Alt-News

The Great Linking – A Paradigm Shift in Alternative News Optimization

The “situation”
The last survivors of the free press fly under the banner of Alt-News. They are a battle-hardened bunch from their inception. Especially since 2017 they have come under the withering fire of the corporate controlled western hegemonic war machine and its effort to totally scrub the internet of all real investigative journalism thereby killing off the free press once and for all. Google, with its near monopoly on search engine results, has played an illegal leading role in that largely successful suppression effort. The American alt-right corporate controlled western hegemonic war machine is strongly supported by NATO and the EU headquartered in Brussels. There is however another fleet of organizations that is far larger and older than the alt-news organizations, and is also devoted to truth and most importantly, peace. These are the peace/anti-war, religious, interfaith, and humanist organizations. But these two large groups of organizations are not really interconnected within themselves, and they are not connected to each other.

Nuclear escalation [1], incessant bombing of Syria and assassinations of Iranians, 25,000 people starving to death every day (mainly due to economic sanctions), the New Cold War [2] and the shadow regulation that suppresses alt-news and peace advocacy organizations - are significant issues of concern to all people of conscience.
[1] Both American and British are increasing nuclear stockpiles https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/15/cap-on-trident-nuclear-warhead-stockpile-to-rise-by-more-than-40
[2] New Cold War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAfeYMONj9E
https://blackagendareport.com/new-cold-war-built-humanitarian-interventionist-lies-and-dismissal-actual-war-crimes
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/18/us-government-funded-coda-story
https://www.mintpressnews.com/shame-on-you-new-york-times-scientists-speak-out-media-disinformation-china/275382
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1218193.shtm l
https://www.rt.com/news/518001-huawei-us-national-security-threat
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-seeks-anti-china-alliance-on-tech-with-joe-biden
https://www.rt.com/russia/517738-bbc-anti-moscow-information
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/18/sucking-liberals-into-a-new-cold-war/?print=pdf
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/518953-western-hemisphere-us-military
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/518932-us-sanctions-china-cold-war

There is no plan to address the polarization between the wealthy and poor

Rogue journalist and social philosopher Caitlin Johnstone was correct in her article titled: There's only one news story, repeating over and over again, 2 Mar, 2021

"There is only ever one news story on any given day, and it is always the same news story: wealthy and powerful people seek more wealth and power, and narratives are spun to advance these agendas.
"That’s it. That’s all you’re ever seeing when you read the news. There are sports scores and the occasional celebrity death mixed in for entertainment, but when it comes to major political and governmental events you’re only ever seeing the effects of wealthy and powerful people working to obtain more wealth, and power and narratives being spun to promote these agendas.
"Today, it’s the Democratic Party killing the $15 minimum wage, protests in Haiti, US electoral shenanigans in Ecuador, bombings and sanctions on Syria, China bad, Russia bad. Appearances which, taken individually, at first glance look like breaking news stories, but when examined closely and integrated into the big picture are actually the exact same dynamics that were playing out yesterday with slightly different shapes. Tomorrow those same dynamics will play out again in different appearances. The shapes are different, but it’s always water droplets in the air."
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/517008-caitlin-johnstone-one-news-story

Likewise, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies were correct in the following meta-analysis.

Ten Problems with Biden’s Foreign Policy – and One Solution, March 15, 2021
By and large though, Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy.
In this respect, Biden is following in the footsteps of Obama and Trump, who both promised fresh approaches to foreign policy but for the most part delivered more endless war.
Instead, the Biden administration seems firmly entrenched behind the walls of hostility Trump built between America and our neighbors, from his renewed Cold War against China and Russia to his brutal sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and dozens of countries around the world, and there is still no word on cuts to a military budget that has grown by 15% since FY2015 (inflation-adjusted).
Despite endless Democratic condemnations of Trump, Biden’s foreign policy so far shows no substantive change from the policies of the past four years. Here are ten of the lowlights...
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/15/ten-problems-with-bidens-foreign-policy-and-one-solution

In sum, the alt-press is pro-humanity and anti-war unlike the politicians that supposedly represent us and the Mainstream “news” media that rationalizes and drives the wars based on government “talking points” directly from the corporate-profit-driven Military Industrial-Media complex.
Example?

New Cold War is Built on Humanitarian Interventionist Lies and Dismissal of Actual War Crimes, Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor, Mar 17, 2021
New Cold War is Built on Humanitarian Interventionist Lies and Dismissal of Actual War Crimes
To manufacture consent for its own constant aggressions the US claims its competitors are guilty of even greater crimes – sheer inventions that never happened.
“Humanitarian interventionist lies represent the most dangerous form of misinformation currently fueling the U.S.’s New Cold War.”
A revolutionary’s first commitment is to the truth. But deciphering the truth has become a difficult task in the United States, not least because the misinformation apparatus is both enormous and tied directly to the imperatives of imperialist state itself. Whatever separation that existed between the military industrial complex and the U.S. corporate media is a thing of the past.
U.S. imperialism has spent much of the last decade gradually escalating a New Cold War with China and the media has manufactured consent for each and every one of its aggressive policies. A new Gallup poll revealed that 80 percent of the U.S. public possess a negative opinion of China. Only Iran and the DPRK, two of the most villainized nations of the U.S. propaganda machine, are viewed with more disdain among Americans.
The U.S. public is bombarded with anti-China media headlines from across the political spectrum. Humanitarian interventionist lies represent the most dangerous form of misinformation currently fueling the U.S.’s New Cold War. Most prominent is the fable that a “genocide” is being committed against Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
“Whatever separation that existed between the military industrial complex and the U.S. corporate media is a thing of the past.”
This month, CNN published a report from the Newslines Institute that claims to independently verify “genocide” in Xinjiang for the first time. The report offered no revelations beyond claims that have already been regurgitated for several years by dubious sources such as Radio Free Asia and Adrian Zenz , a far-right Christian fundamentalist who believes it is his God-given mission to take down the Communist Party of China.
The Newsline Institute is itself a dubious source of information. The head of the Washington-based think tank, Ahmed Alwani , is a former advisor to the U.S. African Command. It should be noted that the U.S. African Command was a leading force in the U.S.-NATO overthrow of Libya in 2011—an intervention which relied upon the same Muslim Brotherhood-backed proxies linked to Alwani . Managing Editor Robin Blackburn is a former editor for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm known as the “Shadow CIA.”
“The head of the Newsline Institute is a former advisor to the U.S. African Command.”
Whether it is the tens of millions of dollars that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has poured into the World Uyghur Congress or the unknown sums flowing from military contractors to the coffers of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), it is clear that the sources peddling humanitarian interventionist narratives in the U.S. corporate media are far from trusty worthy. This hasn’t stopped the Joe Biden administration from endorsing the “genocide” narrative for the purposes of rebranding the New Cold War.
While some believed Biden would reduce tensions with China, the temperature of the New Cold War has risen in recent weeks following the latest militarist maneuvers of new administration. Earlier this month, 27.4 billion USD was requested by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command for an “anti-China missile network” that would run along key islands on China’s border such as Okinawa, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Biden joined the anti-China “Quad” alliance of Japan, India, and Australia on March 12th for the first international summit of his tenure as U.S. president. The alliance was given new life under the Trump administration after more than a decade of inactivity. That Biden would choose the “Quad” as his first summit sends a clear message that the U.S.-led New Cold War on China will continue under the pretext of strengthening alliances and addressing “humanitarian” concerns.
“The temperature of the New Cold War has risen following the latest militarist maneuvers of new administration.”
Humanitarian interventionism renders the U.S. empire’s maneuvers mundane to the passive observer. The truth, however, is that humanitarian interventionism masks the actual war crimes committed by the United States and its imperial lackies. Repeated claims of “genocide” in China or “chemical weapons” in Syria are held to a far higher level of import than the verifiable genocide being committed against the Palestinians by the U.S.’s top ally in Israel or the tens of thousands of Venezuelans who have died from the impact of U.S. sanctions. Not one minute in the U.S. press is spent on the millions of deaths produced from the quarter century-long invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by U.S.-sponsored regimes in Rwanda and Uganda or the tens of millions dead or displaced in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasions of Libya and Syria beginning in 2011…
Behind the illusion of strength rests a foundation of systemic decay. Humanitarian interventionism not only rebrands war crimes as human rights operations but also erases the true motivations behind them. The U.S. has grown accustomed to pursuing humanitarian wars in moments when its interests are threatened. In 2014, Obama intensified U.S. support for violent rightwing opposition figures and sanctions against Venezuela once it became clear that the death of Hugo Chavez would not mark the end of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Syrian government has been accused multiple times of using chemical weapons on civilians since 2016 despite being in the most favorable position to defeat U.S. and other foreign-backed proxies since the war began over a decade ago...
(Please read the whole article from the link below. It is excellent.)
https://blackagendareport.com/new-cold-war-built-humanitarian-interventionist-lies-and-dismissal-actual-war-crimes

What Silk Road Countries Can Do

It seems obvious that the major English language newspapers of the Silk Roads should all interlink. Remember, Google's first big ranking factor is links in from Quality Sites; that means SEO optimized sites. If all the major Silk Road nations' put links to each other on their sites, all of their Google rankings should go up. If not? Law suit! Discrimination! Remember, President Biden isn't perfect, but, he has to keep minorities happy and appear to care about minorities. The people of the Silk Road are human too, and deserve equal representation with "corporate controlled news."

Below are just a few of the fine Silk Road online news services I would like to see interlink:

Afghanistan https://thekabultimes.gov.af (Afghanistan government owned newspaper)
Afghanistan https://www.khaama.com (Afghanistan – I interviewed these gentlemen a few years ago)
Armenia https://armenpress.am/eng (Armenia news)
Azerbaijan https://azertag.az (Azerbaijan State News)
Central Asia http://www.newscentralasia.net (news, information and analysis service with administrative office in Pakistan and editorial presence in Turkmenistan)
China https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/index.html (China National News)
China https://www.globaltimes.cn (China National/International News)
Georgia https://georgiatoday.ge (Georgia news)
India http://www.ptinews.com (India’s premier news organization)
India/South Asia https://aninews.in/about-us (ANI is today South Asia 's leading multimedia news agency with over 100 bureaus in India , South Asia & world)
Iran https://en.irna.ir (Iranian National News Agency)
Iraq https://ina.iq/eng (Iraqi National News Agency)
Kazakhstan https://astanatimes.com (Kazakhstan capital/international news)
Kazakhstan https://www.interfax.kz/?lang=eng (Kazak international news)
Kyrgyzstan https://akipress.com (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia news)
Malaysia https://www.bernama.com/en (Bernama Malaysia’s national news wire service)
Malaysia https://www.nst.com.my (Malaysia leading broadsheet news)
Mongolia https://theubposts.com (Mongolia’s leading English news since 1996)
Pakistan https://www.associatedpressservice.net (Pakistan news)
Pakistan https://www.dawn.com (Pakistan newspaper)
Qatar https://www.aljazeera.com (Qatar International news)
Russia https://tass.com (Russian news agency)
Russia https://www.rt.com (Russia Today)
Singapore https://www.straitstimes.com (Oldest newspaper in Singapore)
Sri Lanka http://www.dailymirror.lk/ (Sri Lanka largest daily news publication)
Syria http://www.sana.sy/en (Syrian National News Agency)
Tajikistan https://www.tajikistannews.net (Tajik news since 1999)
Thailand https://thainews.prd.go.th/en (National news bureau of Thailand)
Turkey https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey (Turkish News Agency)
Turkey https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com (Turkish news)
Turkmenistan https://turkmenportal.com/en/ (Official news)
Uzbekistan https://kun.uz/en (Uzbekistan news)
Uzbekistan https://www.uzdaily.uz/en (Uzbekistan news)

Silk Road voices deserve to be heard in the USA and world wide. Interlinking to the extent politically possible should help.

American attempts at colonization of the entire planet are not helping the average working person in the USA anyways. Just the opposite in fact.
President Trump’s and Biden’s “stimulus” checks are critically important, but where is the plan to reinvigorate small businesses that were devasted by COVID-19? The Small Business Administration is offering a loan program to small businesses, unlike the big corporations that enjoyed windfall profits benefitting wealthy white Americans. Saddling small businesses with debt is not a viable long-term solution given that the COVID-19 epidemic is far from over.

Where is a plan for greater distribution of wealth in the US via inheritance tax, closing tax loopholes for the wealthy and corporations, or a 5-year tax abeyance for low- and middle-income people? Why is there no tax on foreign off-shore accounts(?) and aggressive pursuit into, and penalties for hidden off-shore accounts? There is no plan whatsoever to address the increasing polarization of wealth in the USA or worldwide. The US government is not only pillaging the world, but even the working class in the USA as well. And that is a formula for disaster.

US citizens can have dual nationalities and open offshore accounts using the other passport thereby avoiding American taxes. Likewise, its ridiculously easy to set up shell companies in Panama, Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man, Nevis, Cook Islands, Scotland, and the United Kingdom.

The most important function that a shell company can offer for its shadow owner is providing anonymity while simultaneously guaranteeing control over the shell company and its resources. This suggests a dual structure of mediation. The main action in the legal realm is implemented by the formal organization, yet the visible but fake owner (or CEO) acts as a broker, following the informal orders of the real but secret owner. This is a type of mediation where a “representative broker” is delegated by another actor, whether a single individual or a group, to represent its interests and deal with the outside world (Gould & Fernandez, 1989; Jancsics, 2015).
https://psfa.sdsu.edu/spa/documents/Offshoring_at_Home__Domestic_Use_of_Shell_Companies_for_Corruption.pdf

Even I have been solicited to act as a third-party intermediary. I informed the person the IRS and Interpol were hunting such individuals and was informed they were only searching for terrorist money, not money from drugs, prostitution and weapons transfers. Still, I refused. My guess is at least half of American real assets are hidden, likewise for Chinese and Europeans. The wealth of humanity is hidden by the super-rich while the poor starve and the number of forcibly displaced people now exceeds 80 million.
Until these organized crime syndicates are closed down and governments worldwide start to demand greater circulation of capital, the world will remain teetering on the edge of implosion. It is unrestrained capitalism propped up by corporate owned and controlled media, and either corrupt or at minimum recklessly indifferent politicians that causes civil conflict that has brought this world to the brink of WWIII. “Let them eat cake” as was reported to have been said by Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution, didn’t play really well with the starving masses. Starting wars to distract hungry mobs justifiably angry about racist murders and economic disenfranchisement isn’t a very bright idea.
The stimulus checks are like big white daddy Santa Clause handing out candy to starving children, or a doctor that only gives aspirin to treat broken bones.

Presidents Trump and Biden only address symptoms and not the causes of the illnesses plaguing the USA and its penultimate negative effects on the world like wars and economic sanctions. Neither has the courage or foresight to seriously address the relationship between those failings.
Certainly, people need those stimulus checks, but they need the fundamental flaws in the American unrestrained capitalist system fixed just as much or even more. Temporary “fixes” create the illusion of a solution, but ultimately don’t change anything.
The global cabal of wealthy and powerful have so perfected corruption they have become a parasitic disease well along the way to killing the host.
When President Biden “talks with” the leaders of foreign countries on the American Department of Defense’s target list, he doesn’t really talk with them, but instead issues imperial edicts engineered to evoke maximum provocation. Why? These provocations push the aggression cycle the corporations profit from at the expense of the poor. President Trump referring to President Putin as “Killer Putin” is one example of that. President Putin’s response? Challenging President Biden to a public debate. Well played President Putin. Will Americans fall for that defamatory (“Russia-gate,” “Killer-Putin”) slogan like “China virus?” Probably, unless enough alt-news and peace organizations join The Great Linking and Americans start to have access to more accurate news on the internet.
At this time President Biden and his gang of sycophantic “yes-men” and women are “locked, cocked and ready to rock” into another series of wars based on the old American truism that “wars stimulate the economy and unify the people.”
He couldn’t be more wrong. The American people are sick and impoverished and handing out stimulus checks isn’t addressing the central issue of the growing and extreme wealth inequality. They are sick from the COVID-19, the failure of the federal government to have health services in place before hand, the lack of leadership when it arrived, and the lockdowns and economic devastation it caused and continues to cause. They are sick of the hyper-accelerating national debt and the interest it incurs, and sick of the wastefulness of the American Department of Defense.
Starting and escalating more foreign wars isn’t going to unify the people. It’s only going to drive further wedges into the already highly polarized society that has not experienced such poverty and hopelessness since the Great Depression of 1929. The potential for another civil war and WWIII has never been greater.

Alternative News (alt-news) The Great Linking project was designed to address all of the above issues. It is designed to improve the internet site rankings of alt-news and peace-oriented organizations by interlinking. This article only covers the alt-news sites. Another article is available with peace organizations (including anti-war, religious, interfaith, and humanist organization) embedded within an article. These two articles if posted on alt-news and peace organizations’ sites can be thought of as the simplest way to mutually improve site rankings, a test of Google’s algorithm, and/or a revolutionary act to finally put an end to American foreign military adventurism and deadly economic sanctions, while simultaneously affirming American First Amendment rights to freedom of the press and free speech.
Whereas mainstream news (MSM) tends to support alt-right international militarism, alt-news investigates and reports the abuse of power behind those efforts in exacting detail. Though many or most religious and secular peace advocacy organizations have 501(c)(3) or (4) status and relatively secure funding, the funding of most alt-news internet sites is marginal at best. In 2017 Google’s site ranking algorithms changed dramatically and most alt-news sites were hit very hard. Google’s new algorithms have come under fire from some publications and political groups, and legislative oversight has been suggested, but no solutions have been forthcoming.
By participating in The Great Linking, linked alt-news sites described in this article may earn higher rankings on web browser algorithms than by for example posting simple link lists because this article has original text in addition to diverse “quality” sources.
Simply ignoring the problem of alt-news suppression by Google doesn’t seem to be helping.
Google updates its algorithms quite often however most rules remain the same. Links in to a site from “quality,” SEO optimized sites (that for example have owned a domain name for many years and are often updated) earn big points. Links out from a site generally don’t hurt a site’s ranking unless they lead to spam sites.
Empires have always had their critics. One of the measures of a “great civilization” is the extent to which they tolerate, listen to and learn from their critics.
Complicating this simple fact is that other competing nations and civilizations can use domestic critics in other countries to undermine their civilization. This emphasizes the critical need for fact-checking and the news consumers’ need to know the funding sources of their news providers. That however does not diminish the often very legitimate critical assessments by one nation or civilization of another.
Alt-news lives in the shadow of mainstream news. Especially in recent years alt-news publications critically examining the multi-faced application of Euro-American hegemonic power have suffered an oppressive series of efforts to silence them, including spurious law suits, internet shadow regulation and algorithmic tyranny designed to drive them out of business.
And yet, alt-news survives knowing they hold a critically important role in the world giving a voice to the oppressed for they are the last real representatives of the so-called “fourth-estate” fearlessly reporting on the ever-growing malfeasance of the three traditional branches of government that have usurped near total power over mainstream news.

The above is about half of a "longish" article introducing alt-news to those not familiar with it.
That article and several others can be downloaded from Silk Road Virtual University Editor's site:
https://thegreatlinking.org

The bottom line is... the poor and under-represented cannot just sit around and wait for the wealthy and powerful to "fix" everything, because they won't. There are already many "minority coalitions," like alt-news sites, and peace/anti-war sites, but they are not linked up. The only way to get equal rights is to unify the minority coalitions so we at least get fair representation on the major search engines. For more on all this, please do visit https://thegreatlinking.org website.
United we stand, divided we end up in a slavery even worse than the one we have now.

This world could be like a paradise if we all make the effort to start to perceive the world with greater tolerance and respect for each other and the environment in which we live. It doesn't always have to be "us against "them." That is an illusion created by the makers of mischief. We can make this world infinitely better if we tried. Don't worry so much about the wealthy and powerful. They will come aboard when they are ready.

Little Paradise by romainguy is marked with CC0 1.0

Until that time, if you have a "quality site" that is SEO optimized, please do feel free to put "out-links" so some of the alt-news sites that can be found on the https://thegreatlinking.org site. We need to promote those who tell the truth even and especially in these difficult times.