By Caitlin Johnstone
June 29, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
All western mass media outlets are now shrieking
about the story The New York Times
first reported,
citing zero evidence and naming zero sources, claiming
intelligence says Russia paid out bounties to
Taliban-linked fighters in Afghanistan for attacking the
occupying forces of the US and its allies in
Afghanistan. As of this writing, and probably
forevermore, there have still been zero intelligence
sources named and zero evidence provided for this claim.
As we
discussed yesterday, the only correct response to
unsubstantiated claims by anonymous spooks in a
post-Iraq invasion world is to assume that they are
lying until you’ve been provided with a mountain of
hard, independently verifiable evidence to the contrary.
The fact that The New York Times instead chose
to uncritically parrot these evidence-free claims made
by operatives within intelligence agencies with a known
track record of lying about exactly these things is
nothing short of journalistic malpractice. The fact that
western media outlets are now unanimously regurgitating
these still 100 percent baseless assertions is
nothing short of state propaganda.
The consensus-manufacturing, Overton window-shrinking
western propaganda apparatus has been in full swing with
mass media outlets claiming on literally no basis
whatsoever that they have confirmed one another’s
“great reporting” on this completely unsubstantiated
story.
“The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have
confirmed our reporting,” the NYT story’s co-author
Charlie Savage
tweeted hours ago.
“We have confirmed the New York Times’ scoop: A
Russian military spy unit offered bounties to
Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in
Afghanistan,”
tweeted The Washington Post‘s John Hudson.
“We matched The New York Times’ great reporting on
how US intel has assessed that Russians paid Taliban to
target US, coalition forces in Afg which is a pretty
stunning development,”
tweeted Wall Street Journal’s Gordon Lubold.
All three of these men are lying.
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John Hudson’s claim that
the Washington
Post article he co-authored “confirmed the New
York Times’ scoop” twice uses the words “if confirmed”
with regard to his central claim, saying “Russian
involvement in operations targeting Americans, if
confirmed,” and “The
attempt to stoke violence against Americans, if
confirmed“. This is of course an acknowledgement
that these things have not, in fact, been confirmed.
The Wall Street
Journal article co-authored by Gordon Lubold
cites only anonymous “people”, who we have no reason to
believe are different people than NYT’s sources,
repeating the same unsubstantiated assertions about an
intelligence report. The article cites no evidence that
Lubold’s “stunning development” actually occurred beyond
“people
familiar with the report said” and “a
person familiar with it said“.
The fact that both Hudson and Lubold were lying about
having confirmed the New York Times‘ reporting
means that Savage was also lying when he said they did.
When they say the report has been “confirmed”, what they
really mean is that it has been agreed upon. All the
three of them actually did was use their profoundly
influential outlets to uncritically parrot something
nameless spooks want the public to believe, which is the
same as just publishing a CIA press release free of
charge. It is unprincipled stenography for opaque and
unaccountable intelligence agencies, and it is
disgusting.
None of this should be happening. The New York
Times
has admitted itself that it was wrong for
uncritically parroting the unsubstantiated spook claims
which led to the Iraq invasion,
as has The Washington Post. There is no
reason to believe Taliban fighters would require any
bounty to attack an illegitimate occupying force. The
Russian government
has denied these allegations. The Taliban
has denied these allegations. The Trump
administration
has denied that the president or the vice president
had any knowledge of the spook report in question,
denouncing the central allegation that liberals who are
promoting this story have been fixated on.
Yet this story is being magically transmuted into an
established fact, despite its being based on literally
zero factual evidence.
Outlets like CNN are running the story with the
headline “Russia
offered bounties to Afghan militants to kill US troops“,
deceitfully presenting this as a verified fact. Such
dishonest headlines are joined by UK outlets like
The Guardian who informs headline-skimmers that “Russia
offered bounty to kill UK soldiers“, and the
Murdoch-owned Sky News which went with “Russia
paid Taliban fighters to attack British troops in
Afghanistan” after “confirming” the story with
anonymous British spooks.
Western propagandists are turning this completely
empty story into the mainstream consensus, not with
facts, not with evidence, and certainly not with
journalism, but with sheer brute force of narrative
control. And now you’ve got Joe Biden
once again attacking Trump for being insufficiently
warlike,
this time because “he failed to sanction or impose
any kind of consequences on Russia for this egregious
violation of international law”.
You’ve also got former George W Bush lackey Richard
Haas promoting “a proportionate response” to these
baseless allegations.
“Russia is carrying out covert wars vs US troops in
Afghanistan and our democracy here at home,” Haas
tweeted with a link to the New York Times
story. “A proportionate response would increase the
costs to Russia of its military presence in Ukraine and
Syria and, using sanctions and cyber, to challenge Putin
at home.”
Haas is the president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, a
wildly influential think tank with its fingers in
most major US news outlets.
And indeed, the unified campaign to shove this story
down people’s throats in stark defiance of everything
one learns in journalism school does appear to be geared
toward advancing pre-existing foreign policy agendas
which have nothing to do with any concern for the safety
of US troops. Analysts have pointed out that this new
development arises just in time to sabotage
the last of the nuclear treaties between the US and
Russia, the
scaling down of US military presence in Afghanistan,
and, as Haas already openly admitted,
any possibility of peace in Syria.
“This story is published just in time to sabotage
US-Russia arms control talks,” Antiwar‘s Dave
DeCamp
noted on Twitter. “As the US is preparing for a new
arms race — and possibly even live nuclear tests — the
New York Times provides a great excuse to let the New
START lapse, making the world a much more dangerous
place. Russiagate has provided the cover for Trump to
pull out of arms control agreements. First the INF, then
the Open Skies, and now possibly the New START. Any
talks or negotiations with Russia are discouraged in
this atmosphere, and this Times story will make things
even worse.”
“US ‘intelligence’ agencies (ie, organized crime
networks run by the state) want to sabotage the
(admittedly very inadequate) peace talks in
Afghanistan,”
tweeted journalist Ben Norton. “So they get best of
both worlds: blame the Russian bogeyman, fueling the new
cold war, while prolonging the military occupation. It’s
not a coincidence these dubious Western intelligence
agency claims about Russia came just days after
a breakthrough in peace talks. Afghanistan’s
geostrategic location (and trillions worth of minerals)
is too important to them.”
All parties involved in spreading this malignant
psyop are absolutely vile, but a special disdain should
be reserved for the media class who have been entrusted
by the public with the essential task of creating an
informed populace and holding power to account. How much
of an unprincipled whore do you have to be to call
yourself a journalist and uncritically parrot the
completely unsubstantiated assertions of spooks while
protecting their anonymity? How much work did these
empire fluffers put into killing off every last shred of
their dignity? It boggles the mind.
It really is funny how the most influential news
outlets in the western world will uncritically parrot
whatever they’re told to say by the most powerful and
depraved intelligence agencies on the planet, and then
turn around and tell you without a hint of
self-awareness that Russia and China are bad because
they have state media.
Sometimes all you can do is laugh.
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