Analyst: ‘Empire's lies losing luster, bitter Biden tries trumping truthtellers’

Frustrated at loss of influence, the United States lashes out, shuts down resistance information sites, including the website of the English-language news network Press TV, according to American political commentator and writer Daniel Patrick Welch. 

Welch made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday after the US Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it had seized 33 media websites used by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union, as well as three of the Iraqi anti-terror Kata’ib Hezbollah group, which it said were hosted on US-owned domains in violation of sanctions.

It came a day after a message appeared on the websites of a series of Iranian and regional television networks that claimed their domains had been “seized by the United States Government,” accompanied by the seals of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Commerce Department.

The notice, which also appeared on the website of Press TV, cited US sanctions laws as the reason for the seizure.

Message on websites of Iranian, regional TVs claims ‘domain seizure by US govt.’

In what seems to be a coordinated action, a similar message has appeared on the websites of a series of Iranian and regional television networks that claims the domains of the websites have been “seized by the United States Government.”

‘Mainstream US media persons are unpaid employees of the Pentagon’ 

“This whole business of the US State Department seizing websites and closing down stations across the Mideast and western Asia would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous, if it weren’t coming from the premier war crazed nuclear power on earth,” said Welch.

“What I mean is that the rest of the world is laughing, or a lot of the world knows what’s going on. They know what the Western mainstream media stands for. They know that it’s basically stenography and not journalism. And that it serves the purposes of Empire and Western hegemony,” he stated.  

“I remember George Carlin saying that ‘the press were nothing more than unpaid employees of the Department of Defense, who most of the time functioned as an unofficial public relations agency for the US government.’ It’s perfect,” he said. 

‘Journalism is making people in power uncomfortable’

“And anyone else is a threat. That’s what they mean. That’s what is wrong and has to be shut down. Disinformation? It’s exactly the opposite of the truth. Journalism is making people in power uncomfortable, and anything else is advertising. But that’s not what they want. They want people who toe the line,” the analyst said. 

“And what this signals above all, I think, is that there is a complete failure of US agitprop in Western Asia: in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, in the narrative on Yemen, Syria, in the Middle East, North Africa, Palestine…. It’s failing, and it’s a sign of imperial decline and overreach,” he stated. 

“This is big money, and big work. They have worked really hard through the Cold War, with all their billions of dollars and far reaching projects: Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, the CIA planting stories—the Tonkin Gulf story and hundreds of others—manipulating and doctoring information to mess with the internal affairs of other countries, run their elections, choose their leaders. They’ve been doing this forever,” he said. 

Biden people ‘are tense that their lies are not working’

“The fact that they’re doing this now cuts both ways: first of all, it’s just more of the same old crap; and secondly, they really are kind of tense, and touchy about the fact that their lies aren’t quite working as well anymore,” Welch said. 

“The trouble is that the real losers are the US population. The rest of the world still has access to this. Press TV itself was back up within hours on several other domains. So it also has this petty, punk a$$ whiff of a rearguard action. Kind of pouty—like ‘well, [kid voice] you’re not gonna look at ours anymore!’ Okay, well we’ll look at the British version, or the .ir version. And the ones that lose out are the US population,” he explained. 

‘US people are the most propagandized people on earth’

“But I mean, the US people are, in fact, the most propagandized people on earth. There’s the old saw about the two spies—I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not, but anyway. Two spies are rumored to have gotten together in a bar or wherever; one was an old Soviet spy and one was an old Western spy. They were comparing notes and talking about whose propaganda was worse. And finally the Soviet spy says ‘Well, the real difference is that your people believed yours,’” Welch said. 

He added, “And that is a real statement. Back to Carlin: you have choice on everything in this country that doesn’t matter. And press is one of the things that matters. So you get to hear the official version and that’s it. You have 52 flavors of Baskin Robbins and only two political parties, and those are identical. And this is the kind of selling of a democratic ideal as ‘choice.’ Which leads to ‘having cinnamon flavored dental floss while people are sleeping in the streets.’” 

“The other reason that it’s important that it’s happening now is that it gives the lie to the idea that things are fine with Trump gone. Trump was the problem, and now it’s gonna be great! They actually held signs, if you remember, these types, saying ‘If Hillary had won we’d be at brunch now.’ Right? Remember that?” he said. 

‘Social imperialists are useful idiots’  

“These are useful idiots—the so-called ‘left.’ I call them fauxialists, or social imperialists, whose only cure for the cognitive dissonance frying their brains is to pretend that there is a difference. So that they can maintain some semblance of ‘normal.’ Like oh no, no, we’re the good guys. Or there are good guys. Or whatever, I don’t know. I wonder if they are choking on their brunch now,” he said. 

He added. “There is no difference. This is the same manipulation, the same system, the same machinery. That’s how the system works. And at some point you have to look at it and overcome that cognitive dissonance and say ‘We’re being lied to.’”  

“I remember in the old days we used to laugh at the National Enquirer. There was a stat that came out that said only 25% of the people who bought the tabloid believed it. So 75% bought it even though they didn’t believe it. And we thought we were SO superior, because those silly rednecks were buying a tabloid that would feature stuff like ‘Two headed alien gives birth to Elvis’ baby,’ stuff like that,” he added. 

“But now people have to admit that their vaunted infotainers on the left edge of imperialism are no better, that it’s the same thing.  Rachel Maddow, the darling of self-styled progressives who swallowed Russiagate whole and all that crap—just argued in court that some lawsuit had no merit because her followers know she is exaggerating, and offering opinion, not fact, right? Infotainment. National Enquirer. Might as well be a two headed Elvis baby,” he explained. 

“But maybe we shouldn’t be all that surprised. Americans, quite frankly, are just extreme in their acceptance of propaganda, which is as old as the so called republic itself. I mean seriously: from the starting block, these people believe their own founding mythology, that a beacon of democracy and freedom is going to emerge from an ethno settler colony built on the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous inhabitants and the enslavement of captive Africans. Right? They wouldn’t give up that precious little gem—slavery and apartheid—until 1970. And still are completely and fundamentally committed to the white supremacist machinery that makes America..umm, ‘great,’ I guess,” he said. 

‘Americans are the great innovators in the field of mind control’

“But Americans are the great innovators in the field of mind control and social manipulation. Even the Nazis hired US PR firms. Goebbels was a huge admirer of Ed Bernays. Ed Bernays—Freud’s nephew, Father of Public Relations. Goebbels studied Bernays. And actually found him a very useful source, for ideas like the Big Lie, etc. He is the one who started out by showing that women could be convinced to smoke because cigarettes were these ‘Torches of Freedom’ and so forth,” he revealed. 

“I don’t know. Maybe it is only a place like America that could produce something as cynical as Bernays and what he did with this power: that the most clever and important use of the suffragist movement and women’s striving for equality and freedom was to double the market for cigarettes,” he stated. 

“So—same as it ever was? I don’t know. I mean, it’s a double edged sword, as it usually is. Doomed to fail, because it is so late and so transparent, and only affects the domestic population. They’re losing the war, the propaganda war. But it is precisely dangerous because it is exactly the domestic population who are the ones who will go along with war on Russia and China,” the analyst said.  

“So what’s the takeaway? God I miss George Carlin. He said ‘I don’t believe anything my government tells me. And I have this moron thing I do, it’s called THINKING.’ Think for yourself. Engage in critical analysis. Seek sources outside the mainstream. Talk to each other. Don’t join these bandwagons on cancelling and deplatforming, even if it’s a platform you don’t agree with. Seek out every microphone, every rooftop, every chance. Because the army of agitprop that is arrayed against us is just formidable. The greatest machinery every assembled in the history of humanity. Listen to Ted Geisel: Every Yip and every Yop. Ideas matter. Keep fighting,” Welch concluded.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir