Category Archive: Iraq

30-Years of Bad Journalism– the Un-credible Press

By Socrates George Kazolias–Paris, March 14, 2023:

The New York Times has used anonymous sources to discredit Seymour Hersh for using anonymous sources when he blamed the US for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines. The question is who has a better track record: Hersh or the Gray Lady of WMD fame? (1) I have come under criticism for my previous article insisting that the press fulfill its role of filtering the spin, or even worse, I am accused of encouraging the censorship of those in power.

“If his lips are moving you know he is fibbing.”
photo Wikimedia Commons

Separating fact from fiction and sifting through the fluff to bring out the important, is the very definition of journalism. That journalists have lost their honor and professionalism may be true, but it is none-the-less their job. They are not paid to just hold an open microphone for spin-doctors.

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Syria and the Western Propaganda Machine – White-Washing the Terrorists.

“The first casualty of war is the truth.”

imagesReporting on Syria in the Western media is as close to fake news as propaganda can get. It is the most one-sided and on-side messaging we have seen since NATO intervened in Libya to put  Sunni extremists and al Qaeda sympathizers in power.

First, the rebels in Aleppo are al Qaeda’s Jabhat al Nusra Front forced by the US to change their name last Summer to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. These are Sunni extremists who slit throats on camera, kill minorities, especially Christians and Shiites, throw civil servants off the roves of five-story buildings (people like postal workers and clerks), send suicide bombers into markets and so on. (see 2013 BBC report) These are the people the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been financing, arming, training and now the loyal western press crying over. 

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US Elections – Why the Vietnam War is so important today.

UnknownA lot has been made of Donald Trump’s refusal to serve in the military during the Vietnam War. As a wealthy young man, he probably knew much better than we Grunts did, what that war was all about.  At the same time, when Muhammad Ali died this year, little was made in the mainstream media about his refusal to serve when he said: “I got nothing against the Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me nigger.”  1  The major reason for this is the US has never drawn the right conclusions on that war even though the military did.

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France’s war on terrorism and collateral damage

The man who got on a Parisian bus with me Wednesday was an Arab who had not shaven in four days. He had dark olive skin and kinky black hair and was visibly unbalanced: drugs? He sang to a popular tune “I’m going on Jihad. Won’t you come on Jihad with me too?” He risks five years in prison and a 75 thousand euro fine.

In the first six days after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, 54 people were charged with “apology for terrorism” under a tough law voted in the French parliament last November which can jail someone, if they express their “support for terrorism” on the electronic media: FaceBook, Twitter etc., to up to seven years and fine them 100 thousand euros .

France’s “war on terrorism” has begun. The new law allows the “apologists” to be brought before a judge as soon as they are arrested in a process called “comparution immediate”; that is without time to prepare a defense.  It is a law for a time of war.

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Libya: the criminal silence of the press

The silence of the western press on the situation in Libya is deafening. This is no surprise as the pessimistic predictions of the critics of NATO’s war to oust Qaddafi become reality.

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NATO’s attack on Libyan TV an Outrage

NATO Friday night attacked the Libyan television station in Tripoli killing three people and injuring 15 others in direct violation of their own UN Resolution 1973 which stipulates they may attack military targets “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi” and to impose a ‘no-fly zone’.

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Norway killings and our selective outrage

What happened in Oslo Friday is a tragedy but it is no different than what is happening in the world on a daily basis.  What is different is it happened to blond-haired-blue-eyed kids.  What I find outrageous is that all of a sudden we are shocked in our comfortable Western countries. There are some deaths that are worth more than others in our selective outrage. Let me explain briefly.

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Middle East, The Press and The Insane Framing

The Israelis say Syria paid protesters to go to the Golan Sunday to protest the ongoing Israeli occupation of the heights as if this justifies using live fire against unarmed demonstrators in which as many as 25 people were killed and 350 wounded.  That the accusation rather than the killings gets the lede is insane.

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Libya Yemen and the Mainstream Press Agenda

“There is no way this is going to end up well for the United States.  Every tribe in Yemen has received missiles from American drones.  The US aided and financed Saleh all these years.  They covered for him up to just two weeks ago.  The Yemenis won’t forget this.  The crack troops we saw Friday fighting the tribes are the anti terrorist forces equipped and trained by the United States.”

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Burning books is silly but freedom of speech is precious

There is something wrong when 50 people on the margins make the headlines around the planet and threaten world peace for simply exercising their First Amendment Right to freedom of expression.  There is something wrong when they are pressured not to do it because it will spark violence among people who reject our notions of freedom.  There is something fundamentally wrong when we are willing to sacrifice our freedoms for fear of attack from those who don’t like our ‘civilization’.

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