TOXIC MEDIA: Why Readers Shouldn’t Trust Staff Reporters

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 The following is a classic essay appearing on our Virtual University section (and Media Front). Though first run more than a year ago, its truths remain as fresh and relevant today as if it had been written only yesterday. 

First iteration January 19, 2017 by Eric Zuesse.

In order to be a staff journalist, one must adhere to the propaganda-aims of the individual(s) (the employer) who control(s) the given ‘news’ medium. No newsmedia-owner hires ‘reporters’ or editors who report (or allow to be published) facts which contradict that owner’s (or controller’s — because this applies to ‘non-profits’ as well) central viewpoint. The employees are purely megaphones for their boss’s views. That’s what they were hired to be, and that’s what they are if they succeed in their profession and rise up the career-ladder in it. Anything that a staff journalist writes (or allows to be published, if that person is an editor) contradicting the owner’s views, counts against that employee, and increases his/her likelihood of being eliminated, or at least of being denied a deserved promotion (because not doing the person’s job for the employer).

To be a staff ‘journalist’ is to be a ‘reporter’ for hire, who is willing to exclude reporting whatever facts the owner wants his/her audience not to know (which can be some very important things, such as that the President is clearly lying to say that solid evidence exists that “Saddam’s WMD” still exist). Unfortunately, almost all media-owners have an agenda that overrides truth — they don’t obtain the huge funding that’s necessary to build audience-share if they aren’t backed by big money (billionaire investors, and mega-corporate advertisers) to begin with. Opposing the big money is a sure pathway to obscurity in the field of ‘journalism’; and ‘journalism’ prizes (especially on international-news or other major stories) are pig’s lipstick, far more than indications of journalistic competence. The best journalists, and news-sites, are low-budget, basically volunteer operations (such as you now are reading, and wikileaks). The big corporations don’t own them, and don’t advertise in them — and so, don’t control them.

The demonization of Vladimir Putin and Russia—one of the great and irrefutable barometers of media bankruptcy, not so much for what they say about these targets of constant vilification, but for what they do NOT say about their imperial masters.

A good example of this is the virtually uniform failure of the U.S.’news’ media (including all the Pulitzer people) to have reported the undeniable and simple — and supremely important — fact that U.S. President George W. Bush was lying to assert that he possessed solid evidence that ‘Saddam’s WMD’ still existed, and solid evidence that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his WMD stockpiles — and for him to have asserted, for example, that “a report came out of the Atomic – the IAEA that they [Iraq] were six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need” to invade Iraq without allowing international weapons-inspectors to complete any new investigation into the matter. But that ‘IAEA’ ‘report’ was actually fictitious — it didn’t even exist.

That 7 September 2002 lie by Bush was stenographically reported to the (unfortunately) trusting public, by the many propaganda-organizations (called ‘news’media) — none of which (except the small Washington Times) reported its blatant falsehood — none of them published to readers that, as the IAEA asserted, “There’s never been a report like that [which Bush alleged] issued from this agency.” That ‘IAEA report’ Bush referenced, had simply been cooked-up by George W. Bush and endorsed by Tony Blair. Like one great journalist bannered, “Everyone Knew that Iraq Didn’t Have WMDs”. Among those “Everyone” was Tony Blair himself, but his participation in Bush’s hoax would already have been obvious by no later than 7 September 2002, when Prime Minister Blair was accompanying U.S. President Bush as Bush was fabricating on-the-spot that lie, and when Blair failed to ‘correct’ what the U.S. President had just asserted. Instead, Blair reaffirmed it. They were two gangsters (just ask the Iraqis whether they were gangsters): Bush, and Bush’s lapdog Blair, destroyed Iraq. They are war-criminals, though unprosecuted (because the U.S. aristocracy and the ones that subordinate themselves to it, prohibit any of themselves or their agents from being prosecuted).

As Craig Murray blogged in Britain, the UK’s aristocracy joined America’s aristocracy in deep-sixing the truth on this crucial matter; and, furthermore, Barack Obama continued the rabid lying for war, after George W. Bush had finished being America’s Liar-in-Chief. Obama was merely a more-articulate and cunning version of Bush, in blackface (which won him almost solid support from Blacks, and from ‘liberals’). So, Obama gave us Libya instead of Iraq; and Syria instead of Afghanistan; and Yemen as the Sauds’ playground for their American-made weapons and supported by their U.S. trainers — and also civil war and ethnic cleansing in Ukraine instead of peace with Russia (whose longest European border is the one it shares with Ukraine). And, instead of an economic crash, Obama gave us (besides his pretty rhetoric of ‘concern’ about the elite’s injustices that his actual actions did nothing to punish) increased economic inequality, flatlined wages, and soaring poverty with lots of new burger-flipping jobs. How much are such realities being reported (except by Bernie Sanders, whom the Clinton-Obama Democratic Party cheated out of the nomination, by manipulating the primaries and relying — and feeding — upon Democratic suckers, on Election Day)?

Lies are not permitted to be called ‘lies’, unless they are made by the ‘enemy’ (such as Putin), even if the ‘enemy’ isn’t really the one who is lying.

MSNBC's russophobe Maddow at work—a shameless propagandist, but the Russia hate campaign has made richer and even more famous among her following of clueless, identity politics liberals.

For example, did the ‘news’ media report that what overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President in February 2014 was no such thing as “democracy demonstrations” which had begun spontaneously in Ukraine after President Yanukovych on 20 November 2013 rejected the EU’s trade offer (which offer would actually have cost Ukraine $160 billion — a cost that was never reported in the U.S. press), but was instead a bloody barbaric coup which Obama’s team had started planning way back in 2011? Did America’s (and ’The West’s’) ’news’ media report this U.S. coup in Ukraine — or even that it WAS a “coup” (or even that it had been one) and that it was (as the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor called it when speaking only to a non-U.S. audience) “the most blatant coup in history”? None of them reported any of that. But now the hostilities against Russia — including the sanctions, and the NATO buildup — are based upon those lies, those potentially WW-III-generating libels, against Russia.

Did they report that the economic sanctions and NATO buildup against Russia that the Obama regime ‘justified’ by ‘Putin’s conquest’ of Crimea was actually forced upon Russia, because it’s next door to Ukraine — forced by Obama’s land-grab of Ukraine via a U.S.-imposed coup in Ukraine (as a hoped-for U.S. missile-base against Russia, a mere five minutes missile-flight to Moscow)? And did they report that this aggressive coup overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President, whom 75% of Crimeans had voted for? And did they report that Crimea had been a state in Russia until 1954 when the Soviet dictator arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine? Obama insisted that Nikita Khrushchev’s imposed transfer of Crimea to Ukraine remain permanently — that Crimea remain as a state in Ukraine, no matter what the Crimean people wanted. What would your own local state do if the federal government were taken over by a bloody coup from an enemy power, and threw out the President whom 75% of the people in your state had voted? Obama was opposed to the right of self-determination of peoples when it referred to Crimeans, but not when it referred to the Scotch, or to the Catalans. And he also opposed democracy in Syria. Was any of that reported in the U.S. ’news’ media? Or will Americans first learn about it in the history books — if even then?

Did the ‘news’ media report that the Obama-gang’s entire case against Russia is based upon lies (even if some of the things that Russia’s Vladimir Putin has said have also been lies)? Did they report that Obama’s charges that Russia is the world’s #1 ‘aggressor’-nation are rabid lies from the world’s actual #1-aggressor-nation?

Volunteer journalists (such as “bloggers”) can report these things; well-paid ‘journalists’ cannot and do not. In true George Orwell 1984 fashion, reporting these things is called ‘fake news’, by the actual fake-news masters — and unfortunately suckers believe them. Even on serious domestic-policy news, the prestigious ‘news’ media pump the aristocracy’s lies, and inculcate the desired (by the super-wealthy) misconceptions.

Thus, the question for many young reporters nowadays is: “Will I be bad enough to keep a good job, or maybe even atrocious enough to advance in it?”

Fox Friends is as low as it gets in so-called television journalism and commentary, but these people are not a rare exception, they are almost the norm. Similar nincompoop crews are found in all major media, print, electronic and television. It's par for the course.

As for the consumers of journalism, there is no substitute for a reader’s demanding that every news-report include mentioning each of its sources, and that those sources are 100% reliable ones on the matter alleged, and that the report link directly to the root-source and not to any mere paraphrase of what it allegedly says. In a democracy, the public don’t trust the mere allegations from ‘authority’. Because, to trust ‘authority’ (note: this refers to fake authorities, not to methodologically careful scientific research) is to invite fascist rule, aggressive wars, and mass-exploitation. (Only a few investigative journalists with a long record of proven-accuracy, such as Seymour Hersh, are exceptions, whom a reader can reasonablyaccept upon the basis of unnamed, private, sources. Such veteran, proven, journalists are rare.)

Getting to the truth, and staying with it, requires constant vigilance and a constantly open mind to the possibility that there are falsehoods in one’s own beliefs. If a person isn’t skeptical of his own beliefs, then he becomes a waste-dump of falsehoods, instead of an accumulator of truths — a truly (i.e., truthfully) educated person. Even today, Republicans approve of George W. Bush, and Democrats approve of Barack Obama. Democracy is thus virtually impossible in America, because both sides are polluted by the same aristocracy. The aristocracy controls both Parties. And the government. And the press.

And that’s the problem. Nobody has figured out a solution for it. And America’s press won’t allow even its existence to be published. So, the public cannot understand why they cannot understand.

What can be done to solve this problem that the press hide from the public? Might there be a way for some members of the press to become part of the solution, and no longer part of the problem? Would that even be possible? If not, then how can the public ever come to understand what the problem is? 

horiz-long greyCODA
How Orwellian Can It Get? 

 

About the author

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.

 


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The New Yorker’s Days as Something to Look Up to Are Over

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Patrice Greanville

Call it selling out. Or simply sleaze mixed with a fair dose of self-preservation, that is, operational cowardice. Wanting to keep those cushy sinecures and the comfy life of a cultural arbiter with all the influential social perks flowing.  Putting career above principle. The outcome is the same. With The New Yorker joining the imperial lynch mob on Syria, and bamboozling its audience (or attempting to) with hit pieces unworthy of the paper they are printed on, it's clear this magazine is no longer what it once claimed to be: the titanium standard for good cultural journalism.

By running imperial shill Joshua Yaffa's insidious screed, Russia’s “Madman” Routine in Syria May Have Averted Direct Confrontation with the U.S., For Now, and similar pieces, at a moment when humanity stands on the edge of the abyss of nuclear war, or at least an unthinkably devastating Word War 3, not to mention endorse the further sociopathic mutilation of a nation brutally  attacked and already devastated by a conglomeration of powerful bullies, the New Yorker editors relinquished their enviable place in journalism's high brow precincts and toppled their own publication off of the pedestal it sat, virtually unchallenged, for many years. The evidence below is eloquent.  It's over.  They don't deserve it.



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For best appreciation, be sure to click on the image to enlarge.

About the Author
P. Greanville edits The Greanville Post. 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

 ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Useful Idiots? New Yorker Magazine Fails Litmus Test for Media Impartiality on Syrian War

BE SURE TO PASS THESE ARTICLES TO FRIENDS AND KIN. A LOT DEPENDS ON THIS. DO YOUR PART.

The world has a hyper abundance of prostituted intellects like Yaffa, and the American media are happy to find them and employ them. They thrive on the offal of war promotion. How low can you get? Notice that Yaffa's bioblurb says that Yaffa is a New Yorker contributor based in Moscow. That in itself gives the lie to Putin demonizers like himself.

ROBERT BRIDGE
Strategic Culture

When America’s top thinking man’s journal fails to consider at least one possible alternative as to who may have been responsible for the latest alleged chemical attack in Syria, aside from the ‘Assad regime,’ then we may conclude that the entire mainstream media complex is receiving its marching orders from above.

In an April 14 article in the erstwhile prestigious New Yorker magazine (“Russia’s ‘Madman’ Routine in Syria May Have Averted Direct Confrontation with the U.S., For Now”), author Joshua Yaffa singlehandedly proves there is absolutely no straying from the government-approved narrative that Syrian President Bashar Assad is guilty of carrying out an alleged chemical attack in Douma on April 7. He also manages to pull Russia into the elaborate conspiracy theory, which is now accepted as bona-fide truth in the Western world.

“Moscow welcomes Assad’s defeat of the rebels, and has little concern for how he achieves it, but the use of chemical weapons is an embarrassment and source of unwelcome consequences for the Kremlin,” Yaffa writes with breathtaking arrogance, refusing to entertain the much more likely scenario that the rebel terrorists were responsible for the purported attack. “One unresolved question is whether Russia … got assurances from Syria that it would refrain from using chemical weapons in the future.”

As if this even needs to be said, the function of the media is not to parrot the government line, but to challenge it every step of the way - and even more so when the consequences of failing to do so could result in the outbreak of a major conflict, possibly even World War III. Apparently that is a risk the useful idiots of the Western mainstream media are willing to take.

For any person with even a limited amount of critical thinking skills, this cannot be considered objective and impartial journalism in any sense of the word. Yet it is a prime example of what Western readers are being force-fed on a daily basis: Assad is guilty of carrying out a chemical attack on innocent civilians, nothing else to look at here, please move along [Thus far, there has been one notable exception to this rule, which has not been picked up by the US media, and never will be. Robert Fisk, a veteran British reporter of the Middle East, traveled to Douma for a first-hand account of the alleged attack for The Independent. After a lengthy fact-finding trip, which included interviews with numerous witnesses and medical staff, Fisk revealed what so many people had suspected: there was no chemical attack. The event was entirely staged by the notorious White Helmets 'rescue group'].

Consider the way UK broadcaster Sky News cut short Major-General Jonathan Shaw, a formerly high-ranking British Army officer, as he attempted to question what motive Bashar Assad would have had in carrying out a gas attack at this crucial juncture.

“The debate that seems to be missing from this is… What possible motive could have triggered Syria to launch this chemical attack at this time in this place?” Shaw ventured to ask. "The Syrians are winning, don’t take my word for it, take the American military’s word for it.”

At that point, the interview was quickly terminated for a commercial break. Needless to say, Sky News and other Western media won’t be inviting Shaw back for his expert analysis anytime in the near future.

As if this even needs to be said, the function of the media is not to parrot the government line, but to challenge it every step of the way - and even more so when the consequences of failing to do so could result in the outbreak of a major conflict, possibly even World War III. Apparently that is a risk the useful idiots of the Western mainstream media are willing to take.

In reality, to call these journalists ‘useful’ would be an exaggeration, because they are actually not being very useful at all. By dutifully refusing to consider, even in passing, other alternatives in Syria they have betrayed their allegiances, which is obviously not to the pursuit of truth. To assume your audience is so blissfully ignorant that they cannot imagine other scenarios regarding the chemical attack in Syria for themselves only serves to further alienate the mainstream media monsters from their subscribers. Thus, Western journalists are not ‘useful idiots’ per se; they are simply being idiots.

Yaffa

Incidentally, this explains in a nutshell why the masters of the mainstream media universe are so terribly anxious to silence alternative media voices from the Internet. The existence of dissenting, unscripted voices throws into stark contrast just how biased, prejudiced and undemocratic the Western press has become. Better to manipulate the Internet algorithms than to risk Western audiences hearing voices that challenge the official narrative.

Once again, the ridiculously obvious question needs to be asked since the Western mainstream media refuses to: Why would Assad, who was defeating the rebels on every military front with modern military technologies, resort to the most primitive and egregious form of military methods imaginable, that of chemical weapons? Why would he commit the one act that would undoubtedly bring NATO members into the fray, thereby destroying the results of an 8-year struggle? The short answer is he would not. Not in a million years. However, even if the Western media stubbornly refuses to consider that line of reasoning, it fails to explain why they were unanimously blaming Assad for the attack when experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had not yet arrived in Douma to conduct their forensics work. Instead, they cast aside their journalistic duties in favor of serving as mindless cheerleaders for war.

Yaffa took the hysteria a notch higher, however, when he suggested that it was Russia that was behaving like a “madman” in Syria by warning it would

“Whether thanks to their successful “madman” routine, or the success of arguments for restraint by U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, Putin and his generals must be pleased,” Yaffa wrote, apparently disheartened that something worked to put the brakes on full-blown military action in Syria.

“The Russian effort to preemptively terrify the West into limiting its military operations in Syria began last month, when Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s top military officer, warned that Moscow would shoot down missiles fired at Syrian territory—and, what’s more, if Russian forces came under threat, would strike back by targeting launch facilities and platforms,” Yaffa wrote.

Strange that even the prospect of Russia actually proclaiming it would defend itself from an outright attack is deemed the delusional ranting of a “madman.” Such is the position of the Western media as it continues to perpetuate the myth of a Russian bogeyman as it works to undermine peace in favor of yet another regime change operation.

Clearly, alternative voices in the deeply compromised mainstream media jungle are needed now more than ever.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Mehdi Hasan, beautiful soul, and his diatribe against the consequential Left

Spoiler title

By Stephen Gowans • what's left

Dateline: April 21, 2018

What alternatives might the Syrian government have adopted to face the crisis and emergency that rapacious US foreign policy, Saudi-inspired extremism, and Israeli opportunism inflicted upon it?  Reeking moral smugness, Hasan and his ilk won't or can't answer such real-world questions. 

Hasan: Not as fair and impartial as he'd like us to believe.

If it wasn’t already clear, The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan, wants us to know he’s a beautiful soul. In an April 19 diatribe against “Bashar al Assad apologists,” Hasan professes his distaste for war crimes, torture, and dictatorship, no matter the source, but devotes particular attention to the violence and restrictions on political and civil liberties attributable to the Syrian president. Assad, Hasan concludes, “is a war criminal even if he didn’t gas civilians,” and leftists should stop defending him. The journalist, who also works for the Qatari monarchy’s mouthpiece Al Jazeera, then proceeds to recite a litany of charges against Assad, some undeniable, some unproved or unprovable. One gets the impression that he’s peeved that the latest chemical weapons allegations against the Syrian government, ridiculously thin to begin with, and now largely demolished by Robert Fisk’s reporting, have failed to stick.

At one time, where one stood on the political spectrum depended on one’s position on the questions of political, social, and economic equality, on a national and international level. Leftists favored greater equality; conservatives liked the status quo; and reactionaries, including Qatari monarchs, agitated for a return to a world of ascriptive hierarchies based on class, gender and race. The methods political actors used to achieve their goals could be judged as acceptable or deplorable on moral or instrumental grounds, but it was understood that the methods used were not intrinsic to the goals sought. It was also understood that the circumstances constrained the methods. The methods available to advance a struggle toward growing equality, for example, or in defense of it, differed depending on the strength of the opposition; the likelihood it would yield to violence versus moral suasion; the degree to which supporters could be galvanized to fight and their tolerance for sacrifice, and so on. One could find the methods disagreeable, but if so, there was an expectation that one would suggest realistic alternatives.

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]asan has turned the distinction between goals and methods on its head. In Hasan’s view, leftists are defined not by what they’re trying to achieve, but by the methods they use. Torture, dictatorship, abridgement of civil liberties, warfare that produces collateral civilian casualties—all these things, according to Hasan, are signs of a contra-left political orientation. Thus, he argues, with illogic, that “Bashar al-Assad is not an anti-imperialist of any kind, nor is he a secular bulwark against jihadism; he is a mass murderer, plain and simple.” The illogic is evident in the false dichotomy that lies at the center of his argument. Mass murderer (if indeed Assad can be so characterized) does not exclude anti-imperialist and secular bulwark against jihadism; but in Hasan’s world, mass murderer and secular anti-imperialist are mutually exclusive. They are so to Hasan, because he has transfigured Leftism into the concept of avoiding all choices that have potentially awful consequences.

The beautiful soul retreats from the political struggles of the real world into impotent moral posturing, where no choices are ever made, because the consequences of all choices are awful to one degree or another. Success, then, in any political struggle is transformed from acting on the world to change it into avoiding any step that might have terrible consequences—a recipe for impotence, paralysis and failure. To the beautiful soul, the only leftist political movement that is worthy of support is the one that fails, never the one that comes to power and implements its political program and fights to overcome opposition to it.

To Hasan, the Syrian State’s position on the political spectrum is unrelated to its goals: overcoming sectarian and other divisions in the Arab world, safeguarding Syria’s political independence, and achieving economic sovereignty. Nor does it matter that Damascus is engaged in a struggle against (to use Hasan’s own words) “rapacious U.S. foreign policy”, “Saudi-inspired extremism” and “Israeli opportunism”—in other words, the aggression of conservative and reactionary forces that are more powerful individually to say nothing of collectively than the Syrian State by many orders of magnitude. To the Mahatma, all of these considerations are irrelevant, and all that matters in the evaluation of Assad’s political orientation is whether the methods Damascus has used to defend the gains it has made in the direction of asserting its right to equality and sovereignty are methods that that are suitable to a State in periods of stability, normalcy and safety. It’s as if what Hasan deplores about a war cabinet, for example, is not the war that made the war cabinet necessary, but the very fact that a war cabinet was created in response to it, as if carrying on in the regular manner could somehow make the war go away.

The beautiful soul retreats from the political struggles of the real world into impotent moral posturing, where no choices are ever made, because the consequences of all choices are awful to one degree or another. Success, then, in any political struggle is transformed from acting on the world to change it into avoiding any step that might have terrible consequences—a recipe for impotence, paralysis and failure.

Yet what alternatives might the Syrian government have adopted to face the crisis and emergency that rapacious US foreign policy, Saudi-inspired extremism, and Israeli opportunism inflicted upon it? Even the US constitution makes provision for concentration of authority in the executive branch and abridgement of political and civil liberties under conditions of internal rebellion and threatened invasion. From the mid-1960s forward, if not earlier, Syria has faced permanent crisis and emergency, including an ongoing official state of war with Israel, foreign occupation of its territory (now by the United States and Turkey in addition to Israel), and the fostering of internal rebellion by Western states with imperial ambitions—comparable conditions to those which the architects of the US constitution envisaged would require extraordinary powers for US presidents. Are not comparable powers required for a Syrian president? Any realistic assessment of the challenges Syria faces leads inevitably to the conclusion that harsh and quite disagreeable measures are called for if the Leftist project of defending the equality and sovereignty of Syria within the international network of States is to be achieved against the determined opposition of “rapacious U.S. foreign policy,” “Saudi-inspired extremism” and “Israeli opportunism.”

So, faced with these enormous challenges, what should Assad do? Whatever it is, Hasan can’t say. The best The Intercept writer can do is demand: “Is it the only way you know how to oppose” US, Saudi and Israeli aggression? Well, it does, indeed, appear to be the only way the Syrian government knows how to resist forces many times stronger than itself. But if not this way, then what way? “Should we shoot balloons at the opposition?” Assad once asked another beautiful soul.

In the war against the Axis states, the Allies used torture, summary executions, indiscriminate bombing, confinement of civilians to concentration camps, encroachments on civil liberties, concentration of power in the executive branch, and worse. These methods were clearly disagreeable. And yet, they were the methods chosen to overcome fascism.

It would be wrong to denounce the anti-fascist war as deplorable because some, or indeed many, of its methods, were distasteful–from the virtual dictatorships exercised in Britain and the United States, to the abuse, torture and summary executions of Axis prisoners of war, to sieges and the starving of civilians. And was the Allied countries’ refusal to guarantee the rights of assembly and free expression of Nazi and fascist supporters to be condemned as a human rights violation? Every accusation Hasan makes against Assad he can equally make against Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s conduct in WWII. Curiously (or predictably) he doesn’t, choosing instead to direct his venom at the duo’s ally, Stalin, the only one of the three whose goals were authentically leftist.

The beautiful soul is not of this world. The options available to people who achieve real gains in real world political struggles are rarely simple, and are often ugly and disagreeable to one degree or another. The beautiful soul removes himself from the real world of politics, like the monk retreating from the world into his cell, and thereby avoids having to make choices whose consequences may be regrettable. His politics revolve around denunciations of the choices made by people who act on the world to change it. Few would contest that Hitler’s Nazism, Mussolini’s fascism, and Tojo’s militarism, could have been overcome except by recourse to violence, with all its ugly outcomes, though we can imagine Hasan, the Mahatma, demanding of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin: “Is war the only way you know how to oppose rapacious Nazism, or Japanese imperialism of Mussolini’s opportunism?” We can also imagine him thundering that “Roosevelt is not an anti-fascist of any kind; he is a mass murderer, plain and simple.”

Leftism is not turning the other cheek, an unqualified commitment to rights of free expression and assembly, or scrupulously observing the rules of war, anymore than it’s the opposite of these things. However much Hasan would have us believe that Assad’s shooting balloons at the opposition would make him an authentic anti-imperialist and genuine secular bulwark against jihadism, the truth of the matter is that that shooting balloons would only make Assad a spectacularly unsuccessful anti-imperialist and a secular sieve rather than secular bulwark against jihadist extremism. The Syrian president is unquestionably an anti-imperialist, a point Hasan, himself, concedes (though he doesn’t seem to know it) when he asks is there no other way to oppose US imperialism? What is an anti-imperialist but one who opposes imperialism? The Syrian president, then, in Hasan’s view is engaged in anti-imperialist opposition—he just doesn’t like Assad’s methods. He can’t, however, suggest any realistic alternatives.What distinguishes Assad from leaders Hasan doesn’t demonize as mass murderers is that Assad has been forced by an internal rebellion and invasion to invoke police state powers and deploy force to meet the crisis and that other leaders, enjoying conditions of stability and normalcy, have not. Would any leader under comparable circumstances have acted differently? Hasan’s facile analysis inevitably condemns all leaders of any State or movement that has deployed force and killed, as mass murderers, unless they have met two sets of impossible standards: (1) they’ve guaranteed a politically open society in which the rights of free expression and assembly are guaranteed to all, including the opposition, which is thereby allowed to freely organize the government’s demise, and (2) they carry out all armed operations strictly in accordance with the rules of war.

The New York Times once observed that the US military adheres to all laws of war when it can but violates them under circumstances of military necessity, as, for example, in the capture of cities from insurgents who use the civilian population as shields. Hasan condemns the Syrian Arab Army (or rather Assad specifically) for siege and indiscriminate bombing, presumably in connection with the liberation of Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta, measures also employed by US forces in the capture of Raqqa and Mosul. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis defended the US violations on the grounds that “Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation.” (Hasan, predictably, didn’t include Mattis in his demonology; the beautiful soul reserves his most impassioned tirades for figures of the Left.) The only alternative to siege and bombing was to accept the capture of these cities by Islamist insurgents as a fait accompli–hence, to surrender to Saudi-inspired extremism and accept the disintegration of the secular Arab nationalist state and the leftist (i.e., anti-imperialist) values embedded in it.

The argument I’m making here is not one of “whataboutism”, but that the only realistic choices available to a military confronting insurgent forces which capture territory and refuse to allow the civilian population to flee are either (1) siege and bombing, with inevitable civilian casualties, or (2) capitulation. Hasan’s diatribe against Assad is in effect a plea for Syrian surrender, for there is no realistic way the Syrian government can meet the crisis and emergency produced by “rapacious U.S. foreign policy”, “Saudi-inspired extremism” and “Israeli opportunism” but to take measures Hasan and other beautiful souls will shudder at and condemn. Implicit in Hasan’s analysis is the view that the only real world struggles against inequality worthy of support are those that use quixotic methods that guarantee their failure, and hence, facilitate the triumph of movements of exclusion, inequality, oppression and exploitation.

Addendum

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]asan and his coreligionist Eric Draitser, profess not to take sides. Instead, they claim to hover neutrally above the field of battle, siding only with such abstractions as “humanity,” as if humanity does not include contending forces, or, in Draitser’s case, with “the Syrian people”, as if the Syrian people does not include government forces, Islamist insurgents, and Kurdish fighters. Through a verbal sleight of hand they hope to conjure an artificial construct free from competing forces to which they can claim fealty and thereby avoid taking a side. This is a deception, and the position of cowards.

The intellectual predecessors of Hasan, Draitser, and their ilk likewise adopted a position of neutrality in the struggle between slave owners and the slave rebellion, deploring the methods of struggle chosen by both sides, but particularly the violence of the slave rebellion, the necessary condition of the slaves’ emancipation. “If only they could work out their disagreements amicably,” they sighed.

In the 1930s, the neutralists, seeking to hover God-like above the fray, refused to side with either the Communists or Nazis, abhorring the deployment of defensive violence by Communists and Jews against the Nazis who would destroy them.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa, Canada. He used to write a regular column for Canadian Contentand is a frequent contributor to the Media Monitors Network. In the past Gowans maintained his own Web site, What’s Left in Suburbia?. [1] However, since February 2007 Gowans has posted his work on a blog titled What's Left. 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 



What Are “Assad Apologists”? Are They Like Those “Saddam Apologists” Of 2002?



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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

And The Intercept is far from being the only leftie outlet to play muddled "anti-imperialist" politics. Watch those banana peels!

Isn’t it fascinating how western journalists are suddenly rallying to attack the dangerous awful and horrifying epidemic of “Assad apologists” just as the western empire ramps up its longstanding regime change agenda against the Syrian government? Kinda sorta exactly the same way they began spontaneously warning the world about “Saddam apologists” around the time of the Iraq invasion?

The increasingly pro-establishment Intercept has published an article titled “Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists: Your Hero Is a War Criminal Even If He Didn’t Gas Syrians,” condemning unnamed opponents of western interventionism in Syria for not being sufficiently condemnatory of Bashar al-Assad in their antiwar discourse.

Last week The Times published an article titled “Apologists for Assad working in British universities,” frantically informing the public that “top academics” are circulating information that runs counter to the official Syria narrative, followed this week by a Huffington Post article attacking those same academics in the same way. Yesterday, the BBC ran an article titled “Syria war: the online activists pushing conspiracy theories,” warning its readers about “pro-Syrian government” internet posts.

Hasan: Not exactly impartial. He works for Aljazeera, owned by Qatar, one of the Gulf tyrannies involved in the treacherous effort to topple Assad in cahoots with the US, the Saudis and other regional criminals.

I first encountered the word “apologetics” as a young Catholic girl in a parochial school, where the term was introduced to me as the religious practice of defending Church doctrine using discourse and argumentation. I did not become familiar with the related secular term “apologia” until much later, which is defined as “a work written as an explanation or justification of one’s motives, convictions, or acts.”

It wasn’t a term I ever made use of or encountered much in day to day life until I started writing extensively about the dangerous warmongering behaviors I was seeing in my country’s allies last year, when all of a sudden it became a part of my daily life. For me, I was just trying to help prevent the western empire from decimating yet another Middle Eastern country in yet another war based on lies and avoid dangerous escalations that could lead to nuclear holocaust, but to countless strangers on the internet I am an “Assad apologist” and a “Putin apologist”.

People have been calling me these things every single day for well over a year now. The internet is weird, man.

And surprise surprise, now that the war drum is beating louder than ever for Syrian blood, the phrase “Assad apologists” is enjoying a massive uptick.

The argument as I understand it is that people like Professors Tim Hayward and Piers Robinson, the subjects of the aforementioned Times and Huffpo articles, are not protesting the latest warmongering agenda of a multinational power establishment with an extensive history of decimating Middle Eastern countries, but are in fact going out of their way to justify Bashar al-Assad’s motives, convictions, and acts. Not because they oppose death and destruction like normal human beings, but because they are just positively head-over-heels gaga over some random Middle Eastern leader for some reason.

Even more annoying than the honest regime change proponents are people like Mehdi Hasan, author of the aforementioned Intercept piece, who claim to oppose US regime change but find themselves tone policing the antiwar left instead...men like Hasan choose to focus their creative energy on making sure the antiwar left mitigates its speech sufficiently and prefaces every antiwar argument with “Assad is a bloodthirsty evil dictator, but”.

And that’s always how these arguments go. By pointing out that the US-centralized empire has been plotting regime change in Syria literally for generations, I’m not opposing dangerous regime change interventionism, I’m defending a dictator. By noting that the western empire has an extensive history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to manufacture support for military aggression, I’m not stating a well-documented and frequently admitted fact, I’m performing apologia on behalf of a despotic regime.

It can’t possibly be because I am aware that the neoconservatives who have been braying for this attack for years are always completely wrong about everything. It can’t possibly be because the US-centralized war machine has had a well-established pattern for many years of demolishing countries based on lies and false pretenses of humanitarianism only to leave in their wake a humanitarian disaster, which they then blame on “mistakes” made by whoever happened to be in charge at the time. It can’t possibly be because US-led military interventionism in modern times is literally never helpful, literally never accomplishes what its proponents claim it will accomplish, and is literally always extremely profitable for its most vocal advocates.

Nope, it’s got to be because I fell in love with a gangly Syrian president whom I’d never even thought about before the neocons set their crosshairs on him, and I only oppose the next imminent military catastrophe because I agree so much with his policies and behavior.

Even more annoying than the honest regime change proponents are people like Mehdi Hasan, author of the aforementioned Intercept piece, who claim to oppose US regime change but find themselves tone policing the antiwar left instead. The world is full of problems, the greatest arguably being a third world war and potential nuclear confrontation between Russia and America ensuing from US interventionism in Syria, but men like Hasan choose to focus their creative energy on making sure the antiwar left mitigates its speech sufficiently and prefaces every antiwar argument with “Assad is a bloodthirsty evil dictator, but”.

Like that’s what the world desperately needs right now: for the antiwar left to be even more mitigated in its speech than it already is. For us to slam on the brakes of our antiwar surge to check one another to make sure we’re all being explicitly anti-Assad enough.

These writers never make it clear exactly why it’s so important for everyone in the antiwar movement to be checked and scrutinized for excessive enthusiasm about the Syrian government. Are they worried they’ll go and join the Syrian Arab Army? That they’ll install Assad as president of the United States? How is sympathy toward the Syrian government a threat to anything other than the manufacturing of support for more escalations in US-led interventionism?

We don’t need equivocation and tone policing right now. What we need is a loud and unequivocal NO to western military interventionism in the country immediately adjacent to the one we raped fifteen years ago.

We’ve been here before. Here’s an article from 2001 titled “Saddam Hussein’s American Apologist”. Here’s one from 2002 titled “Saddam’s apologists”. Here’s another from 2003 titled “After Saddam’s Capture: Will His Apologists Now Recant?” Here’s yet another from 2003 titled “Armchair generals, or Saddam’s leftwing allies”. Here’s one from 2005 titled “Parliament’s damning report about Saddam apologist George Galloway.” This was an extremely common smear against opponents of the Iraq invasion, who were of course later proven to have been 100 percent correct in every way.

Iraq is as relevant as relevant gets to this debate, and anyone who claims otherwise is only doing so because they know Iraq is devastating to their Syria arguments. They’re pulling the same damn tricks in the same damn way, in some cases with the same damn people. These “We must stop the Assad apologists!” op-eds are coming out with increasing frequency and urgency because they are losing control of the Syria narrative and they are running out of tricks. Don’t let their authoritative way of speaking fool you; they are not nearly as confident as they pretend to be.

Appendix:
The Intercept is not alone in taking a treacherous liberaloid line on Syria. Here's Truthdig, believed by many to be firmly on the left, doing pretty much the same. Who the hell is calling these shots? The piece is authored by one Sonali Kolhatkar, clearly an establishment water-carrier. You can read it here.

And this Sonali is really making the rounds, like a bad fungus. Here she is with her screed on Counterpunch, accompanied by a lame editorial intro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About the Author
 
Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician. 

 Creative Commons License  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 

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