Libya"s Slave Auctions And African Genocide: What Hillary Knew

A new CNN investigation has uncovered a network of slave markets operating in warehouses in various cities across Libya six years after NATO-led intervention in the country toppled the government of Muammar Gaddafi in support of US and UK backed rebels. And not only did CNN confirm the presence of slave auctions where human beings are being sold for as little as $400 in "liberated" Libya, but CNN"s crew was actually able to film a live auction in progress, while also gathering the testimonies of multiple victims.

Though CNN"s footage and accompanying report is shocking, such practices have been quietly documented for years, and clear warnings were issued starting in early 2011 that Libya"s black as well as migrant population would be the first to fall victim at the hands of the Islamist Libyan rebels that NATO"s war empowered. From the outset critics of Western intervention in Libya loudly sounded the alarm of a genocide against black Libyans in progress committed by the very rebels the US, UK, France, and Gulf allies were arming - a fact so well-known that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was personally briefed and warned on the matter.

Screenshot of CNN"s investigative video uncovering modern day slave auctions in post-Gaddafi Libya.

The Dangerous Myth of Gaddafi"s "African Mercenaries" 

Among the foremost of these early critics at the time, Maximilian Forte, Associate Professor at Montreal"s Concordia University, published a 2012 book which exhaustively documented racially motivated crimes which came early and often during the armed uprising. His book, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO"s War on Libya and Africa, contains essential summary context laying out the role that international media played in 2011 and after, including CNN itself, in fueling the xenophobic campaign to scapegoat Libya"s over one million strong black population as "pro-Gaddafi mercenaries".

According to Professor Forte:

Racial fear and xenophobia were at the very crux of the first public calls for Western military intervention, and were the basis for the first utterance of the need for a "no-fly zone" ... The myth of the "African mercenary" was useful for the Libyan opposition, the NTC [National Transitional Council] and the militias, to insist that this was a war between "Gaddafi and the Libyan people," as if he had no domestic support at all...

 

As Patrick Cockburn explained, the insurgents" "explanation for the large pro-Gaddafi forces was that they were all mercenaries, mostly from black Africa, whose only motive was money."

Gaddafi"s "pan-Africanist" policies such as aggressive support for the creation of the African Union (in 2002), and a relatively open immigration policy allowing for the influx of sub-Saharan African migrants to work on Gaddafi"s massive building projects, stirred resentment and discontent within broader Arab Libyan society in the decade leading up to the 2011 war. This was the historical background which set the stage for the anti-Gaddafi rebels" extraordinary claim that sub-Saharan "foreign mercenaries" were being used en masse by Gaddafi to target protesters (later proven false).

And these historic ethnic and racial dynamics were well understood by the US government long before official support to Libyan militant groups began - militants which were not only shown to have al-Qaeda links, but which declared "open season" on all black Libyans and migrant workers during the revolution. As the CIA"s own historical analysis of Libya"s internal dynamics spells out:

QADHAFI in 1998 adopted a decade-long pan-African policy that enabled large numbers of sub-Saharan migrants to enter Libya without visas to work in the construction and agricultural industries. Although sub-Saharan Africans provided a cheap labor source, they were poorly treated and were subjected to periodic mass expulsions. By the mid-2000s, domestic animosity toward African migrants...

Similar to later developments in Syria, the media would uncritically echo whatever the "freedom fighting" rebels would feed it, thus this black foreign mercenary trope became an unquestioned reality spread from rebel propagandists to the Western public. Libyan opposition members even began claiming to be victims of wild attacks by roving bands of machete-wielding pro-Gaddafi blacks wearing tell-tale yellow hard hats - a symbol which also falsely began to be associated with "Gaddafi"s savage mercenaries" - resulting in subsequent mass arrests and executions of innocent black migrant construction workers.

CNN Spread the "Black Mercenary" Lie

The end result would of course be the widespread targeting and scapegoating of an entire ethnic population within Libya. This is demonstrated, for example, in the most well-known example of Tawergha, an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed NTC Misratan brigades.

A widely circulated photo from the Libyan war which shows rebels threatening to shoot a black man.

But it is important to remember that CNN itself at the time regularly promoted the false "black mercenary" narrative which helped fuel and excuse such atrocities, even though it is now much belatedly investigating and decrying Libya"s current migrant slave auctions, while leaving out the essential context which enabled such horrors in the first place. For example, the following February 2011 CNN reporting relied on unnamed opposition sources during the earliest days of the conflict to say:

Residents said hundreds of mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa had been killed or captured while fighting for Gadhafi, but much of the army appears to have gone over to anti-government forces.

And a separate CNN article from the same month - though acknowledging that no CNN journalists were even inside the country - still uncritically reported:

Clashes broke out between a large crowd of demonstrators and people who appeared to be African mercenaries in the center of the city, according to an activist.

Yet another broadcast segment from February 2011 - the clip of which appears to have since been deleted from CNN"s site (but which is available on YouTube), asks the question: in Libya "just who is doing the dirty work?" - while answering that Gaddafi imported Chadian and Sudanese mercenaries to crack down on civilian protesters.

And those few examples are but a tiny sampling of CNN"s consistent spreading the dangerous myth throughout the early stages of the conflict - to say nothing of how ubiquitous the false rebel claims became among mainstream media generally.

US-backed Rebels and Ethnic Genocide

One of the few international correspondents to actually report the truth in real time while writing from inside Libya was The Independent"s (UK) Patrick Cockburn. In an August 2011 story he wrote as if attempting to warn the world about the future war crimes to come at the hands of the US-backed rebels:

The rotting bodies of 30 men, almost all black and many handcuffed, slaughtered as they lay on stretchers and even in an ambulance in central Tripoli, are an ominous foretaste of what might be Libya"s future. The incoming regime makes pious statements about taking no revenge on pro-Gaddafi forces, but this stops short of protecting those who can be labelled mercenaries. Any Libyan with a black skin accused of fighting for the old regime may have a poor chance of survival.

Subsequent stories of widespread torture and executions of black Libyans included a 2012 report in UK media which involved anti-Gaddafi "revolutionaries" filming themselves torturing black prisoners, making them eat the former Libyan national flag.

If reporters like Cockburn and even prominent human rights organizations (see Human Rights Watch, September 2011, Libya: Stop Arbitrary Arrests of Black Africans) understood what was happening months prior to height of NATO"s military campaign in support of the rebels, which ended in the brutal torture and field execution of Gaddafi, then what did one of the prime US architects of the war, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton know and when did she know it?

Then Secretary of State Clinton posing with Libyan rebel commanders.

What Hillary Knew

The answer lies in a March 27, 2011, intelligence brief on Libya published by WikiLeaks. The brief, which was made public in 2015 as part of a large batch of Hillary emails released by the State Department, was sent by long time close adviser to the Clinton family and Hillary’s personal intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, and contains clear reference to rebels summarily executing "all foreign mercenaries" - which had already become the common euphemism for black Libyans then being targeted by the US-supported rebels.

Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary:

Under attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort to encourage additional defections.

 

Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…

Hillary Emails show UK, French, Egyptian special forces were secretly in Libya providing arms to "protestors" https://t.co/SyRhaYeLGI

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 25, 2016

And further interesting is that the line immediately following the acknowledgement of war crimes against "foreign mercenaries" indicates that a long time CIA supported Libyan exile was then taking command of the very militants committing those summary executions.

The email continues:

At the same time Colonel Khalifa Haftar has reportedly joined the rebel command structure, in an effort to help organization the rebel forces.

Khalifa Haftar has since 2011 become a mainstay in Libya"s post-Gaddafi chaos, heading up one of the three to four governments (at any given time) claiming authority in the war-torn country. Haftar has been widely acknowledged as the "CIA"s man" during his two decade long exile in the US, as a BBC profile explained: "His proximity to the CIA"s headquarters in Langley hinted at a close relationship with US intelligence services, who gave their backing to several attempts to assassinate Gaddafi."

CIA"s Khalifa Haftar and Mass Executions

Meanwhile, Haftar is currently being eyed by international prosecutors for continuing to commit war crimes in Libya. One month ago The Guardian reported, "Ex-CIA asset Khalifa Haftar, due to meet Italian officials in Rome, ordered soldiers to kill prisoners, according to legal experts." The Guardian cites video evidence which proves he continues to be "complicit in calling for extrajudicial killings."

And yesterday Al Jazeera reported that a formal suit has been filed against Haftar at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for "carrying out mass executions and torture." Another recent Guardian report which details torture and rape being carried out against prisoners held under Haftar"s militia alliance, includes the following eyewitness account of the torture of African migrant detainees: “There was a black man, a migrant. In the evening, they threw him into one of our cells: ‘You rape this guy, otherwise, you’re dead!’”

Then Secretary of State Clinton understood in early 2011 what was happening concerning the rebel genocidal targeting of black Libyans and African migrants, yet pushed to arm the rebels and overthrow Gaddafi anyway. She was given the intelligence brief which gave evidence this was happening on March 27, 2011. But even without such a classified intelligence report personally delivered to her, such war crimes were so well known that a full month prior on February 28, 2011, Al Jazeera could publish the following story entitled, African Migrants Targetted in Libya:

As nations evacuate their citizens from the violence gripping Libya, many African migrant workers are targeted because they are suspected of being mercenaries hired by Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.

 

Dozens of workers from sub-Saharan Africa are feared killed, and hundreds are in hiding, as angry mobs of anti-government protesters hunt down "black African mercenaries," according to witnesses.

"No Regrets"

But even years later, as such race-based war crimes have now been exhaustively documented, Hillary has consistently indicated that she has no regrets. Though her beloved Libyan rebels, legitimized and empowered through broad support from the West, were literally killing people based on the color of their skin, not a single one has ever been convicted in a court of law or punished for their crimes.

Moreover, Hillary has never so much as hinted at the problem, though her public stature would allow her a world-wide platform to speak against atrocities at any time, possibly preventing further crimes. Instead, she has simply chosen to conclude her role in the tragic story of Libya with her crazed and gleeful declaration of "we came, we saw, he died."

China Unveils "Magic" Island-Building Ship On Eve Of Trump Arrival

In a move that appears to validate Joint Chiefs Of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford’s concerns about China’s strategy of slowly expanding its territorial and military footprint in the Pacific, the Chinese government unveiled on Sunday a “magical” island-building ship on the eve of Donald Trump’s visit in a move likely to renew fears about its claims to territory in the South China Sea, the Financial Times reported.

Measuing 140 meters, the Tiankun is the biggest dredger in Asia, with cutters and pumps capable of smashing the equivalent of three Olympic pools of rock an hour from the sea floor and shooting it up to 15 kilometers away to create artificial land. Over the past five years, China has used similar vessels to create a string of strategic islands to support its claims to 85% of the territory in the South China Sea.

China has been widely criticized by the international community for its land-reclamation efforts in in the Spratley islands, where China has been building manmade bases over some of the since 2014. China has asserted its dominance of several groups of tiny islands in the South and East China Seas. China last year said it would not accept a ruling against it made in a key international legal case over the strategic reefs and atolls that China has asserted its authority over. In that ruling, the ICC decided that the islands belonged to the Philippines.

According to Newsweek, the US estimates China has added 3,200 acres of land on seven features (which includes rocky outcrops and reefs) over the past three years.

Between 2013 and the middle of 2016 - the peak phase of the island-building efforts - China created seven islands and reclaimed 2,000 acres, and built airfields, missile bases and radar systems.

Last year, Beijing appeared to signal it was halting large-scale dredging. However, the creation of the Tiankun would suggest otherwise. Launched at a shipyard in Jiangsu province on Friday, the Tiankun will enter service next year with Tianjin Dredging Company, an arm of state-owned China Communications Construction Company that has carried out most of the dredging in the South China Sea.

The Marine Design and Research Institute in Shanghai, which designed the vessel, described it as a “magic island-maker” on Saturday.

The US military has taken a more hard-line approach to China’s territorial claims in the Pacific since President Donald Trump took office. Since inauguration day, the US Navy has conducted at least four “freedom of operation” missions whereby US destroyers have sailed within 12 miles of the controversial islands. The most recent such mission occurred in mid-October. Each time, China has scrambled fighter jets and ships to intercept the US vessel.

As the FT pointed out, Washington’s opposition to China’s claims remains an irritant in bilateral relations, and the topic is expected to be an important point of discussion with Xi Jinping, China’s president, when Trump arrives in Beijing on Wednesday for a two-day visit.
 

The Last Living Nuremberg Prosecutor: War Is Not The Answer

Authored by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

Only one lawyer who prosecuted the Nuremberg trials is still alive today, and he has an important message for the world: war is not the answer.

60 Minutes recently interviewed Ben Ferencz, a son of Romanian Jewish immigrants who found refuge in the United States. His father worked as a janitor, and Ben was the first person in his family to go to college. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, he was driven to enlist in the military.

Due to his short stature, the Air Force rejected him, as did the Marines. He eventually finished his education at Harvard and went on to join the Army, landing at Normandy and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

Because of his legal training, Ferencz was transferred to a new unit in General Patton’s Third Army, where he was tasked with gathering evidence from concentration camps as the U.S. Army liberated them. That information was going to be used to prosecute war crimes.

He says he is still haunted by what he saw and the stories he heard, remembering the story of a son whose father had hidden bread for him under his arm every night so other prisoners couldn’t steal it.

Though he returned home to the United States, he has soon summoned again. General Telford Taylor, who was in charge of the Nuremberg trials, requested Ferencz’ legal expertise, sending him multiple binders of top secret documents from the Nazi regime.

“He gave me a bunch of binders, four binders. And these were daily reports from the Eastern Front — which unit entered which town, how many people they killed. It was classified, so many Jews, so many gypsies, so many others,” he told 60 Minutes.

“Ferencz had stumbled upon reports sent back to headquarters by secret SS units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job had been to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941,” killing communists, gypsies, and Jews, the outlet reported. These murders were independent of concentration camp exterminations and occurred in the victims’ own towns.

“They were 3,000 SS officers trained for the purpose, and directed to kill without pity or remorse, every single Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on,” Ferencz recounted.

Ultimately, his findings led him to push for an additional trial, despite the previous ones already being conducted at Nuremberg.

“When I reached over a million people murdered that way, over a million people, that’s more people than you’ve ever seen in your life, I took a sample. I got on the next plane, flew from Berlin down to Nuremberg, and I said to Taylor, ‘General, we’ve gotta put on a new trial.’“

Because the prosecutors were already stretched thin and other trials were already underway, Taylor put him in charge of handling the Einsatzgruppen. At age 27, Ferencz prosecuted 22 former commanders, all of whom plead not guilty to their crimes.

But, as Ferencz proved with written evidence, they had documented their atrocities in cold, plain language. 60 Minutes noted the Nazi reports:

“Exhibit 111: ‘In the last 10 weeks, we have liquidated around 55,000 Jews.’  Exhibit 179, from Kiev in 1941: ‘The city’s Jews were ordered to present themselves… about 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days.’ Exhibit 84, from Einsatzgruppen D in March of 1942: Total number executed so far: 91,678.”

Otto Ohlendorf, who led Einsatzgruppen D, actually claimed the murders were carried out in self-defense. “He was not ashamed of that. He was proud of that. He was carrying out his government’s instructions,” Ferencz told 60 Minutes.

Though Ferencz was exposed to some of the worst behavior in human history, he fell short of calling the soldiers “savages,” as the 60 Minutes interviewer referred to them. Rather, he blamed the power of patriotism and soldiers ‘just doing their jobs.’

“He’s a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind,” he said, speaking of soldiers who commit atrocities.

“Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.” [emphasis added]

Ferencz successfully prosecuted the 22 commanders he put on trial, and four were hanged. He has spent his life trying to deter war crimes and delivered the closing arguments in the first case at the International Criminal Court at the Hague in the Netherlands, which was established in 1988. He has also donated his personal life savings to a Genocide Prevention Initiative at the Holocaust Museum.

When the interviewer pressed him about his optimism in the face of continued genocide in places like Sudan — asking whether he is simply naive — he maintained his positivity and rejected the claims of those who insist war is necessary:

“Well, if it’s naive to want peace instead of war, let ’em make sure they say I’m naive. Because I want peace instead of war. If they tell me they want war instead of peace, I don’t say they’re naive, I say they’re stupid. Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don’t even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. That is the current system. I am naive? That’s insane.”

Though the interviewer also accused of him being an idealist, he insisted the opposite — that he’s a realist. He also said:

“People get discouraged. They should remember, from me, it takes courage not to be discouraged.”

He pointed out that decades ago, freedom for women, gays, and transsexuals was unthinkable, they have now come to pass, insisting it’s also possible to end mass murder and war.

“[I]t’s a reality today. So the world is changing. And you shouldn’t — you know — be despairing because it’s never happened before. Nothing new ever happened before.”

Tucker Carlson Tackles the Dangerous Case of the Democratic War Party, Itching For a Fight With Russia

During last night"s Tucker Carlson show, he attempted to find out why the democratic party, the same people who prided themselves on being anti-war during the Bush administration, were so god damned eager to wage war with just about anyone they could find willing to participate.
 
Inside of their party is one sole source of reason, Tulsi Gabbard, Iraqi war veteran, and Congresswoman from Hawaii who sits on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. In response to Trump"s actions in Syria, Gabbard issued the following statement.
 

“It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia—which could lead to nuclear war.
 
“This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning. If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court. However, because of our attack on Syria, this investigation may now not even be possible. And without such evidence, a successful prosecution will be much harder.”

Rep. Gabbard: “Yes, I’m skeptical” of claim Assad regime is behind chemical weapons attack https://t.co/fETssThsLF https://t.co/fpYdUNR2t4

— CNN (@CNN) April 7, 2017

The subsequent result of her seemingly rational position was leaders on the left calling for her to step down.

This is a disgrace. Gabbard should not be in Congress. https://t.co/yDTh43GZam

— Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) April 9, 2017

Carlson tackled the subject in an eloquent 1-minute monolog.
 

 
One of his guests last night was a Democratic strategist, Al Mattour, war hawk -- a man interested in overseeing the deaths of thousands.
 
In a nutshell, Al believes we should wage war with anyone who attempts to "disrupt our elections." Tucker asked Mattour, plainly, "how does having a confrontation with Russia makes our country more safer and prosperous?"
 
Mattour replied "it makes us safer in our democratic processes to make sure their integrity is preserved."
 
When Tucker juxtaposed China"s actions towards the United States against Russia, asking "why aren"t you pushing for confrontation with China? They"re doing everything Russia is doing, and more," Mattour agreed that we should be confronting them in a similar bellicose fashion.
 

 
Lastly, Stephen Cohen, Professor of Russian studies at Princeton and NYU, an actual expert on China, weighed in, saying "Russia thinks we"re crazy, completely crazy."
 
He even took some time to express his "disgust" with Al Mattour, saying "your previous guest, I don"t mean to be rude to him. First of all, he doesn"t know what he"s talking about. And, secondly, he excludes the reality that Russia has a politics. And the politics in Russia today as we talk is [...] the concern that America is preparing war against Russia. If not on Syria, then on the other two cold war fronts [...] where NATO is building up in an unprecedented way. This is not good because they have nuclear weapons and because accidents happen."
 
He then theorized what the conversation between Putin and Tillerson was like, pointing to the two having a history of trust together from the time Tillerson led Exxon Mobile.

"Rex, says Putin, what in the world is going on in Washington?"

 
Professor Cohen, ominously, summed it up, "I"m not young. I"ve been doing this 40 years, sometimes as a Professor, sometimes inside. I have never been as worried as I am today about the possibility of war with Russia."
 

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

If You Think "Fake News" Is A New Phenomena, You're Wrong

Submitted by Mnar Muhawesh via TheAntiMedia.org,

The “fog of war” erupts in the confusion caused by the chaos of war. And in the media, it’s an intentional phenomenon that makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction.

While the battles over war narratives evolve, they all have a common goal: to distort reality on the ground.

Such is the case on the crisis in Syria, the new cold war with Russia, and even the buildup for President Bush’s support for Kuwait’s “humanitarian” war against Iraq.

On Oct. 10, 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl identified only as “Nayirah” told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she witnessed Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators and leaving them on a cold floor to die.

Her testimony was cited numerous times by senators and even President George H.W. Bush as  justification for backing Kuwait in the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, which erupted just three months later.

However, it was later revealed that “Nayirah” was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States, and her testimony was arranged by a PR firm representing a Kuwaiti-sponsored group lobbying Congress for military intervention.

More recently, during the “Arab Spring” uprisings that swept the Middle East in 2011, Libyan media claimed that Moammar Gadhafi loyalists carried out mass “Viagra-fueled rapes,” and that the Libyan leader had ordered rape as a weapon of war. When Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a prosecutor with the International Criminal Court, opened an investigation into these allegations, it grabbed international headlines, appearing in Al-Jazeera, the BBC, and Reuters, among many others.

Even as Amnesty International questioned the legitimacy of the allegations, other supposedly humanitarian groups hit a loggerhead on the veracity of the claims. One top U.N. official said he believed the claims were meant as a scare tactic to invoke “massive hysteria” even as another top U.N. official defended them, creating a distraction from the war itself.

And today the fog of war is obscuring realities on the ground in Syria.

Major news outlets frequently cite unnamed sources, a convenient way to manipulate public perception. From CNN to Reuters, these outlets are publishing unverifiable claims and providing minimal evidence to support them, and readers are supposed to drink it all up

The crisis in Syria has attracted international attention and concern, and the corporate media is using the tragedies of war to push an agenda and boost its audience. This push for content — no matter what — has serious consequences. On Dec. 20, for example, Egyptian police arrested five people for making videos they claimed were set in Aleppo, but were actually filmed at a demolition site.

Social media further distorts reality on the ground, presenting a fragmented image of war as the media promotes only those accounts that align with the goals of the United States and its allies.

The media and public both accept the accounts of the White Helmets as gospel. Yet that group, which purports to serve as volunteer first responders in Aleppo, receives training from British mercenaries and funding from a PR firm with ties to George Soros.

Not only are the White Helmets making fake videos, but they’ve even been exposed as agents embedded in the Nusra Front and ISIS.. Armed and far from impartial, the White Helmets are a recipient of millions in USAID funding.

Whether the White Helmets are the apolitical first responders they claim to be or not, one thing is clear: The narrative being weaved by and about them supports U.S. intervention in the war in Syria.

The narrative is built around activists frequently cited by the media, like Bilal Abdul Kareem, who is embedded with the Nusra Front and recently glorified suicide bombers as revolutionaries.

Or Lina Shamy, the young Syrian activist who promotes sectarian terrorists from Jaysh al-Sham, who threaten genocide against religious minorities as revolutionaries.

It’s time to put a critical lens to the propaganda in the news and social media. It’s time to demand more than reporting that toes the government line and makes claims without real evidence.