EYE ON THE MEDIA

Studies in Indecency
The virtuosi of mendacity.
PATRICE GREANVILLE

As reported [falsely]  by CBS News | Published on Jan 7, 2016

Watch CBS anchor Scott Pelley intone, cueing the audience they are about to see something awful, that the Gov. of Pres. Assad has committed yet another atrocity:

[Graphic Images]: “Syrian government forces are blockading rebel-controlled towns in Syria, and residents are starving as a result. One resident said they are “dying in slow motion” due to a lack of food, water, and  medicine. Elizabeth Palmer reports.”

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]isinformation is no longer an occasional, aberrational event in the rivers of reports that constitute the American news system: disinformation is the norm. At this point, the only things a clueless citizen can trust—and that, too, may change some day—is sports casts and weather reports. Everything else is tainted by definition, in varying degrees but always tainted, infused from head to toe with some ideological spin favoring the corporate/imperial status quo. Domestic news is quite polluted, of course, but international news—where the empire, controlled by the deep state, has a very serious stake—is manipulated 100%, no exceptions allowed. Examples are therefore extremely easy to find. It takes willful blindness not to see them.

The Madaya Famine Hoax

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he story about a dreadful famine caused by the supposedly equally dreadful “Assad regime” and its allies in the town of Madaya is a case in point, but it gets better.  CBS (an outfit that in reality should be called the Columbia Bullshitting System) on Jan. 9th delivered a broadside of Orwellian magnitude at the Russian forces fighting in Syria, not to mention all manner of innuendoes at Washington’s “marked man,” Syria’s president Assad. The report, fronted by 60 Minutes’s Mike Whitaker, who thereby shamelessly proved his loyalty to his employers, also managed to insult the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), one of the heroic forces fighting against the Western/Saudi-backed Takfiris, the very same bloodthirsty lunatics Western media and politicians pretend to hate. We’re addressing that journalistic outrage on a separate article.

What do you have to say about this, Mr Pelley? Mr Blitzer? Miss O’Donnell? Mr Whitaker? You, oh so revered and kowtowed Charlie Rose? And a multitude of others…including the deans of the respected J-schools in the nation? How come there is no uproar over this obscene level of imposture? Well, expect no reply. Obviously —when it comes to what passes for working, top professional journalists in the West, especially America, there’s no decency left when it comes to a choice between duty to truth and careerism. So to hell with the truth, even at a point in history where its obliteration from the mass consciousness is allowing and encouraging the rape of the planet and the ever expanding cycle of criminal wars waged by the Western empire in its quest for complete global dominance.

Decency left the American journalism building long ago. If I’m wrong, show me. In the paragraphs below our colleague in counter-disinformation, Sarah Abadallah, sets the record straight. She is joined by Prof. Tim Anderson, whose irrefutable reports we have been featuring the last few weeks and which we intend to keep on publishing.

BELOW: As noted by Sarah Abdallah, this beautiful Syrian girl, who is currently safe and sound, has seen her photo on Facebook stolen and retouched by the terrorists in their propaganda effort, serving as a tool in stories which the Western media then disseminated uncritically. We all know the empire is not shy about fabricating news and that it has numerous experts in graphic arts capable of such impostures. 

NAHARNET.COM

Published on Jan 11, 2016

Exchange between Syria’s permanent Rep to the UN and Al-Jazeera correspondent tonight.

Syria: BBC Fabricates Again, Uses Recycled Photos. Madaya Residents used as Human Shields by US-NATO Backed Terrorists

By Prof. Tim Anderson

Global Research, January 11, 2016

More fabricated photos (see info-graphic) have been used by al Qaeda groups and western media in the dirty war on Syria, the residents of the town of Madaya have been used as human shields by NATO backed terrorists

Those same gangs used recycled photos to blame the Syrian Army and Hezbollah of starving civilians these photos are from from other years and other places

Several villages are in this stand-off situation, where both sides need to clear the way for aid convoys

Fortunately, on 8 January aid convoys broke through, reaching Madaya.

Click image to enlarge

The original source of this article is Global Research // Copyright © Prof. Tim Anderson, Global Research, 2016

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

Danielle Ryan | Simulpost with Global Research News

Media seems determined not to point out the major cause of migrant crisis facing the EU is the chaos and misery United States helped introduce to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he scale of the migrant crisis Europe is facing today cannot be understated. It is truly unprecedented. What is habitually understated, however — and in fact almost completely ignored by mainstream media — are the real roots of the crisis.

The debate around migration into the EU is happening nearly entirely without reference to the causes of the recent influx of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East. The elephant in the room is NATO and nobody really wants to talk about it.

Hundreds of articles, laden down with numbers and proposals and predictions fail to make any direct link between cause and effect. News anchors sit seemingly baffled, mouths agape, at the apocalyptic-like pictures they are seeing land on their desks, and yet few are willing to draw the appropriate conclusions. But it is such a basic and logical connection that it’s hard to believe it is not being made very loudly and very persistently.

Maybe it’s just that these journalists are so conditioned to framing U.S. and NATO policy in a positive light that the links don’t even really occur to them. Or maybe they’re simply embarrassed and trying to shift focus from their long-recorded support for various military interventions in these countries.

Either way, the result is that the story is framed in such a way that it makes the timing of the crisis sound almost random. We’re witnessing a conversation about how to ‘deal’ with boats full of Libyans making their way across the Mediterranean — as if Libya was a country that had just self-imploded yesterday, and for no discernible reason.

A fierce debate is raging over ‘what to do’ about these migrants — and in a way that’s understandable because that is the more immediate problem — but the debate we really need to be having is about the policies, NATO’s policies, which were the catalyst.

Even if Europe unites in formulating a ‘solution’ to the problem, it will be nothing more than a bandaid fix because it will only deal with symptom. After all, what’s the point in covering your open wound with a bandaid when the guy who cut you is still wielding a knife in the same room? It doesn’t take a genius to work out how that story ends.

Whenever the cause is grudgingly mentioned by the media, it is mentioned briefly and abstractly where the author or anchor might refer to “conflict” or make mention of how violence has “reignited” in these countries in recent years and months.

The editors at the New York Times in particular, are big fans of loading all the blame squarely onto Europe’s shoulders. Here a Times piece argues that the migrant crisis “puts Europe’s policy missteps into focus”. Another piece, from the editorial board, lectures Europe on how to handle the situation.

In April, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg called for a “comprehensive response” to the crisis and promised that NATO would help to stabilize the situation. The alliance’s role in “stabilizing” Afghanistan was part of its broader approach to the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, he said.

That is rich coming from the head of a ‘security’ and ‘defensive’ alliance which for years has pursued a policy of offensive destabilization in the very regions which people are fleeing from in their hundreds of thousands. But Stoltenberg’s comments and NATO’s actions are easily decoded by the employment of some basic common sense.

The NATO modus operandi is clear. The pattern, repeated over and over, involves the complete destabilization of a region, to be swiftly followed up with another NATO-led ‘solution’ to the problem. When you couple that with the use of spokespeople who are unashamed to feign ignorance and lie blatantly (Jen Psaki, Marie Harf etc.), and a compliant media that will regurgitate the line without question, this is what you get.

ABOVE: Libyan migrants await processing. 

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he 2011 NATO intervention in Libya was authorized by the United Nations on “humanitarian” grounds and resulted in the deaths of between 50,000 and 100,000 people and the displacement of 2 million. Very humanitarian.

Similarly, after the U.S.-led campaign to destabilize Syria in an effort to topple Bashar al-Assad, facilitating (and even supporting) the rise of ISIS in the region, a staggering 10 million have been displaced (according to Amnesty International) and European countries are left to help pick up the pieces. Germany, for example, has pledged to resettle 30,000 Syrian refugees. Sweden, a non-NATO nation, has taken in similar numbers.

It should be made clear however, that the numbers European countries have taken or pledged to take pale in comparison to the numbers being hosted in other Middle Eastern countries. Lebanon, for example, is hosting 1.1 million Syrian refugees. Jordan is hosting more than 600,000. Iraq hosts nearly a quarter of a million. Turkey hosts 1.6 million.

There is one country that’s getting off scot-free in all of this — at least on the Syrian front. That country is the United States. The U.S. has taken in less than 900 Syrian refugees after four years of war. American officials have cited “national security” in their explanations for not yet taking more, although they have said they would like to see the number increase.

Maybe this has something to do with it?

Debate not allowed

There is a second media crime flying under the radar here and it is this: In European countries where the massive influx of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa have caused serious societal divisions, where migrants have failed to assimilate (for a variety of reasons, including both government policies and often radical religious beliefs), Western media will allow no one to talk about it honestly — and woe betide the person who tries.

Take Sweden, where the disease of political correctness is at an even more advanced stage than it is in the rest of Europe. There, any attempt to debate the coherence of a ‘doors wide open’ immigration policy is branded as “racist”. A further irony in the Swedish context, is that the country is facing a housing crisis and has nowhere to put most of the people they are pledging to resettle. There’s some real forward-thinking, common sense policy for you.

This is a dangerous combination for Europe: An unsustainable influx of migrants, foreign policy which ensures its continuation, a docile media, and an epidemic of political correctness which has infected the entire continent.

Media 101 on the migrant crisis: Talk a lot about migrants, don’t mention why they fled and then call anyone who has a problem with it a “racist” — success! Oh, and you get an added bonus if you can somehow link it all to ‘Russian aggression’, Vladimir Putin and NATO as a ‘defensive’ alliance.

Some European countries are taking a more hardline approach and are getting slammed for it. Hungary, for example, is looking at building a barrier wall along its border with Serbia, similar to barriers along the Greek-Turkish and Bulgarian-Turkish borders. Again, this has sparked accusations of xenophobia and racism from media and political quarters.

Media 101 on the migrant crisis: Talk a lot about migrants, don’t mention why they fled and then call anyone who has a problem with it a “racist” — success!

But that’s part of the game, isn’t it? If NATO’s war supporters can focus the debate around the idea that anyone who wants to address or critically assess immigration policy is “racist” then we won’t have to talk about why the migrants are here in the first place or why they are facing such dire circumstances at home.

Russia Today’s Oksana Boyko tried recently, to broach this topic with Peter Sutherland, the UN’s special representative on international migration and development, but she got nowhere. She argued that the debate around migration into the EU can’t really be had without addressing the essence and heart of the problem, but found that NATO policy is apparently a topic not up for discussion.

Debating Europe’s migrant crisis without acknowledging the context in which it has been created it useless. It would be like asking Americans to debate police brutality without talking about race. The two are inescapably interlinked and any ‘solutions’ that come from an incomplete debate will ultimately fail.

For now though, it seems Europe will continue to debate this humanitarian crisis in terms of ‘what to do’ without addressing the ‘how to stop’ and we’ll keep running around in a vicious circle.

An easier solution, of course, would be for NATO to put an end to its campaign of destabilization in the Middle East and North Africa, but that would require the acceptance and acknowledgement of some very hard truths.

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No, Virginia, Tom Hanks didn’t win the Second World War.

If there were any doubts that Western “leaders” live in a fantasy make-believe world constructed out of their own lies, the G-7 meeting and 70th anniversary celebration  of the Normandy landing dispelled the doubts. 

[T]he howlers issuing from these occasions are enough to split your sides.  Obama and his lap dog Cameron described the Normandy landing on June 6, 1944, as “the greatest liberation force that the world has ever known” and took all the credit for the US and Britain for the defeat of Hitler.  No mention was made of the Soviet Union and the Red Army, which for three years prior to the Normandy landing had been fighting and defeating the Wehrmacht. 

The Germans lost World War II at the Battle of Stalingrad, which was fought from August 23, 1942 until February 2, 1943, when most of the remnants of the powerful German Sixth Army surrendered, including 22 generals.  

Nineteen months previously the largest invasion force ever assembled on planet earth invaded Russia across a one thousand mile front. Three million crack German troops; 7,500 artillery units, 19 panzer divisions with 3,000 tanks, and 2,500 aircraft rolled across Russia for 14 months. 

By June 1944, three years later, very little of this force was left. The Red Army had chewed it up.  When the so-called “allies” (a term which apparently excludes Russia) landed in France, there was little to resist them.  The best forces remaining to Hitler were on the Russian front, which collapsed day by day as the Red Army approached Berlin.

The Red Army won the war with Germany. The Americans and the British showed up after the Wehrmacht was exhausted and in tatters and could offer little resistance. Joseph Stalin believed that Washington and London stayed out of the war until the last minute and left Russia with the burden of defeating Germany.

Hollywood and popular writers have, of course, buried the facts.  Americans have all sorts of movies, such as “A Bridge Too Far,” that portray insignificant events, however heroic, as turning points in the war.  Nevertheless, the facts are clear.  The war was won on the Eastern front by Russia. Hollywood’s movies are fun, but they are nonsense. 

Russia is again on the outs with “the world community,”  because Obama’s plan to seize Ukraine and to evict Russia from its Black Sea base in Crimea has come a cropper.  Crimea has been a part of Russia for as long as the US has existed.  Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, stuck Crimea into the Ukrainian Socialist Republic in 1954 when Russia and Ukraine were part of the same country.  

When the Washington-imposed stooge government in Kiev recently declared that it was abolishing the use of the Russian language and arresting Ukrainians who had dual Russian citizenship and began tearing down Russian war memorials consecrated to the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis, the people in Crimea used the ballot box to disassociate from Washington’s stooge government in Kiev, first voting their independence and then voting for reunification with their mother country.

Washington, and the other G-7 countries following Washington’s orders, described this Crimean act of self-determination, which is exactly comparable to the act of self-determination declared by Britain’s American colonies, to be a case of “Russian invasion and annexation.”  Similar efforts to disassociate from Kiev are underway in other former Russian territories that today comprise eastern and southern Ukraine.

Washington has equated self-determination in eastern and southern Ukraine with “terrorism” and has encouraged its stooge in Kiev to use military violence against protesting civilians. The reason for branding separatists “terrorists” is to make it OK to kill them.

It is extraordinary to any learned person that the President of the United States and the titular heads of state of the Western European countries would publicly declare such  blatant lies to the world.  The world has historians.  The world has peoples whose knowledge vastly exceeds that of the “mainstream media,” a.k.a., the Ministry of Propaganda, or, as Gerald Celente brands them, “the presstitutes.”  Whatever name we use, the Western media is a collection of well paid whores.They lie for money, dinner party invitations, and speaking invitations with large honorariums and book contracts with large advances.

I know. They tried to recruit me.

Notice how narrowly Washington defines “the world community.”  The “world community” consists of the Group of 7.  That’s it.  Seven countries make up the “world community.”  The “world community” consists of six white countries and Washington’s puppet state of Japan.  The “world community” is the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. The other 190 countries are not part of Washington’s “world community.”  In the neocon doctrine, they are not even part of humanity. 

The “world community” doesn’t have the population of single excluded countries, such as China or India.  I haven’t done the calculation, but probably the land mass of Russia itself exceeds the land mass of the “world community.”

So, what is this “world community?”

The “world community” is the assemblage of US vassal states.  Britain, France, and Germany were important on the 20th century scene. Their histories are studied in universities. The populations had a decent standard of living, although not for all citizens. Their past is the reason for their present importance.

In effect, these countries were propelled forward by history, or by the history important to the West. Japan, being an appendage of Washington, has tried to become “western.”  It is extraordinary how such a proud, war-like people became nothing.

As I have finally stopped laughing at the presumed non-role of Russia in the defeat of Hitler, let’s return to the G-7 meeting.  The Big Happening of this meeting was Russia’s exclusion and the shrinkage of the G-8 to the G-7.

This was the first time in 17 years that Russia was not allowed to participate in the meeting of which Russia is a member.  Why?

Russia is being punished.  Russia is being isolated from the 7 countries that the White House Fool thinks constitute “the world community.”

Obama is angry that his National Security Council and the morons he appointed to the State Department and UN were so poorly educated that they did not know that much of the Ukraine consists of former Russian provinces inhabited by Russians.  These ignorant Obama-appointed morons thought that they could grab Crimea, evict Russia, and leave Russia without access to the Mediterranean, thus unable to hold on to its naval base in Tartus, Syria, the easier for Washington to invade Syria.  

Crimea has been part of Russia since Russia completed the reconquest from the Tartars. I remember the Tarter, or Tater, ethnics from my visit to Tamerlane the Great’s (Timur as he was also known) tomb in Samarkand 53 years ago. Today Tamerlane’s city is refurbished as a tourist site. 53 years ago it was a desolate place in ruins, overgrown with trees growing out of the tops of the minarets.

As Obama’s plan to seize Ukraine failed, like every one of his other plans has failed, Washington’s spokesmen for the vested private interests have seized on the opportunity to demonize Putin and Russia and to restart the Cold War.  Obama and his Group of 7 puppets or vassals used the occasion to threaten Russia with real sanctions, in place of  the present propaganda sanctions that have no effect.  According to Obama and his British lap dog, Putin must somehow prevent the Russian populations of eastern and southern Ukraine from protesting their subservience to a neo-fascist government in Kiev backed by Washington, or else.  

Putin is supposed to embrace the Oligarch, a former minister of the government that Washington overthrew, put in office by a fake vote in which turnout was a small percent of the population.  Putin is supposed to kiss this corrupt Oligarch on both cheeks, pay Ukraine’s natural gas bills and forgive its debts.  In addition, Russia is supposed to repudiate the Crimean people, evict them from their re-unity with Russia and hand them over to the neo-Nazi Right Sector to be eliminated as retribution for Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, for whom some Western Ukrainians fought. In exchange, Washington and NATO will put anti-ballistic missile bases on Ukraine’s border with Russia in order to protect Europe from nonexistent Iranian nuclear ICBMs.

This is supposed to be a win-win deal for Russia.

The Obama regime used its well-paid NGOs in Ukraine to overthrow an elected, democratic government, a government no more corrupt than those in Western or Eastern Europe or Washington.

The political morons who have England, France, Germany, and Italy in their hands are wagging their fists at Russia, warning of more, this time real, sanctions.  Do these morons  really want their energy supplies cut off?  There is no prospect, despite the propagandistic claims, of Washington supplying the energy on which Germany industry depends and on which Europeans depend so that they do not freeze in the winter.

Sanctions on Russia will wreck Europe and have little, if any, effect on Russia.  Russia is already moving, with China and the BRICS, outside the dollar payments mechanism. 

As the demand for dollars drops, the dollar’s exchange value will drop.  Initially, Washington will be able to force its vassals to support the dollar, but eventually this will become impossible.

What the White House Fool, the neoconized National Security Council, the presstitute media, and subservient Congress are doing is to support and uphold the policies based on hubris and arrogance that are leading the US into the abyss.

An abyss is like a black hole.  You don’t get out.

Washington’s lies are so blatant and transparent that Washington is destroying its own credibility.  Consider the NSA spying.  Documents released by Snowden and Greenwald make it completely clear that Washington spies not only on government leaders and ordinary people but also on foreign businesses in order to advance US commercial and financial interests.  That the US steals Chinese business secrets is not in doubt.  So what does Washington do?  Washington not only denies what the documents prove but  turns the charge around and indicts five Chinese generals for spying on US corporations.

The only purpose of these indictments hyped by the US attorney general is propaganda.

The indictments are otherwise totally meaningless, not merely false.  China is not about to turn over five Chinese generals to the liars in Washington.  For the presstitute media the story is a way to move the NSA’s spying out of the spotlight. China is substituted for the NSA as the guilty party.

Why doesn’t China, Brazil, Germany and every other country issue arrest warrants for NSA’s top officials, for Obama, and for the members of the congressional oversight committee?  Why do other countries always allow Washington to control the explanation with propaganda first strikes?

Americans are very susceptible to propaganda.  They seem to have a special taste for it. Consider the hate whipped up against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a US soldier just released by the Taliban in a prisoner exchange with the US.  The hatred and bloodlust that the presstitute media have whipped up against Bergdahl has caused his hometown to cancel the celebration of his release. The press engineered hatred of Bergdahl has spilled over into threats against Hailey, Idaho.

What is the basis for the attacks on Bergdahl?  Apparently, the answer is that Bergdahl, like pro-football star Pat Tillman who turned down a $3.6 million contract to join the Army Rangers and go to defend freedom in Afghanistan, came down with a case of doubts about the war.  Originally Pat Tillman’s death was attributed to his heroic action and enemy fire.  Then it emerged that Tillman was a victim of “friendly fire.”  Many concluded that he was murdered, because the government did not want a sports hero speaking out about the war.  As Bergdahl is off the battlefield, he has to be murdered in the press–like Russia, China, Iran, Putin, Assad, Crimeans, and the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.

In America hate and the cultivation of hate is alive and well.  But not a single moral virtue is.

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