Stephen Lendman
Ian Hurd: Warmongering academic. Rewarding careers are made out of allegiance to the empire’s criminal goals.
[P]revious articles explained when America goes to war of plans one, media scoundrels march in lockstep.
They justify the unjustifiable. They defend the indefensible. Big Lies proliferate. Truth is verboten. It’s systematically buried. It’s turned on its head.
Rule of law principles don’t matter. Supporting might over right takes precedence.
Benefitting powerful monied interests matters most of all. So does advancing America’s imperium.
MSM media reports, commentaries and editorials support what demands condemnation. It’s longstanding major media policy.
UK-based Media Lens editors David Cromwell and David Edwards provide “authoritative criticism of mainstream media bias and censorship, as well as providing in-depth analysis, quotes, media contact details and other resources.”
MSM betray their followers, they explain. Free and open societies are at risk. Fiction substitutes for fact.
News is carefully filtered. Dissent is targeted. It’s threatened. Independent voices are systematically shut out.
Aggressive wars are called liberating ones. America and other Western countries are increasingly lawless.
They get away with mass murder and much more. They do so in plain sight. In real time repeatedly.
On September 24, Cromwell and Edwards “nutshelled media zeitgeist in a single tweet,” saying:
ITV political editor Tom Brady said:
“I am not at all religious, but I can’t help feeling there may be a seventh circle of hell reserved somewhere for Jihadi John.”
He referred to the killer of US journalists James Foley, Steven Sotloff and British citizen David Haines.
Bradley’s comment highlights MSM duplicity. Their hypocrisy. They focus on Islamic State “pure evil.” They ignore longstanding state terrorism.
Mass slaughter, destruction, displacement, broken lives and unspeakable human misery it inflicts.
Doing so provides cover for lawless US aggression. It ignores how Obama uses IS and other Takfiri terrorists as proxy shock troops against Assad.
The same scheme ousted Gaddafi. Nations posing no threat to America are ravaged and destroyed.
Syria is the latest example. In late August 2013, New York Times editors featured Ian Hurd’s op-ed. Similar rubbish followed.
He’s a Northwestern University political science professor(1). He heads its international studies program.
Students are advised to avoid him. He supports lawless aggression. He shamelessly headlined “Bomb Syria, Even if It Is Illegal.”
He called it “urgent…to deter further massacres and to punish Bashar al-Assad.”
He lied claiming he used chemical weapons against his own people. No credible evidence suggests it. Plenty indicts US-supported terrorists.
Hurd turned a blind eye to reality. He supports America’s killing machine.
“There are moral reasons for disregarding the law,” he claimed. None whatever exist.
International, constitutional and US statute laws are inviolable. Violators must be held accountable.
America maintains huge stockpiles of illegal chemical and biological weapons. So does Israel.
Both countries use them at their discretion. They do so illegally. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mandates their elimination.
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) prohibits developing, producing, stockpiling and using them. It requires their destruction.
It doesn’t matter. America and Israel do what they please. Rogue states operate this way.
Syria voluntarily destroyed it CW stockpile. It did so under OPCW supervision.
It’s still accused of using CWs it doesn’t have. Ones it never used. Especially internally. Against its own people.
Post-9/11, Washington systematically violated international laws, treaties and norms. It continues doing so.
It spurned nuclear disarmament efforts. It did so to advance its program. To retain current stockpiles.
It renounced the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It usurped the right to develop and test new weapons.
It intends spending a trillion dollars or more over the next three decades modernizing its arsenal. It wants it able to have more than ever destructive power.
It abandoned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). It did so because it prohibits development, testing and deployment of missile defenses.
It spurned a proposed Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). Adoption would prohibit further weapons-grade uranium and plutonium production.
It would prevent new nuclear weapons being added to current stockpiles.
Washington spends more on military/defense programs than the rest of the world combined.
It does so with all budgeted and off-the-books secret components of foreign and homeland spending included.
It does it at the expense of vital domestic needs. They go begging to let Washington wage war on humanity.
It advocates preemptive/proactive/preventive/anticipatory first-strike nuclear wars.
It does so against non-nuclear states. Against ones posing no threat to America. It claims might is right.
It spurned the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). It prohibits developing, producing, stockpiling and using new biowarfare weapons.
It usurped the right to advance them. It did so lawlessly. It acted in violation of over a century of chemical, biological and radiological weapons prohibitions.
Hurd ignored what demands highlighting. He lied claiming Assad “violated humanitarian principles throughout (months of) conflict.”
Since Russia and China oppose Obama’s agenda, he should declare core rule of law principles null and void, Hurd said.
He should claim they “evolved.” He should declare Security Council authorization no longer is needed.
Throughout Syria’s conflict, Times editors featured other op-eds like Hurd’s. A rogue’s gallery of hardline extremists are featured.
Times editors leave no doubt where they stand. They support Washington’s imperial agenda.
They consider lawless aggression just cause. They ignore core rule of law principles, standards and norms in the process. They do it unapologetically.
Washington Post editors march to the same drumbeat. On September 22, they headlined “US airstrikes in Syria signal a new battlefield,” saying:
Obama authorized airstrikes in Syria…(T)hey are to be welcomed…Obama (is) justified (in conducting his campaign) to rescue a vulnerable population…”
WaPo editors urge more than airstrikes. They want US combat troops deployed without saying so explicitly.
They ignored Obama’s lawless aggression. They endorsed it but want more. So do Wall Street Journal editors.
They headlined “America Bombs in Syria,” saying:
Doing so “mark(ed) a welcome offensive…(It) takes the war to the terrorists who beheaded two Americans” and one British subject.
They “threaten US interests in the Middle East and security at home.”
“The mistake in the 1990s against Osama bin Laden was to limit the assaults to pinprick strikes and one-time affairs.”
“…Obama’s stated goal…require(s) ground forces. (They’re) needed…to collect intelligence, direct air strikes, and conduct special” operations America does best.
Candidate Obama campaigned against Bush’s Iraq war. He pledged to end Afghanistan fighting.
He promised a new era of peace and stability. President Obama exceeds the worst of all his predecessors and then some.
WSJ editors ignore his worst crimes. Presidents should never start wars they can’t win, they said.
They want Obama to flex US muscle. Go all the way. Show “America is the strong horse.”
No matter how much death and destruction it causes. Regardless of what rule of law principles say.
Or critics. Or fundamental moral standards. Or whatever the cost or duration.
MSM media scoundrels march in lockstep. They support US aggression. They turn a blind eye to right over wrong.
They ignore their own code of ethics. It prioritizes public trust, credibility, accuracy, and truth.
It mandates fairness, integrity, independence, and accountability.
MSM scoundrels serve wealth, power and privilege alone. They do so at the expense of principle, honor and trust.
They betray their readers and viewers in the process. They do it unapologetically. They ignore what’s right. They act with disdain.
Famed journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) called them “prostitutes of the press.”
Paul Craig Roberts calls them “presstitutes.” They “whore for Washington and” corporate America.
They’re propagandists, not journalists. They’re charlatans.
They’re scam artists.
They’re scoundrels in the worst sense of the term. They make street whores look respectable by comparison.
Integrity isn’t their long suit. They march in lockstep with imperial lawlessness. They misinform people willfully.
They lie for power. They carpet bomb readers and viewers with managed news misinformation garbage.
They generate depoliticized societies. They support wrong over right.
They call mob rule democratic governance. They twist facts to fit imperial policy.
They believe war is peace. They consistently turn truth on its head.
They’re on the wrong side of history. Don’t expect them to explain.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
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Notes
(1) Ian Hurd can be contacted here.
