The news cycle has rules every rookie journalist understands. When the media choose to break them, you can be sure it is for entirely non-journalistic reasons
From AI to cloud services to propaganda, Big Tech is fueling the genocide in Gaza. There's a letter-writing campaign to join. The letter itself is a bit wimpy. Please feel free to add or revise it before sending.
Right now, Linkedin is hosting job postings from Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), the logistics company that is behind the GHF, which is responsible for daily murders of Palestinians seeking aid. This must stop!
There’s a campaign to have the Delaware Attorney General, Kathy Jennings, dissolve the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) which is incorporated in Delaware. The group DELPHR has launched an effort to put pressure on the Deleware Attorney general, with a letter-writing effort. You can do your part and sign on here:
national letter-writing tool which was created by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
'UK POLICING MINISTER MET INSURANCE FIRM TARGETED BY PALESTINE ACTION WEEKS BEFORE BAN
Home Office minister Diana Johnson met Allianz UK to discuss 'protest activity and destruction of property'
By DANIEL TESTER
Published date: 1 October 2025 13:01 BST
Last update: 3 hours 32 mins ago
A Home Office minister met representatives of an insurance firm targeted by Palestine Action weeks before the department moved to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation, British government transparency releases reveal.
According to the release, Allianz UK and then-Minister for Policing Diana Johnson met on 3 June 2025 to discuss "protest activity and destruction of property".
Allianz, the world’s largest insurance firm, has been repeatedly targeted by Palestine Action which accuses it over its alleged financial ties to Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems.
Commenting on Johnson's meeting with Allianz, a Defend Our Juries spokesperson said: "The meeting between Allianz and a government minister on protest activity, just weeks before Palestine Action was proscribed, demonstrates the true intentions behind this absurd ban. It was done to protect the companies profiting from genocide, over the rights of British citizens"...
Keir Starmer’s Labour party has refused to grant Declassified access to its annual conference, prompting condemnation from press freedom groups
PHIL MILLER and JOHN McEVOY
26 September 2025...'
AND, right now, on the homepage of OWEN JONES: BATTLE LINE, website of the freelance journalist:
'LABOUR JUST BANNED ME
I got banned from Labour conference. This is a party led by brittle, pathetic authoritarians
OWEN JONES
Sep 30, 2025...'
AND, latest on the home page of DECLASSIFIED UK, right now:
'JOURNALISTS SECRETLY OFFERED CASH FOR MEDIA POSTS
Exclusive: Firm directed by former Israeli intelligence officer recruiting journalists to publish content that benefits Labour party.
JOHN McEVOY
1 October 2025
Earlier this summer, a journalist named Amun Bains received an unusual message on TikTok.
It was from an account named Good News Britain, which said it was working with a group called The Amplifiers to build “a network of digital producers countering the far right online”.
Bains was told The Amplifiers wanted to “work with producers whose progressive content can cut through the noise and counter the division and disinformation spread by the far right”...
...Bains realised that The Amplifiers was being run by a little-known digital communications agency named 411.
He was even more concerned to learn that Assaf Kaplan, a former Israeli intelligence officer in Unit 8200, had been on the call with him as one of the company’s directors.
But who is paying 411, and why?
411 was set up last September by former Labour party officers who describe themselves as “the team behind the… historic 2024 general election victory”. It is named after the number of seats won by Keir Starmer’s party...'
(THAT'S ALL FOLKS. What more do we really need to know about the DTARMER CABAL?)
The identity of the official who instigated the detention order against George Galloway and his wife should be disclosed. Without the opportunity to interrogate that person in open court, justice will not be served. Galloway's attorneys have every right to question the reasoning behind his detention, and that means the individual responsible must be required to reveal his/her thinking.
I note, as Galloway pointed out in his press conference after the event, that he refused to provide the police with the password to his phone (he didn't know it but would refuse in any case). He pointed out that the device contained private, protected communications with his legal representatives. As it happens, he's currently preparing a law suit in Dublin against Elon Musk. It's no stretch of the imagination to surmise that Musk would have appreciated access to the Galloway team's planned strategy. Government- and that includes police agencies- are stuffed with the sort of people always looking to advance through the private sector and curry favour by delivering sensitive information to powerful individuals. I'm not saying Musk was behind this incident. But I am saying that at the senior security level, persons were aware of Galloway's impending action against a man who might be grateful for advance knowledge in the matter.
Long ago the media ceased being able to make a profit from the derisory sums paid by the public - to buy a newspaper, for instance. So they fell back on advertising. As long ago as 1928, the British journalist Hannen Swaffer wrote:
"Freedom of the press in Britain means freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to".
Then advertising fell off, largely because of the rise of the Internet. The media had no reputable sources of income left, so they turned to a highly disreputable source: government. Today the mainstream media are as much government mouthpieces as were "Pravda" and "Izvestia" in Soviet times.
In the unlikely event that I want to know what the government is saying, I can read its own pronouncements and press releases. It's just stupid to pay real money to see stenographic copies of that in the media.
Upton Sinclair published "The Brass Cheque" in 1919. In this book he exposed in exhausting detail how the Associated Press newspapers fabricated stories, lied by omission, told half-truths and so on. He was, as you may know, one of the most prominent journalists in the US 110 years or so ago. So, western media in general have never been any better than Izvestia or Pravda. I lived in the US during the 80s, and in 1982 I threw my TV in a dumpster because I was so sick and tired of the obvious propaganda.
“There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes”.
Let's jump forward in time to the late 1930s. In Berlin "The Times" correspondent's name was Douglas L. Reed. He submitted article after article during the mid thirties with which he wanted to warn the British people about what the brutal dictator there was up to.
One by one his letters were put in the circular archive. In 1939 he resigned in disgust. He returned to England and started writing "The Controversy of Zion" in 1951. He finished it in 1956. It took him twenty two years to find a willing publisher. I wonder why. (Not really)
To add my two pennerth, PATRICK LAWRENCE (I'm pretty sure) writing at CONSORTIUM NEWS (consortiumnews.com) quoted a story of an American reporter, flying home from a Cold War stint in Moscow, sharing a seating row with a Russian journalist starting an assignment in the USA.
'I go to study American propaganda,' the Russian said.
'What propaganda?' asked the American, bewildered.
On a much less serious note.... At the peak of his carreer Babe Ruth was running half naked through a train behind a half naked girl. One of two journalists sitting next to each other said: "Had we seen any of what just happened, we may actually have had to write about it."
What's wrong with 'our' MPs who refuse to question the gov't financed PSBs who will not comply with the terms of their own charters? Channel 4 & BBC are nothing more than gov't stenographers.
There is nothing "wrong" with them, unless you still cling to the ancient belief that MPs are paid to represent the public. Nowadays, of course, they are full-time employees of the government - and most of them belong to the same party as the government. So of course they say what the government tells them to - if they don't want to lose their cushy sinecures.
I suppose you are trying to roll back the curtain and reveal who instructs the government. That is a harder task, since the main purpose of the government is to hide who has the real power. Weapons manufacturers certainly - but I would hesitate to speak of "foreign lobby groups", since the foreign concerns that matter do not have to "lobby" - asking for favours, cap in hand. They are the Boss.
I'm fascinated by the concept of a Hamas camera. I've been searching online but can't seem to locate a site that sells them. But then, perhaps I haven't fully absorbed the notion in all its strategic implications. I'll take a stroll in the garden and think it over. Wait- isn't that a Hamas rosebush? And the wall behind it- surely those are Hamas breeze blocks. The magpies chattering in their raucous language- Hamas operatives sending coordinates across the bright cerulean- yes- the Hamas sky. I have it now. No need to go on shopping for that camera. My old Kodak will do. Because when you stand with Palestine, all your things and all you behold are enlisted in Hamas.
'LEADERS IN MIDDLE EAST WELCOME TRUMP'S GAZA PEACE PLAN
'By RUSHDI ABUALOUF, Gaza correspondent, and George WrightGEORGE WRIGHT
'Published 29 September 2025
'Updated 52 minutes ago
'European and Middle Eastern leaders have welcomed a US peace plan for Gaza, as President Donald Trump warned Hamas to accept it...
'Speaking at Monday's news conference at the White House, Trump called the plan "a historic day for peace".
'But he said Netanyahu would have US backing to "finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas" if Hamas did not agree to the plan.
'Netanyahu then said Israel "will finish the job" if Hamas rejected the plan or did not not follow through.
'In a video statement shortly afterwards, Netanyahu reinstated his longstanding opposition to a Palestinian state. "It's not written in the agreement. We said we would strongly oppose a Palestinian state," he said...
'In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan said they welcomed Trump's "leadership and his sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza".
'They said they were ready to engage with the US to finalise and implement the agreement, which they said should lead to a "two state solution, under which Gaza is fully integrated with the West Bank in a Palestinian state".
European Council President Antonio Costa said he was "encouraged by Prime Minister Netanyahu's positive response" to the proposal. He added "all parties must seize this moment to give peace a genuine chance"...'
How anyone still can believe in any sort of agreement proposed by any American or Israeli politician is beyond me.
I challenge anyone to name an international agreement that Israel or the US abides by. They have both thrown international law itself in the trash can. They've replaced it with "Rules based international order" (read: We make the rules, and you had better follow them, or else.)
Useful and clarifying as always. I think there is another important aspect to it, which I don't think you have fully spelt out: Breaking News treatment is itself a way to grade the importance of events, and so another layer of deceit. By omitting this "honor" from certain news they are effectively saying, without using a single word, that certain events are not so important, for instance the bombing of that hospital or many others.
Be very careful who you read, everyone.
Thanks Mr Cook for this principled piece.
It's Orwell world, with almost no exceptions. Screen-addiction serves technocracy serves loss of human agency.
The media is like those drugs that the rapist puts in the victim's drink to rape her without her realizing it.
Take action today
FIFA and UEFA are meeting about whether to expel Israel from their tournaments. Tell FIFA to ban Israel from playing in the 2026 World Cup:
In the UK:
https://palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/banIsrael
Worldwide:
https://www.gameoverisrael.com/en
And
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/ban_israel_from_the_world_cup_2_0/?bezdetb&v=169237&cl=22311971612&_checksum=6d83a36799686c95d03116e8c556125ab456e12a3f0eebd7c7cf7b35a91a2184&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=169237
Stop the techno-genecide
From AI to cloud services to propaganda, Big Tech is fueling the genocide in Gaza. There's a letter-writing campaign to join. The letter itself is a bit wimpy. Please feel free to add or revise it before sending.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/big-tech-cancel-contracts-with-idf/?source=group-democracy-for-america-advocacy-fund&referrer=group-democracy-for-america-advocacy-fund&redirect=https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hdc_big_tech_cancel_contracts_with_israel&link_id=1&can_id=a707410023f29d0530df1e255f3edf18&email_referrer=email_2907365&&&email_subject=demand-an-end-to-big-tech-complicity-in-gaza&refcodeEmailReferrer=email_2907365
Tell Linkedin “No hiring for genocide”
Right now, Linkedin is hosting job postings from Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), the logistics company that is behind the GHF, which is responsible for daily murders of Palestinians seeking aid. This must stop!
https://www.codepink.org/linkedin
Put a stop to GHF
There’s a campaign to have the Delaware Attorney General, Kathy Jennings, dissolve the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) which is incorporated in Delaware. The group DELPHR has launched an effort to put pressure on the Deleware Attorney general, with a letter-writing effort. You can do your part and sign on here:
national letter-writing tool which was created by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
More details can be found in this article:
https://passblue.com/2025/08/29/a-us-group-demands-probe-into-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-alleging-war-crimes/
Here’s a direct email: attorney.general@delaware.gov
a comment
Can I state my beliefs here without getting banned as Caitlin did to me ?
This will be a problem when you touch DOMESTIC issue as opposed to FOREIGN
(Last post on this comment stream, I promise but take a look at this...)
On home page of MIDDLE EAST EYE (middleeasteye.net) right now:
'UK POLICING MINISTER MET INSURANCE FIRM TARGETED BY PALESTINE ACTION WEEKS BEFORE BAN
Home Office minister Diana Johnson met Allianz UK to discuss 'protest activity and destruction of property'
By DANIEL TESTER
Published date: 1 October 2025 13:01 BST
Last update: 3 hours 32 mins ago
A Home Office minister met representatives of an insurance firm targeted by Palestine Action weeks before the department moved to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation, British government transparency releases reveal.
According to the release, Allianz UK and then-Minister for Policing Diana Johnson met on 3 June 2025 to discuss "protest activity and destruction of property".
Allianz, the world’s largest insurance firm, has been repeatedly targeted by Palestine Action which accuses it over its alleged financial ties to Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems.
Commenting on Johnson's meeting with Allianz, a Defend Our Juries spokesperson said: "The meeting between Allianz and a government minister on protest activity, just weeks before Palestine Action was proscribed, demonstrates the true intentions behind this absurd ban. It was done to protect the companies profiting from genocide, over the rights of British citizens"...
AND on the home page of DECLASSIFIED UK (declassifieduk.org) right now:
'LABOUR BARS JOURNALISTS FROM PARTY CONFERENCE
Keir Starmer’s Labour party has refused to grant Declassified access to its annual conference, prompting condemnation from press freedom groups
PHIL MILLER and JOHN McEVOY
26 September 2025...'
AND, right now, on the homepage of OWEN JONES: BATTLE LINE, website of the freelance journalist:
'LABOUR JUST BANNED ME
I got banned from Labour conference. This is a party led by brittle, pathetic authoritarians
OWEN JONES
Sep 30, 2025...'
AND, latest on the home page of DECLASSIFIED UK, right now:
'JOURNALISTS SECRETLY OFFERED CASH FOR MEDIA POSTS
Exclusive: Firm directed by former Israeli intelligence officer recruiting journalists to publish content that benefits Labour party.
JOHN McEVOY
1 October 2025
Earlier this summer, a journalist named Amun Bains received an unusual message on TikTok.
It was from an account named Good News Britain, which said it was working with a group called The Amplifiers to build “a network of digital producers countering the far right online”.
Bains was told The Amplifiers wanted to “work with producers whose progressive content can cut through the noise and counter the division and disinformation spread by the far right”...
...Bains realised that The Amplifiers was being run by a little-known digital communications agency named 411.
He was even more concerned to learn that Assaf Kaplan, a former Israeli intelligence officer in Unit 8200, had been on the call with him as one of the company’s directors.
But who is paying 411, and why?
411 was set up last September by former Labour party officers who describe themselves as “the team behind the… historic 2024 general election victory”. It is named after the number of seats won by Keir Starmer’s party...'
(THAT'S ALL FOLKS. What more do we really need to know about the DTARMER CABAL?)
yep.
The identity of the official who instigated the detention order against George Galloway and his wife should be disclosed. Without the opportunity to interrogate that person in open court, justice will not be served. Galloway's attorneys have every right to question the reasoning behind his detention, and that means the individual responsible must be required to reveal his/her thinking.
I note, as Galloway pointed out in his press conference after the event, that he refused to provide the police with the password to his phone (he didn't know it but would refuse in any case). He pointed out that the device contained private, protected communications with his legal representatives. As it happens, he's currently preparing a law suit in Dublin against Elon Musk. It's no stretch of the imagination to surmise that Musk would have appreciated access to the Galloway team's planned strategy. Government- and that includes police agencies- are stuffed with the sort of people always looking to advance through the private sector and curry favour by delivering sensitive information to powerful individuals. I'm not saying Musk was behind this incident. But I am saying that at the senior security level, persons were aware of Galloway's impending action against a man who might be grateful for advance knowledge in the matter.
Long ago the media ceased being able to make a profit from the derisory sums paid by the public - to buy a newspaper, for instance. So they fell back on advertising. As long ago as 1928, the British journalist Hannen Swaffer wrote:
"Freedom of the press in Britain means freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to".
Then advertising fell off, largely because of the rise of the Internet. The media had no reputable sources of income left, so they turned to a highly disreputable source: government. Today the mainstream media are as much government mouthpieces as were "Pravda" and "Izvestia" in Soviet times.
In the unlikely event that I want to know what the government is saying, I can read its own pronouncements and press releases. It's just stupid to pay real money to see stenographic copies of that in the media.
Upton Sinclair published "The Brass Cheque" in 1919. In this book he exposed in exhausting detail how the Associated Press newspapers fabricated stories, lied by omission, told half-truths and so on. He was, as you may know, one of the most prominent journalists in the US 110 years or so ago. So, western media in general have never been any better than Izvestia or Pravda. I lived in the US during the 80s, and in 1982 I threw my TV in a dumpster because I was so sick and tired of the obvious propaganda.
Hey, this is fun! I’ll offer this, from 1883:
“There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes”.
- John Swinton (1829–1901), Scottish-American journalist, newspaper publisher, and orator. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Swinton http://www.rense.com/general20/yes.htm
Let's jump forward in time to the late 1930s. In Berlin "The Times" correspondent's name was Douglas L. Reed. He submitted article after article during the mid thirties with which he wanted to warn the British people about what the brutal dictator there was up to.
One by one his letters were put in the circular archive. In 1939 he resigned in disgust. He returned to England and started writing "The Controversy of Zion" in 1951. He finished it in 1956. It took him twenty two years to find a willing publisher. I wonder why. (Not really)
https://archive.org/details/reeedcontrov
To add my two pennerth, PATRICK LAWRENCE (I'm pretty sure) writing at CONSORTIUM NEWS (consortiumnews.com) quoted a story of an American reporter, flying home from a Cold War stint in Moscow, sharing a seating row with a Russian journalist starting an assignment in the USA.
'I go to study American propaganda,' the Russian said.
'What propaganda?' asked the American, bewildered.
'Exactly,' said the Russian.
On a much less serious note.... At the peak of his carreer Babe Ruth was running half naked through a train behind a half naked girl. One of two journalists sitting next to each other said: "Had we seen any of what just happened, we may actually have had to write about it."
Imagine a "journalist" saying that today.
Excellent.
What's wrong with 'our' MPs who refuse to question the gov't financed PSBs who will not comply with the terms of their own charters? Channel 4 & BBC are nothing more than gov't stenographers.
There is nothing "wrong" with them, unless you still cling to the ancient belief that MPs are paid to represent the public. Nowadays, of course, they are full-time employees of the government - and most of them belong to the same party as the government. So of course they say what the government tells them to - if they don't want to lose their cushy sinecures.
I suppose you are trying to roll back the curtain and reveal who instructs the government. That is a harder task, since the main purpose of the government is to hide who has the real power. Weapons manufacturers certainly - but I would hesitate to speak of "foreign lobby groups", since the foreign concerns that matter do not have to "lobby" - asking for favours, cap in hand. They are the Boss.
I'm fascinated by the concept of a Hamas camera. I've been searching online but can't seem to locate a site that sells them. But then, perhaps I haven't fully absorbed the notion in all its strategic implications. I'll take a stroll in the garden and think it over. Wait- isn't that a Hamas rosebush? And the wall behind it- surely those are Hamas breeze blocks. The magpies chattering in their raucous language- Hamas operatives sending coordinates across the bright cerulean- yes- the Hamas sky. I have it now. No need to go on shopping for that camera. My old Kodak will do. Because when you stand with Palestine, all your things and all you behold are enlisted in Hamas.
WHAT THE BBC WILL REPORT (& HOW)...
On the BBC NEWS ONLINE home page right now:
'LEADERS IN MIDDLE EAST WELCOME TRUMP'S GAZA PEACE PLAN
'By RUSHDI ABUALOUF, Gaza correspondent, and George WrightGEORGE WRIGHT
'Published 29 September 2025
'Updated 52 minutes ago
'European and Middle Eastern leaders have welcomed a US peace plan for Gaza, as President Donald Trump warned Hamas to accept it...
'Speaking at Monday's news conference at the White House, Trump called the plan "a historic day for peace".
'But he said Netanyahu would have US backing to "finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas" if Hamas did not agree to the plan.
'Netanyahu then said Israel "will finish the job" if Hamas rejected the plan or did not not follow through.
'In a video statement shortly afterwards, Netanyahu reinstated his longstanding opposition to a Palestinian state. "It's not written in the agreement. We said we would strongly oppose a Palestinian state," he said...
'In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan said they welcomed Trump's "leadership and his sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza".
'They said they were ready to engage with the US to finalise and implement the agreement, which they said should lead to a "two state solution, under which Gaza is fully integrated with the West Bank in a Palestinian state".
European Council President Antonio Costa said he was "encouraged by Prime Minister Netanyahu's positive response" to the proposal. He added "all parties must seize this moment to give peace a genuine chance"...'
TREACHERY ABOUNDS.
How anyone still can believe in any sort of agreement proposed by any American or Israeli politician is beyond me.
I challenge anyone to name an international agreement that Israel or the US abides by. They have both thrown international law itself in the trash can. They've replaced it with "Rules based international order" (read: We make the rules, and you had better follow them, or else.)
Useful and clarifying as always. I think there is another important aspect to it, which I don't think you have fully spelt out: Breaking News treatment is itself a way to grade the importance of events, and so another layer of deceit. By omitting this "honor" from certain news they are effectively saying, without using a single word, that certain events are not so important, for instance the bombing of that hospital or many others.