The BS Filter

John Pabon from strategic advisory firm Fulcrum Strategic Advisors joins me to give his perspective on China – business, political and social. John’s an American who currently lives in Melbourne, and spent the last ten years living in Shanghai. We talk about the ol’ Communism v Capitalism debate, the treatment of the Uyghurs, working conditions in factories, IP theft, and how mos...

Alan MacLeod joins me again to discuss the latest news about Venezuela and Iran. Alan is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. He is author of “Bad News From Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting.” His latest book, Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, was published by Routledge in May 2019. Follow him on Twitter: @AlanRMacLeod And don&#8...

We talk about Australia’s bushfires and America’s assassination of Soleimani. And my book, The Psychopath Epidemic , is finally out! HOW TO LISTEN If you’re seeing this message, it means you aren’t logged in as a subscriber. If want to listen to the premium episodes of the series, you’ll need to become one of our Bullshit Fighters and REGISTER NOW for one of our premium acc...

The oligarchs have worked out the model for getting people to vote for “killer clowns”. The Democrats gave Trump $738 billion to buy weapons. And America is using AGM-114R9X Hellfire drones to terrorize the world. George Monbiot on the killer clowns. Media Bias Chart Hellfire drones Trust No-one Manovich on why fake news isn’t the problem The Democrats give Trump a $738 billion X...

Colonel Huge Banzer ruled Bolivia with military support until 1978, when Siles won the election – but Banzer declared the election invalid. The same thing happened in 1979. And again in 1980. But this time General Luis García Meza grabbed the reins of power in the bloody coup. Finally in 1985, Paz was elected President again, for the fourth and final time – and immediately lurched to t...

We pick up our series on the political history of Bolivia in 1943 with the government of Major Gualberto Villarroel López, which ended in violence and his assassination a few years later. The country continued to have coup after coup. In 1967, Che Guevara tried to start a revolution in the country, which ended up with his execution by the CIA. Outrage at Che’s execution lead to a leftist cou...

Alan MacLeod joins me to discuss the propaganda model and how it applies to media bias on the coverage of Bolivia, Venezuela, Corbyn, Ukrainegate and Russiagate.  Alan is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. He is author of “Bad News From Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting.” His latest book, Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent,...

What’s happening in Bolivia? President Evo Morales was recently the subject of a coup, and has fled to Mexico. In order to provide some perspective on the current events, we take a detailed look at the political history of Bolivia – a poor country that has survived an endless number of military coups, often supported and financed by the CIA. The post BFTN 56 – Bolivia 1 appeared first...

Americans were SHOCKED to discover that Russia had interfered in their 2016 Presidential elections. How dare they interfere with the democratic process of a sovereign nation! Of course, those same Americans probably have no idea that their own country has, according to the research done by my guest today, done the same thing over 80 times since the end of WWII. And this number doesn’t even i...

It’s gloating time in the West with the suicide of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. On today’s show we examine the history of ISIS and how the United States and their allies created the conditions for ISIS and then proceeded to fund and arm it . We look at the media’s near complete lack of skepticism and analysis regarding ISIS and Trump’s claims as they dance on al-Baghdadi&#82...

This week we have more on the Biden business in the Ukraine including some background on the Euromaidan uprising, the role of energy supply in the regime change and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the role of the United States (via USAID) in the overthrow of Yanukovych. As evidence for the latter, we play the leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for Euro...

A lot of people have asked us, in our great and unmatched wisdom, to explain what’s going on with Syria, Trump, Turkey and the Kurds. HOW TO LISTEN If you’re seeing this message, it means you aren’t logged in as a subscriber. If want to listen to the premium episodes of the series, you’ll need to become one of our Bullshit Fighters and REGISTER NOW for one of our premium accounts...

We try to go a little deeper on the Trump-Ukraine-Biden story than most of the media coverage. Apart from Trump and Joe Biden, we talk about the roles that Viktor Shokin, Mykola Zlochevsky, Viktor Yanukovich, Petro Poroshenko, Dmytro Firtash, Volodymyr Zelensky and Yuriy Lutsenko have in this story, along with American players Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and former CIA official, Cofer Black. The po...

In this final episode of our China series, we talk about: How China might weaponize its holdings of more than $1.1 trillion worth of U.S. Treasuries, aka the “nuclear option” The risk of China starting a currency war with the US China’s current position on IP protection And we finish with a little more discussion about China’s theory on the “Socialist market economy”...

There’s been lots of talk in the media about Trump’s trade war with China. One aspect about it that I find interesting is that I never see any talk, in this context, about the fact that China is a Communist country – a Communist country that seems to be a major economic threat to the USA, the world’s leading Capitalist country. Didn’t the West win the Cold War? So over the n...

There’s been lots of talk in the media about Trump’s trade war with China. One aspect about it that I find interesting is that I never see any talk, in this context, about the fact that China is a Communist country – a Communist country that seems to be a major economic threat to the USA, the world’s leading Capitalist country. Didn’t the West win the Cold War? So over the n...

There’s been lots of talk in the media about Trump’s trade war with China. One aspect about it that I find interesting is that I never see any talk, in this context, about the fact that China is a Communist country – a Communist country that seems to be a major economic threat to the USA, the world’s leading Capitalist country. Didn’t the West win the Cold War? So over the n...

The plan this week was to interview Alan MacLeod about his new excellent book “Propaganda in the Information Age” but he missed the call, so we talked about it without him instead. We’ll get him on next week for a follow up. The book is an internet-era update on Herman and Chomsky’s 1988 classic “Manufacturing Consent” , and the new book opens with an interview...

We finish our mini-biography on the new Prime Minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, aka “BoJo”, or, as I like to call him, “The Big BJ”.  In Ray’s absence, I’m joined again by my good friend Trevor Bell from the The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove . HOW TO LISTEN If you’re seeing this message, it means you aren’t logged in as a subscriber. If want t...

On this episode I’m joined by Brisbane’s #1 podcaster, the fabulous Trevor Bell, co-host of The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove (“a weekly podcast which takes a look at news, political events, culture, ethics and the transformations taking place in our society”), who is standing in for Papa Bear who is on vacation…. AGAIN. And we are doing a mini-biography on the Unite...

On this week’s news show we look the recent headlines concerning Iran – their arrest of 17 CIA spies, and the seizure of oil tankers by both the British and the Iranians. Who and what should we believe? Iran detains 17 citizens accused of spying for the CIA Iran Executes Defense Ministry Staffer Over Spying for CIA People want us to talk about Brexit but it’s more like a series, not so...

How do these shell companies get used? We provide some examples. We also talk about the fallout of the Panama Papers, Operation Car Wash, the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Galizia, why Americans didn’t show up in the Panama Papers as much as we might have expected, and how some of the world’s largest banks used Mossack Fonseca to profit from “arms dealers, bag men for Third...

After more than a year of analysis, the first news stories were published on April 3, 2016, by SZ and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Some 4.8 million leaked files were emails, 3 million were database entries, 2.2 million PDFs, 1.2 million images, 320,000 text files, and 2242 files in other formats. Edward Snowden described the release in a Twitter message as the...

In 2015, journalist Bastian Obermayer from the Süddeutsche Zeitung , a Southern German Newspaper, was approached online by an anonymous source.  He or she provided him with a database from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. They are the Panama Papers. Named in the leak were 12 current or former world leaders, 128 other public officials and politicians, and hundreds of celebrities,...

Iran stands accused by the US of attacking two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. But should we accept the US’s claims at face value? Or is there more to the story? Here’s a short clip from the show. Full shownotes below. Please Note: our weekly news shows are currently available to Silver subscribers and above.  Follow Cameron on Facebook | Instagram | Twitter Follow Ray on Faceboo...