Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 7, 2016  A shadowy group called PropOrNot (shorthand for Propaganda Or Not) that has gone to a great deal of trouble to keep its funders and principals secret, is promulgating a blacklist of 200 alternative media websites that it has labeled “Russian propaganda outlets.” On Thanksgiving Day, Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg amplified this smear campaign in an article giving credence to the anonymous group’s research. While a handful of state-funded sites are included on the list, both the Washington Post and PropOrNot have come under withering criticism for engaging in McCarthyism by including dozens of respected sites like Naked Capitalism, Truthout, Truthdig, Consortium News and, initially, CounterPunch, on the list. (CounterPunch has since been removed and Naked Capitalism’s lawyer has sent a scorching letter to the Washington Post demanding a retraction and an apology.) The widely read Paul Craig Roberts also landed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 6, 2016 On December 2 President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team sent out a press release advising that he had formed a business advisory panel “which is composed of some of America’s most highly respected and successful business leaders, will be called upon to meet with the President frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the President implements his plan to bring back jobs and Make America Great Again.” In fact, according to the Chair of the panel, Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman and CEO of Blackstone, a private equity/hedge fund/investment bank headquartered in New York City, it was Schwarzman who actually selected the members of the panel and Trump went with the full group he had selected. (See Schwarzman’s Bloomberg TV interview here.) Aside from being a disparate cacophony of voices from wildly different businesses ranging from Boeing, a commercial jet manufacturer, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 5, 2016 Populist backlash, which has been running rampant on both sides of the Atlantic, just handed Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi his walking papers in a widely anticipated referendum vote. Renzi pushed for the referendum to reform the legislative system in Italy and said he would resign if it didn’t pass. Voters saw it as a power grab by Renzi and soundly defeated it with just under 60 percent voting against the measure. Under the terms of the referendum, Italy’s Senate would have shrunk from 315 members to 100 while the Senate’s right to hold a vote of no confidence in the government would have been severed. Much like Donald Trump’s appeal to the working class in America, Renzi took office in 2014 on an anti-establishment campaign. Ironically, or perhaps not, Renzi used the identical words as Trump, promising to clean out … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 2, 2016 Some independent journalists and university professors in the United States who have appeared on RT television to criticize either runaway corruption on Wall Street or in Washington, have landed on two newly created blacklists. RT is a Russian state-financed news network formerly known as Russia Today. Its English-language RT America unit broadcasts from Washington, D.C. A shadowy group called PropOrNot, that has not disclosed either its funders or its principals, has created a blacklist of 200 independent media web sites that it is calling tools of Russia. On the list are some of the most popular and widely read alternative media outlets like Naked Capitalism, Truthout and Truthdig, which regularly carry articles by some of the most knowledgeable and informed voices in America. Another popular site, CounterPunch, was originally on the list but has now been removed following what PropOrNot calls … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 1, 2016 Craig Timberg, a Washington Post reporter with an interesting history (which we’ll get to shortly), doubled down last night with a new article suggesting that Congressional legislation may be coming to further crack down on independent journalists not properly adhering to the dogma of Washington. Timberg has become the deserving piñata of writers like Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, Max Blumenthal of AlterNet, Robert Parry at Common Dreams and numerous other writers at alternative media. Timberg and the Washington Post, which is owned by the billionaire CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, are being stridently called out as McCarthyites for an article published on Thanksgiving Day that cited unnamed “experts” at a shadowy group called PropOrNot to smear 200 alternative media sites as tools of Russia. The blacklist included some of the most informed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 30, 2016 Two days ago, a former Citigroup employee, Erin Daly, filed a 27-page lawsuit in Federal Court in Manhattan alleging gender discrimination and unlawful termination. On the same day, November 28, Daly simultaneously filed a complaint with the Department of Labor alleging she was retaliated against by Citigroup after she reported “violations of insider trading laws” to lawyers at the bank. It is illegal for U.S. banks to retaliate against whistleblowers. According to the Federal lawsuit, less than two weeks after Daly reported the insider trading law violations to internal lawyers, she was terminated from the bank. These are extremely serious charges against a mega Wall Street bank that would have gone belly up in 2008 had it not received $45 billion in equity infusions from the taxpayer, over $300 billion in asset guarantees from the government and more than $2.5 trillion … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 29, 2016 On Sunday, November 13, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump named Stephen K. Bannon as his Senior Counselor and Chief Strategist in the White House. Newspapers across America focused on Bannon’s background as an executive at the right-wing Breitbart News. But Bannon’s more revealing role is that of a seasoned propaganda filmmaker, churning out documentaries that target liberals as haters of America while his films are actually being financed by billionaires who like their plutocracy just the way it is. On September 21, 2012, less than two months before the Presidential election, a Bannon documentary titled “Occupy Unmasked” was released in select theaters in an effort to discredit the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Breitbart web site urged its followers to create “buzz” about the film. Writing at The Nation, Michael Tracey called the film “a deranged hodge-podge of bizarre memes, wild dot-connecting … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 28, 2016 As we reported on November 20, three of the men associated with Citizens United, the right-wing organization that took the legal case to the U.S. Supreme Court that ushered in today’s unprecedented era of unlimited corporate money in U.S. elections, took key posts in the Donald Trump campaign beginning this past summer. One of the men, Stephen K. Bannon, has been named by President-elect Trump to be his Senior Counselor and Chief Strategist in the White House. While Bannon is widely cited for his executive role at Breitbart News prior to joining the Trump campaign, he is also the long-tenured, right-wing filmmaker for the Citizens United organization. A number of the films made by Bannon list Lawrence Kadish as Executive Producer and Victory Film Group as an affiliated entity involved in the documentaries. When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 20, 2016 Citizens United, the nonprofit organization that brought the U.S. Supreme Court case that has unleashed unlimited corporate spending in elections, sent three of its top strategists to run the Donald Trump campaign in its floundering days of 2016. Here’s the timeline: On July 11, 2016, the Trump campaign announced that it had “enlisted the services of Bryan Lanza, who will serve as the Deputy Communications Director for Surrogates. Mr. Lanza’s focus will be on organizing and mobilizing Trump supporters in an effective way that allows Mr. Trump’s America First message to resonate with voters.” Lanza came from Citizens United where he had been Communications Director. On August 17, 2016, the New York Times reported that Steve Bannon would become Chief Executive of the Trump campaign. The article focused on Bannon’s role at Breitbart News but Bannon was the long-tenured filmmaker for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 18, 2016  “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” a reality tv show, has some stiff competition coming from network news as it reports on the daily churn of the Trump Transition Team, which is providing enough intrigue for a thrice daily soap opera. At 6:37 a.m. on Wednesday, three NBC reporters announced that Donald Trump had “taken the unprecedented step of requesting his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, receive top-secret clearance to join him for his Presidential Daily Briefings.” By mid-morning Wednesday, the New York Times was denying the rumor. But by evening, ABC News was reporting that the “intelligence community” had confirmed the story to its reporters. Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka. He is 35 years old, has no intelligence background, no current security clearances, and is the publisher of a New York City-based newspaper, The New York Observer. A newspaper publisher is … Continue reading →