The
Guardian bracht afgelopen donderdag het bericht dat 2 Twitteraccounts
niet tot echte mensen behoorden, maar door Russische bot’s werden aangestuurd (of zoals
je wilt: door geautomatiseerde software) werden bediend.

In
die Twitterberichten werd de ‘gifgasaanval’ in Douma neergezet als
een vals bericht (niet een ‘false flag’, dat zou een wel gepleegde
gifgasaanval zijn, die in de schoenen van bijvoorbeeld Assads bewind
werd geschoven, iets dat overigens meermaals wel is gebeurd in Syrië, zoals bij de grote gifgasaanval van 2013…)…..

De
eigenaren van de accounts, wel degelijk bestaande personen, hebben zich kenbaar gemaakt en nee, het gaat niet om de gebruikelijke en spreekwoordelijke zwart gemaakte Russische schapen…..

Ondanks
dat The Guardian op de hoogte is van het gelogen bericht, weigert dit
dagblad te rectificeren en het bewuste artikel te verwijderen van het
internet…….

Lees
het volgende artikel van Caitlin Johnstone over een dagblad dat de mond vol
heeft met de woorden ‘fake news’, waar het zelf fake news (of: nepnieuws) brengt, fake news dat
de bevolking op moet zetten tegen Syrië en Rusland……. Waar de waarheid over de
‘gifgasaanval’, namelijk dat deze niet bestaand was en is, wordt geweigerd door The Guardian en de redactie deze zelfs weigert ook maar als mogelijkheid te zien……. ‘Niet vreemd dus’ dat The Guardian de leugen over Russische bots niet wenst te rectificeren, een herhaling van de enorme berg leugens over de Russische bemoeienis met de presidentsverkiezingen in de VS……

Johnstone stelt terecht dat het niet toegeven van fouten (fouten die de politieke situatie verdedigen, dus het illegaal oorlogvoeren in gebieden waar in dit geval GB niets te zoeken heeft) geen probleem is, sterker nog: met het toegeven van dit soort fouten zou men niet alleen de politiek tegen de haren instrijken, maar ook de eigenaar (of eigenaren) van The Guardian, een dagblad dat zich de laatste paar jaar heeft ontpopt als oorlogshitser…….. Dezelfde Guardian die na Douma stelde: “After Douma, the west’s response to Syria’s regime must be military….” En dat voor een mediaorgaan dat zegt onafhankelijk te zijn…….

The
Guardian Is Committing Journalistic Malpractice By Not Retracting
This Claim

caitlin
johnstone

On
the 19th of April, The
Guardian published
an article making the positive assertion that two Twitter accounts
were run not by real people, but by automated
bot software based
in Russia. Since the article was published, the owners of both
accounts have stepped forward, on video, demonstrating in no
uncertain terms that they are in fact real human beings and not
software programs.

As
of this writing, days later, there has been neither retraction nor
correction of the false claims made by The
Guardian,
and the
articleremains as
published.

The
article’s author, Heather Stewart, makes the following claim:

“One
bot, @Ian56789,
was sending 100 posts a day during a 12-day period from 7 April, and
reached 23 million users, before the account was suspended. It
focused on claims that the chemical weapons attack on Douma had been
falsified, using the hashtag #falseflag.
Another, @Partisangirl,
reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over the same 12-day
period.”

Stewart
explicitly asserts that the Twitter account @Ian56789 is
a bot. That account’s owner appeared
for an interview on Sky
News,
completely disproving this assertion. Stewart also names the Twitter
account @Partisangirl as
a bot account. The account’s owner, Maram Susli, is a well-known
Syrian-Australian activist with many
publicly available videos and
a Wikipedia
page.

This
is an extremely egregious case of journalistic malpractice. A
demonstrable falsehood has been published about two individuals, the
information has been publicly available for days, and there has been
no correction or retraction from a trusted mainstream news source.
When confronted with the obvious and undeniable falsehoods in her
story, Heather Stewart tweeted,
“It’s not my analysis – as the piece makes quite clear – it’s
the government’s.”

Wow.
There’s a lot going on in those thirteen words. First of all, a
journalist’s most important job is to question government power and
hold it to account. The fact that mainstream British journos are now
defending the unquestioning advancement of demonstrably false smears
by saying that’s what the government told them to say should disturb
everyone, and the fact that they’re not even correcting it at all is
positively bone-chilling. Even after admitting to being a government
stenographer, there should still be a correction after a claim’s
demonstrably false nature comes to light.

Secondly,
Stewart’s wording explicitly asserts that those accounts are bots as
an absolute fact. It doesn’t say “One alleged bot, @Ian56789,”
it says “One bot”. It doesn’t say “Another account the
British government has labeled a bot, @Partisangirl,”
it asserts that the account is a
bot. Stewart took the British government at its word, repeated what
she was told as absolute fact, and published it in a very widely read
and trusted news outlet, which has refused to retract or correct the
claim.

This
is because both The
Guardian and
and Stewart know that in today’s political environment there are
never any consequences for these McCarthyite hatchet jobs. It is much
better for them to ignore those speaking dissenting perspectives than
to publicly admit error, because those who question the narratives
which benefit longstanding imperialist agendas do not have power on
their side. The
Guardian has
arguably become in recent years the single most virulent promulgator
of war propaganda on the planet, and it is protected by the might of
the western empire. Those who get crushed into the dirt by its tank
treads, not so much.

The
legendary Australian journalist John Pilger, whose work on the evils
of war and imperialism has been an inspiration for generations of
journalists like myself, stated in an interview earlier this year
that there was a “purge” of antiwar writers from The
Guardian some
three years ago.

“But
my written journalism is no longer welcome – probably its last home
was The
Guardian,
which three years ago got rid of people like me and others in pretty
much a purge of those who were saying what The
Guardian no
longer says anymore,” Pilger said on
the Flashpoint radio
show.

Since
that time we’ve seen a relentless outpouring of pro-interventionist
propaganda from The
Guardian with
headlines like “After
Douma, the west’s response to Syria’s regime must be military“,
conducting fact-free
smear jobs on
opponents of Syrian interventionism, and deliberately
hiding all evidence which
contradicts the pro-interventionist narrative. Day after day after
day this toxic outlet advocates death, destruction and mass murder
over peace and common sense, and those
who have been permitted to rise within its ranks are
the ones who understand that it is in the interests of their career
advancement to march to the beat of the war drum.

This
is not healthy, and this is not acceptable. But in a way it’s good
that these brazen war propagandists are exposing themselves so
completely, because we can point at what they are doing and present
clear evidence of a mass media campaign to manufacture support for
a longstanding
regime change agenda,
thereby shattering the faith that people have placed in these
deceitful institutions. Hopefully we can do it before they do much
more harm.

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