POLICING 'TRUTH': The Billionaires’ ‘Fact’-Checking Gang to Keep ‘News’-Media ‘Honest’

How the U.S. Government Harvests the Public at Home & in Its Colonies

Eric Zuesse

Let’s take as an example, Politi-Fact, in the United States itself:

On 4 July 2024, I headlined “WHY IS JOE BIDEN NOT BEING TRIED FOR BRIBERY & CONSPIRACY? And why are America’s ‘news’-media covering this up?” I noted there that Politi-Fact has been protecting Biden by misrepresenting the evidence, and that it’s “owned by the Poynter Institute, funded by 11 Democratic billionaires and one Republican one”. Those were 11 ‘non’-profits, but they also are funded by U.S.-and-allied Governments; and, in fact, at least one of the 11, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) seems to be almost entirely so, though it might additionally have more direct but secret funding from or on behalf of U.S. billionaires. And, if we look at the IWPR’s top 11 listed donors or “Supporters”, 3 of the 11 are the U.S. State Department; 3 more are its equivalents for Norway, Netherlands and UK; and the others are the European Commission, the Dutch Postcode Lottery Fund, the UK Conflict Stability and Security Fund, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.N.’s Entity for Gender Equality. So, all 11 of the IWPR’s top “Supporters” are wholly or largely controlled by the U.S. Government. That list is introduced by the IWPR by saying: “This broad support enables us to maintain intensive programs while avoiding over-dependence on any single source. We are especially grateful to those donors who support us through multi-year assistance to strengthen existing activities and those who provide precious institutional assistance.” In addition, the IWPR lists 25 “Partners,” such as Reporters Without Borders, and the International Republican Institute. The IWPR’s International Board is co-headed by a member of the UK Governance Committee, and a member of the “U.S. & NL Governance Committees.” The IWPR was founded in 1991 so as to assist reporters to have a ‘balanced perspective’ on the breaking-up of Yugoslavia (which the CIA was secretly already stoking).

Another good example (besides the ‘news’-coverage — or absence of same — regarding the extraordinarily strong bribery & conspiracy case that is not being pursued against the U.S. President) concerns the Philippines, whose Government has, for some reason, been allowing the U.S. Government militarily to increasingly re-occupy that ‘former’ U.S. colony and to place soldiers and weapons there to facilitate an invasion of China. A superb investigative reporter who has been covering this is the independent Brian Berletic, who on 2 November 2023 headlined “US Shapes Philippines into Southeast Asia’s ‘Ukraine’” (land from which to invade China, instead of land from which to invade Russia), and he quoted from sources such as: “Reuters in its article, ‘Exclusive: U.S. military in talks to develop port in Philippines facing Taiwan,’ would report: ‘U.S. military involvement in the proposed port in the Batanes islands, less than 200 km (125 miles) from Taiwan, could stoke tensions at a time of growing friction with China and a drive by Washington to intensify its longstanding defence treaty engagement with the Philippines.’” Berletic went on to quote an official U.S. Government historian describing the brutal 1899-1902 Teddy-Roosevelt-led war that conquered the Philippines and made them a U.S. colony. He noted the U.S. Government’s carefully designed program to reward, with Fulbright scholarships and other inducements, the Philippines’ upper crust. And he said that, “In reality, all the US is building in the Philippines are military bases meant to drag both it and the region into greater instability, economic stagnation, and possibly even war.” His focus was on the constant U.S. propaganda-machine to fool Filippino voters to elect pro-U.S.-anti-China politicians, such as its current President, Bongbong Marcos, the only son of the extremely corrupt U.S.-imposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Berletic didn’t, however, mention such highly relevant facts as that “The Philippines ranked 77th out of 81 countries globally in the student assessment conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 15-year-old learners.” (Incidentally, China was excluded from that year’s PISA study because in the prior, 2018, one, China topped the list and the U.S. regime was outraged.) Keeping the voters ignorant is important to do if the imperial regime, the U.S. regime, is to be able to exploit its victim — the colony — ‘democratically’ by means of elections. And this is also the reason why four of the five countries (out of the 81) that scored even worse than the Philippines in this PISA were U.S.-controlled banana republics. All of these countries have long been under the thumb of American billionaires. Furthermore: in terms of life-expectancy, the Philippines scores significantly lower even than the U.S. itself does, and almost all of the countries which score even worse than the Philippines are ‘former’ colonies of France, Netherlands, Belgium UK, and other European regimes. So, the historical record is clear that colonialism (imperialism) destroys countries.

But, anyway, Berletic’s article was still too true to satisfy the U.S. regime; and, so, the Philippine branch of a U.S. ‘fact-checking” ‘charity’, the Poynter Institute (which owns in the U.S. PolitiFact — which helped America’s ‘news’-media to hide from Americans Joe Biden’s intense corruption) simply lied, and published on 23 November 2023, “FACT-CHECK: US not building new military bases in the Philippines”. Their ‘argument’ was that 

“The EDCA, which was signed in 2014, grants US troops access to designated Philippine military facilities, the right to build facilities, and preposition equipment, aircraft, and vessels. It does not allow US military permanent positioning or basing in any Philippine military facility or base.”

That was implying Berletic had alleged the bases that the U.S. regime is building in the Philippines are to be “permanent,” or sovereign U.S. territory within the Philippines, but Berletic had actually neither said nor implied any such thing. Poynter’s Philippine branch simply lied. They gave Berletic’s article the “Rating: FALSE” because the treaty didn’t use the word (nor any equivalent) “permanent,” though nowhere did Berletic’s article say or imply that it did. In other words: the Poynter Institute presumes that the Filippino people aren’t merely uneducated but stupid, and it also presumes that this gives the Poynter Institute the right to deceive them. It’s the same attitude, the same haughty contempt, that slave-holders generally have toward their slaves.

On 29 August 2024, Berletic headlined “How is the US Convincing the Philippines to Destroy Itself?”, and he described in detail how the NED’s “vast network” in the Philippines includes “so-called ‘fact-checking’ projects” such as “PressOne,” which has “repeatedly targeted those exposing US interference in the Philippines’ internal political affairs and undermining Philippine sovereignty.” Furthermore, he gave examples, such as “PressOne outright lied claiming, ‘President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has denied that the facilities were intended to be military bases.’ The Reuters report PressOne cites does not deny the facilities are indeed military bases.” The U.S. Congress and Presidents routinely fund with billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars — plus U.S. billionaires’ ‘charitable’ donations — this ongoing subversion program to keep the Filippino people deceived so that they will vote for the U.S. regime’s stooges to rule over them. He concludes that, “Considering the pile of ashes and bones the US is transforming Ukraine into, even as this same process gains momentum in the Philippines, it is clear that along this path, there is no future at all for the Philippines,” other than as being yet another springboard for America’s ultimate invasion against China.

As usual, censorship — which is what ‘fact-checking’ ‘services’ actually do — is a tool of dictatorship, but it NEVER is a tool of democracy, because democracy cannot function unless only each individual on one’s own makes the determination BY AND FOR ONESELF, what is true and what is false. Dictatorship thrives with censorship, and democracy dies with censorship. There is no actual authority except one’s own scientific analysis of a situation. If the analysis is not scientific, then one will come to false conclusions; but, NO analysis that comes from anyone else will be trusted by a scientist — that analysis will instead be investigated by the scientist; and, then, if believed to be true, will be believed by that person to BE scientific. Expertise exists, and will be respected by a scientist, but authority DOES NOT, and CAN NOT. Only a fool will contract-out to some ‘authority’ his/her own judgment, because to do that is to enslave oneself.

Existing ‘fact-checking’ ‘services’ represent not science, but the agenda of their funders. And ALL censorship is toxic to democracies.

To rely upon an alleged “fact-checking service” is to rely upon one group of billionaires instead of upon another group of billionaires. It is to be a mental slave of one group of billionaires instead of to another group of billionaires. The intelligent news-consumer will instead do one’s own rigorous online investigation to verify/disconfirm a specific allegation in the given “news” report. An intelligent person will be inclined to distrust any alleged “news” report that fails to link through to its primary sources, and that doesn’t place within quotation-marks for edit-copy-pasting into a websearch box so that doing such fact-checks on one’s own is facilitated instead of made difficult if not impossible to do. No intelligent person contracts-out to anyone else one’s evaluations of what is true and what is false, because to do that is to invite becoming unknowingly a mental slave of other (typically unidentified) people.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.