Archive for the ‘DISHONEST JOURNALISM’ Tag

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE WORD “WAR” OFTEN MISUSED WHEN DISCUSSING ISRAEL’S BLOODY GAZA ASSAULTS – WHAT’S REQUIRED FOR A CONFLICT TO BE CALLED “WAR” ? – THE KIND OF SUBTLE AND POISONOUS DISINFORMATION SO OFTEN TAINTING THE WORDS OF PRESS AND POLITICIANS   Leave a comment

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY HAMZA ABU AL-TARABEESH IN MONDOWEISS

 

“Five years on, a reporter from Gaza remembers the 2014 war”

 

Just a note on words.

Sorry, but I can’t help it, I am always offended when anyone calls one of Israel’s periodic savage attacks on Gaza a “war.”

“War” generally implies two forces of at least some rough equivalence. Otherwise, no conflict would take place, as the greatly weaker side would avoid a fight and retreat.

But you can’t retreat when your home and neighborhood are being assaulted. And where do you run to when you live in a giant open-air prison surrounded by fences and automated machine-gun towers?

No, you cannot dignify Israel’s ruthless assaults on Gaza with the word “war.”

One side has jets, guided missiles, tanks, artillery, armored soldiers, and satellite intelligence while the other has hand-held weapons?

That is the work of the worst kind of cowards, the work of heavily-armed men who kill trapped opponents and women and children and who blow-up homes.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THINKING PEOPLE HAVE BEEN APPALLED BY THE GUARDIAN’S RECENT FALSE STORY ATTACKING JULIAN ASSANGE – BUT THE CONTEMPORARY GUARDIAN IS CONSISTENTLY APPALLING – IN ITS HARD NEWS AND VIEWS THE GUARDIAN IS ABOUT AS TORY AND PRO-AMERICAN AND WAR-LOVING AS THERESA MAY   Leave a comment

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOE LAURIA IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“The Guardian has claimed Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange at the Ecuador embassy. John Pilger visited Assange and tells CN’s Joe Lauria Assange strongly denied any such meeting”

 

The Guardian, under its present direction, serves pretty much as a crypto-Tory propaganda outlet.

It tries covering its trail with loads of stuff about the disadvantaged and minorities, but these are puff pieces of no real substance. Indeed, many of them strike the reader as forced and not terribly sincere.

When it comes to the big issues of the day – Assange, Russia, Corbyn, America’s military, Israel’s behavior, Saudi Arabia’s murderer Prince, Ukraine, and others – The Guardian view is virtually indistinguishable from some Tory Party house organ under the direction of Theresa May.

It is an amazing phenomenon that anyone still gives The Guardian any credibility. Its extreme bias and willingness to run what can only be called disinformation disqualify it entirely from being taken seriously, at least by serious people, and certainly on serious issues.

Its bias shows in many ways, notably in the way it handles comments from readers. It is very controlling, starting with big limits on what story topics are even allowed comments to removing (non-abusive) comments to banning people from commenting.

It still lives off its old reputation from decades ago when it was a (somewhat dull) publication genuinely concerned with working-class and progressive matters.

Today, on the Internet, the main page resembles a pop magazine with its mix of personalities, movies, fads, pop books, television, promotions, pop singers, and travel with a spot of local interest. This all goes to trying to draw a younger audience.

That is all enmeshed with numberless light articles about the unfortunate, women achieving things, and people with unusual sexual identity problems. This kind of material provides the paper’s only claim to being progressive or liberal today.

Under this outer skin, as it were, comes the red meat of The Guardian.

I could give dozens of examples, but here, below, is my favorite, analyzed as what I call a celebration of Hate Russia Day. It is propaganda and disinformation and just plain hate on a grotesque scale. An old 1950s Soviet publication might even have been ashamed to pile it on so thickly.

But The Guardian is not ashamed, not in the least, and it does comparable things, week-in and week-out, about Assange as Russian tool, Russia as an imminent threat to “the West,” Corbyn as anti-Semite, the good work of America’s military, Iran as the root of evil, celebrating Saudi Arabia’s murderer Prince as progressive, Ukraine as a victim of aggression, and others.

Along the way, it manages to heap praise and give continued publicity to the likes of Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton, a couple of the most dishonest and murderous figures of our time.

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/john-chuckman-comment-absurd-lengths-to-which-our-press-goes-to-attack-russia-britains-guardian-holds-hate-russia-day-today-some-of-its-stuff-is-so-ham-fisted-it-reads-like-1959-pravda-atta/

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ABSURD LENGTHS TO WHICH OUR PRESS GOES TO ATTACK RUSSIA – BRITAIN’S GUARDIAN HOLDS “HATE RUSSIA DAY” TODAY – SOME OF ITS STUFF IS SO HAM-FISTED IT READS LIKE 1959 PRAVDA ATTACKING “AMERICAN RUNNING DOGS”   11 comments

John Chuckman

COMMENT ON THE GUARDIAN’S EXTRAORDINARY DISPLAY TODAY OF ANTI-RUSSIAN PREJUDICE

 

“Russian ‘dirty money’ is damaging UK security, MPs say

“Government must stop money laundering by ‘kleptocrats and rights abusers’, which is helping Putin subvert international rules”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/21/russian-dirty-money-is-damaging-uk-security-mps-say

 

Today is Hate Russia Day over at The Guardian.

Well, I know, they always hate Russia at The Guardian, but today features an especially loud and ugly outburst from this self-appointed source of “quality journalism” as the ads appealing to subscribers like to put it.

First, at the top of the front page, we have a big story about “dirty money” And “kleptocrats” and “abusers” exploiting the rules of the City of London, a world financial capital. Second, as if all that weren’t enough, The Guardian gives us, nearer the bottom of the front page, a link to an extremely long story called “Russia uncovered: writers on the World Cup host nation.” I dissect this second really gruesome effort below.

According to the first story, which reports uncritically some unsupported comments from a committee of anti-Russian MPs and even adds unrelated material to juice things up, Russians are using the financial facilities of the City of London to finance all kind of unholy deeds and activities and aggression.

Of course, a real newspaper reporting from such politicians would have asked some questions in order to get at some facts. But facts in this top-of-the-page item are strangely missing.

The idiotic story even manages, once again, to regurgitate the Skripal Affair which supposedly took place in Salisbury. That certainly has a lot to do with international finance in the City of London, but just in case you missed all the financial story’s suggested tie-ins to Russian dirt and intrigue and aggression, there it is, right before your eyes, attempted murder at the highest level.

Of course, the Skripal Affair is more an indictment against the workings of the British government and the British press than anything else. Two Russian citizens, held absolutely incommunicado for a long period, are said to have been attacked, with no evidence offered, using a poisonous substance, again with no evidence offered, that supposedly originated in Russia, yet again with no evidence offered. And the very circumstances of the attack and discovery of the “victims” are packed with implausibilities and contradictions.

So, in a sense, bringing up an alleged poisoning in a story about Russia’s unscrupulous use of public financial facilities in Britain does serve a real purpose. It tells us just how low and ridiculous the existing standards in Britain are for statements by government and by the mainline press on certain subjects.

The committee of politicians, of course, represents the same government that started a massive round of international diplomatic expulsions and public accusations against a head of state based solely on the inexplicable mysteries of the Skripal Affair.

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For background on the Skripal Affair, readers might enjoy:  https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/john-chuckman-comment-the-scandal-that-never-stops-giving-everything-that-is-but-some-truth-new-disinformation-provided-on-the-british-skripal-poisoning-affair-implausibilities-of-the-affai/

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The finance story also carries the suggestion that Britain needs to employ all her diplomatic, military and financial resources to counter Russian aggression. Sounds like the good old boys in Langley, Virginia wrote some of their talking points. I guess that’s what they mean these days when they speak of the old “special relationship” between Britain and America.

Can you just imagine all the truly filthy money that passes through the City of London week-in, week-out? Saudi money? Money from Bahrain? Money from various juntas and dictatorships? Mafia money? Money from human trafficking? Money from drugs? CIA money? Money from bent politicians of every description? If you were able to cut out all the truly dirty lucre, the City of London would simply close down. But Russian money, there’s the real problem according to this propaganda from cheap British politicians supported by press like The Guardian.

Now, remember, this is a supposedly left-wing paper effectively supporting unsupported right-wing government assertions. As I’ve said before, The Guardian is truly an establishment publication which disguises its true identity with a myriad of what Alt-right types in America might call “precious snowflake” filler stories about minorities and women and the unfortunate, but the attitudes of those kind of paste-on poster campaigns are not carried over into the paper’s core business.

As if all that weren’t enough, The Guardian gives us nearer the bottom of the front page a link to a great long story called “Russia uncovered: writers on the World Cup host nation.” I dissect it, section by section, below.

 

“Observer writers and Russia experts go behind the spin to analyse the host nation’s social and political landscape”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/20/russia-uncovered-world-cup-special-report-racism-pussy-riot

 

Well, I don’t know what qualifies someone as an expert over at the Observer (a Guardian subsidiary), but this shameful piece of gutter literature is just one long set of attacks on the host nation for the upcoming World Cup, an event of which Russia is very proud about hosting and to which it is very much looking forward. The piece is a kind of Wikipedia article on the sins of Russia that you will be exposed to if you dare attend the World Cup.

Here are the section captions, which you only have to read to grasp the intent of this long, hate-filled piece:

 

1) Racism

‘Young fans see the dominance of far-right chants. Anyone who challenges it faces a threat of violence’

Absolutely no evidence is offered for this, just a picture of some nasty-looking young men and some assertions. Anyway, if you want to find some extreme right-wing, you’ve come to right place if you go to the United States. Militias, Aryan Churches, the Klan, etc. A huge Nazi Bund organization in Hitler’s day. See this: http://chuckmangrotesques.blogspot.ca/2011/03/hitler-youth-american-volksbund-youth.html   Or, even more ghastly for open violence, the murderous settler gangs in Israel and the former bar room bouncer who regularly threatens minorities, Avigdor Lieberman, who is today Israel’s Defense Minister.

Of course, good old Britain herself has always offered a home to this element. There was Oswald Mosley’s British Fascists in the 1930s. There was a royal family that deeply admired Hitler, and that is almost certainly the real reason Edward VIII was made to abdicate with war approaching. You may find pictures of him and Wallis Simpson with stars in their eyes meeting Hitler. You might also enjoy this:  http://chuckmangrotesques.blogspot.ca/2015/08/john-chuckman-grotesques-royal-family.html  And there was arch- imperialist Churchill and the ruthless measures, including machine-gunning peasants, taken on behalf of the integrity of The Empire. You see, this kind of attack is possible against anyone, for such kinds of people live in every society.

The real question about such groups always is whether they have power in the government, as they very much do in Israel and in the United States.

 

2) Stadiums

‘The fabulous expense of this event has gone to some place other than good architecture’

I don’t mind criticisms of architecture. Indeed, I rather enjoy it when honestly done, and it’s something I indulge in myself, but here the nasty intent is clear by the context. What is architecture criticism, and unrelentingly negative architecture criticism, doing in a piece alongside the Russian Mafia and a voice from Pussy Riot?

 

3) Protest

“Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina: ‘The state controls all the big media but they cannot cut out the eyes of the people’”

Can you imagine quoting a woman, an authority on absolutely nothing, from an outfit like Pussy Riot, whose only claim to fame is getting themselves into trouble years ago for desecrating a church, on the state of politics in a vast and complex nation like Russia? Were they to do same kind of nasty act in a fundamentalist church in parts of the Southern United States, they might very well have been beaten or shot. It is roughly the equivalent, but even worse, of asking Jane Fonda in 1968 to give an expert opinion of American politics.

 

4) Media and censorship

‘It’s only going to get worse!’

Media censorship? This from the paper which allows no comments on the first story about Russian abuse of financial institutions and which quickly closed commenting on this list of clap-trap about Russia. This from a paper which ran government story after story about the supposed poisoning in Salisbury, the Skripal affair, without allowing comment and without seeking any expert outside view on the government claims? This from a paper which ran months of Joe McCarthy-style attacks on a very decent British politician, Jeremy Corbyn, over non-existent anti-Semitism in his party? This from a paper which supported Tony Blair’s stream of lies and killing, and which supports him still, every once in a while, trying to give him a new public voice with a feature?

 

5) Nostalgia

“Whether Soviet simplicity or the strength of the tsars, the best of times are in the past with a poster of Stalin”

Unbelievably, The Guardian sarcastically offers us an image of an old Soviet sentimental poster of Stalin happily with a gang of kids. As though Russians were just fools about the past or indeed longed for it to be repeated. My God, there are people in Britain who still enjoy reading or watching something about Henry VIII, a murderous tyrant, going on five centuries after his reign. And Stalin, like all tyrants, did accomplish some things admired even outside Russia, like building Russia up from a peasant society to an industrial power and leading the nation through the most terrible war in history to victory. You cannot just forget such epoch events, no matter how touched by darkness.

By the way, in the nostalgia section, The Guardian also drags in the Czars. Russia has made an effort to inform people of a long-term national historical institution which was completely vilified by the Communists. It is no different than France having museums about historical characters like Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI or Napoleon. And what is wrong with that? Of course, the suggestion here is that Putin is to be seen as a modern Czar. Ridiculous. Criticism of historical royalty coming from a nation that just spent a fortune on a “royal wedding” between a B-actress and an unbalanced, ne’er-do-well prince, as though it represented the grandeur of Britain, does strike me as a little strange.

 

7) The mafia

‘The gangsters want the World Cup to go well. They’ve already made money and will make more’

Yes, that is the way the items are numbered, perhaps indicative of the thought going into it.

Well, here’s the good old Russian Mafia. As though Mafia organizations weren’t a major force throughout Europe – in Italy with its Sicilian Mafia, its Camorra around Naples and other parts of Italy like Lombardy, the Corsican Mafia in France, still other mafias across the continent, and, of course, the multiple major crime families of the United States who run literally multi-billion-dollar enterprises. By the way, there is a significant Camorra branch operation in Britain. Israel has several Mafia crime families, some of which are active internationally.

But never mind all those other mafias, the Russian one is especially insidious and evil because it is, after all, Russian.

Posted May 21, 2018 by JOHN CHUCKMAN in Uncategorized

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JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: POLITICAL TALES FROM RENTOULAND – A PLACE WHERE WINNING BY-ELECTIONS IS BAD SO LONG AS THE PARTY LEADER’S NAME HAPPENS TO BE CORBYN   Leave a comment

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOHN RENTOUL IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Recent events make it likely that Labour will win both seats in the by-elections next week, meaning Jeremy Corbyn will remain leader – a disaster for the Labour Party”

How does John Rentoul manage to keep employed as a columnist?

Somehow in Rentouland – just a hop, skip, and a jump down the road from Cloudcuckooland – winning by-elections is bad for a party, a party which should instead be working to rid itself of its present leadership.

Well, I do know the answer to my own question.

Because The Independent just salivates about bringing the disgusting Tony Blair – in the form of one of his acolytes if not himself in the flesh – back to power, and writers like John Rentoul do the yeoman’s work of writing-up pages of lame arguments in favor of it.

That moral pigmy and complete sell-out to special interests, Blair, gets almost daily coverage in the paper, as do some of his cult followers.

Blair’s recent insane speech about the public rising-up against Brexit and stopping it – such words from the very man who ignored the greatest peace demonstrations in British history to charge ahead in his secret partnership with Bush to destroy Iraq – was given embarrassing over-exposure by the paper with many images on the same page as links to the same dreary stuff, as though it were statesmanlike material of the greatest possible importance being featured.

And why does anyone in the least wonder that Trump attacks the corporate press?

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MORE ANTI-ASSAD PROPAGANDA IN THE INDEPENDENT – JUST WHY SUCH THINGS ARE PROPAGANDA – CAMERON TSK-TSKING ABOUT HORROR IN SYRIA HE ACTUALLY SUPPORTS – A NOTE ON MERKEL AND REFUGEES   Leave a comment

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE AND VIDEO IN THE INDEPENDENT

Here’s more propaganda from The Independent, so poorly disguised you cannot vouch for the source.

God, don’t you ever get tired of pushing this stuff out?

Even if you could account for the source, this is propaganda precisely because it has absolutely no perspective. The best propaganda always has a tiny bit of truth, and the truth here is that, yes, such weapons are used.

You absolutely cannot fairly take one small part of a huge destructive war and suggest that it explains what is going on. It cannot. It can horrify people though, and that would appear to be its purpose here because The Independent makes no practice of presenting such things in most situations.

I can’t recall any equivalent material being used by The Independent for Israel’s slaughters in Gaza, and such material does exist. Some very brave photographers took images of the rivers of blood and smashed children.

I don’t recall such material for America’s (and of course Britain’s) proud invasion of Iraq in which such ghastly weapons as cluster bombs and white phosphorus were used. Thousands of pictures exist of sliced-up children and smashed women, but you never ran any.

The creepy Saudis, whom Britain implicitly supports and with whom it explicitly does a handsome business, are, right now, killing masses of civilians in Yemen, and they are using America’s dreadful cluster bombs to tear them apart, maiming those not killed. Where are your terrifying images?

The horror in Syria did not start by the government’s barrel-bombing places. The barrel-bombing is a response to the infiltration and entrenchment of tens of thousands of heavily-armed terrorists trying to destroy the country from scattered and hidden positions all over it.

They were infiltrated into Syria by the lunatic now running Turkey. They are financed and supplied by the absolute princes of Saudi Arabia. They were assisted, advised, and even led in some cases by the same government of Israel which holds more than five million unwilling people as prisoners. Yet more money came from the absolute princes of Qatar.

And the United States has also supplied and trained elements. It clearly approves of what has been going on or it would be stopped. We know to a certainty that nothing happens anywhere near its Middle East colony of which it does not approve.

Britain under David Cameron, as one of America’s most groveling allies, has also done its dirty bit to help.

This entire misery could be ended if outside help and support for thugs were ended, but that help and support, by the above-named parties, will not stop. Because those countries want Syria destroyed just the way Iraq was destroyed, reduced to a meaningless set of rump states with a population left to suffer for a generation.

And they want to achieve that in the most cowardly of fashions, giving the bloody work over to hired mercenaries and ideological maniacs while standing off – tsk-tsking at the horrors as Cameron is wont to do – pretending they have nothing to do with it.

I simply do not understand how anyone can think human trash like ISIS and al-Nusra Front should prevail over a reasonable, highly-educated man like Assad, a leader who has always protected a secular and diverse society and who keeps the support of large parts of that society.

It is a totally absurd situation, and it can only be explained in light of American policy. It is the policy that destroyed Iraq and Libya and sparked in large covert operations the whole pointless and wrongly-named Arab Spring. There was nothing spring-like in what happened.

A brief experiment with democratic government in Egypt was smothered following Israel’s complaints about the threat it represented. Egypt was returned to a decades-old dictatorship much to Israel’s liking. In other places, like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, potential uprisings were violently suppressed by absolute governments.

It was all an effort to re-mold the region to the liking of America and its Middle East colony under a façade of popular revolt and never mind all the inconvenience of death, destruction, and misery. The region’s authoritarian governments were overthrown only where they disagreed with America and/or Israel while in all other cases they were left to flourish, and the authoritarian governments overthrown were only replaced by others. Democracy flourishes nowhere.

Well, Mr. Putin understands that, and if the nations doing the deadly supplying aren’t going to stop, he’ll destroy what they’ve supplied. The Syrian army will do the rest.

NOTE:

Julian Assange has said that the massive influx of refugees into Europe is, in fact, part of the American strategy to de-stabilize Syria, and I don’t doubt that he is right. Emptying Syria of good parts of its professionals and technicians only further weakens it.

This, of course, puts in quite a different light Ms. Merkel’s controversial, open-arms support for unlimited refugees in Germany. She, rather than speaking from a heart larger than we would have credited her from past behaviors, is just once again supporting American policy, a much more familiar stance for her.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: PHONY GUARDIAN ARTICLE ABOUT PUTIN WORKING TO KEEP THE WEST OFF BALANCE – WE HAVE ZERO JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY – WHAT PUTIN IS DOING – CHARACTER OF SOME KEY LEADERS – ENDLESS ISLAMOPHOBIA SINCE 9/11   Leave a comment

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Once again, here is an article of which The Guardian, so long as it pretends to genuine journalism, should be ashamed.

Contrary to the completely uninformed words of the article, Putin does not work to keep “the West off-balance.” He is keen to cooperate and work together with Europe and America, as he has demonstrated many, many times. Do you not see the ugly, needless throwback-to-the-Cold War implications of the language used in this article about Putin versus the West?

Putin is cautious – combined with a keen intelligence and decisiveness – this makes him the likely most superb leader in the world today.

Any reader of character can see that Cameron, Hollande, and Obama are missing some of these qualities in various proportions. Cameron virtually comes off as a Music Hall parody of a Prime Minister making overly-pompous pronouncements and demands while Hollande cannot rise above the role of limp-shouldered provincial school master. Obama is an ambitious blunderer who only plays official spokesperson for the Pentagon and CIA. None of that is Putin’s fault.

Putin waited a long time before entering Syria, and when he did so it was under the invitation of what remains the only legitimate government, no matter what Cameron or Obama assert in strained words. That government is a legitimate ally of Russia’s and is entitled to assistance against terrorist forces introduced and armed by third parties. But even now, Putin’s natural caution sees Russia working only with air and missile forces with the Syrian Army doing the fighting under them.

Now that he has made the decision, he gives it the effort it deserves. And while I hate war, much as Jeremy Corbyn does, I cannot help seeing Putin as a courageous and right-thinking figure. He stands a good chance of bringing the horrors of Syria to an end. He works towards peace and stability while America’s public record for years now is almost non-stop war and deceit.

And all the phony mainline press stories and all the dumb statements from the ridiculous man who heads NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, and all the Pentagon threats and name-calling cannot change that. Newspapers running such propaganda only reduce themselves in the minds of thoughtful people to being the modern equivalents of the old Soviet apparatchiks constantly generating bone-headed propaganda no one could possibly believe.

Putin fights only the same terrorists that The Guardian and every other mainline newspaper have screamed about now for several years, giving great publicity to their beheadings and other atrocities, although your effort now to question Putin’s motives does make me question your previous motives. It was so easy to run stories about the gruesome horrors of ISIS while doing nothing about it, wasn’t it? Indeed, you claimed the satisfaction, along with that silly puff-ball of a Prime Minister, David Cameron, of morally pooh-poohing ISIS while remaining secretly satisfied with the dirty work it did to destroy Syria. And all the publicity and pompous speeches just happened to play comfortably into supporting the shameless and continuous stream of Islamophobia with which we’ve been inundated in Europe and America since 9/11.

Nothing could be more hypocritical and completely dishonest.

Yet again, the horrors of Syria have nothing to do with Assad. He started nothing. And such horrors as use of chemical weapons had nothing to do with him. And they certainly have nothing to do with Mr. Putin. The people responsible for the deaths of a quarter million, countless atrocities, and the piteous streams of refugees are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar working under the auspices and complete approval of the United States and its brutal Middle East colony, Israel.

That group of nations wants Syria reduced to the same kind of divided, helpless mess as Iraq – a bleeding body left on the ground with its limbs hacked off – but they don’t want to take direct responsibility for the criminal assault, as America and Britain did, often to their regret, in Iraq.

You, The Guardian, only effectively work to continue the horror by publishing dishonest stuff, but I’m sure I waste my breath on senior editors who already know much of what I’ve said. Now, for general readers I’ll only say that if this is what appears in a paper of The Guardian’s traditional liberal and non-corporate reputation, you can only imagine what garbage is regularly strewn over the pages of The Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. It is extremely difficult for ordinary people to get even a glimpse of truth through a phalanx like that defending brutal government deceit. And that is just what is intended.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHY CAN’T THE PALESTINIANS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES ? THE CLEAREST EVIDENCE OF A HUGE AND CONTINUING BIAS IN OUR PRESS   Leave a comment

John Chuckman

COMMENT TO CBC RADIO CONCERNING AN INTERVIEW ON SUNDAY EDITION WITH GIDEON LEVY

As liberal-minded and decent-spirited as your Israeli journalist guest of March 29, may be, why can’t the Palestinians speak for themselves?

Are the Palestinians such hopeless children or primitives that they cannot speak for themselves?

Your program has given voice to scores of Israelis and apologists for Israel over the years with barely a sound from the Palestinians, who have many articulate and educated spokespeople.

The bias, extreme bias, just couldn’t be clearer. Even when speaking of the grief Israel has imposed on five million people for half a century, and in violation of countless international laws and agreements and norms, pretty much only Israelis are deemed qualified to comment.

Actually your interview today could be seen as a new form of reverse-propaganda in that it advertises reasonableness amongst Israelis, telling people: So don’t worry about the endless abuse and injustice, such good folks in Israel will make things right, eventually, and you can feel good just knowing they are there.

Michael, despite your general liberal-mindedness, your broadcasting practices on this terrible, longstanding issue of utterly-debased human rights makes you part of the problem, not the solution.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MARGARET WENTE HURLS MORE IGNORANCE: CALLING FRENCH STUDENTS PROTESTING IN MONTREAL THE GREEKS OF CANADA – JUDGING A COLUMN BY ITS HORRIBLE COMMENTS – ALBERTA DOLLARS?   Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“Finally the vast majority of the demonstrations have been peaceful. The subway smoke and the class invaders are not a protest problem they are a criminal problem and need to be dealt with in a criminal way. To associate a bunch of thugs with the 115000 students who have demonstrated peacefully is wrong.”

Yes, and it is an especially sensitive matter in Quebec because the previous generation there, before the Quiet Revolution, had low opportunities for university attendance. So in their eyes, this is more than a financial concern.

And I might add, Wente, in getting it wrong, is only performing at her expected level.

She amuses and supports herself by tossing bloody hunks of meat into the beast compound.

She has virtually never honestly analyzed a serious problem.
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“Without the rest of Canada supporting it, Quebec is worse than Greece. At least Greeks have a glorious past. Quebecers have always been lazy, useless socialist twits.”

These words are a perfect example of what someone like Wente brings floating to the surface, much like toxic residue.

One could cite many such comments here.

Surely this provides hard evidence for the level and quality of Wente’s appeal, but that’s what one expects from the work of a professional propagandist: members of the Politburo clapping their bloody paws together, hooting and bellowing, following her words.
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‘The tuition protesters must be doing something right if Globe and Mail orders this piece from one of their “Commentary writers”.’

And not just ‘one’ of their commentary writers.

But the amazing Ms. Wente, utility-infielder political hack in the great tradition of 19th century scurrilous scribblers, the kind of folks who used to call Lincoln an obscene ape.

Considering Ms. Wente’s track record, it is hard to understand how anyone takes her seriously.

Just some egregious examples were inaccurate reporting on Vancouver’s safe-injection site courtesy of one prejudiced source; even worse, her garbage on the Middle East, including the trashy notion of Palestinian mothers not caring for their children; and, her all-time whopper, her dangerously dishonest columns from conquered Iraq, a catastrophe that cost a million lives.

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/the-iraq-wars-trashiest-piece-of-propaganda/

One can only hope to understand her having any audience from the scientifically determined fact that her kind of conservative views tend to appeal to lower intelligence.

http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/why-republicans-have-no-sense-of-humor/
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“Entitled Quebeckers brought to you be Albertans dollars!”

Again, the kind of toxic waste Ms. Wente’s words always bring floating to the surface of any issue.

Albertan dollars?

I thought our currency was national?

Of course, someone in Texas might equally say:

“Blowhard Albertans brought to you by Texas dollars!”