{"id":309485,"date":"2017-05-24T02:58:43","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T01:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=309485"},"modified":"2017-05-24T17:24:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T16:24:01","slug":"washington-post-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/washington-post-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the Washington Post Have Fake News?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

There are two kinds of fake news: <\/span><\/p>\n

One is a report of something that actually didn\u2019t happen, which for a newspaper to do can reasonably be called lying, inasmuch as a newspaper is expected to report only<\/i> things that happen, and any violation of that strict standard \u2014 which separates journalism from propaganda \u2014 is at least negligence violating the very reason why consumers purchase<\/i> or subscribe to a newspaper (that reason being trustworthiness). This deception amounts unqualifiedly to lying, in any case where a reasonable assumption can be made that the given false \u2018news\u2019 report\u2019s falsehood results from the publisher\u2019s propagandistic orientation and intention to deceive on that given matter. (This might be done in order to please the controlling stockholder of an advertiser, or for many other reasons.) In such cases, the fake news is propaganda instead of news. To sell to consumers propaganda as \u2018news\u2019 is additionally to deceive them into paying the publisher in order to become deceived by the publisher; so, it\u2019s a deception on top of a deception; it is actually deception-squared. That\u2019s why selling such \u2018news\u2019 is even worse than merely giving it away for free (such as honest<\/i> PR or propaganda is \u2014 it is free). <\/span><\/p>\n

The other type of fake news is omission of a crucial fact from a report, whenever the omission is so crucial that it will sway some readers to believe \u201cx\u201d when \u201cnot x\u201d is true, and therefore such an omission is equivalent<\/i> to lying. This is a far more subtle type of deception, because it relies upon the consumer to deceive himself, instead of upon the publisher explicitly asserting<\/i> the falsehood to the reader or hearer. Such \u201csins of omission\u201d are impossible to outlaw, but are more insidious than direct lying is, because any publisher can easily abuse this power to deceive, merely by making clear to his employees what types of facts they will be penalized (demoted etc.) for reporting. For example, any publisher who causes employees to exclude stating as a fact that some public official is lying or did lie about a particular matter, when proof is available that the given official did<\/i> lie about it, would be publishing fake news on that matter. However, more often, a publisher simply establishes a policy not to hire editors (or producers) who would allow a report to be published that calls a \u201cliar\u201d a person whom the publisher favors, not even if that person can be proven to have lied \u2014 he may be said to have \u201cerred\u201d maybe, but not<\/i> \u201clied.\u201d The tendency, therefore, is that people in power may be described as \u201clacking in experience\u201d or etc., but not described as a \u201cliar.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Examples will be provided here of both types of fake news in the Washington Post<\/i>, all of which examples exhibit the same intention to deceive readers in the same type of way on a particular broader subject. This broader subject that\u2019s being deceptively presented is whether or not the U.S. should conquer foreign countries; or, in other words, whether or not America\u2019s military-industrial complex (which thrives upon taxpayers\u2019 enhanced appetites for financing and shedding blood for the nation\u2019s conquests abroad) will be served. Service to that objective is otherwise called \u201cneoconservatism\u201d or neoconservative propaganda, which is the way that the Washington Post<\/i> will be documented here to be. Understanding the motive for such fake news is far more complex; the only issue to be addressed here is the fake news itself \u2014 this particular agenda (neoconservatism) for the WP\u2019<\/i>s fake news: <\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, here, will be the paradigmatic case of neoconservative propaganda: the deceptions that were perpetrated upon the American public in order to invade Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

As has been pointed out by many books and by some bloggers, the Washington Post<\/i> was, in 2002 and 2003, one of the leading deceivers of the American public into invading Iraq so as to eliminate Saddam Hussein\u2019s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The fact that President George W. Bush lied to assert that he was in possession of conclusive<\/i> evidence that Hussein was producing WMD in 2002 was, in at least one instance, incontestable practically at the very moment that he said it, but this crucial fact was never reported by the Washington Post<\/i>, not even when the authoritative agency in the particular instance, the IAEA, made repeated attempts to draw the attention of America\u2019s reporters to the lie. During a press conference with Britain\u2019s Tony Blair, Bush said, on 7 September 2002, that a \u201cnew report\u201d had just come out of the IAEA that Iraq \u201cwere six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon. I don\u2019t know what more evidence we need,\u201d in order to invade and overthrow Saddam Hussein. The IAEA made clear that \u201cThere\u2019s never been a report like that issued from this agency\u201d<\/span><\/a>, but the WP<\/i> (like the rest of America\u2019s press) failed to report that the IAEA was accusing the U.S. President, of, essentially, concocting<\/i> an IAEA \u2018report\u2019, on this vitally important matter, a \u2018report\u2019 that never existed<\/i> \u2014 in other words, of outright lying in order to assert that the case to invade Iraq had already been made by the IAEA. This instance wasn\u2019t like all of the U.S. \u2018intelligence failures\u2019 in which the President\u2019s own \u2014 i.e. U.S. \u2014 intelligence agencies, had refused to contradict him in public; this was instead an entirely independent intelligence agency that the President was citing as an authority here \u2014 and they were directly contradicting him, in public, about it. They just couldn\u2019t get word out about that, to the American public. So, the idea that Bush wasn\u2019t lying in order to \u2018justify\u2019 his invading Iraq, but was only relying upon America\u2019s own faulty intelligence agencies regarding the matter, definitely does qualify as fake news in the WP<\/i>, and it persists even today, as fake \u2018history\u2019 about the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The invasion on 20 March 2003 wasn\u2019t \u2018an error\u2019; it was a crime, and a very massive one.<\/span><\/p>\n

This fake news that Bush had \u2018erred\u2019 to invade Iraq was of the indirect type because it entailed suppression of the crucial fact from being published; it wasn\u2019t fake news because the WP<\/i> published their own<\/i> lies about it. However, such stenographic \u2018reporting\u2019 of the government\u2019s lies is merely passing along a dictatorship\u2019s propaganda, not publishing real news. Real news always requires a publisher\u2019s own investigation and the skepticism that any real scientist has about any<\/i> allegation. In matters so important as an invasion of a foreign country, \u2018news\u2019-reporting can\u2019t get any worse than such stenography being palmed-off as \u2018news\u2019, and the persons to be blamed for this fraud against the public are never the mere employees (who might lose their jobs if they don\u2019t comply) but the publisher himself or herself \u2014 ultimately the controlling stockholder in the firm, who wouldn\u2019t invest in the given \u2018news\u2019-organization if it were to be fully honest.<\/span><\/p>\n

More recently, the WP<\/i> has published fake news about Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad (who is a Ba\u2019athist, like Saddam Hussein was), like it had published fake news about Iraq\u2019s Saddam Hussein.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 2 April 2017, it was \u201c\u2018The hospitals were slaughterhouses\u2019: A journey into Syria\u2019s secret torture wards\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 15 May 2017, it was \u201cSyria using crematorium to hide executions, State Department says\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 16 May 2017, it was \u201c\u2018I still have nightmares\u2019: Voices from inside Assad\u2019s torture network in Syria\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

All were based upon PR-agency-shopped allegations and questionable evidence (like \u2018Saddam\u2019s WMD\u2019 etc. had also been) from people who either were, or could have been, Al Qaeda affiliated, or else Islamic Brotherhood affiliated, extremist Islamists \u2014 supporters of Sharia law. And it all started with (and the WP\u2019<\/i>s ultimate sources were uncorroborated testifiers as having personally experienced what was shown in) \u201cthe Caesar photographs\u201d<\/span><\/a>, from \u201cthe Syrian Detainee Report.\u201d As wikipedia<\/span><\/a> puts it (my boldfaces<\/b>):<\/span><\/p>\n

The source, who for security reasons is identified only as Caesar, was at the time a photographer with the Syrian military police who worked secretly with a Syrian opposition group, the <\/i>Syrian National Movement<\/i><\/b>. His job was “taking pictures of killed detainees” at just two military hospitals in Damascus.[5] He told war crimes investigators that he used to be a forensic investigator. But once the Syrian uprising began, his job became documenting the corpses of those killed in Syrian military prisons.[8] He did not claim to have witnessed executions or torture.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

As the U.S. government\u2019s Wilson Center explains<\/span><\/a> about the Syrian National Movement:<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2011 uprising<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

After Syrians launched their own uprising in March 2011, the <\/i>[Muslim] Brotherhood took a leading role in assembling the exiled opposition in the <\/i>Syrian National Council<\/i><\/span><\/a>. It was launched in August 2011. The Brotherhood was the only organized and experienced movement among an otherwise deeply fragmented opposition. It also had support from <\/i>Qatar<\/i><\/b> and <\/i>Turkey<\/i><\/b>. But its domination over the opposition in exile was contested. The Brotherhood\u2019s immediate challenge was competition from rival Islamists who secured influential positions on the Syrian National Coalition, the Council\u2019s successor, which was established in November 2012.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The rival Islamists included the Coalition\u2019s first president, Sheikh Mouaz al Khatib. Khatib, a former <\/i>preacher<\/i><\/b> at the historic Umayyad Mosque, had special legitimacy since he had just left Damascus. Another rival was Imad al din al Rashid, former vice-dean of the Faculty of <\/i>Sharia<\/i><\/b> of Damascus. <\/i>His Syrian National Movement<\/i><\/b>, an alliance of secularists, moderate Islamists and Salafis<\/i> [\u201cSalafis\u201d means extreme fundamentalist Muslims], failed to recruit significant following.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Both Qatar and Turkey are run by fundamentalist (\u201cSharia\u201d) Sunni Muslims who want to conquer the Shia Muslims who lead the fundamentalist Shia regime in Iran and the non-sectarian secular regime in Syria. These Sunnis want also a (U.S.-supported) gas pipeline to be built through Syria to transport Qatar\u2019s gas into the EU to grab market-share away from Russia, which is the main country that America\u2019s aristocracy wants to weaken and ultimately to conquer<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Saddam Hussein had been supported by America\u2019s aristocracy when Saddam was trying to conquer Shiite Iran back in the 1980s, but became opposed by the U.S. aristocracy as soon as he turned against and invaded fundamentalist Sunni Kuwait and became friendly toward secular Russia, which since 1979<\/span><\/a> has been plagued by (U.S.-Saudi-backed) \u201cmujahideen\u201d (who became called \u201cTaliban\u201d and some of whom then became \u201cAl Qaeda\u201d<\/span><\/a>) and other fundamentalist Sunnis in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere, who want a Sharia-law-ruled Russia. The Obama regime in America came into office in 2009 determined to overthrow Syria\u2019s secular leader Bashar al-Assad<\/span><\/a>; and, starting in 2010, actively pursued organizing rebels against Syria\u2019s secular government. On 24 September 2010<\/span><\/a>, Jared Cohen of Hillary Clinton\u2019s State Department was working to find a way to stir demonstrations to bring down Assad\u2019s government; and, on 23 June 2011<\/span><\/a>, he was meeting inside the London Ecuadorean Embassy with Google\u2019s Eric Schmidt to pry out of Julian Assange information about how to do this; and, on 25 July 2012<\/span><\/a>, Cohen was (now as a high Google executive paid by top Hillary backer Schmidt) telling Hillary\u2019s other aides about Cohen\u2019s own progress in putting the Syrian overthrow-plan into effect<\/span><\/a>. Google also assisted the 1 March 2013<\/span><\/a> start of Hillary\u2019s plan for the February 2014 coup in Ukraine<\/span><\/a>, which used nazis to bring down Ukraine\u2019s government, just as they used jihadists to bring down Syria\u2019s government \u2014 extremist haters of Russians in both cases.<\/span><\/p>\n

With \u2018allies\u2019 such as Saudi Arabia\u2019s despots, and such as the apartheid Israeli \u2018democracy\u2019 (which latter is so theocratic it doesn\u2019t even have any constitution), the U.S. government is no \u2018democracy<\/span><\/a>\u2019, despite its Constitution (which the U.S. government routinely violates). But whereas the Washington Post<\/i> calls Russian Television \u2018fake news\u2019<\/span><\/a>, Russian Television presents news<\/span><\/a> about those regimes and their allies, while the WP<\/i> presents lies about RT, and about Russia, and about any ally of Russia (such as Saddam Hussein was, and Bashar al-Assad is). If this sounds like a lopsided characterization, it\u2019s nonetheless stated because the associated reality is also lopsided<\/span><\/a>. That\u2019s the reality which should be reported but is instead blacked-out in America\u2019s press<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, one of those Russian allies is Syria, whose government the U.S. government therefore is at war against, and has invaded, while pontificating that the world\u2019s most \u2018aggressive\u2019 country is Russia<\/span><\/a>, and while claiming to be the moral authority that can dictate morality to the \u2018barbarous\u2019<\/span><\/a> Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 16 December 2016, Human Rights Watch published \u201cIf the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria\u2019s Detention Facilities\u201d<\/span><\/a>, claiming to confirm the \u201cCaesar\u201d photos. Then, on 7 February 2017, Amnesty International published \u201cHuman Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Exterminations at Saydnaya Prison, Syria\u201d<\/span><\/a>, further \u2018confirming\u2019 the alleged depravity of Assad\u2019s government. Yet a third \u2018authority\u2019 that was additionally cited in the three articles in the Washington Post<\/i> that were here referred to as having alleged that Assad was doing these types of things to innocent people during the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-Turkey-UAE-Kuwait war to conquer his country, was the Syrian Network for Human Rights<\/b>. How reliable, then, are these three alleged \u2018authorities\u2019 on that subject?<\/span><\/p>\n

Wikipedia\u2019s section \u201cCriticism of Human Rights Watch\u201d has a subsection \u201cAllegations of Bias\u201d<\/span><\/a>, which states, among other things: <\/span><\/p>\n

Ideological and selection bias[edit]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

HRW has been accused of evidence-gathering bias because it is said to be “credulous of civilian witnesses in places like Gaza and Afghanistan” but “skeptical of anyone in a uniform.”[1] Its founder, Robert Bernstein, accused the organization of poor research methods and relying on “witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers.”[2] In October 2009, Bernstein said that the organization had lost critical perspective on events in the Middle East:[2] “[T]he region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.”[2] HRW responded by saying that HRW “does not devote more time and energy to Israel than to other countries in the region, or in the world”.[3] Tom Porteus, director of the HRW’s London branch, replied that the organization rejected Bernstein’s “obvious double standard. Any credible human rights organization must apply the same human rights standards to all countries.”[4]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

According to The Times, HRW “does not always practice the transparency, tolerance and accountability it urges on others.”[1]\u00a0 <\/span>\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Fundraising[edit]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

On September 7, 2010, it was announced that George Soros planned to donate $100\u00a0million to Human Rights Watch.[69] Soros’ donation was criticized by Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor.[70]<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Journalists have criticized Human Rights Watch for requesting, encouraging or accepting financial donations in Saudi Arabia and for its fundraising methods.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, the PR department of New York\u2019s Syracuse University headlined on 17 December 2016, \u201cHRW Validates Caesar Report on Syrian Torture, First Reported by Law Professor David Crane\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported regarding the HRW study, which was co-authored by Professor Crane:<\/span><\/p>\n

Commissioned by London law firm Carter-Ruck on behalf of Qatar, the Caesar Report\u2019s other co-authors were international prosecutors Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva QC and Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. This team \u2014 which also included forensics experts \u2014 analyzed 835 images, 150 of those in depth, uncovering evidence of starvation, beatings and strangulation, as well as an obsessive documentation of the killings. The lawyers also cross-examined Caesar and found him to be \u201ca truthful and credible witness,\u201d according to Crane.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Qatar had commissioned anti-Assad PR from HRW, and got what they had paid for, in their \u201cCaesar Report.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding Amnesty International\u2019s report, which was issued on 7 February 2017, the invariably cogent \u201cMoon of Alabama\u201d blogger headlined and documented appropriately about it the same day, \u201cHearsay Extrapolated \u2014 Amnesty Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof\u201d<\/span><\/a>, but one could also say that it provided zero evidence (but lots of allegations). Three days later, the also credible Tony Cartalucci bannered \u201cUS Cooks Up New Syrian Atrocities Amid Syrian Talks\u201d<\/span><\/a>. Then, yet another day later, on February 11th, the brilliant Rick Sterling headlined \u201cAmnesty International Stokes Syrian War\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he utterly destroyed the AI study\u2019s credibility. Among many other things, he tracked the AI study\u2019s funding and backing back to Soros and other rabid haters of Russians. Finally, on February 25th, Paul Mansfield bannered \u201cAmnesty fake report ‘Human Slaughterhouse’ invents Assad war crimes to undermine Syria peace talks\u201d<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

As regards the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), it (and other U.S.-arsistocracy-backed fronts) was discussed by Helena Glass, on 8 February 2017, headlining \u201cAmnesty International \u2013 A Propaganda Machine\u201d<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Like the <\/i>Syrian Observatory of [for] Human Rights,<\/i><\/b> the <\/i>SNHR<\/i><\/b> is a one man show. One man who lives in the UK, who has no background, and who adamantly and openly hates Assad. <\/i>Neither of these \u2018organizations\u2019 list their funding although it is widely believed to come from the UK\u2019s GCHQ.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

BOTH organizations claim to have \u2018a network of spies on the ground in Syria with whom they converse daily for information\u2019. Like SOHR, <\/i>Fadel Abdulghani,<\/i><\/b> the Director of Syrian Network of Human Rights, lists absolutely no previous background or history on social media sites. He never existed prior to becoming an expert\u2026and Chairperson of his one man show\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But it gets worse:<\/i><\/b> Fadel Abdulghani is aligned with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which the US and Australia consider an alias of MEK. MEK, headed by Maryam Rajavi was considered a terrorist organization by the US as of 2003 and was delisted in 2012.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It gets worse:<\/i><\/b> The delisting of MEK as a terrorist organization was made by then Secretary of State \u2013 Hillary Clinton!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Uh-oh.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Thus it would appear that one of Amnesty International\u2019s prime source[s] for their claim that Assad tortured and murdered 13,000 comes from one man who is affiliated with a former terrorist organization who has no background or previous experience and who would seem to have been \u2018created\u2019 from thin air\u2026and possibly funded by GCHQ!\u00a0 <\/span>Wow!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Apparently, Maryam Rajavi openly declares that she is the leading advocate and voice to \u2018violently over-throw the government of Iran\u2019.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The international war to overthrow Assad is barbaric, and nothing that is said in the present article is necessarily rejecting the possibility that some of the gruesome things that have been alleged about Assad\u2019s handling of his side of that international invasion against Syria\u2019s government might be true. But that\u2019s not the topic here, anyway; the topic is instead the question as to whether the Washington Post<\/i> has fake news. It certainly does<\/i> \u2014 and lots of it, including also, for example, that \u2018news\u2019paper\u2019s continuing not<\/i> to report that the coup that occurred in Ukraine in February 2014 was a coup by the U.S.<\/span><\/a>, and no grass-roots democratic revolution, such as the U.S. regime (and its propaganda-organs) claim it to have been. That \u2018news\u2019paper\u2019s subscribers are buying propaganda.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org There are two kinds of fake news: One is a report of something that actually didn\u2019t happen, which for a newspaper to do can reasonably be called lying, inasmuch as a newspaper is expected to report only things that happen, and any violation of that strict standard \u2014 which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":309488,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[30,96,1035,535,541,1017,526,524,754,523,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-309485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-big-brother","9":"tag-cover-up","10":"tag-daily-news","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-media","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-propaganda","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-syria","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}