Propaganda isn’t just about what the MSM covers
It’s about what it doesn’t cover:
…[A]n information technology officer has been accused of bank fraud. He tried to flee the country, and now Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) office has finally fired the aide, despite this person being under investigation since last winter. His termination was made official on Tuesday.
Imran Awan is the name of the subject in question. The Capitol Police launched a probe, where he’s been accused of “serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.” He also provided technical assistance to other Democratic members of Congress…[H]is two brothers, along with two of their wives, also worked for members of Congress. Imran moved out of his house in Virginia when he found out he was under investigation last February. He rented the home to a Marine Corps veteran and his wife, a naval officer, who found hard drives that they tried to destroy. The FBI now has possession of those hard drives.
I’m not sure what the significance of this story will end up being. But I’m fairly sure that it’s something the MSM ought to be covering at this point. But apparently, it’s been decided that it’s hardly worth mentioning. I doubt that would be the case if the party Awan had been working for had been the GOP.
You see this sort of downplaying of stories all the time in terms of the MSM. It’s a far more subtle form of controlling what people think than the way they write (or talk) about what they do write about.
At least, when a story is covered, the MSM’s readers have a chance of evaluating it. This way, the story doesn’t exist, and if the MSM is a person’s sole news source that person doesn’t know a thing about the story. I don’t know the statistics on this, but I believe there’s still a significant number of people for whom the MSM is the sole news source.
[ADDENDUM: The WaPo covered the story, but in a manner designed to minimize it.]
[ADDENDUM: As a blogger, I certainly pick and choose what I’m going to cover. But I’m just one lone person, and my criteria involve whatever stories especially interest me and on which I have something unusual or compelling (in my opinion, anyway) to say. Also, if I represent the sole news source for anyone, it would surprise me greatly.]
The thing is, this one incident could explain ALL of the DNC election hacking, which is currently being blamed on Russia. You would think that Mueller would take a keen interest in it, no?
I’d just heard of this Awan brothers story yesterday at Reddit. A lot of people there are posting a lot of info that the MSM hasn’t mentioned a word. If the connection was Awan-Republicans, or Awan-Trump, I’m not sure which story would be breathlessly covered by the MSM: Russia or the Awans. Or both.
I agree, that the MSM is the sole source for far too many people for their info. And they’re being mislead intentionally by a liberal media.
And agree with Matt — why hasn’t Mueller looked into this? Partisanship???
If I were the Washington Post (say) and I wanted to bury a story without being accused of failing to cover it, here is what I would do. I would write the story and make it available online, without providing any links to it. However, anyone searching for an appropriate keyword (e.g. “Awan”) would find the story.
I wonder if this kind of “stealth posting” is being done.
“other Democratic members of Congress”
Were those democratic members of Congress Democrats or Republicans? Democratic is not a noun.
Ray, haven’t you learned to read the news as if it were printed in TASS or PRAVDA?
As someone who works in IT, all I can think of is that the FBI should be able to get data off those hard drives despite being hit with a hammer. They have ways of getting information off of fragments of disks. If Awan did not also overwrite every part of those disks and use a really strong magnet on them, they can get the contents of those disks to see what he and old DWS were up to. I wonder what he had on her? We will likely never know but she sure does act odd about him and her laptop.
We may figure it out. The results, if somebody really looks into it, might really be a shock.
Maybe that whole bunch were working for the ISI, The Pakistani Intel service.
wow, you can save some typing by going back ten years and read what i wrote that the lie of omission is the most important means of this game.. duh…
for me its like writing and waiting 5-10 years to hear someone get on page with looking ahead…
like the next shoa..
they been working towards moving the public that way since they found out the public didnt agree first with slavery then with extermination.
i TOLD you all that they been leaving out the arguments that they work on and that you get the public arguments. been trying to say so for years and point it out till recently giving up… ya cant save drowning people who dont want to be saved and like drowning, can you?
we have willi munzenbergs antifa
we have nazi priest father coughlins social justice
we have third way (fascist) democrats
we have communitarian (communist totalitarian) republicans
we have (soviet feminists) exterminating their constituency purposefully
we have globalists importing their replacements now that the smartes woment have much fewer babies and paid for dumber women to have babies, we have a dumber society!!!!!!!!! go go ladies.
now we have lots of doctors and racialists calling for extermations of white babie, babies in general, and no one is reminding them of aktion 11, aktion 12…
yes.. why dont i get daignosed with high functioning autism which gives me my memory and other super skills (At a cost)? cause i am from latvia, and we remember Aktion T4!!!!!
Want to know what they are leaving out and playing with for 35 years as i wait for people to talk about it? (the german i put up here warning you died first!!!!!!!!!)
Aktion T4
ah, but WHAT are they leaving out of wiki?
ERNST RUDIN Sangers friend, paul popenoe, and a man with exactly the same ideas and MORE Cache than Coyne
[edited for length by n-n]
Gosh, how could neo not have realized for all of these years that, the MSM fails to cover stories contrary to the narrative they favor? If only she had even half the prescience that arfldgrs congratulates himself upon, how much better a world might it be?
Is there any more annoying and tedious an expression than, “i TOLD you all that”?
This isn’t a new story. The arrest is new.
Makes you wonder what else is going on in Washington besides the people’s business.
This story is from Feb. 21:
Imran Awan, ringleader of the group that includes his brothers Abid and Jamal, has provided IT services since 2005 for Florida Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman.
The brothers are from Pakistan. The trio also worked for dozens of other House Democrats, including members of the intelligence, foreign affairs and homeland security committees. Those positions likely gave them access to congressional emails and other sensitive documents.
The brothers, whose access to House IT networks has been terminated, are under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police. Wasserman Schultz resigned from her DNC post following a disastrous email hack during the 2016 campaign. Her House spokesman did not respond to The DCNF’s question Monday about Imran’s employment status.
As of Feb. 6, she had declined to fire Imran. Investigators found that congressional information was being copied to an off-site server and they suspect the brothers of improperly accessing information and stealing congressional property. Chiefs of staff for the employing Democrats were notified Feb. 2.
https://www.allenbwest.com/chilling-new-scandal-hits-democrats-media-silent/
the men were getting a million dollars for a salary and the wives had 6 figure no show jobs as well There you go no class Democrats why don t lucrative jobs like this go to Americans ??
Huh ?
More from the link I provided previously from Allen West, dated Feb. 21. He is making the same point Neo is making. It’s not just what is covered but what is not covered.
Now, I’m onboard a cruise ship, but we still get the news, and I haven’t seen any of this covered on CNN, NBC or MSNBC. I saw a lot of coverage about the “not my president” protest or the protests in London to refuse our president the invitation to an official state visit. This is what the American people see, and it angers them – the blatant duplicitous hypocrisy. Comparing the November election to 9-11 or Pearl Harbor is insidious and far over the top, but that’s NEWS on the liberal progressive left.
Ok, let’s just imagine this, if we had three Russian brothers who were IT specialists working for Republican Members of Congress…yep, you get my drift. The story would be all over the place and there would be demands for these Members of Congress to step down, certainly be investigated.
But have you heard anything about this story, this revelation? As Ricky Bobby would say, “this just happened” but not in the world of the left. You see, the leftist media dismisses that which does not serve their ideological agenda and talking points. There is no way they’re going to bring this to light, just like there’s no such thing as an IRS scandal, and nothing happened in Benghazi. Or what is Extortion 17? Who is Army 1LT Clint Lorance? This isn’t so much about “fake news,” it’s about “selected news” and that is always about what the left deems important.
My wife listens to NPR all the time and she also gets the NYT news feed on her iPhone. She has no idea about what unmasking of intelligence information is. Nuff said.
This Awan case has the potential to jail many Dems and destroy the Democrat party.
The main thing to realize is that this entire Awan family was composed of criminals. Who has time or the inclination to commit mortgage and bankruptcy fraud when you are making millions in IT? Bribes and security leaks will be discovered. I can speculate all over this story, but I expect the very worst for the Dems.
Think of it this way: Would a GOP Congressman from a place like Nebraska pay a criminal foreign family millions to run his IT system and have complete access to all sorts of internal and national security secrets?
Cornhead”expect[s] the very worst for the Dems” from the Awan case.
Ain’t gonna happen, though it clearly should. The Dems, like Wassy Schultz and Podesta are taking on traitorous dimensions.
Artfldgr:
I don’t insult you; please don’t insult me, especially about something that isn’t correct on your part.
WHERE did I say “Wow, I just noticed this?”
Do you really think that when a writer writes a thought, it’s the first time that writer ever thought it? That’s not a logical conclusion, unless that person states it’s the case.
For the record, I’ve known about the MSM’s sins of omissions at least as long as I’ve been writing this blog. Not only that, but in the post I wrote today, you may have missed this line which pretty clearly indicates I’ve been noticing this for a long, long time: “You see this sort of downplaying of stories all the time in terms of the MSM.”
How could I indicate you see it “all the time” if this is the first time I noticed it?
I have a suggestion for you: cut out the accusations that people here don’t know something, unless you know for sure that they don’t know it. I’ve made that suggestion before, and I’d like you to take it.
Another suggestion is that you do a simple search. For example, just now I did a search for the word “omission” in my posts on this blog Right off the bat I found these posts that use the word “omission” to refer to the MSM’s omissions: this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.
That’s just what I found after a search for “omission.” I could have searched for other related words, and probably come up with more posts that discuss omissions on the part of the MSM as being important. Those posts I linked to go back to the earliest days of this blog, well over a decade ago. And it only took me a couple of minutes at most to do that search.
Artfldgr:
What I wrote in the comment right above this also applies to knowledge of the way the left works. You definitely can offer some extra facts to bolster your argument, facts of which most of us here are probably unaware and that would be good to know. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know some of it, nor does it mean that we don’t get the basic principles of leftist thought and tactics. There is no need whatsoever to offer insults with your facts, and it’s actually counterproductive to do so.
By the way, note what I wrote here and here about coverage of Sanger.
Matt SE,
Please tell me you are not waiting for Mueller and his team of Clintonista lawyers to investigate anything that might cause leftists to twist in the wind. The important ‘news’ is djt hiring Russian hookers to pee on a hotel bed in Moscow and Putin hacking voting machines.
Mueller is Comey’s buddy appointed by an bho appointee. We all should know where this goes. Drip, drip, drip… and then the smoke in the mirror that will be collusion. Its Chinatown Jake.
@ parker,
Of course not.
I’m just making a point that a methodical, unbiased investigator *ought* to take an interest in this case. If Mueller doesn’t, that tells you something about his methods and bias.
addendum to Neo’s 4pm post: As soon as Art gets on his high horse about how he is the only one who actually knows anything, and how the rest of us morons can’t read, or listen to what he has said, I skip the rest of everything else he writes. Maybe there’s something worth reading there, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to wade through the insults to find it.
Tony Scott’s 1998 film Enemies of the State is worthy a revisit. The bureaucracies never sleep and exist to protect the bureaucracies. Yes, I am cynical. I also know that as a lifetime member of the NRA since 1982 I am on the list. Its no big deal, just a fact. That is why we are audited by the IRS nearly every other year. Because we are honest it is always a minor pain in the behind.
And, I never hired hookers to pee on a Moscow hotel bed. Pinky swear.
Matt SE,
My tongue was in my cheek with that commit. The fix is baked in that cake.
I think this story can be combined with Hillary’s private server to attack Dems in next years elections. You don’t have to go into details that will only confuse voters. You just have to point out that Dems in Congress did not control their own party anleft the whole country open to cyber attacks, whether from Putin, Guccifer, or some as yet unknown Pakistanis. The Dem leadership hasn’t taken cyber security seriously, and the Dems under them didn’t care enough to call them on it. That might be enough to swing some close congressional seats.
physicsguy at 5:00 pm,
That is exactly my perception as well. It’s one thing to insult a fellow ‘guest’, another thing entirely to insult your host. Occasionally, I run out of patience and call him on it.
@Neo – you raise a great point.
And, yes, art, it was something quite noticeable some time ago, yet, I think this is probably a more important aspect of reporting than the bias in what does get reported.
Sometimes it is completely missing. Sometimes it is on some middle page, in the least noticeable corner. Sometimes it is missing key information.
Thank goodness there is “conservative” media.
Well, it seems to suffer from similar flaws.
But, at least we have a greater range of choice than we did way back when.
Just need to seek info from a broad set of sources vs relying on one or a set serving a single point of view, and taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.
“If Mueller doesn’t, that tells you something about his methods and bias.” – Matt SE
We don’t know if he is or not, and we shouldn’t, quite frankly.
This stuff about the (I forget the name… “Info GPS”?) data service the dems employed is maybe a more relevant and fruitful vector to explore.
I don’t know if it is just rumor from the right, or if there is substance, but the one person in common is the woman trump jr met.
Wouldn’t surprise me to find unsavory ties on both sides – to putin’s delight.
A Democratic IT staffer getting arrested for bank fraud isn’t big news. It would be if there is credible evidence suggesting that he, not Russia, hacked Clinton’s email.
But not too long ago that person was Seth Rich, as Hannidy, Newt, etc tried to tell us. As it turns out, that was total conspiracy theory BS…and the media was right to ignore it or, to the extent they reported it, reported it like Birtherism or Pizzagate.
I saw this on CNN. They opened with what he was charged with and justified the importance of the story by focusing on why Debbie Wasserman kept the guy on her payroll while he was being investigated (which has a certain Trump-Flynn feel, but with considerably lower-level actors).
The rest of the story (he was the real hack) was treated as a conspiracy. At this point, that sounds about right.
Propaganda??
For the last 6 months US dominated by Trump – Russian link, however what matters with election US election is not bad as Imran Awan case.
Few points need to be highlighted here:
1- Why Wasserman Schultz has “inexplicably protected” Awan for months?
Wasserman Schultz’s appearing to threaten Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa with “consequences” if he did not return a laptop Awan owned that his officers had seized. Rosiak described the move as inexplicable.
2-Awan threatened a veteran family to get back the smashed hard drives and other computer equipment now at the center of the investigation
mran Awan and his family then reportedly began trying to terrorize the Marine veteran and his Navy officer wife into returning the equipment, calling them repeatedly, arriving at the home three or four times, and threatening to sue if the equipment was not returned. Instead, the family turned the material over to the FBI.?
3-Awan’s defense attorney in his present case appears to have opted for the same rhetorical strategy. “This is clearly a right-wing media-driven prosecution by a United States Attorney’s Office that wants to prosecute people for working while Muslim,” Chris Gowen, Awan’s attorney
4- Why did Nancy Pelosi lie when she said she never heard of Awan? Email revealed by Wikileaks says Awan had access to Pelosi’s iPad.
5-Why did Debbie Wasserman Schultz keep paying his salary until he was arrested trying to flee the country ?
6-Dose there any relation between Imran Awan ISIS/al-Qaeda and the Taliban?
In documents leaked in April 2011 on the Wikileaks website, US authorities described the ISI as a “terrorist” organisation on a par with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
In the same month the US military’s top officer, Adm Mike Mullen, also accused the ISI of having links with the Taliban.
He said it had a “long-standing relationship” with a militant group run by Afghan insurgent Jalaluddin Haqqani, which targets US troops in Afghanistan.
Neo and everyone else dropped what should have been the lead. Awan and co. did IT work for Rep(s). on the House intelligence committee. BrianE (above) picked it up. We’re talking national security felonies &/or espionage.
It is certainly possible that the IT work was done on purely unclass material for all of those Reps. We would never know the reverse if Comey, Holder, or Lynch were in charge. Will we ever learn the details from Trump’s swamp?
Oops! The word is “lede” not “lead.”
Yes, I am cynical. I also know that as a lifetime member of the NRA since 1982 I am on the list. Its no big deal, just a fact. That is why we are audited by the IRS nearly every other year.
parker: I’d like to hit the pause button right now and reread what you said again.
I don’t disbelieve you at all, my friend. But for the studio audience — that has truly been your experience for years now?
About that million dollar thing being bandied about – that’s for 5 people over 4 years or something like that. Not a whole bunch and certainly not out of line for govt.
Roy,
This may just be small time hustlers, taking the dems for a ride, while operating like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, but the rest of the family did get outta Dodge with what is estimated to be a fair amount of money.
The number is more like $4 million since 2009 for the family, but that really isn’t the point.
They are alleged to have been laundering money for terrorist organizations, small time swindling and downloading who knows what from the dem congresspersons computers they provided IT services for.
It’s always suspicious when the accused smash hard drives with a hammer, and attempt to flee the country.
It may be nothing, but who can the public rely on for a competent investigation? The DOJ_FBI were in the tank for the dems, the Republican committees ARE the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. It may be up to the capital police to get the goods on these people?
Maybe the FBI should hire Crowdstrike, since they did such a crack up job on Hillary’s server.
Brian E,
I in no way wish to diminish the serious implications of what may have happened. I was just noting that emphasis on the money involved is a distraction.
Exactly what are people doing to defeat the Leftist alliance made out of 1000 hydra heads?
Do people even realize that if they killed the Main Sewer Media entirely, the Left would lose at most 5% of their total power and one of their hydra heads. The head will regenerate in time, and losing 5% of 100% isn’t worth much in the long term strategically.
There is Propaganda & lies??
looks both are connected and used together in most of the cases.
About lying let’s start off with some facts:
I AM LYING
“The Dems, like Wassy Schultz and Podesta are taking on traitorous dimensions.”
Well, yes. Business as usual for them over the past 25 or more years.
Roy,
I misunderstood your point.
Yes it is a distraction, just as the reason Awan was arrested for bank fraud. That’s the official story, but I hope that was just the method to keep him from fleeing the country, while a competent, thorough investigation is conducted on his stealing government computers and files and his ties to money laundering.
But at this point, how do we even trust that the FBI will do a non-political investigation and not sweep the facts under the Democrat rug. Ever since Comey, in a political act, provided cover for Lynch to not file charges against Hillary, the stench emanating from the FBI doesn’t give one confidence.
@BrianE – With the DOJ headed by GOP / trump picks, it would be on them if the FBI didn’t investigate this.
This may not fall under Mueller’s scope, but it seems that some LE investigation is needed. Something of this sort must be afoot if they took this action against him.
It is rather serious accusations, even if it seems that only dems (?) who were victimized.
Lack of coverage by the msm doesn’t mean that nothing is being done, or that it would get swept under the carpet.
No doubt “conservative” media will be on it.
As Iowahawk says, journalism is about covering the important stories…with a pillow until they stop moving.
Soldiers said that the MSM refused to cover the good news in Iraq, instead saturating Americans with the death tolls and IEDs.
This had an intentional effect.
Ymar Sakar Says:
July 29th, 2017 at 7:28 pm
Soldiers said that the MSM refused to cover the good news in Iraq, instead saturating Americans with the death tolls and IEDs.
This had an intentional effect.
* * *
I noticed that at the time.
Following Cronkite’s lead, as it were.
BrianE Says:
July 28th, 2017 at 11:56 am
…
But at this point, how do we even trust that the FBI will do a non-political investigation and not sweep the facts under the Democrat rug. Ever since Comey, in a political act, provided cover for Lynch to not file charges against Hillary, the stench emanating from the FBI doesn’t give one confidence.
* * *
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/07/report-fbi-general-counsel-under-investigation-for-leaking.php
BrianE Says:
July 27th, 2017 at 2:14 pm
More from the link I provided previously from Allen West, dated Feb. 21. He is making the same point Neo is making. It’s not just what is covered but what is not covered.
* * *
And the “not covered” is the more important feature.
That’s how you can get two ordinarily rational people to believe that the other one is living in a fantasy world: each has received only half of any given story.
* * *
Paul in Boston Says:
July 27th, 2017 at 2:52 pm
My wife listens to NPR all the time and she also gets the NYT news feed on her iPhone. She has no idea about what unmasking of intelligence information is. Nuff said.