NWO has SA in its sights. (part 1)

[Trickzta]

An interesting article showing how important it is to have Media backing;

CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, who at the time was the most trusted and recognizable name in news, went on TV and declared that the U.S. should basically just "negotiate, not as victors," because at best "the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." Upon hearing this, Johnson was rumored to say, "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

http://www.cracked.com/article_19382_5-embarrassing-failures-history-class-turned-into-victories.html#ixzz3GsLxsxWG

The war on the flavour of the day, be it drugs, terrorism or some other BS isn’t new;

The whole of civilization is now facing a challenge with the growth of what President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) warned the U.S. people against – the military/industrial complex – saying that it would destroy U.S. democracy.

We know now that a small group made up of the military/industrial/media/corporate/academic elite, whose agenda is profit, arms, war and valuable resources, now holds power worldwide and has a stronghold on elected governments. We see this in the gun and Israeli lobbies, among others, which wield great power over U.S. politics.

We have witnessed this in ongoing wars, invasions, occupations and proxy wars, all allegedly in the name of “humanitarian intervention and democracy”. However, in reality, they are causing great suffering, especially to the poor, through their policies of arms, war, domination and control of other countries and their resources. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/10...trial-complex/

Here is an example of what needs to stop. In the words of a man in a position to know what he’s talking about. Why was this speech and the story of the suicide of three young IDF soldiers not headlines in the Media?

In a stunning indictment of the Gaza assault as the act of a savage nation, even its president has proclaimed Israel a "sick society" incapable of dialogue with those around them and in need of treatment. In a speech at the opening of a conference aptly titled, "From Hatred of the Stranger to Acceptance of the Other," Israeli President Reuven Rivlin - who as head of state has little real power compared to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with far too much - suggested Israel has become a nation without humanity or empathy that has "forgotten how to be decent human beings." If you need further evidence of the justice of his claim, here's video of Israeli soldiers arresting an 11-year-old, mute, developmentally disabled boy near Hebron for the possible crime of throwing a stone as neighboring Israeli settlers cheer. This makes us sick.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2014/10/20/sick-society

[Trickzta]

A few examples of how Mainstream Media is just a tool, truth doesn’t even play a role in this reporting.

CNN deception: Live aerial footage of police running into Sandy Hook was of another school

http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2013/01/22/cnns-live-aerial-footage-of-police-running-into-sandy-hook-was-of-another-school/

Why would NYT and CNN hire Liberians to PRETEND they’re deathly ill with Ebola? http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2014...racy-theories/

Bear in mind what William Colby told us before his untimely death, namely: “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media”, including newspapers as well as television.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/09/26/sandy-hook-no-murders-in-newtown-in-2012-the-power-hour-and-alex-jones-interviews/

No one died in Sandy Hook: Testimony from the Social Security Death Master File

To conclude, no one was killed on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. More perverse still,according to the Social Security Administration’s records, none of the alleged Sandy Hook victims ever lived!

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/09/28/sandy-hook-ct-crime-data-confirms-fbi-report-but-something-is-still-wrong-2/

CNN’s Fake Gulf War Reporting
Posted on June 10, 2011 by Dr. Eowyn

This is a CNN broadcast about the Gulf War in 1991, by correspondent Charles Jaco ostensibly reporting live from Saudi Arabia. Jaco faked it. He was reporting from some studio.

http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2011/06/10/cnns-fake-gulf-war-reporting/

[JohnV]

Trickster, who is this nwo in one sentence? The greedy politicians right here already have their 'sights on sa,' so they beat the nwo to sa

[Trickzta]

News is propaganda BS! By now we should have realized the fact that News is controlled.

Video – German journo: European media writing pro-US stories under CIA pressure
German journalist and editor Udo Ulfkotte says he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, adding that noncompliance ran the risk of being fired. Ulfkotte made the revelations during interviews with RT and Russia Insider.

“I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service,” Ulfkotte told Russia Insider. He made similar comments to RT in an exclusive interview at the beginning of October.

“One day the BND (German foreign intelligence agency) came to my office at the Frankfurter Allgemeine in Frankfurt. They wanted me to write an article about Libya and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi…They gave me all this secret information and they just wanted me to sign the article with my name,” Ulfkotte told RT.

“That article was how Gaddafi tried to secretly build a poison gas factory. It was a story that was printed worldwide two days later.”

Ulfkotte reveals all this and more in his book ‘Bought Journalists,’ where he mentions that he feels ashamed for what he has done in the past.

“It is not right what I have done in the past. To manipulate people, to make propaganda. And it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray people not only in Germany, but all over Europe,” he told RT. “I was a journalist for 25 years and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.”

“I was bribed by the Americans not to report exactly the truth…I was invited by the German Marshall Fund of the United States to travel to the US. They paid for all my expenses and put me in contact with Americans they’d like me to meet,” he said.

“I became an honorary citizen of the state of Oklahoma in the US just because I wrote pro-American. I was supported by the CIA. I have helped them in several situations and I feel ashamed for that too.”

Many other journalists are involved in the same practice, Ulfkotte added.
“Most of the journalists you see in foreign countries, they claim to be journalists and they might be. But many of them, like me in the past, are so-called ‘non-official cover.’ It means you work for an intelligence agency, you help them if they want you to. But they will never say they know you.”

http://www.pakalertpress.com/2014/10/22/video-german-journo-european-media-writing-pro-us-stories-under-cia-pressure/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pakalert+%28Pak+Alert+Press%29

[JohnV]

Trickster, who is this nwo in one sentence? The greedy politicians right here already have their 'sights on sa,' so they beat the nwo to sa??

[Trickzta]

JohnV you managed to define the New South Africa in one sentence but the New World Order will take more than that, lol.

It depends on your definition of the NWO, I would say I’m talking about a One World Order which in essence is the NWO.

Another definition would be the New World Super-power and it would seem that the Chinese are the most likely candidate to replace the Western Forces.

Another scenario is WW3 which the Elite seem hell-bent to instigate rather than capitulate to the Chinese Maybe they fear the retribution that their guilty conscience knows is due them?

I’ll go deeper into this in the near future.

[Trickzta]

For the record, I’ve made claims against the CIA and various American Presidents concerning their involvement in drug dealing and other heinous crimes. Mainstream Media wouldn’t cover any of these allegations and the Alternate Media wouldn’t publish such serious allegations without some proof or evidence and/or without a witness’s written testimony in their possession. The odd one might do so I suppose. But there’s a long list of references and sources at the end of these articles, some of which I’ve checked out to the best of my ability.

The purpose of exposing these allegations is to expose the sorry state of affairs in the top echelons of Government in the USA. How can anyone believe that the USA is a ‘Good Guy’ in world affairs when their figurehead is involved in crimes against humanity?

The scale of their criminal operations is beyond belief. It’s a truly sad reflection of the state of the World’s Super-Power when this abuse of power by some of its Presidents is rampant.
This state of affairs could not prosper if the Media was unimpeded and allowed to carry out their investigative reporting in a truly ‘free and independent’ fashion.
It’s a long story but what can I say? Power corrupts!

In 1996 Gary Webb wrote a series of articles published in the San Jose Mercury News, which investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was then distributed as crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funneled profits to the Contras. The CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by the Contra personnel and directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras. Although he strongly implied CIA involvement, Webb never claimed to have made a direct link between the CIA and the Contras. Moreover, Webb's articles were heavily attacked by many media outlets who questioned the validity of his claims, although the unusual response led some to question if the CIA was involved. Webb turned the articles into a book called, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion." On December 10, 2004, Webb reportedly committed suicide, albeit under strange circumstances (two gunshot wounds to the head).

In 1996, CIA Director John M. Deutch went to Los Angeles to attempt to refute the allegations raised by the Webb articles, and was famously confronted by former Los Angeles Police Department officer Michael Ruppert, who testified that he had witnessed it occurring.

The CIA has been accused of moneylaundering the Iran-Contra drug funds via the BCCI, the former U.S. Commissioner of Customs William von Raab said that when customs agents raided the bank in 1988, they found numerous CIA accounts. The CIA also worked with BCCI in arming and financing the Afghan mujahideen during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, using BCCI to launder proceeds from trafficking heroin grown in the Pakistan–Afghanistan borderlands, boosting the flow of narcotics to European and U.S. markets

A number of allegations have been written about and several local, state, and federal investigations have taken place related to the notion of the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport as a CIA drop point in large scale cocaine trafficking beginning in the latter part of the 1980s. The topic has received some press coverage that has included allegations of awareness, participation and/or coverup involvement of figures such as future presidents Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, as well as future Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Saline County prosecutor Dan Harmon (who was convicted of numerous felonies including drug and racketeering charges in 1997. The Mena airport was also associated with Adler Berriman (Barry) Seal, an American drug smuggler and aircraft pilot who flew covert flights for the CIA and the Medellín Cartel.

On November 15, 1996, then Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch visited Los Angeles' Locke High School for a town hall meeting. At the meeting, Michael (Mike) Ruppert publicly confronted Deutch, saying that in his experience as an LAPD narcotics officer he had seen evidence of CIA complicity in drug dealing. Ruppert went on to become an investigator and journalist and established the publication "From The Wilderness", a watchdog publication that exposed governmental corruption, including his experience with CIA drug dealing activities.

The oldest Mexican Cartel, the Guadalajara cartel, was benefited by the CIA for having connections with the Honduran drug lord Juan Matta-Ballesteros, a CIA asset, who was the head of SETCO, an airline used for smuggling drugs into the US and also used to transport military supplies and personnel for the Honduran Contras, using funds from the accounts established by Oliver North.”.

It is also alleged that the DFS, the main Mexican intelligence agency, which is in part a CIA creation and later became the Mexican Center for Research and National Security(CISEN), had among its members the CIA's closest government allies in Mexico. DFS badges, "handed out to top-level Mexican drug-traffickers, have been labelled by DEA agents a virtual 'license to traffic.'".
It is also known that the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug-trafficking network in the early 1980s, prospered largely, among other reasons, because it enjoyed the protection of the DFS, under its chief Miguel Nazar Haro, a CIA asset.

In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S.—which, in exchange, allowed him to continue his drug-trafficking activities—which they had known about since the 1960s. When the DEA tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so. The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America. However, when CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, documents aboard the plane revealed many of the CIA's activities in Latin America, and the CIA's connections with Noriega became a public relations "liability" for the U.S. government, which finally allowed the DEA to indict him for drug trafficking, after decades of allowing his drug operations to proceed unchecked.

The CIA, in spite of objections from the Drug Enforcement Administration, allowed at least one ton of nearly pure cocaine to be shipped into Miami International Airport. The CIA claimed to have done this as a way of gathering information about Colombian drug cartels, but the cocaine ended up being sold on the street.

In November 1993, the former head of the DEA, Robert C. Bonner appeared on 60 Minutes and criticized the CIA for allowing several tons of pure cocaine to be smuggled into the U.S. via Venezuela without first notifying and securing the approval of the DEA.

In November 1996, a Miami grand jury indicted former Venezuelan anti-narcotics chief and longtime CIA asset, General Ramon Guillen Davila, who was smuggling many tons of cocaine into the United States from a Venezuelan warehouse owned by the CIA. In his trial defense, Guillen claimed that all of his drug smuggling operations were approved by the CIA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking

More to follow, this is the tip of the iceberg.

[Trickzta]

Some things never change, some things stay the same. An interesting read (to some) but it’s still to be seen just how much of this is true. Read on those that would find this to be of interest.

The Internet is filled with revelations of how the global elite want to depopulate humanity by 90%. Landmarks such as the Georgia Guidestones are top of the evidence list for proof of this agenda. There is an emerging body of evidence that the Georgia Guidestones are a correct representation of this idea.

If a front group for the CIA, Deagel, is correct, we are about a decade away from this hellish mighmare.

Just who is Deagle? The power and influence of the corporation that you never heard of is staggering. This is the modern day Zapata Oil, which was a CIA front corporation run by George H. W. Bush which in turn facilitated much of the Air America “drugs for guns” program in Latin America.

My sources tell me that Deagel is the same exact kind of organization as Zapata Oil. Deagel ran guns through the Ambassador Chris Stevens and subsequently delivered them al-Qaeda in Libya and in Syria at the time of Stevens death. Deagel was intimately involved in Benghazi in ways that will be revealed in later article. Deagel is not just a gun running/drug running/child sex trafficking organization, they are also intimately connected with the business as “Open source intelligence links”. This means that Deagel and their partner (affiliation listed below) serve as marketing companies for the CIA and sell intelligence information to the highest bidder. Stratfor and Deagel provide the CIA with a minimum of two degrees of separation from nefarious operations which could taint the U.S. government and in particular, the CIA. These activities will be the topic of a future article. The focus of the remainder of this is article is the destruction and depopulation of the United States.

http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2014/10/the-target-date-for-americas-depopulation-has-been-set-2465986.html?utm_source=direct-b4in.info&utm_content=beforeit39snews-verticalresponse&utm_medium=verticalresponse&utm_campaign=&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fb4in.info%2FshzV

[HR Solutions]

Lol .....

[Trickzta]

Nice people? Nasty sods more like! My opinion is that there are way too many reports concerning the drug and crime regime aka the Government of the US for them all to be false. More on this to follow. Small wonder that the Mainstream Media is muzzled and manipulated as seen in the next post.

Clinton worked himself up rapidly and became a governor of Arkansas. As a governor Bill Clinton committed a series of high crimes, related to his Illuminati connection. He became the leader of a gigantic network which dealt with drug-smuggling, laundering of drug-money and corruption in general.

A good friend of Clinton from Arkansas, Larry Nichols, was interviewed in a film. Clinton thought that Nichols would keep his mouth shut, but he didn't. He was hired by Clinton and had found out that Clinton's firm, "Arkansas Development Finance Authority" (ADFA), laundered drug-money. Cocaine to a value of $10.000.000 (ten million dollars!) a week was flown in from Mena Airport in Arkansas. The money was laundered via ADFA to a bank in Florida, to a bank in Georgia, to Citycorp in New York, and from there it was transferred out of the country. All this regarding to Larry Nichols.

Clinton's best friend, Dan Lasater, led the operations. Lasater and Bill Clinton's brother, Roger Clinton, later spent time in jail due to drug related crimes.

The Chief of Police in Arkansas at that time, Doc Delaughter, said he had gathered information from many persons in Lasater's surroundings, how he smuggled drugs and abused young girls sexually. During those investigations Doc was harassed by persons from his own police department, paid by Clinton.

Bill Clinton created new laws that helped "Tyson Foods" to be the biggest company in Arkansas. The owner, Don Tyson, received a loan from the Clinton-owned ADFA, but never had to pay back. Doc says he has evidence enough against Tyson to start an investigation regarding illegal drug-trade. Nichols says in the film:

The first loan ADFA approved was to "Park-O-Meter" ... When I investigated the company, I found that the Directive Secretary and cashier was Webb Hubbell ... Guess who wrote the law proposition ... which made ADFA possible. Webb Hubbell. Guess who drove the law proposition which looked into- and admitted (Park-O-Meter's) request. "Rose Law Firm" (owned by Hillary Clinton). Who signed the admittance? Webb Hubbell and Hillary Clinton.

Nichols said that when journalists started investigating the loans to "Park-O-Meter", they discovered that the company did not make parking meters, but removable airplane nose-cones, delivered to the air-field in Mena. The equipment was used to smuggle narcotics into the country, and with this Clinton and his companions participated heavily to the pushing of street-drugs in the USA.

Nichols says further that Clinton most of the time was involved in drug trade and the people he surrounded himself with followed him all the way to the White House.

When Clinton became President he elected Webb Hubbell as the Minister of Justice(!). Hubbell had to go back to Arkansas, though, to plead guilty to having cheated customers of the "Rose Law Firm" on $500.000.

Maybe the largest drug smuggling event in the USA history started in 1982 on Mena Airport by Barry Seale, pilot for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA!!!). He had had problems with the authorities in Louisiana, so he moved his dirty business to Arkansas, where he could work un-disturbed. Seale said later in a police investigation that he had used nose-cones to smuggle drugs (Park-O-Meter).

So what did Bill Clinton do, when he came to power in the White House? Just like the drug trading president before him, Freemason-Brother George Bush, he started a war against drugs(!).

The interesting part is, though, that when different people have started talking about Clinton's affairs, they have suddenly and mysteriously died. One of them was Barry Seale, the drug smuggler. He was killed in February 1987.

By that time, several murders were committed in Arkansas.

(Open link to see long list of the dead, allegedly sanctioned by Clinton.)

But why hasn't Clinton been thoroughly investigated and put to trial when so many people knew about the crimes? Larry Nichols might have the answer:

Many people wonder how Bill Clinton could lead a whole state in the size of Arkansas with the ultimate power he expressed. It's not that hard. After 12 years, after having "made friends" with the rich, Clinton was in charge of the constitutional laws, the judges, the lawyers and the banks.

When Clinton moved into the White House, he continued as before. He is just one more of the top controlled Presidents, whose purpose is to make way for the New World Order and the new slave community. When Richard Nixon resigned in the 70's the Brotherhood took over the USA with the help of Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller. Since then there haven't been any true democratic elections in the USA. The Presidents have all been selected carefully by the Illuminati, with David Rockefeller on top. The "free" elections are just something for to keep people busy and to make them think there is a choice. As a matter of fact, no candidate will make it to Presidency if he hasn't got the support from the Illuminati. Such candidates will be ridiculed, lied about or financially overthrown already early in the campaign.

http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/billclintonscriminalbackground.htm

[Trickzta]

I’d say that once the MSM starts to complain about Media Control then there’s a chance that some people would accept that the manipulation and censorship of the Media is elevated from ‘theory’ to ‘fact’. Some may not see it this way, but it’s been rather obvious to others for some time now. No doubt in my mind whatsoever. Read on if you will.

The liberal main stream media (MSM) connived to elevate Obama to the presidency in 2008 and to reelect him in 2012. Remember Journalist? (See “Media Conspired to Protect Obama“)

The MSM refused to investigate Obama’s shadowy background and history of associating with known communists, including his childhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who was a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party.

Now, 6 years into his presidency, more and more of the MSM are complaining about Obama’s press restrictions and lack of transparency. But not one complainer has expressed remorse for colluding to get this toxic man elected twice as president.

http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2014/10/29/karma-is-a-bitch-msm-now-say-obama-is-a-danger-to-press-freedom/

Here are some of those in the MSM who are bitching: Listed in the link above.

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan

New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson

David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times,

Michael Oreskes, a senior managing editor of The Associated Press,

Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who is now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University,

Financial Times correspondent Richard McGregor

CBS veteran television news anchor and chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer

On March 10, 2014, after 21 years with the CBS network as its Washington bureau correspondent and occasional Evening News substitute anchor, Sharyl Attkisson resigned from CBS News, reportedly due to frustration over the network’s liberal bias and lack of dedication to investigative reporting.

New York Times’ foreign policy reporter James Risen

On Oct. 3, 2014, at a recent joint meeting of the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Associated Press Photo Managers, the Associated Press’ Washington Bureau chief Sally Buzbee detailed 8 ways the Obama administration is restricting access to information.

On Oct. 25, 2014, speaking at a White House Correspondents’ Association seminar, USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page called the Obama White House not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any other in history.

More Dangerous? Sounds ominous and is rather scary when you factor in the strange and mysterious deaths of some journalists in the past few years.

[pmbguy]

Dude... you got the best avatar likeness on the forum!

But Tricky... I bet your wife does not listen to a word you say... like wears the pants and made you get a vasectomy

[HR Solutions]

Lol ......... Does anyone on this forum actually read what he writes ? ..... sorry I mean copy pastes ....

[Trickzta]

How much would you wager pmguy? I bet you’re the boss and you have your wife’s permission to say so. There are activities that my wife, my 1st wife for 26 years and counting, and I share, one example is riding bicycles (and walking) out in the country or in Nature Reserves and spending quality time watching the sun go down and the stars come out while we talk about common interests and enjoy each others' company.

Sure, in the everyday matters some domains are my wife’s and some are mine, some we share. This works for us and I hope that others are as lucky and as content with their marriage as we are. We make a point of getting away at least once a month for the weekend, and often for a week or four days at least. Just the two of us. It’s great to have someone that you’re close to and have someone that you enjoy being alone with for days on end without getting bored or tired of each others' company.

Early next year we’re spending ten days in a rock cottage on a mountain without electricity, TV, WIFI, cell phone coverage etc. It’s the only cottage on the mountain and there are waterfalls and streams nearby. Heaven.

We both wear pants. I don’t wear skirts. I don’t talk about politics to my wife and she don’t talk about diets and fashion to me.

Read the next article to see who wears the pants in South Africa. I’ve “copied and pasted” the whole article for those that don’t open links. The link is supplied as the source.

[Trickzta]

October 30, 2014
Resource-Cursed Crony Capitalism
Who Really Runs the South African Show?
by PATRICK BOND

The biggest credibility crisis ever to hit South Africa’s independent media is unfolding this week. There is a serious risk that fewer than a half-dozen power-crazed corporate managers will destroy the waning integrity – and at minimum, the ownership structure – of the country’s most popular tv news station, eTV, which had aspired to become Africa’s answer to Al-Jazeera. These men are once- radical trade unionists – now gone to pot.

From the standpoint of national politics, even more is at stake, as tends to happen when deep rot is uncovered linking the hyper-competitive (but mostly banal and always shrill) mainstream media, ex-leftist entrepreneurs, a wealthy but decaying sweetheart trade union, predatory multinational corporations and a corruption-riddled state. If there were justice, the rotten structure would be pushed over and new foundations built for a sound media, economy and democracy.

However, though even minor reform is distant, at least the society is quite prepared for all this, psychologically. Déjà vu: just over two years ago, we were profoundly shaken when leaked emails sent to a multinational mining house by a prominent ruling-party businessman-politician – and former National Union of Mineworkers general secretary – revealed how he commandeered the state to end a labour dispute with platinum mineworkers.

Emailer Cyril Ramaphosa, who owned 9 percent of Lonmin until early this year, described that wage struggle as “dastardly criminal.” On August 15 2012, he assured company executives that thanks to his prodding, the police minister would soon “act in a more pointed way.” At the time, the region’s leading cops were acutely aware of Ramaphosa’s political power.

A day later, the result was the Marikana massacre of 34 mineworkers. It caused not only incalculable national reputational damage, but lasting class conflict. What had been the World Bank’s Lonmin poster-child ‘Strategic Community Investment’ project was, in the process, unveiled as a housing development fake (5500 pledged, 3 delivered), a women’s empowerment fraud, a UN Declaration of Human Rights promise-breaker and a serial tax cheat.

Since then, Ramaphosa has repeatedly attracted activist protests – in a university lecture, in parliament and in the Marikana Commission investigating the massacre – against his ideological U-turn and obeisance to London capital. Though he became the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party’s deputy president just four months after the massacre and is thus likely to replace President Jacob Zuma in 2019, his comprador-bourgeois role fronting for Lonmin will never be forgiven or forgotten.

History does sometimes repeat itself, as farce. Seven months ago, Marcel Golding – a former National Union of Mineworkers deputy general secretary (serving under Ramaphosa 25 years ago) now running eNews – received a string of emails from a behind-the-scenes fixer, Yunis Shaik. To every media observer’s astonishment, these emails were lodged in papers at the Cape Town Labour Court last Friday by Golding, now desperately battling to save his eNews leadership.

The documents prove that six weeks before this year’s national election, Shaik told Golding and his wife, eNews executive Bronwyn Keene-Young, that their nightly national broadcast should give “lead story” coverage to Zuma for the opening of the $270 million De Hoop Dam in the country’s northeast, most minerals-rich region.

The intermediary between Zuma and Shaik was Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel, former general secretary of the SA Clothing and Textile Workers Union (Sactwu). Within the eNews holding company, Shaik’s main protectors were the founding and current Sactwu general secretaries, Johnny Copelyn and Andre Kriel – all close pals of Golding until recently. Now they are maximum enemies.

March 24 was a flashpoint moment, as Shaik wrote: “I got a call from Minister Patel today. He says President Zuma this day opened a new dam. The building of dams is a big issue and has big impact on our country for supply of water etc. he wants for us to cover it tonight.”

When after two days eNews had only mentioned the De Hoop Dam fleetingly on the morning show, Shaik emailed Keene-Young again, frustrated. “I received three sms from Ebrahim and a phone call which gave rise to me sending an email to Marcel and yourself.”

Shaik continued: “after receiving another phone call from Ebrahim, and you and Marcel still not available,” he then called and sms-ed eNews director Patrick Conroy, “alerting him of the news and suggested it gets some coverage. The fact that Ebrahim comes knocking on my door arises from the undertaking you and Marcel had given him with regard to coverage of the infrastructure programme.”

This deal was not trivial, for eNews’ 2.5 million nightly viewers are an audience 2.5 times greater than the state SA Broadcasting Corporation’s English-language news show (itself subject to regular ridicule by the SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition and campaigning by the Right2Know movement, for many good reasons, including SABC’s hackish and unqualified chief operating officer who was fired by a court for faking a high school pass last Friday).

During eNews’ 2012 London launch, Conroy claimed it would “become the Al Jazeera of Africa.” But now, Patel’s “ham-fisted attempt at Stasi-style propaganda” – as the Sunday Business Times described the abuse of power at eNews – makes transparent “just how wafer-thin the line really is between powerful people seeking propaganda and the information dished out to the public.”

Golding’s main ally on the board of directors of the eNews holding company was Barbara Hogan, and she immediately resigned: “I am mindful of the briefing that Yunis Shaik gave me when he claimed that Sactwu … had lost patience with the editorial practices of eTV, citing the failure to give prominent coverage to Minister Ebrahim Patel’s economic pronouncements, as an instance of such dissatisfaction.”

Shaik’s emails imply that the eNews commitment to Patel’s infrastructure projects followed a deal-sealing meeting at the Golding/Keene-Young home one Sunday: “the undertaking to give more attention to the news was also to the President and other Ministers as part of our lobbying for support on the STB programme.” Oops, how could Golding let that one slip out?

As South Africa prepares for digital tv migration, the Set-Top Box ‘STB programme’ was Golding’s attempt to garner state support for a combined, fee-based cable news and internet access system in which he was simultaneously investing just over $2 million, in order to ensure eNews had control over rapid STB retail installation. However the share price of the local electronics firm he favoured soon tanked, resulting in sufficiently large losses that Copelyn and Shaik allegedly had a pretense for dismissing Golding this month, for dereliction of duty, gross negligence, dishonesty, and breaches of fiduciary duties and ethics policy.

(Whether true or not, media activists insist the STBs – costing around $100 – be provided by the state as a free universal lifeline service so as to enhance information access.)

Golding rebutted that in reality, the STB programme was trivial and the fall-out with other eNews owners occurred because of the Sactwu/Patel attempt to force the broadcaster to adopt a pro-ANC political agenda. This follows similar allegations involving a tv channel recently launched by the infamous Gupta family – close Zuma family partners, hence acquiring untouchability status – and a leading newspaper chain bought by another ANC supporter (with 45 percent SA and Chinese state financing). Ironically, the latter is called Independent News, but the new owner’s people quickly fired a leftist labour commentator and Cape Town editor who were both critical of crony capitalism [disclosure: I write occasionally for its Durban and Johannesburg newspapers].

What kind of propaganda would Patel want dished out on national television? He certainly would not want eNews to mention the De Hoop Dam’s cost overruns (130 percent) or controversies surrounding its main beneficiaries, platinum mines, which get 60 percent of the new water supply. A year ago, such information catalyzed sell-out accusations against Zuma by an opposition party. Other De Hoop Dam victims are downstream, in water-starved Mozambican communities and in the Kruger National Park, Africa’s premier wildlife reserve. There, park officials joined by progressive environmentalists and water-sector NGOs firmly opposed De Hoop’s diversion of water to the mines (not to poor people).

For Patel, worst of all would be a national news show providing rudimentary class analysis of infrastructure’s costs to ordinary people. This is off-limits, judging from Patel’s diversionary arguments on SABC during the controversial passage of his fast-track infrastructure legislation earlier this year.

Early on, it was obvious that fat-cat foreign mining houses will be the winners in Patel’s high-carbon, export-oriented Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission, and that poor people will lose through much higher electricity, water and transport prices. In Parliament, no one I encountered in a hearing last January could rebut concerns about Patel’s excessive haste, especially after a recent round of infrastructure white-elephant breeding that included World Cupsoccer stadiums, the hated new highway tolling system around Johannesburg, luxury airport spending (and a subsidy-sucking fast train to Johannesburg-Pretoria), and many others.

The intensity of the background debate about infrastructure winners and losers – in the world’s most unequal major economy – is why Keene-Young’s 26 March email rebuttal to Shaik makes such disturbing reading. In what was an otherwise admirably fractious reply, she assured, “undertakings made by Marcel and myself to Ebrahim Patel” to offer a series of eNews reports on infrastructure projects were indeed fulfilled.

“The series has been produced and broadcast by our news team as agreed… We have delivered in every way on the agreement and the quality of the broadcasts has been outstanding…”, she claimed.

Really? The eNews team does have talented journalists, without question, and e.tv shows are often critical of government. But this particular series was sufficiently happy-faced that the broadcasts now feature prominently on Patel’s government website. The eNews overview report on infrastructure is one of the worst cases, celebrating two parastatal corporations’ most destructive mega-projects: Eskom’s two $10 billion coal-fired power plants and Transnet’s $30 billion rail, oil pipeline and shipping expansion.

To disguise South Africa’s awful – and worsening – infrastructural projects on eNews, Shaik was Patel’s logical ally. Though mostly out of public view, this former Sactwu deputy general secretary was previously best known thanks to his brothers Schabir and Moe. The two achieved permanent notoriety when Schabir helped corrupt then-deputy president Zuma (who was fired as a result, in 2005) via a bribe from a French arms dealer (as one of many examples), and when in 2008-09, Moe leaked political secrets of the same man – who became President Zuma in 2009 – to the US State Department, whose diplomats chortled in cables that Chelsea Manning then (thankfully) released to WikiLeaks. Nicknamed ‘Mole Shaik’ as a result, he was then put in charge of the Development Bank of Southern Africa’s infrastructure projects across Africa, in spite of having no related experience or project finance qualifications.

This, then, is the new South Africa’s Achilles Heel: a nexus of Resource-Cursed crony capitalism centred on lavish state subsidies for the multinational corporate extractive industries’ infrastructure needs, dirty politricks (oftentimes bearing family fingerprints), cynical manipulation of the media, and the degeneration of once-committed liberation movement activists and trade unionists into some of the world’s most venal email leaksters.

At Marikana, this combination was lethal – while this week’s messy tv news battle has elements that are simply laughable.

However, there’s no mirth if you are a South African who wants good quality journalism, genuine democracy, much less inequality and poverty, full employment and a fairer economy, a clean environment, generous social policy, local sovereignty, corruption-free accumulation, gender equity and freedom for LGBTI people, an end to migrant labour exploitation, and so many other fruits anticipated to come with liberation from apartheid.

Because now you are realizing just how closely the current ruling crew’s deracialised configuration of power across economy, politics and journalism resembles the elite’s pre-1994 structure.
And if so, then this media meltdown can only add fire to your belly, as you hunger for change.

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/30/who-really-runs-the-south-african-show/