[Vredeslijst] Ander Nieuws week 27: Amerikaanse leugens over vermeende gifgasaanval door Assad

Do Jul 13 14:02:02 CEST 2017

Jeff
Shall we not accuse people of dignifying lies but use lists to feel free 
to try establishe truth?
Wendela

Op 13-7-2017 om 13:55 schreef Jeff:
> On 2017-07-03 21:50, vredesnieuws op vredesmedia.nl wrote:
>
>> Onderzoeksjournalist Seymour Hersh onthult Amerikaanse leugens over
>> vermeende gifgasaanval door Assad
>> (http://www.vredessite.nl/andernieuws/2017/week27/0629-syria-lies-sarin.html) 
>>
>
> [Note: By posting and forwarding such content, the editors of Ander 
> Nieuws are equally responsible for dignifying such lies, as is rightly 
> denounced in the following opinion piece. Chemical warfare denial in 
> 2017 is morally equivalent to Holocaust denial but more harmful in 
> practice: it involves not past history but the continuing tragedy in 
> Syria. - JM]
>
>
> Al Jazeera - Opinion - Middle East
> 12 July 2017
>
> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/07/syria-case-editorial-accountability-170711133007352.html 
>
>
>
> SYRIA AND THE CASE FOR EDITORIAL ACCOUNTABILITY
>
>     By publishing Seymour Hersh's latest 'fiction'
>     on Syria, German daily Die Welt served as a
>     conduit for disinformation.
>
> By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
>     https://twitter.com/im_PULSE
>
> On June 29, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons 
> (OPCW) published a comprehensive report confirming that the nerve 
> agent used in the Syrian regime's April 4 attack on Khan Sheikhoun 
> that killed 92 was sarin. The conclusion was no surprise. The World 
> Health Organisation (WHO) and Doctors Without Borders (known by its 
> French initials, MSF) had already found the symptoms of the victims 
> consistent with exposure to a nerve agent. In a separate analysis, the 
> French government had matched sarin samples from the site to regime 
> stock. A Human Rights Watch investigation also found the regime 
> responsible for this and three other chemical attacks since December, 
> and said the latest attack was "part of a broader pattern of Syrian 
> government forces' use of chemical weapons".
>
> However, the response from the regime and its supporters followed a 
> familiar pattern. There was denial, deflection and deception. There 
> were conspiracy theories. There was whataboutery. But effluvia from 
> this dung heap merely fouled the air until it was ignited into a 
> noxious fire by an inveterate pyromaniac. Enter Seymour Hersh.
>
> Seymour Hersh, a once celebrated journalist, has been reluctant to 
> cede the limelight. But the pride of place that he earned through hard 
> work he now wants to keep by trading on his legacy alone. Hersh, who 
> once did the legwork for his stories - finding sources, corroborating 
> claims, verifying evidence - is now relying on the uncorroborated 
> claims of anonymous sources to tell tall tales that contradict 
> available evidence. The man who broke world-changing stories from My 
> Lai to Abu Ghraib now hops from publication to publication, writing 
> sensational drivel, sullying his reputation and diminishing his 
> publishers'.
>
> His latest story, published in the German daily Die Welt, was a 
> colourful rendition of an extant conspiracy theory: that the deaths in 
> Khan Sheikhoun did not result from a chemical attack but were caused 
> by toxic discharge from a conventional attack on a jihadi facility. 
> Based on the baroque testimony of an anonymous source, Hersh concludes 
> that there was no sarin involved.
>
> The OPCW report put an end to this nonsense. But more embarrassingly, 
> Hersh's claims were contradicted even by the regime and Russia. His 
> publisher, Die Welt, was left with egg on its face - much like the 
> London Review of Books before, which had published his earlier forays 
> into conspiracism (To its credit, the LRB declined to publish Hersh's 
> latest).
>
> This opprobrium is richly merited - but is it sufficient to discourage 
> others from yielding to the click bait temptation?
>
> Every publisher knows that conspiracism pays. Some of the internet's 
> most visited sites traffic in conspiracy theories. Conspiracism 
> flatters anti-establishment cynics by providing them with an 
> adversarial posture, diluted of content but full of sound and fury. 
> With the rise of populism, there is a vast reservoir of 
> anti-establishment sentiment to be exploited. And with ad revenues 
> increasingly tied to clicks, even respectable publications appear 
> eager to tap into this pool. Hersh is useful because, regardless of 
> the quality of his work, his oversized reputation allows them to 
> access this resource without suffering much in the way of reputation.
>
> A diligent editor could not have missed all the red flags raised by 
> Hersh's recent stories. Both publications allowed Hersh to bring his 
> own fact checkers, which is astonishingly cavalier considering the 
> incendiary nature of his claims. But the notion was reduced to farce 
> when Hersh used Scott Ritter as his fact-checker.
>
> A one time UN weapons inspector whose reputation was built on his 
> opposition to the Iraq war, Ritter has tried to deal with his recent 
> loss of reputation (over personal indiscretions) by trying to build an 
> audience on the conspiracist fringe. Since his release from prison, 
> Ritter has shown a peculiar set of concerns, marking his return with 
> an attack on the Syrian White Helmets. The attack was shoddy, much of 
> it echoing extant conspiracy theories published on the alt-right 
> conspiracy site 21stCenturyWire (an offshoot of Infowars). But it 
> coincided with the Russian media's relentless campaign against the 
> White Helmets aimed at denying them the Nobel Peace Prize. In 
> subsequent articles, Ritter praised Trump for his overtures to Russia; 
> cast doubt on intelligence reports about Russian hacking of the DNC; 
> and credited Trump's claim that he was being wiretapped by the Obama 
> administration.
>
> But it's what came next that provides clues as to Hersh's source for 
> his latest story and Die Welt's dereliction.
>
> On April 9, Ritter wrote an article based on Russian claims that 
> debuted the conspiracy theory that would later be embellished into the 
> Die Welt article. After repeating the accusation that the deaths in 
> Khan Sheikhoun were caused by the regime's targeting of an al-Qaeda 
> facility, Ritter went on to casually blame the August 2013 Ghouta 
> chemical attack on al-Qaeda and declared the White Helmets their 
> accomplices. Two days later, Ritter signed an open letter to Trump 
> with a group calling itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for 
> Sanity (VIPS) repeating the allegation, but citing as their source 
> "Our US Army contacts". There is reason to doubt the existence of 
> these "Army contacts".
>
> In 2013, VIPS had written a similar open letter to Obama claiming that 
> according to "numerous sources in the Middle East" the regime was 
> innocent of the Ghouta chemical attack. Except, the article - 
> including the reference to "numerous sources in the Middle East" - was 
> plagiarised from the Canadian conspiracy site Globalresearch.ca. One 
> signatory to this 2013 letter, former CIA officer Larry Johnson, is 
> widely believed to be Hersh's source for his three LRB articles on 
> Syria and bin Laden. Hersh has often relied on the VIPS for his 
> stories. The group, made up of disgruntled former employees of the 
> government, is also the likely source for his current article. In 
> other words: the likely source for Hersh's "facts" was also his "fact 
> checker".
>
> Wittingly or not, it is by now clear that Hersh - and by extension Die 
> Welt - served as a conduit for disinformation. For Die Welt to prove 
> that it wasn't deliberately deceiving its audience, it will have to 
> not just retract the story and apologise, it will also have to 
> identify Hersh's anonymous source. There is no ethical justification 
> for granting anonymity to someone who has deliberately tried to deceive.
>
> Only by exposing such sources to public scrutiny will the press be 
> able to discourage malicious parties from abusing confidentiality 
> principles to advance dubious agendas.
>
>      Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is Lecturer in Digital
>      Journalism at the University of Stirling. He
>      is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles
>      Review of Books.
>
> The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not 
> necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
>
>
> ADDITIONAL MATERIAL ON KHAN SHEIKHOUN CHEMICAL ATTACK AND 
> IRRESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM:
>
> Will Get Fooled Again – Seymour Hersh, Welt, and the Khan Sheikhoun 
> Chemical Attack
> By Eliot Higgins, June 25, 2017
> https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/06/25/will-get-fooled-seymour-hersh-welt-khan-sheikhoun-chemical-attack/ 
>
>
> The Khan Sheikhoun Chemical Attack — Who Bombed What and When?
> By Christiaan Triebert,  April 10, 2017
> https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/04/10/khan-sheikhoun-chemical-attack-bombed/ 
>
>
> Russia admits sarin used in spite of Sy Hersh fantasy
> July 10, 2017
> http://claysbeach.blogspot.nl/2017/07/russia-admits-sarin-used-in-spite-of-sy.html 
>
>
> OPCW Fact-Finding Mission Confirms Use of Chemical Weapons in Khan 
> Shaykhun on 4 April 2017
> OPCW, 30 June 2017
> https://www.opcw.org/news/article/opcw-fact-finding-mission-confirms-use-of-chemical-weapons-in-khan-shaykhun-on-4-april-2017/ 
>
>
> LIES of the Russian-Syrian regime story on Sarin gas debunked
> SHIBLI ZAMAN 6 April 2017
> https://wewritewhatwelike.com/2017/04/06/lies-of-the-russian-syrian-regime-story-on-sarin-gas-debunked/ 
>
>
> Sarin gas deaths in Khan Sheikhoun: separating fact from fiction
> Louis Proyect, 5 April 2017
> https://louisproyect.org/2017/04/05/sarin-gas-deaths-in-khan-sheikhoun-separating-fact-from-fiction/ 
>
>
> Syria, Seymour Hersh and the Sarin denialists
> Brian Whitaker, 1 July 2017
> https://medium.com/@Brian_Whit/syria-seymour-hersh-and-the-sarin-denialists-6c1f0ddf3988 
>
>
> Listening to Seymour Hersh Ramble about His Supposed Inside Knowledge 
> about Syria
> by Stanley Heller, June 29, 2017
> http://www.thestruggle.org/Hersh%27s%20strange%20intervew%20on%20sarin.htm 
>
>
> 'Do you only care how we die?' Syrians ask why gas is the only red line
> Salwa Amor, 8 April 2017
> http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syria-sarin-barrle-bombs-idlib-559365502 
>
>
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