received the most attention — namely, that it has become regarded as suspicious, and even treasonous, merely to visit Russia, and that I accepted the invitation to attend in part to combat that toxic, dangerous, and xenophobic perception — is the statement of mine that RT highlighted on social media.

Obviously, anyone is free to criticize people who decide to visit Russia. Anyone is free to denounce those who speak with RT (such as Stephen Hawking, whose RT interview can be seen here, though I’d love to hear from those holding such views why it’s permissible to speak to think tanks such as Brookings and Center for American Progress, which are funded by Gulf state tyrannies). And, needless to say, anyone is free to attack or dispute any statements or views that I, or anyone else, express as part of such discussions.

Nance did none of that. What he did, instead, is exactly what he did on MSNBC to Jill Stein in August 2016: In two tweets, he outright lied about me on purpose, telling his 420,000 Twitter followers that I am “an agent of Moscow” and “deep in the Kremlin pocket.” He further lied by stating that I “helped Snowden defect” and that I “reports into [my] masters in Moscow.”

 
None of Nance’s statements here is opinion. These claims — especially that I am an “agent of Moscow” and “deep in the Kremlin pocket” — are intended to be factual statements: that I work for, and am paid by, Russia and the Kremlin, and that I aided Snowden in “defecting” to Moscow. They are all outright lies. There is no other way to describe them.

Thus far, his tweet has been retweeted by close to 5,000 people. After I noted that they were lies, Nance reaffirmed them and said how proud he was to have broadcast them.

This is because Nance knows that he is free to lie this way with impunity. That’s because he works for an organization — MSNBC — that masquerades as a news outlet but actively encourages its employees to lie this way about anyone who criticizes the Democratic Party.

He will be celebrated inside MSNBC, not sanctioned or even told to rescind his lie, because — just as happened with the lie he told about Jill Stein — the person he chose to falsely accuse of being a paid agent of Russia is someone that the MSNBC audience of Democratic partisans hates, and lying is thus permitted and encouraged, just the way it is in any partisan organization. The network is derided as “MSDNC” for a reason.

Obviously, Nance is simply adhering to the post-World War II tactic of the U.S. military and intelligence community from which he emerged: For decades, they accuse any journalists they dislike, or dissidents of any kind, of being covert agents of Moscow.

You would think that any real journalists inside NBC News might be bothered enough by this classically McCarthyite tactic — accusing a journalist of being an agent of Russia without a shred of evidence — to denounce it, but you would be quite wrong. Just look at how identical the script is used by Nance to the actual words Joseph McCarthy spoke at one of his notorious hearings:



That’s because NBC News and MSNBC have essentially merged with the CIA and intelligence community and thus, use their tactics. The network is filled with former generals and CIA officials who are part of the community that pioneered these smear tactics of accusing journalists and critics they dislike of being traitors, spies, and Kremlin loyalists. Indeed, Nance sometimes appears on MSNBC along with former CIA Director John Brennan, who MSNBC also hired as an “analyst.” This is who they are.
It’s also what the Democratic Party is: This is their go-to tactic. After my colleague Lee Fang reported on the numerous corporate interests for which Howard Dean secretly shills in exchange for large payments — everything from pharmaceutical companies to Iranian regime-change cults such as MEK — this was the response from Dean (who, needless to say, also frequently appears on MSNBC):



Anyone who criticizes the Democratic Party or its leaders is instantly accused of being a Kremlin agent despite the lack of any evidence. And the organization that leads that smear campaign is the one that calls itself a news outlet (and this is all independent of the fact that another one of its hosts recently lied about having her blog hacked and claimed she reported it to the FBI — a claim everyone in journalism knows is a lie — and not only was never sanctioned for it by was praised for doing that by MSNBC’s star host).
Needless to say, MSNBC is not the only cable outlet that acts as an arm of a political party and encourages its on-air personalities to lie and smear critics of that party. I have spent years documenting lies told by certain Fox News employees and denounced the willingness of some of their hosts to do exactly that while on Fox News itself.
But you can’t be a credible critic of lies — whether told by other cable outlets or politicians — if you not only permit but clearly encourage and reward your own on-air personalities when they do the same. And in the case of MSNBC, they not only do this, but they practice one of the most historically destructive versions of it: fabricated allegations that their critics, including journalists, are treasonous agents of a foreign power.

 


MSNBC Does Not Merely Permit Fabrications Against Democratic Party Critics. It Encourages and Rewards Them.

The network routinely allows outright lies to stand if aimed at critics of Democrats, especially fabricated allegations of being Kremlin agents. The latest is Malcolm Nance.
Glenn Greenwald
July 8 2018, 7:19 a.m.

DURING THE 2016 primary and general election campaigns, various MSNBC hosts were openly campaigning for Hillary Clinton. One of the network’s programs featured Malcolm Nance (pictured above), whose background is quite sketchy but is presented by the cable network (and now by NBC News) as an “intelligence expert” and former intelligence officer for the U.S. Navy.
On August 20, 2016, weekend host Joy Reid asked Nance about the supposed “affinity” for Russia harbored by Jill Stein supporters. In response, Nance told MSNBC viewers: “Jill Stein has a show on Russia Today.” You can still watch the video of this claim here on MSNBC’s own website or see it here:



Whatever your views might be about Stein and her third-party candidacy, there is no disputing the fact that Nance’s statement was a falsehood, a fabrication, a lie. Stein did not have a show on RT, nor did she ever host a show on RT. What Nance said was made up out of whole cloth — fabricated — in order to encourage MSNBC viewers to believe that Stein, one of the candidates running against Clinton, was a paid agent of the Kremlin and employee of RT.
Reid allowed Nance’s lie to stand. Perhaps she did not realize at the time that it was a lie. But subsequently, a campaign was launched to urge MSNBC to correct the lie it broadcast, based on the assumption that MSNBC — which is part of NBC News — was a normal news outlet that functions in accordance with basic journalistic principles and would, of course, correct a false statement once that was brought to its attention.
The media watchdog group FAIR repeatedly documented the lie told by Nance and urged MSNBC to issue a correction. The Intercept wrote about this falsehood on several occasions and also noted that MSNBC was refusing to issue a correction of what everyone knows is a false — but an obviously quite significant — claim. Multiple tweets were directed at NBC News, MSNBC, Nance, and Reid asking them to correct the fabrication to their viewers:




To date — almost two years later — neither NBC News nor MSNBC, nor a single journalist who works for either one of those media outlets has corrected this significant falsehood, despite obviously knowing that it was broadcast to their viewers. In other words, NBC News and MSNBC know that they told viewers something that was materially false, and yet refuse to correct it. Please, defenders of this network: Tell me what that says about its integrity, about its real function, about whether it is a real news outlet.

Worse, not only was Nance never sanctioned in any way for the lie he told, but he was rewarded: He has since gone from “MSNBC contributor” to “MSNBC intelligence analyst,” and is far more pervasive on the network, and its hosts have spent the month aggressively promoting his new book on how Vladimir Putin is destroying U.S. democracy.

On MSNBC, lies are not corrected; they are rewarded, provided the lies are designed to smear the reputations of Democratic Party critics. Is this not definitive and conclusive proof of that: that this is not a news outlet but a political arm of the Democratic Party? What else could possibly explain, let alone justify, behavior like this? I’m asking that earnestly.

I BRING THIS UP again now not because I think MSNBC will ever correct its lie — it has made clear that lies designed to destroy the reputations of Democratic Party critics are perfectly permissible — but because a very similar event happened on Friday night involving the same MSNBC analyst.

This week, I traveled to Moscow to meet with Edward Snowden, as well as to participate in a cybersecurity conference, on a panel regarding “fake news” that included Alexei Venediktov, famous in Russia as a fierce critic of the Putin government in his position as editor-in-chief of Ekcho Moskvy radio station, along with Giovanni Zagni, head of an Italian website dedicated to checking politicians’ statements who is working with Facebook to determine “fake news.” (The Intercept paid for my travel and I was paid no fee for the trip).

The panel was moderated by RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and also included Sergey Nalobin, acting deputy director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Given the presence of harsh Putin critics on the panel, the discussion included severe criticisms of both the U.S. and Russian governments, their propensity to lie, and their desire to control the internet.

After Nalobin claimed that Russia was the victim of disinformation and “fake news” campaigns, I responded by pointing out that while this was true, Russia is also the perpetrator of such campaigns, and that in general, the history of the Cold War has continued through today: whereby the U.S. and Russia both use the same tactics against one another while claiming to be the victim.

After the event, there were camera crews from numerous media outlets wanting to interview some of the panel participants. I spoke to all of them. One of them was RT, which published the full transcript of the three-minute interview, as well as selected video clips. The primary point I made that received the most attention — namely, that it has become regarded as suspicious, and even treasonous, merely to visit Russia, and that I accepted the invitation to attend in part to combat that toxic, dangerous, and xenophobic perception — is the statement of mine that RT highlighted on social media.

Obviously, anyone is free to criticize people who decide to visit Russia. Anyone is free to denounce those who speak with RT (such as Stephen Hawking, whose RT interview can be seen here, though I’d love to hear from those holding such views why it’s permissible to speak to think tanks such as Brookings and Center for American Progress, which are funded by Gulf state tyrannies). And, needless to say, anyone is free to attack or dispute any statements or views that I, or anyone else, express as part of such discussions.

Nance did none of that. What he did, instead, is exactly what he did on MSNBC to Jill Stein in August 2016: In two tweets, he outright lied about me on purpose, telling his 420,000 Twitter followers that I am “an agent of Moscow” and “deep in the Kremlin pocket.” He further lied by stating that I “helped Snowden defect” and that I “reports into [my] masters in Moscow.”


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Can you acknowledge you were spreading disinformation about him?
Or do we just pretend that never happened, and you actually have a clue about him?
“Spreading disinformation” like I’m f*cking Pravda. Have a drink, Nat.

And Greenwald is a shill for authoritarian dictators and anti-American. I own about the guy for ten years. Started as a fan when he’d be on Bill Maher and now he’s gone straight down the rabbit hole.
 
“Spreading disinformation” like I’m f*cking Pravda.
When it comes to the lies you spread online about Greenwald you’re either:

A) Ignorant, and willfully so at this point
B) Lying on purpose

Neither are good looks.

And Greenwald is a shill for authoritarian dictators and anti-American. I own about the guy for ten years. Started as a fan when he’d be on Bill Maher and now he’s gone straight down the rabbit hole.
Why do you conflate opposing neocon imperialism with being anti-American? Is there something inherently American about killing unknown people with drones?

Why do you consider it ‘anti-American’ for a person to expose and oppose the unconstitutional spy apparatus the neocons constructed?

The ‘rabbit hole’ Greenwald went down was saying that shit that was wrong under Bush was still wrong when Obama did it.
 
When it comes to the lies you spread online about Greenwald you’re either:

A) Ignorant, and willfully so at this point
B) Lying on purpose

Neither are good looks.


Why do you conflate opposing neocon imperialism with being anti-American? Is there something inherently American about killing unknown people with drones?

Why do you consider it ‘anti-American’ for a person to expose and oppose the unconstitutional spy apparatus the neocons constructed?

The ‘rabbit hole’ Greenwald went down was saying that shit that was wrong under Bush was still wrong when Obama did it.
K, now do where I’m blatantly saying you’re Nat using a different screenname.
 
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