Juli 2017 gaf Klaas van Egmond, hoogleraar Geowetenschappen aan de Universiteit Utrecht, een werkzame definitie van het neoliberalisme. Gespecialiseerd in Milieukunde en Duurzaamheid, en in de onderliggende sociaal-culturele en financieel-economische deelterreinen, zette hij tijdens een lezing uiteen dat de huidige neoliberale ideologie de samenleving dwingt tot ‘financialisering’ van het hele bestaan. Niet meer de normen en waarden van een gemeenschap zijn doorslaggevend, maar de winstdoctrine, het excessief belang dus dat de elite aan financiële motieven hecht, waardoor de mensheid nu gebukt gaat onder de dictatuur van het marktdenken.
Uit professor Van Egmond’s uiteenzetting kan men opmaken dat vandaag de dag niets nog in zijn eigen taal met ons spreekt, de macht spreekt alleen in de taal van het geld, al het andere zwijgt of wordt gemarginaliseerd dan wel vernietigd. Bij de daarvoor noodzakelijke conditionering van de massa spelen de mainstream-media een centrale rol. Onlangs las ik de volgende opmerking van de Amerikaanse journalist en historicus William L. Shirer, internationaal bekend vanwege zijn boek The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). Shirer schreef:
‘How completely isolated a world the German people live in,’ I noted in my diary on August 10, 1939. ‘A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it.’ I had returned to Germany from a brief leave in Washington, New York and Paris, and coming up in the train from my home in Switzerland two days before I had bought a batch of Berlin and Rhineland newspapers. They quickly propelled one back to the cockeyed (vertekende. svh) world of Nazism, which was unlike the world I had just left as if it had been on another planet. I noted further on August 10, after I had arrived in Berlin:
‘Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland… here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is maintained… What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland, which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion.’
Shirer wees er tevens op dat
Though it is perhaps unwise to generalize about such things, this writer’s own impression of the workingman in Berlin and in the Ruhr was that while he was somewhat cynical about the promises of the regime, he had no more hankering for revolt than anyone else in the Third Reich. Unorganized as he was and lacking leadership, what could he do?
But the greatest cause of his acceptance of his role in Nazi Germany was, without any doubt at all, that he had a job again and the assurance he would keep it. An observer who had known something about his precarious predicament during the Republic could understand why he did not seem to be desperately concerned with the loss of political freedom and even of his trade unions as long as he was employed full-time. In the past, for so many, for as many as six million men and their families, such rights of free men in Germany had been overshadowed, as he [the workingman] said, by the freedom to starve. In taking away that last freedom, Hitler assured himself of the support of the working class, probably the most skillful and industrious and disciplined in the Western world. It was a backing given not to his half-baked ideology or to his evil intentions, as such, but to what counted the most: the production of goods for war.
Net als nu in alle westere democratieën stemde ook in nazi-Duitsland de kiezer met zijn portemonnee. En nog meer als in Hitler’s Duitsland zijn de mainstream-media vandaag de dag in handen van een rijke elite die zowel de banken als de staat beheersen. Shirer’s observatie uit 1939 past daarom naadloos in het huidige neoliberale tijdsgewricht. Ook nu zijn de westerse commerciële massamedia erin geslaagd de bevolking ervan te overtuigen dat het militair-industrieel complex absoluut noodzakelijk is om de vermeende agressie van een grote vijand, opnieuw de Russen en hun bondgenoten, te kunnen weerstaan. De neoconservatieven en de zogeheten 'liberals' -- te vergelijken met sociaal-democraten -- staan vooraan bij het demoniseren van Rusland. Tegelijkertijd geldt wederom dat ‘all the rest of the world’ beseft dat juist het Westen en zijn NAVO-partners ‘de vrede’ bedreigen. Anno 2019 wordt het Westen weer geconfronteerd met een opkomend fascisme, mede als gevolg van een ‘systemic crisis’ van het kapitalisme, en door de nauwe banden tussen het militair-industrieel complex en de politieke elite, gesteund door de ‘vrije pers,’ die zich blijft afzetten tegen ‘Trumps deplorables,’ zoals ook opiniemaker Ian Buruma hen betitelt, zonder zich werkelijk af te vragen wat de motieven van deze burgers zouden kunnen zijn. Omdat Buruma geen Shirer is, toont Ian’s houding aan ‘how completely isolated’ het wereldje is waarin mijn oude vriend en zijn publiek leven. Nadat hij in augustus 2015 nog met grote stelligheid had verkondigd dat ‘Trump geen president [zal] worden,’ zag Buruma zich in oktober 2016 gedwongen te constateren dat Trump
must thus rely on disaffected white Americans who feel that they are being left behind. The fact that enough people feel that way to sustain such an unsuitable presidential candidate is an indictment of US society.
Met andere woorden: pas een maand vóór Trump tot president werd gekozen, had opiniemaker Buruma door dat er tot zijn grote schrik een omslag had plaatsgevonden onder een substantieel deel van de Amerikaanse bevolking.
Hoe deze voortgaande blindheid van de corporate media te verklaren is, was het onderwerp van een vraaggesprek in april 2018 tussen de Amerikaanse oud-correspondent van The New York Times, Chris Hedges en de Amerikaanse auteur en hoogleraar Media Studies Mark Crispin Miller. Laatstgenoemde zette uiteen dat:
Hoe deze voortgaande blindheid van de corporate media te verklaren is, was het onderwerp van een vraaggesprek in april 2018 tussen de Amerikaanse oud-correspondent van The New York Times, Chris Hedges en de Amerikaanse auteur en hoogleraar Media Studies Mark Crispin Miller. Laatstgenoemde zette uiteen dat:
as the press has vanished into the media cartel — six transnational corporations that control some ninety percent of the content that we digest daily — as the media cartel becomes more concentrated, it is simultaneously also becoming closer and closer to the state.
I have never seen anything like the moment that we are living through, having studied the media in this country for decades, and of course having lived with it all my life, like you have, I can’t really find the words to convey my astonishment at the constant hurricane of propaganda in which eye we are all living on a daily basis, and as you note, the all pervasive, stigmatization of those wo dare to depart from the official story, even to look into it, much less to contradict it vocally.
I think one day soon we will be able to have a comprehensible look at the history of for example The New York Times, and see how there were indeed parts, sectors within the institution, within the newspaper, were one had a certain amount of latitude (speelruimte. svh). For instance, I have been very carefully studying the media-performance since the assassination of John Kennedy for a film-project I am involved in, and I have been quite struck by the fact that as unanimous, univocal (eenduidig. svh) as the official story was back then, still there were, even within the mainstream media, here and there contradictions of the official story. I mean, you had to hunt for them, you had to search them out, they were so buried as to be almost non-existent, but then at the same time you were also struck by the fact that there was really a lot more latitude in, say, the book review sections of the newspapers. In 1975, amazingly enough, The Washington Post, which by now seems to me a kind of CIA-agent, actually ran in the book review section a very positive review of Philip Agee’s ‘Inside The Company,’ which had not been published yet.
Ter verduidelijking, als voormalig CIA-agent onthulde Agee de misdadige praktijken van deze geheime dienst tegen linkse organisaties en regeringen in Latijns-Amerika en hoe de VS militaire dictaturen en doodseskaders in Zuid- en Midden-Amerika steunden. Bovendien schreef hij over de infiltratie van de CIA in West-Europa en Afrika. In 1990 toonde Agee op plausibele wijze aan dat de VS het regime van Saddam Hoessein had uitgelokt om Koeweit binnen te vallen. Washington had na de val van de Sovjet Unie namelijk een nieuwe vijand nodig om de miljardenverspilling aan het Amerikaans militair-industrieel complex politiek te kunnen blijven rechtvaardigen.
Professor Mark Crispin Miller:
It is an indispensable book and an outrageous book, because Agee actually listed the names of all the CIA-officers he worked with in South-America as a way to make them ineffective. This was a very bold thing to do. It is now illegal since 1982. Not only did The Washington Post book review section gave that book a positive review, but because it was not available in the United States yet — it had only be published in Britain — there was a footnote telling people how to get copies. That will never happen nowadays.
Over de reden waarom in de jaren zeventig dit wel kon en nu niet, zei Crispin Miller:
Starting in the mid-seventies the CIA went through its big public relations crisis because of a Congressional investigation, it was a watershed (mijlpaal. svh) moment for domestic dissident expression about the intelligence community. There was also the Pike Committee of the House of Representatives. It’s report was more pugnacious (strijdlustig. svh) and ended up being classified by the House. If you go back and look at rural papers, small papers all over the country, the letter sections, the editorials sections, you are really struck by the fact that a very broad range of American people was deeply troubled by the excesses of the CIA. The response was not uniformly authoritarian and defensive as I think it would be now. What happened is that in response to that crisis the CIA set about to make sure that nothing like that would happen again.
Enige achtergrond-informatie:
Under Pike's chairmanship, the committee investigated illegal activities by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA).
The Pike Committee’s demands for information were resisted and stalled by US President Gerald Ford's Administration. The eventual report produced by the Pike Committee described the Administration's sandbagging (saboteren. svh) this way: ‘when legal proceedings were not in the offing, the access experience was frequently one of foot-dragging, stone-walling, and careful deception.’
In fact, the Administration's reluctance to release documents requested by the Committee almost ignited a constitutional crisis in 1975. Newly declassified documents from the National Security Archive demonstrate the highly contentious nature of this conflict, showing the CIA’s refusal to comply with the Pike Committee’s requests for information. Ultimately, when the Pike Committee was preparing to sue for the documents’ release, the CIA determined the likelihood of winning the lawsuit was remote, and Ford was able to orchestrate a compromise. The Agency would release the requested documents ‘on loan’ to the Committee, and if there were disagreements about a specific document, the President would have the final say. The Pike Committee was then able to proceed with their investigation, and generated a report.
Maar het eindrapport van ‘the Pike Committee was never officially published, due to Congressional opposition.’ De opmerking van Chris Hedges dat ook de FBI de scherpe kritiek aan banden probeerde te leggen, beaamde Crispin Miller: ‘The FBI was trying to do the same thing.’ Begin jaren zeventig waren de geheime, illegale FBI-praktijken, onder de codenaam COINTELPRO, bekend geworden. Uit FBI-gegevens bleek dat
COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) een reeks van geheime en deels illegale projecten [was] die werden uitgevoerd door de Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) gericht op het observeren, infiltreren, in diskrediet brengen en verstoren van binnenlandse politieke organisaties.
En:
dat 85% van de acties van COINTELPRO gericht waren op groepen en individuen die de FBI zag als ‘staatsgevaarlijk,’ zoals communistische en socialistische organisaties, organisaties en individuen van de burgerrechtenbeweging, Martin Luther King en andere leden van de Southern Christian Leadership Conference, de National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, de Congress of Racial Equality en andere burgerrechtenorganisaties, zwarte nationalistische groepen, de American Indian Movement, een breed scala aan organisaties met het label Nieuw Links (New Left), de Students for a Democratic Society en Weathermen, bijna alle groepen die protesteerden tegen de oorlog in Vietnam, maar ook individuele studenten, de National Lawyers Guild, de vrouwenbeweging, nationalistische groepen… Ook extra opvallende Amerikanen, zoals Albert Einstein, die lid was van een aantal burgerrechtengroepen, kwamen onder FBI toezicht.
Dat het bespioneren van de eigen burgers geen incident was, blijkt uit het feit dat bijna vanaf ‘haar oprichting in 1908’ de FBI zich ‘bezig hield met politieke onderdrukking,’ hetgeen de VS nog steeds niet weerhoudt om zich keer op keer op te werpen als de verspreider en beschermer van de democratie en de mensenrechten. Daarentegen wees professor Mark Crispin Miller er op:
I don’t think the FBI was as influential with the media or as adapt in handling them as the CIA was, because we know of Carl Bernstein’s famous Rolling Stone-article in 1977 that the CIA had hundreds of journalists either on their payroll outright or working with them. Bernstein gave the impression that it stopped, but I think it was just getting started. What we have seen over the decades since the mid-seventies — and I’m going to make a provocative comparison — is something analogous to what the nazi’s called ‘Gleichschaltung,’ (gelijkschakeling. svh) streamlining. When they came to power they made it their business to make sure that not only all media-outlets, but all industries, all sectors of the culture, would be streamlined, which meant getting rid of anyone who was not fully on board with the nazi-program, so that every single sector of the media, theater, filmmaking, radio and so on, were all completely on board.
Well, what we are living through now is unprecedented in American experience. I mean, even ten years ago I would have flinched if someone had compared outright our press to the nazi-press. I would have thought that a kind of vulgar overstatement, but recently I was reading William Shirer’s ‘Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941.’ Shirer was the great CBS-newsman who was doing radioreports from Berlin in the late thirties, and who smuggled his diary out of nazi-Germany when he was kicked out. I recommend the people to read this bestseller, particularly the entry for the 10th of August 1939, when he just returned from a trip through Europe and was struck by the stridency (alles overheersende. svh) and utter dishonesty of dr. Goebbels’ newspapers. Shirer was flabbergasted to see that all the newspapers on the newsstands throughout Germany were all screaming in their headlines about Poland’s imminent attack on Germany. All these absurd, lunatic projections, were completely reversing the actual situation.
Hetzelfde zien we nu met de zogeheten ‘vrije pers,’ die allerminst ‘vrij’ is, aangezien haar allereerste en belangrijkste taak het maken van winst is voor de eigenaren van de ‘corporate press.’ Crispin Miller:
There is no question that the commercial press is a kind of starveling (hongerlijder. svh) now, because they don’t have the advertising revenue’s anymore they used to have to keep them fully staffed. A few years ago The New York Times had to let go more than 110 journalists and you can see it today, the newspaper is a pamflet.
Maar het is niet alleen het gebrek aan inkomsten, ook de neoliberale ideologie is nu volledig geïnternaliseerd geraakt, de anti-Rusland propaganda van The New York Times, waar alleen het Amerikaanse militairs-industrieel complex van profiteert, de propaganda voor een systeem waarin de financiële macht bepaalt welke politieke koers er gevaren moet worden, de klinkklare nonsens dat Rusland Donald Trump aan de macht heeft geholpen, maakt deze krant een aanfluiting van de journalistiek. En het is uiterst gevaarlijk, vooral ook omdat de westerse mainstream-media de ‘Times’ als hun grote voorbeeld zien. Zo kwalificeerde bijvoorbeeld de VPRO-journalist Chris Keijne The New York Times als ‘de beste krant van de wereld,’ en prees de voormalige adjunct-hoofdredacteur van de Volkskrant, Arie Elshout, de Times, omdat, in zijn ogen, 'feit en commentaar nergens zo tastbaar [zijn] gescheiden als bij The New York Times,' en neemt de zelfbenoemde kwaliteitskrant NRC Handelsblad klakkeloos onbewezen beweringen uit The New York Times over, ondanks het feit dat in hun uitgebreid gedocumenteerde wetenschappelijke studie Manufacturing Consent. The political economy of the Mass Media (1988) de Amerikaanse geleerden Edward S. Herman en Noam Chomsky over de berichtgeving van de westerse commerciële media, met voorop de NYT, concludeerden:
In contrast to the standard conception of the media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and their independence of authority, we have spelled out and applied a propaganda model that indeed sees the media as serving a ‘societal purpose,’ but not that of enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with the information needed for the intelligent discharge of political responsibilities. On the contrary, a propaganda model suggests that the ‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises...
As we have stressed throughout this book, the U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit -- indeed, encourage -- spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness. No one instructed the media to focus on Cambodia and ignore East Timor. They gravitated naturally to the Khmer Rouge and discussed them freely -- just as they naturally suppressed information on Indonesian atrocities in East Timor and U.S. responsibility for the agression and massacres. In the process, the media provided neither facts nor analyses that would have enabled the public to understand the issues or the bases of government policies toward Cambodia and Timor, and they thereby assured that the public could not exert any meaningful influence on the decisions that were made. This is quite typical of the actual 'societal purpose' of the media on matters that are of significance for established power; not 'enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process,' but rather averting any such danger. In these cases, as in numerous others, the public was managed and mobilized from above, by means of the media's highly selective messages and evasions. As noted by media analyst W. Lance Bennett: 'the public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to the messages... Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public.'
En:
Given the imperatives of corporate organization and the workings of the various filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is essential to succes. In the media, as in other major institutions, those who do not display the requisite (vereiste. svh) values and perspectives will be regarded as 'irresponsible,' 'ideological,' or otherwise aberrant, and will tend to fall by the wayside. While there may be a small number of exceptions, the pattern is pervasive, and expected. Those who adapt, perhaps quite honestly, will then be free to express themselves with little managerial control, and they will be able to assert, accurately, that they perceive no pressures to conform. The media are indeed free — for those who adopt the principles required for 'societal purpose.'
Dat wat betreft de ideologische achtergrond, maar ook op de werkwijze van de zogeheten vrije pers valt het nodige op te merken:
The technical structure of the media virtually compels adherence to conventional thoughts; nothing else can be expressed between two commercials, or in seven hunderd words, without the appearance of absurdity that is difficult to avoid when one is challenging familiar doctrine with no opportunity to develop facts or argument… The critic must also be prepared to face a defamation apparatus against which there is little recourse, an inhibiting factor that is not insubstantial... The result is a powerful system of induced conformity to the needs of privilege and power. In sum, the mass media of the United States are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without significant overt coercion. This propaganda system has become even more efficient in recent decades with the rise of the national television networks, greater mass-media concentration, right-wing pressures on public radio and television, and the growth in scope and sophistication of public relations and news management.
Onder de kop 'The New York Times Versus The Civil Society' schreef professor Edward S. Herman naderhand een vernietigend artikel over 's werelds invloedrijkste krant:
The veteran Times reporter John Hess has said that in all 24 years of his service at the paper he 'never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don’t let me get started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?' The paper is an establishment institution and serves establishment ends. As Times historian Harrison Salisbury said about former executive editor Max Frankel, 'The last thing that would have entered his mind would be to hassle the American Establishment, of which he was so proud to be a part.'
Op zijn beurt wees één van ’s werelds belangrijkste onderzoeksjournalisten, John Pilger, op het volgende:
On August 24 2006 the New York Times declared this in an editorial: 'If we had known then what we know now the invasion if Iraq would have been stopped by a popular outcry.' This amazing admission was saying, in effect, that journalists had betrayed the public by not doing their job and by accepting and amplifying and echoing the lies of Bush and his gang, instead of challenging them and exposing them. What the Times didn’t say was that had that paper and the rest of the media exposed the lies, up to a million people might be alive today. That’s the belief now of a number of senior establishment journalists. Few of them — they’ve spoken to me about it — few of them will say it in public.
De berichtgeving in het Westen is handel, onderworpen aan de marktwetten van vraag en aanbod, en almaar stijgende winst. Ralph Nader waarschuwde terecht:
Face it, America. You are a corporate-controlled country with the symbols of democracy in the constitution and statutes just that-symbols of what the founding fathers believed or hoped would be reality.
Onder de kop:
Ouch. Jill Abramson, Ex-New York Times Editor: The ‘Narcissistic’ NYT Is Making ‘Horrible Mistakes,’ Needs a ‘Course Correction,’
schreef de Amerikaanse journalist Lloyd Grove, op de website van The Daily Beast van donderdag 28 juni 2018:
It may not have been the tweet heard around the world, but it was certainly heard — like a thunderclap — at The New York Times’ headquarters at 620 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.
'Kind of pisses me off that @ nytimes is still asking Who Is Ocasio-Cortez? when it should have covered her campaign,' Jill Abramson erupted on Twitter on Wednesday morning—a biting reference to the newspaper’s original headline concerning the 28-year-old socialist’s shocking Democratic primary upset, a landslide actually, over incumbent Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District.
Indeed, a quick review of the Times’ coverage of the primary race turned up mention of and quotes from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in two news stories prior to Election Night, and a few name-checks in editorials — one of which, published in the June 20 print edition, noted that she’s 'a challenger [Crowley] is heavily favored to beat.'
'Missing her rise [is] akin to not seeing Trump’s win coming in 2016,' Abramson added in her tweet — an even more biting reference to the Times’ self-acknowledged failings in the paper’s reporting of the presidential campaign.
In response to Abramson’s critique — which she elaborated in several emailed comments shared with the Times — Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told The Daily Beast: 'We have enormous respect for Jill and deeply appreciate her passion. Criticism and feedback helps us do better work and we’re always open to it. On these specifics though, we just disagree with Jill.' A few hours after Abramson’s tweet, the headline phrase that pissed her off, 'Who is Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez?' was changed online to 'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A 28-Year-Old Democratic Giant Slayer.'
The Times, of course, is used to reader complaints — but not to public spankings from former executive editors.
Abramson, 64, famously held that job for nearly three years—the first and only woman to do so—until she was summarily sacked amid an unseemly public-relations melee in May 2014.
Ondanks dit alles nam de NRC van maandag 25 juni 2018 toch de volgende bewering van The New York Times klakkeloos over:
Onderzoek New York Times : Assad zit achter chemische aanval op Douma
Na eigen ‘forensisch’ onderzoek concludeert The New York Times dat Assad achter de gifgasaanval op Douma in april zit. Met Virtual Reality sta je ín het gebombardeerde gebouw.
Inderdaad: 'Virtual Reality,' oftewel propaganda. Onder de kop ‘Jim Mattis refutes the “Fake News” from Israël and NATO’ berichtte de vooraanstaande onderzoeksjournalist Thierry Meyssan op de website Voltaire Network van 19 februari 2018:
The Atlantist Press has been claiming for years that President Bachar el-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. Except that according to US Secretary for Defense, General Jim Mattis, this is fake news. Like Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, this story, which has been occupying the columns of newspapers for the last five years, is pure war propaganda.
This should have been headline news in all the Western news outlets. But only Newsweek mentioned it. During his Press conference on 2 February, Secretary for Defense General Jim Mattis indicated that while he ‘thought’ that Damascus had used chemical weapons against his own people, no-one in the Pentagon has ever provided the slightest proof.
The journalist, who knows General Jim Mattis personally, heard him declare, off the record, his aversion for the myth of Syrian chemical weapon. He offered him the opportunity to repeat his claim, this time in public. Here is the transcript of this conversation (published a little late).
Question : Is there any proof that chlorine weapons were used – proof of chlorine weapons?
Jim Mattis : I think so.
Question : No, I know, I heard you.
Jim Mattis : I believe they have been used several times. And that, as you know, is a rather specific category, that’s why I ruled out sarin as being something different - yeah.
Question : So there is credible proof that sarin and chlorine …
Jim Mattis : No, I don’t have any proof, not specifically. I don’t have proof. What I’m saying is that other groups on the ground, NGO’s, soldiers on the ground, have said that sarin was used. So we’re looking for proof. I have no proof, either credible or non-credible.
Source: ‘Media Availability by Secretary Mattis at the Pentagon,’ Press Secretary, Departement of Defence, February 2, 2018
Het feit dat zowel NRC Handelsblad als de Volkskrant en de rest van Nederlandse zelfbenoemde kwaliteitspers het doen voorkomen alsof deze inmiddels oud-minister van Defensie Jim Mattis deze opmerkingen niet heeft gemaakt, demonstreert hoe journalistiek corrupt zij allen zijn. Een ander voorbeeld van het moedwillig verzwijgen van de realiteit, is dat de Nederlandse pers bewust zes jaar lang verzweeg dat onder andere Nederland terroristen in Syrië steunde, een feit dat alom bekend was gemaakt via de ‘sociale media.’ Dezelfde hierboven genoemde Thierry Meyssan berichtte al op 3 augustus 2012 via Voltaire Network:
No one doubts that terrorism in Syria is being sponsored by NATO and the GCC but until now it was being carried out behind a veil of hypocrisy. Unable to bombard and raze the country because of the Russian and Chinese double veto, the Western powers and their Arab partners decided to bleed the country while setting it up for an attack by mercenaries. Then on February 12 came the call to jihad issued by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Suddenly, NATO, the GCC and al-Qaeda found themselves pursuing the same objective. Notwithstanding, Brussels took the view that the Egyptian sheik’s declarations were his alone and were therefore unworthy of comment as if to underline that NATO doesn’t revise its positions in response to such fatwas. This rationale remained unconvincing because it ignored the issue of the common objectives shared by the self-proclaimed advocates of democracy, on the one hand, and Islamism, on the other. It did allow appearances to be preserved. The masks are now off. The Western powers have acknowledged their links with terrorists.
Wat de corruptie van de commerciële massamedia aantoont is vooral dat zij -- net als het Amerikaanse Congres -- de ‘deep state’ beschermen, de macht achter de staat. Dit proces is uitgebreid en gedocumenteerd, van binnenuit, beschreven door de Amerikaanse intellectueel Mike Lofgren, die de ‘deep state’ omschrijft als ‘a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.’
Meer daarover de volgende keer.
Dank jullie, collega's van de mainstream-pers dat jullie zo dapper zijn geweest om zes jaar lang angstvallig te verzwijgen dat Nederlandse regeringen terroristen steunden. Goed werk verricht! En bij deze ook dank aan mijn oude vriend Ian Buruma die al in september 2013, zonder enig bewijs op The World's Opinion Page zijn 'urban elites' vertelde dat het hoogste tijd was om via 'Bombing for Morality' volstrekt illegaal een 'regime change' in Syrië af te dwingen. Teleurgesteld schreef hij:
A gift for words was always US President Barack Obama’s strongest asset. In Syria, it now looks as if his words – calling the use of chemical weapons a red line that Bashar al-Assad must not cross – have trapped him.
Desondanks zijn ook deze propagandisten niet in staat de geloofwaardigheid van het Amerikaans imperialisme overeind te houden.
A gift for words was always US President Barack Obama’s strongest asset. In Syria, it now looks as if his words – calling the use of chemical weapons a red line that Bashar al-Assad must not cross – have trapped him.
Desondanks zijn ook deze propagandisten niet in staat de geloofwaardigheid van het Amerikaans imperialisme overeind te houden.
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NBC Reporter Quits Over Network’s ‘Mechanical’ Support for ‘Perpetual War’ - Sputnik International
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