Stephen Lendman
Jeff Bezos: One more sordid connection for a paper that is already notorious for its eager complicity in the crimes of empire. (DonkeyHotey, via flickr)
The Washington Post ranks with the worst. Its editorial policy long ago fell from grace. It openly fronts for wealth, power and privilege.
Extreme hawkishness defines its agenda. Neocons control editorial policy. Owner Jeff Bezos has CIA ties. He’s bought, paid for and owned by dark forces ruling America.
He got a $600 million CIA contract for much more than Amazon Web Services (AWA). He proliferates information dark forces in America want published.
He has a disturbing history currying favor with national security officials. WaPo should explain his CIA connection. Readers should know its editorial policy reflects its war on humanity agenda.
WaPo is a virtual CIA house organ. Earlier, Communications Professor/journalism scholar/media critic Robert McChesney commented, saying:
“When the main shareholder in one of the very largest corporations in the world benefits from a massive contract with the CIA on the one hand, and that same billionaire owns the Washington Post on the other hand, there are serious problems.”
Bezos has a disturbing history currying favor with national security officials.
“The Post is unquestionably the political paper of record in the United States, and how it covers governance sets the agenda for the balance of the news media.”
“Citizens need to know about this conflict of interest in the columns of the Post itself.”
“If some official enemy of the United States had a comparable situation – say the owner of the dominant newspaper in Caracas was getting $600 million in secretive contracts from the Maduro government – the Post itself would lead the howling chorus impaling that newspaper and that government for making a mockery of a free press.”
Paul Pillar is a former top CIA analyst. On February 8, he headlined his Consortium News article “WPost Lost in Neocon Fantasyland.” Saying, in effect, its editorial policy supports endless wars of aggression against nonexistent enemies. Its Watergate-type exposes no longer exist. It’s in bed with dark forces it should confront with forceful editorial truth and full disclosure.
It’s on the wrong side of virtually every issue harming millions in America and worldwide. It proliferates pure propaganda, not journalism. WaPo editors are part of the anti-Putin chorus. They consistently blame him for US/Kiev high crimes.
They consider Illegitimate Ukrainian Nazis democrats. They call courageous Donbass freedom fighters terrorists. They ignore Putin’s all-out efforts for peaceful conflict resolution. They come perilously close to urging US war on Russia. They’re mindless about a potentially humanity destroying conflict if lunatics in Washington launch it.
Their reporting on Boris Nemtsov’s murder reads like bad fiction. They ludicrously portray him as Churchillian. He was a political nobody. Previous articles explained. His RPR-PARNAS party has less than 5% support. He enjoyed around 1% at most.
Polls show over 85% of Russians back Putin – more than double Obama’s support in America. A Sunday planned spring commemoration became a Nemtsov memorial march – a one-day Moscow event of no significance attracting around 21,000 participants at its height.
Most came simply to show respect – not support for a man the vast majority of Russians disliked.
Previous articles explained he was a US-funded Putin-bashing self-serving opportunist – polar opposite what the vast majority of Russians want and deserve. The typical type scoundrel Washington likes installing in governments it topples as a convenient stooge serving US interests and their own at the expense of their own people they betray.
WaPo editors turned truth on its head claiming “(t)housands def(ied) Putin in Moscow.” They look for any reason to bash him. They lied claiming “Russians know all too well the possible consequences of joining protest rallies in Moscow.”
Police don’t “regularly attack and beat peaceful demonstrators” as WaPo editors claimed. This kind of lie is common practice in America and other Western countries. Police in cahoots with Washington viciously attacked Occupy Wall Street protesters earlier in cities nationwide.
Club-wielding/head bashing cops attacked anti-war and global justice demonstrators earlier. Anyone challenging US injustice risks facing full-force state ruthlessness – including prison time, torture or death.
Don’t expect WaPo editors to explain. Instead they lied claiming “tens of thousands showed up” in Moscow Sunday for Nemtsov. It bears repeating. Estimates were about 21,000 at most. Claiming they “def(ied) fear that pervades Vladimir Putin’s Moscow” is polar opposite truth.
Saying Sunday’s turnout showed “many Russians, like Mr. Nemtsov himself, did not give up the cause of democracy and human rights” reveals more about WaPo-style neocon “fantasyland.” So does hyping nonexistent Putin “imperialism and repression.” Citing a “democratic West,” in contrast, is pure fantasy. WaPo editors make garden-variety big liars look benign in comparison.
“(M)any Western leaders remain in a state of denial about Mr. Putin or still hesitate to take measures that might stop his aggression,” they ranted.
No Russian aggression exists now or earlier. None is planned. No evidence suggests it. Putin shames Western leaders. They support Washington’s permanent war agenda. They’re comfortable with US-dominated unipolarity.
Putin deplores war. He supports multi-world polarity, peace and stability. WaPo editors urge more sanctions on Russia. They want Kiev supplied with more heavy weapons than already. They want war, not peace. They lied about phantom Russian forces in Ukraine. No one can find them because they don’t exist.
Since both sides agreed on February 12 Minsk ceasefire terms, Kiev continues to violate them. Rebels respond only if attacked. WaPo editors maliciously accused “Russian forces” of breaching Minsk. They practically compared Putin to Hitler.
They outrageously claim he intends “to forcibly overturn the post-Cold War order in Europe.” On the one hand, they said “(i)t’s not known who murdered Mr. Nemtsov…” On the other, they claim “it probably won’t be (known) as long as Mr. Putin remains in power.”
They ludicrously said Sunday marchers “placed responsibility where it must lie.” A previous article said it’s inconceivable to think Putin wanted Nemtsov killed. Few Russians think so. Clear signs suggest a CIA false flag!
The article quoted Washington’s ambassador to Russia John Tefft practically admitting Nemtsov was more valuable to America dead than alive. It said draw your own conclusion.
It bears repeating. WaPo editors want war, not peace. They’re heading perilously close to urging direct confrontation with Russia. They are part of the lunatic fringe in America’s capital. The danger to humanity is they may get the war they crave.
A Final Comment
Readers expect more from Financial Times commentaries than Gideon Rachman’s March 2 anti-Putin rant. He headlined “Vladimir Putin’s survival strategy is lies and violence.”
Ad hominem maliciousness substituted for facts and legitimate analysis. Rachman lied saying Putin “stirs nationalist paranoia that makes Nemtsov’s killing permissible.”
He outrageously blamed him for the crime saying “(w)hen a government starts murdering its critics in the streets, it has crossed the line into barbarism.”
Lay blame where it belongs. America’s CIA and Israel’s Mossad have longstanding records of eliminating figures opposing their governments’ imperial policies the old-fashioned way – by a bullet, bomb, slit throat or convenient well-planned accident.
Don’t expect MSM writers to explain. Rachman disgracefully compared today’s Russia to Soviet years under Stalin and Nazi Germany.
He sounded like WaPo editors saying “(u)nleashing vioience and then lying about it has become standard operating procedure for Mr. Putin’s Kremlin – from eastern Ukraine to the streets of Moscow.”
Anyone making minimal efforts to understand what’s ongoing knows Washington, Israel, Britain and rogue NATO partners bear full responsibility for most global violence, instability and cold-blooded killings like Nemtsov’s murder.
Blaming Putin for their crimes doesn’t wash. Willful lying on issues this serious shows Rachman is no different from neocon US journalists – paid propagandists by any standard.
His article included a litany of Big Lies – whoppers shaming FT editors for publishing it. Making them look like their Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal counterparts.
They owe their readers an apology for printing rubbish they should have rejected straightaway.
Start by replacing Rachman. Follow up with an editorial retracting his Big Lies. Join others in working for world peace and stability. Help save humanity from the scourge of possible nuclear war.
[box] 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 [/box] [printfriendly]
