Good ol' Comrade Tucker Carlson... GO Putin!!!

[pasayten]

Maybe they can get Tucker on for an interview?

A small Missouri radio station is airing a Russian radio program full of propaganda amid the invasion of Ukraine
kbalevic@insider.com (Katie Balevic) - Yesterday 9:52 AM


A radio station in Missouri is airing a Russian radio program full of state propaganda.
Peter Schartel says he is exercising free speech as he airs the pro-Russian content amid the invasion of Ukraine.
The radio program, Radio Sputnik, is produced by a US division of the Russian-run media group Rossiya Segodnya.

Peter Schartel airs the Russian program Radio Sputnik every day at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. from his station, KCXL Radio, in Liberty, Missouri.

"America is a very different country than it used to be. We used to be a country of freedom, job, opportunity, and equality. Now, we are a country that looks down upon traditional values. We are a country that puts its citizens second to citizens of other countries," the home page of the radio station reads.

Schartel started airing Radio Sputnik in early 2020, and since then, he has been accused by critics of being a traitor for promoting propaganda and disinformation, according to The Associated Press.

"While we know that airings of such programs are extremely limited, we believe that our nation must stand fully united against misinformation and for freedom and democracy across the globe," the organization said in a statement.

The NAB added that despite their support for the freedom of speech, the First Amendment "does not prevent private actors from exercising sound, moral judgment."

On Schartel's KCXL, the station claims that the United States is "a country that, rather than speaking the truth, we hide it, in fear of being 'offensive.'"

"At KCXL 102.9fm and 1140am, we bring you the truth. We tell you the things that the liberal media wont tell you. We make it our goal to inform our listeners on the issues that matter. We are your information station!" the home page reads.

Read the original article on Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/missour ... nda-2022-3

[pasayten]

Russia praises Fox News as politicians set their stance on the Ukrainian invasion
Zeleb.es - Yesterday 2:15 PM

Fair and balanced
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has praised the Fox News coverage of the war in Ukraine. Despite the increasing isolation that Putin and his government are facing, the Kremlin still finds a few good friends in this critical time and the conservative news cable channel seems one of them.

[mister_coffee]

There was also a subtle technical problem in the reporting about Hunter Biden's laptop.

All of the reporting referred to the "hard drive" of that laptop, and many of them quoted technical people about it. Interestingly, MacBook Pros haven't shipped with a "hard drive" since around 2009, and tech people are fussy with their language and terminology and wouldn't have made that mistake.

Some articles had photos of the alleged "hard drive", and I've been inside enough MacBook Pros to know those photos didn't contain anything that had ever been inside a Mac.

[Rideback]

Problem #1, it's never been determined that it belonged to Hunter Biden.
Problem #2, it came from Rudy G
Problem #3, it was fried, but some emails were able to be retrieved, of those Politico reporter says he has verified but they're not damning emails.
Rudy G did more illegal acts in one day than Hunter Biden even dreamed of.

Marcy Wheeler:

'I’m going to explain how The Laptop that Rudy Giuliani floated just before the election is the functional equivalent of the Steele dossier.

Before I do, let me make a fairly obvious (if counterintuitive) point: Of the three people that powerful Ukrainians attempted to cultivate for their ties to the Vice President or President — Paul Manafort, Hunter Biden, and Rudy Giuliani — just one provably affected US policy through the Vice President or President: Rudy.

Contrary to what you may have read, for example, Manafort actually wasn’t the one who prevented the GOP platform from being strengthened to support Ukraine, JD Gordon was (though Trump’s do-not-recall answer about his own involvement can’t rule that out). Mueller’s decision not to prosecute Gordon as an agent of Russia was only recently made public (thanks to the relentless work of Jason Leopold and his lawyer).

And while there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that Manafort entered into a quid pro quo on August 2, 2016, trading campaign strategy for a commitment to help carve up Ukraine to Russia’s liking along with $19 million a financial benefit for Manafort personally, because the investigation into Manafort became public in 2016, his ongoing efforts to push that Russian plan to dismember Ukraine never (as far as has been made public) had the involvement of Trump. It’s possible Trump was involved or Manafort got certain commitments in 2016, but Manafort’s own cover-up prevented DOJ from determining whether or not that was true.

According to the NYT story that has renewed the frenzy around the laptop Rudy Giuliani released just before the election, Federal prosecutors still haven’t determined whether Hunter Biden’s treatment of Chinese, Kazakh, and Ukrainian influence efforts amounted to a crime. But they do have evidence that Hunter Biden tried to be explicit that he could not influence his father to help Burisma.

In one email to Mr. Archer in April 2014, Mr. Biden outlined his vision for working with Burisma. In the email, Hunter Biden indicated that the forthcoming announcement of a trip to Ukraine by Vice President Biden — who is referred to in the email as “my guy,” but not by name — should “be characterized as part of our advice and thinking — but what he will say and do is out of our hands.”

The announcement “could be a really good thing or it could end up creating too great an expectation. We need to temper expectations regarding that visit,” Hunter Biden wrote.

Vice President Biden traveled to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, about a week after the email.

In the same April 2014 email, Hunter Biden indicated that Burisma’s officials “need to know in no uncertain terms that we will not and cannot intervene directly with domestic policymakers, and that we need to abide by FARA and any other U.S. laws in the strictest sense across the board.”

He suggested enlisting the law firm where he worked at the time, Boies Schiller Flexner, to help Burisma through “direct discussions at state, energy and NSC,” referring to two cabinet departments and the National Security Council at the White House.

The firm “can devise a media plan and arrange for legal protections and mitigate U.S. domestic negative press regarding the current leadership if need be,” Mr. Biden wrote in the email.

And sworn testimony from experts in both parties say Hunter did not dissuade his father from taking steps to crack down on corruption.

Of these three well-connected Americans being cultivated by powerful and corrupt Ukrainians — some but not all of them known Russian agents — only Rudy Giuliani is known to have had a direct effect on policy. Among other things, Rudy got Marie Yovanovitch fired. In only Rudy’s case, then, do we have clearcut proof that a Ukrainian influence operation had the desired effect of changing American policy. Though even there, it’s not yet clear whether Rudy’s unregistered influence peddling was criminal.

(Obviously, Manafort pled guilty to being an unregistered Ukrainian agent during the earlier period, and he got paid orders of magnitude more than Hunter Biden did, too.)

So as we fight about The Laptop again, based on a reference to verified emails in a NYT article bylined by serial Rudy mouthpiece Ken Vogel, the first thing we should keep in mind is that there’s far more evidence that Rudy Giuliani successfully influenced the President or Vice President as a secret agent of Ukraine than Hunter Biden.

[PAL]

Ken, please tell us what is on the Hunter Biden laptop, exactly. Thanks.

[Rideback]

Look at the Senate investigation, all 87 pages of it, done by Rep Senator Chuck Grassley and another Rep which came to the conclusion that the Hunter Biden conspiracies were empty of any facts and were quite simply political fodder.

The questions about the bio labs in Ukraine, Russian involvement as well as US involvement have been asked and answered which you would know if you read the links provided.

There comes a time when even you have to question the questioners you listen to and wonder why they never provide answers, only more questions as if the rest of the world is supposed to scurry out and jump down that rabbit hole as if they will find the answers to the Universe. The questions you ask are nothing more than tools straight out of Putin's tool box. Word for word what he speaks, what his state run tv plays and his minions spread. Word for word, check it out. Here's a link just in case you don't know how to use Google. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/amer ... quit-putin

[dorankj]

The reference is bio labs, the inference that they have a danger was from the official. Asking for more transparency and understanding is exactly what the ‘fifth estate’ should do! Why give a warning if these labs are harmless research? Why are we funding any labs there? (Don’t sell me that ‘cleaning up old Russian labs’ propaganda, clean-up can happen much faster) After the world just experienced a likely bio-leak from a research lab, this is all very reasonable to look into and get answers. Propaganda comes from many sources, look at the Hunter lap-top!

[Rideback]

The Russian disinformation technique of sewing doubt is so often based on 'a question'. The question takes a statement, an observation or a feeling and puts it into a different context than it was originally sourced. The 'question' is the tool that acts as overall to nurture mistrust feeding it to grow larger and more widespread...going from a piece of gossip to eventually a fear in any government institutions. People think that a harmless 'question' is an act of cynical intelligence. It's not. The 'question' is a tool to get even the most intelligent to disengage from rational thought and become angry & afraid. It works until the target fights back by fact checking and realizing they've been conned.

Good fact checks, thank you.

[PAL]

Ken, these posts are long but I hope you can read them and open up your mind.

[pasayten]

Tucker Carlson Upset His Show Is Called 'Organ of Russian Disinformation'

Newsweek - Daniel Villarreal - Yesterday 8:17 PM

After weeks of seemingly defending Vladimir Putin and having clips of his show played on Russian state media, Tucker Carlson is taking umbrage at being called an enabler for Russian disinformation.

Carlson's reaction comes at a time when two Republican legislators have accused him of spreading Russian propaganda connected to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In the Thursday broadcast of Carlson's Fox News program, he said that Republican Texas Representative Michael McCaul had recently called his show an "organ of Russian disinformation."

Carlson didn't cite a specific instance of McCaul saying such a thing.

"In other words, not only are we wrong—which is fine—we're disloyal Americans doing the bidding of a foreign power," Carlson said. "It's not fine. It's slander."

Carlson then said that his show is "only and narrowly interested in the interests of our own country." He then accused McCaul and other Republicans of "suddenly talking like Joe Biden" who "calls anything he doesn't like Russian disinformation."

As proof of his claim, Carlson referred to Biden's comments stating that Russia had an interest in furthering claims that Biden had used his political standing to benefit the Ukraine-based business dealings of his son, Hunter.

An 87-page report released in mid-September 2021 by Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin examined these claims. Their report neither cited any instances of criminal financial activity by Hunter Biden nor presented concrete evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.

Carlson has continued to broadcast these claims. The Biden administration has since said that Russia has repeated these allegations in order to aid in its characterization of Ukraine's government as corrupt and in need of a regime change.

Illinois Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger has also recently accused Carlson's show of spreading Russian propaganda.

Part of Kinzinger's claim stems from Carlson's recent broadcasts about the U.S. allegedly funding bioweapon labs in Ukraine. In fact, on Tuesday, Democratic Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen accused Carlson of spreading misinformation about the labs.

In a March 9 broadcast, Carlson claimed that the U.S. and Western media had tried to disavow the labs' existence. He said that testimony by U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland proved that Russia's claims of U.S. involvement in the labs were "totally and completely true."

However, fact-checkers pointed out that the U.S. government had previously stated that the labs were researching possible epidemics, not bioweapons like Russian sources have long claimed. In fact, the U.S. has said Russia's claims about U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine may be a cover for Russia to launch its own bio-attack and then blame the U.S. or Ukraine for the attack.

Adam Kinzinger Calls Tucker Carlson's Show 'Evil' And 'Russian Propaganda'
The Russian state-owned TV network RT has frequently replayed Carlson's February 24 defense of Putin, in which he rhetorically asked: "Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic?"

Russian state media has also broadcast a conversation between Carlson and retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who predicted Russia would "annihilate" Ukrainian troops if they did not surrender.

The Russian government has instructed its news outlets to show clips of Carlson "as much as possible" because of his critical views of the U.S. policy, according to Mother Jones.

https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson ... on-1689298

[pasayten]

Somebody is still drinking the Kool Aide... GO Putin!!!

Actually the Biden admin. (Specifically Victoria Newland) stated they had secret bio labs and were concerned about them falling into Russian hands.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... s-ukraine/

Fact Checker Analysis

How the right embraced Russian disinformation about ‘U.S. bioweapons labs’ in Ukraine

By Glenn Kessler - Washongton Post
Staff writer
March 11, 2022 at 3:20 a.m. EST

“Bioweapon labs in Ukraine prove US criminal activity, diplomat says”

— headline of Tass news article, quoting Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the morning of March 9

“Under oath in an open committee hearing, Victoria Nuland just confirmed that the Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.”

— Tucker Carlson, remarks on his Fox News show, the evening of March 9

Russian disinformation often begins with a speck of fact, which is then twisted into a full-blown conspiracy theory. The technique makes it easier to spread and take root among the country’s supporters. Note how quickly the party line uttered by the Russian Foreign Ministry was embraced by Carlson.

In this instance, Russia for years has been seeding the ground to claim that the United States set up biowarfare labs in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. Then, brief remarks by Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, were twisted to provide “confirmation” of the disinformation program.

The Facts
The Russian claims about Ukrainian labs bear the earmarks of the Soviet Union’s long-running campaign of false allegations that the United States used biological weapons. The KGB, for instance, in the early 1980s spread false claims that a U.S.-funded research project in Pakistan was sending “killer mosquitoes” into Afghanistan, leading to local outrage that ended the program.


After the Soviet Union collapsed, former officials admitted the fabrications. But Russian disinformation about biological weapons resumed again in earnest after Vladimir Putin took control in 1999, according to a 2021 article in the Nonproliferation Review by Milton Leitenberg of the University of Maryland. Leitenberg says the effort is designed to distract from Russian’s own biological weapons program.

Much as the Soviet Union tried to spread fear in Pakistan, Russian officials and media outlets bit by bit have sought to raise questions about U.S. labs in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

In 2015, the Russian state-owned news channel Rossiya-24 aired an alarming one-hour report. Tens of thousands of pigs in Ukraine and Georgia were dying because of a mysterious disease — and the reporter claimed U.S.-funded biological research facilities in those countries were to blame.


This was an enhanced version of an earlier claim. Three years earlier, Gennady Onishchenko, then the chief of Russia’s consumer protection agency, accused Georgia of “economic sabotage” by introducing the African swine fever (ASF) virus into Russia. He pointed the finger at the establishment a year earlier in Georgia of the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research, named after the U.S. senator who led efforts to eliminate dangerous weapons in former Soviet states. The facility was the first in the region that met Biosafety Level 3 standards, meaning it was equipped to study serious or lethal human diseases.

Onishchenko darkly noted that the lab’s director had once been Georgia’s intelligence chief and he could not understand why U.S. “military medics” and “epidemiologists” were stationed in Georgia “at our borders.”

Eventually, Russian officials alleged that ASF — which killed nearly 800,000 pigs in Russia and neighboring countries between 2014 and 2017 — was developed in the Georgia lab with the aim of curtailing Russia’s pork imports. (Never mind the outbreak started in 2007, four years before the lab opened.)


The attacks on the U.S.-funded labs in the region became even more pronounced after Britain in 2018 said the Russian government was responsible for the attempted killing of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal via the nerve agent Novichok.

Here are the specks of truth that Russian officials are using to spread their propaganda. The labs were initially funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), as part of its cooperative biological engagement program. And the labs do study African swine fever — but with the aim of preventing its spread.

At a 2017 conference hosted by the DTRA, for instance, a Ukrainian official outlined laboratory efforts at improving the diagnosis, surveillance and prevention of ASF in wild boar populations. Another official discussed how Ukrainian scientists had implemented a program to monitor certain soft ticks, which transmit the disease to pigs. Then a third official presented on efforts to trace tularemia and anthrax in animals such as wild boars.


All of those efforts are in line with a statement posted on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine — that the program helps “ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.” The United States and Ukraine in 2005 had signed an agreement under which the Defense Department, at no cost to Ukraine, would assist the Ministry of Health in making sure that Ukrainian labs studying diseases could not be used to develop biological weapons and in better detecting, diagnosing and monitoring infectious-disease outbreaks. The United States “has invested approximately $200 million in Ukraine since 2005, supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites,” the Defense Department said in a fact sheet released Friday.

“The Russian charges that the Lugar Center and other biological labs in the Caucasus and Central Asia are making banned bioweapons are unfounded,” wrote biological threat expert Filippa Lentzos in 2018. “Last week a group of international experts, including this author, visited the Lugar Center by invitation of the Georgian government. We were given access to all areas of the site, examined relevant documentation, and interviewed staff, and concluded that the Center demonstrates significant transparency. Our group observed nothing out of the ordinary, or that we wouldn’t expect to see in a legitimate facility of this sort.”

Nevertheless, despite the constant debunking, the Russian propaganda that the United States has bioweapons labs in Ukraine has taken root, especially on the right, with the hashtag #usbiolabs trending on Twitter as the Russian invasion of Ukraine commenced. “Would the Russian invasion of Ukraine be justified if it were for biodefense?” asked Robert W. Malone, a prominent vaccine skeptic, on March 9.


The latest iteration of this claim was sparked by a brief exchange during a Senate hearing on March 8 between Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Nuland. Rubio asked whether Ukraine has biological or chemical weapons. Nuland responded by talking about the research labs and the U.S. concern that Russia would get access to them.

“Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of,” Nuland replied. “So, we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

Following the lead of the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman — who asserted Nuland’s comment was proof of the United States’ “illegal and criminal activity on Ukrainian soil” — Carlson and many others on the right jumped to the conclusion that this meant the labs really were biological weapons facilities.


Carlson briefly acknowledged numerous fact checks that previously had debunked the claim but then embraced the latest Russian spin as the truth. Russian state TV then featured Carlson’s take the next day, completing the circle.

Donald Trump Jr. gleefully tweeted a clip of Nuland, saying: “Well that went from conspiracy theory to Senate testimony in about 6 days … It used to take six months to go from conspiracy theory to fact.”

(Never mind that in 2020, during Trump’s father’s presidency, the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine expressly denied Russia’s renewed claim that Ukraine possessed U.S.-funded bioweapon labs after China’s Foreign Ministry echoed that falsehood to distract from scrutiny of the origins of the coronavirus.)

In reality, Nuland’s statement about “biological research facilities” did not confirm allegations of bioweapons labs. African swine fever, for instance, is not a human pathogen. But it does devastate pigs and can be used as an economic weapon, so it is considered by the United States to be a potential biowarfare agent — especially in countries (such as the United States) with little experience with it.


In 2019, a group of Eastern European experts assessed that a “lone wolf” without any special training in microbiology, financial support or specialized lab equipment could launch such an attack. They said the ASF virus was especially dangerous because of its high virulence, lack of vaccine and devastating impact on pork production.

Asked on Thursday to expand on Nuland’s comment, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said medical facilities “all have equipment, pathogens or other things that you have to have restrictions around because you need to be sure it is being treated and handled appropriately.” She said there was a concern the Russians could misuse materials, even if not designed for weapons, “in dangerous ways or create challenges for the population.”

The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency, told Reuters Thursday that it had “strongly recommended to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and other responsible bodies to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent any potential spills.”


Andrzej Jarynowski, a Polish infectious-disease epidemiologist, said Kharkiv’s Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine is one of the best labs between Greifswald, Germany and Pokrov, Russia — a distance of about 1,300 miles. He said ASF, Bacillus anthracis, avian Influenza viruses, Francisella tularensis, brucella, salmonella, E. coli (toxin producing), Borrelia sensu lato and the coronavirus were studied at Kharkiv, a city now under siege, with active agents stored until the invasion. Dangerous pathogens are kept in freezers, so a loss of electrical power due to the war could potentially allow for their escape.

Gigi Gronvall, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who for 10 years was on the Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, said that it’s likely the Russians would not find much more at the labs on ASF than they already know, given the prevalence of ASF in Russia. But she recently published a study on the state of Russia’s life sciences research and found it to be anemic.

“If there was not a lab, the Russians still would say there was a lab there,” Gronvall said.

The Pinocchio Test
Under Putin, Russia has a biological weapons program, one that it has clearly used to target its opponents. Yet it tried to provide cover for its activities by repeatedly charging that the United States, through facilities it has funded in countries like Ukraine, has its own bioweapons program.

As we said, it’s straight out of the old Soviet playbook. But that doesn’t mean prominent commentators like Carlson should be so quick to fall for it.

Four Pinocchios

[dorankj]

Actually the Biden admin. (Specifically Victoria Newland) stated they had secret bio labs and were concerned about them falling into Russian hands. Who’s spreading ‘mis-information’ now? You guys still denying Hunter’s lap-top too?!

[pasayten]

Kremlin memo names Tucker Carlson as "essential" to its propaganda strategy
Mon, March 14, 2022, 6:41 PM
The Kremlin sees Tucker Carlson’s commentary as “essential” in its Ukraine war messaging strategy according to a 12-page memo leaked from a Russian government agency to the Russian media, as reported in Mother Jones. DC bureau chief of Mother Jones David Corn joins Joy Reid on his reporting on this story. MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance also joins The ReidOut to discuss.

https://news.yahoo.com/kremlin-memo-nam ... 55255.html

https://news.yahoo.com/voices-fox-news- ... 32634.html