Asymmetrical Polarization

[Thomas Eckhardt]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 08:59:28 +0100
  
This is not about "playing into the hands" of anyone. It 
is not about "soul searching". It is not about 
partisanship. It is about fact finding and reporting. At 
least for me.

I pointed to a specific case, that of Michael Gordon. In 
my opinion, he lied to the public when he forwarded 
government propaganda -- just like his colleague, the 
discredited Judith Miller, did. The consequences were at 
least hundreds of thousands of dead Iraquis and the 
destabilisation of a whole region of the world. Mark Kohut 
-- just stopping short of calling me an idiot for pointing 
out the obvious, or at the very least fowarding a 
well-founded argument -- argued that Gordon did not lie 
but was being played by the government. Which presumably 
means that we can now trust Gordon when he reports about 
Syria. The same presumably is valid for Fred Hiatt from 
the WP.

They were either complicit, or they were duped, no?

One may choose to believe that these journalists were 
played by the government, I guess. That they provided 
false information to the public that at the very least 
contributed to an illegal war of aggression back then is 
not disputable I hope.

For me these people are warmongers who sell regime change 
wars to the public. As I said, I do not think everything 
reported in those papers is a lie. But much of it is, 
mostly by omission. And the general impression one gets 
about events in geopolitical hot spots like Libya, 
Ukraine, Syria is plainly skewed in favour of regime 
change.

One example: Have you read the House of Commons report on 
Libya? It is well worth anyone's while:

"In March 2011, the United Kingdom and France, with the 
support of the United States, led the international 
community to support an intervention in Libya to protect 
civilians from attacks by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi. 
This policy was not informed by accurate intelligence. In 
particular, the Government failed to identify that the 
threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels 
included a significant Islamist element. By the summer of 
2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had 
drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change. That 
policy was not underpinned by a strategy to support and 
shape post-Gaddafi Libya. The result was political and 
economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, 
humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights 
violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across 
the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa."

"An Amnesty International investigation in June 2011 could 
not corroborate allegations of mass human rights 
violations by Gaddafi regime troops. However, it uncovered 
evidence that rebels in Benghazi made false claims and 
manufactured evidence. The investigation concluded that 
much Western media coverage has from the outset presented 
a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying 
the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly 
suggesting that the regime’s security forces were 
unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who 
presented no security challenge."

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/11903.htm#_idTextAnchor004

You have not read about this report anywhere, have you? Is 
this also playing into Trump's hands and should therefore 
be discredited?

Here is a slightly dated take on things by John Pilger, 
whom you, please pardon the polemics, probably consider 
another one of those many, many journalists whose 
reporting used to be good but who have now somehow "lost 
it" (Hersh, Parry, Greenwald, Assange etc.) because their 
reporting is "playing right into the hands of the new 
regime" (I despise the man just as much as the next 
person, but "regime", really?):

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/28/selling-regime-change-wars-to-the-masses/




matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Stop attacking journalism - you guys are playing right 
>into the hands of
> the new regime. I mean really. "...mainstream american 
>journalism is
> complicit in much more mass murder than any good they 
>may have done." What?
> Dude, stop using in the AM.

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l