Thanks to Dawn for this, an old article but one well worth posting
Quote:MONDAY, JUL 25, 2016 11:14 PM BST
Shades of the Cold War: How the DNC fabricated a Russian hacker conspiracy to deflect blame for its email scandal
Leaked revelations of the DNC's latest misconduct bear a disturbing resemblance to Cold War red-baiting
PATRICK LAWRENCE
Shades of the Cold War: How the DNC fabricated a Russian hacker conspiracy to deflect blame for its email scandal
Hillary Clinton; Vladimir Putin (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Kirill Kudryavtsev)
Now wait a minute, all you upper-case "D" Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into your computers to sabotage our elections on behalf of Donald Trump, no less?
Is this a joke? Are you kidding? Is nothing beneath your dignity? Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters? My answers to these, in order: yes, but the kind one cannot laugh at; no, we're not kidding; no, we will do anything, and yes, we have no regard whatsoever for Americans so long as we can connive them out of their votes every four years.
Clowns. Subversives. Do you know who you remind me of? I will tell you: Nixon, in his famously red-baiting campaign a disgusting episode against the right-thinking Helen Gahagan Douglas during his first run for the Senate, in 1950. Your political tricks are as transparent and anti-democratic as his, it is perfectly fair to say.
I confess to a heated reaction to events since last Friday among the Democrats, specifically in the Democratic National Committee. I should briefly explain these for the benefit of readers who have better things to do than watch the ever more insulting farce foisted upon us as legitimate political procedure.
The Sanders people have long charged that the DNC has had its fingers on the scale, as one of them put it the other day, in favor of Hillary Clinton's nomination. The prints were everywhere many those of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has repeatedly been accused of anti-Sanders bias. Schultz, do not forget, co-chaired Clinton's 2008 campaign against Barack Obama. That would be enough to disqualify her as the DNC's chair in any society that takes ethics seriously, but it is not enough in our great country. Chairwoman she has been for the past five years.
Last Friday WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 DNC email messages providing abundant proof that Sanders and his staff were right all along. The worst of these, involving senior DNC officers, proposed Nixon-esque smears having to do with everything from ineptitude within the Sanders campaign to Sanders as a Jew in name only and an atheist by conviction.
Wasserman fell from grace on Monday. Other than this, Democrats from President Obama to Clinton and numerous others atop the party's power structure have had nothing to say, as in nothing, about this unforgivable breach.They have, rather, been full of praise for Wasserman Schultz. Brad Marshall, the D.N.C.'s chief financial officer, now tries to deny that his Jew-baiting remark referred to Sanders. Good luck, Brad: Bernie is the only Jew in the room.
The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, appeared on ABC's "This Week" and (covering all bases) CNN's "State of the Union" to assert that the D.N.C.'s mail was hacked "by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." He knows this knows it in a matter of 24 hours because "experts" experts he will never name have told him so.
Here is Mook on the CNN program. Listen carefully:
What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.
Is that what disturbs you, Robby? Interesting. Unsubstantiated hocus-pocus, not the implications of these events for the integrity of Democratic nominations and the American political process? The latter is the more pressing topic, Robby. You are far too long on anonymous experts for my taste, Robby. And what kind of expert, now that I think of it, is able to report to you as to the intentions of Russian hackers assuming for a sec that this concocted narrative has substance?
Making lemonade out of a lemon, the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then associates Trump with its own mess and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave).
Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no "Russian actor" at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever be offered persuasive evidence otherwise.
Reluctantly, I credit the Clinton campaign and the DNC with reading American paranoia well enough such that they may make this junk stick. In a clear sign the entire crowd-control machine is up and running, The New York Times had a long, unprofessional piece about Russian culprits in its Monday editions. It followed Mook's lead faithfully: not one properly supported fact, not one identified "expert," and more conditional verbs than you've had hot dinners everything cast as "could," "might," "appears," "would," "seems," "may." Nothing, once again, as to the very serious implications of this affair for the American political process.
Now comes the law. The FBI just announced that it will investigate no, not the DNC's fraudulent practices (which surely breach statutes), but "those who pose a threat in cyberspace." The House Intelligence Committee simultaneously promised to do (and leave undone) the same. This was announced, please note, by the ranking Democrat on the Republican-controlled committee.
Bearing many memories of the Cold War's psychological warp and if you are too young to remember, count your blessings it is the invocation of the Russians that sends me over the edge. My bones grow weary at the thought of living through a 21st century variant. Halifax, anyone?
Here we come to a weird reversal of roles.
We must take the last few days' events as a signal of what Clinton's policy toward Russia will look like should she prevail in November. I warned in this space after the NATO summit in Warsaw earlier this month that Cold War II had just begun. Turning her party's latest disgrace into an occasion for another round of Russophobia is mere preface, but in it you can read her commitment to the new crusade.
Trump, to make this work, must be blamed for his willingness to negotiate with Moscow. This is now among his sins. Got that? Anyone who says he will talk to the Russians has transgressed the American code. Does this not make Trump the Helen Gahagan Douglas of the piece? Does this not make Hillary Clinton more than a touch Nixonian?
I am developing nitrogen bends from watching the American political spectacle. One can hardly tell up from down. Which way for a breath of air?
Patrick Lawrence is Salon's foreign affairs columnist. A longtime correspondent abroad, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker, he is also an essayist, critic and editor. His most recent book is "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale, 2013). Follow him @thefloutist. His web site is patricklawrence.us.
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Dawn Meredith Wrote:David Guyatt Wrote:Perhaps it's only me who sees all of this as symptomatic that the great US neoliberal empire is crashing and burning and that its time is passing.
Nero, fiddle, fire.
:
:::thumbsdown::::boom::
Nope it's not only you. However I am stunned by how many politically aware people are hanging on to the fake CIA story. People who should know better. And of course the real story here is the content of those emails. That has been lost in translation. Hillary lost because she was outed for who and what she is. What the DNC did to Bernie causing many Bernie supporters to refuse to support her at the polls.
Terrific articles Paul.
Hey Dawn, it looks like PDS also agrees with our analysis. The following quote from his FB page:
Quote:Peter Dale Scott As the Pax Americana begins to crumble into rubble, so does the covert fabric of the US deep state that has supported it. This article agrees with one from Reuters which I will also post.
Peter also posted the James Bamford article to his FB along with the article (also posted earlier) by Craig Murray on the shallowness of media reporting on this issue:
Quote:Peter Dale Scott
9 hrs ·
http://www.reuters.com/…/us-russia-cyb...ry-idUS…
At the very least these two articles by James Bamford and Craig Murray show how shallow governing media stories have become on major issues. With their income problems, they have become so dependent on USG news handouts (or leaks), they simple ignore, more glaringly than ever, persuasive contradictory accounts.
The state of the body politic is a mess, and blame for the current popularity of "fake news" cannot by any means be focused uniquely on the Trump team.
Well shucks, that ain't goin' happen.
Obama has resisted every call to publish US intelligence analyses of alleged Russian involvement in the shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine.
But the Intercepts offer does put pressure on Obama to put up or shut up - and hopefully we can lay this risen cadaver of a news hack story back in its grave and thereafter leave well alone.
Quote:AMA MUST DECLASSIFY EVIDENCE OF RUSSIAN HACKING
Jeremy Scahill, Jon Schwarz
December 12 2016, 8:10 p.m.
HERE ARE TWO of political history's great constants: first, countries meddling in the internal affairs of others (both enemies and "friends"); and, second, bogus charges from a faction in one country that foreigners are meddling in its internal affairs to help another faction.
Both are poison for any country that wishes to rule itself.
So if we're serious about being a self-governing republic, we have to demand that President Obama declassify as much intelligence as possible that Russia may have intervened in the 2016 presidential election.
Taking Donald Trump's position that we should just ignore the question of Russian hacking and "move on" would be a disaster.
Relying on a hazy war of leaks from the CIA, FBI, various politicians, and their staff is an equally terrible idea.
A congressional investigation would be somewhat better, but that would take years like the investigations of the intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction and would be fatally compromised by the Democrats' political timidity and GOP opposition.
The only path forward that makes sense is for Obama to order the release of as much evidence as possible underlying the reported "high confidence" of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia both intervened in the election and did so with the intention of aiding Trump's candidacy.
Intelligence agencies hate, often with good reason, to publicly reveal how they obtain information, or even the information itself, since that can make it clear how they got it. But the government would not need to reveal its most sensitive sources and methods e.g., which specific Vladimir Putin aides we have on our payroll to release enough evidence to aid the public debate over interference in our election by a powerful nation state.
And if there were ever a situation in which it was crucial to lean in the direction of more rather than less disclosure, it's now. Obama should make that clear to the intelligence agencies, and that if forced to he is willing to wield his power as president to declassify anything he deems appropriate.
The current discourse on this issue is plagued by partisan gibberish there is a disturbing trend emerging that dictates that if you don't believe Russia hacked the election or if you simply demand evidence for this tremendously significant allegation, you must be a Trump apologist or a Soviet agent.
The reality, however, is that Trump's reference to the Iraq War and the debacle over weapons of mass destruction is both utterly cynical and a perfectly valid point. U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly demonstrated that they regularly both lie and get things horribly wrong. In this case they may well be correct, but they cannot expect Americans to simply take their word for it.
It's also the case that the U.S. has a long history of interfering in other countries' elections, and far worse: The U.S. has overthrown democratically elected governments the world over. In fact, in 2006 Hillary Clinton herself criticized the George W. Bush administration for not doing "something to determine who was going to win" in Palestinian elections. It would not be shocking in the least if Russia sought to interfere in the U.S. electoral process.
But let's have some proof.
In his Farewell Address of 1796, George Washington wrote, "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it." That was good advice then, and it's good advice now. We have to force our politicians to take it seriously.
And if it comes to pass that the U.S. government refuses to back up these serious claims with evidence, then perhaps a patriotic whistleblower will do the public an important service. Here is our offer at The Intercept: If anyone has solid proof that Russia interfered with U.S. elections, send it to us via SecureDrop and we will verify its legitimacy and publish it.
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Paul Rigby Wrote:Labour MP: Highly probable' Russian hackers interfered over Brexit vote
A LABOUR MP today claimed it is "highly probable" Russia interfered to influence the Brexit vote.
So it was Putin who took control of my pencil and made me put my X in the wrong box...
MP doesn't seem to recall that Obama came and visited and warned the UK to vote Remain. Or else.
Gee, the 'Russians did it' meme is getting a good work out. They are talking in Germany too.
Tracy Riddle Wrote:Guess what, David? I'm not a Democrat. I'm a registered Independent. Trump used to be a Democrat until a few years ago.
The whole point of the Russia did it campaign was to deflect from the content of the emails? Seriously? Why are so many Republicans going along with this? To help the Clintons?
Trump is hardly welcome in the GOP. Seen as a complete outsider. Not one of them. Accused of hijacking the party. There were all sorts of GOP groups such as 'Republicans for Hilary' trying to get rid of him.
Magda Hassan Wrote:Tracy Riddle Wrote:Guess what, David? I'm not a Democrat. I'm a registered Independent. Trump used to be a Democrat until a few years ago.
The whole point of the Russia did it campaign was to deflect from the content of the emails? Seriously? Why are so many Republicans going along with this? To help the Clintons?
Trump is hardly welcome in the GOP. Seen as a complete outsider. Not one of them. Accused of hijacking the party. There were all sorts of GOP groups such as 'Republicans for Hilary' trying to get rid of him.
Magda, that amounted to about 15% of the party, and increasingly those weasels are now coming around to accepting jobs in his administration (like Rick Perry).
David Guyatt Wrote:It seems to me Tracy that you're purposely missing the point about Clapper's statement. If US intelligence doesn't know how or when the emails were passed to Wikileaks, then they can't know who passed them either. Ergo, it could have been anybody. No Russian fingerprints involved because no evidence/proof is involved.
I frankly find your additional comments about the various whistleblowers not providing evidence to be bizarre. What are they supposed to do? Provide information that would almost certainly lead to the identity of the leaker/s - just to prove a point? And then walk away and watch him/her/them face the cruel retribution of a failed and vindictive state? Of course they're not going to and I'm really flabbergasted that you are arguing for that to happen.
Besides that, it has been a feature of American law since its beginning that it is the accuser who has to evidence their allegations against the accused - not the other way around. But you're suggesting that the US has now we've reached that stage of their decline where the accused must evidence their innocence against unsubstantiated and unproven allegations. Really?
Meanwhile, isn't it a great pity that our elite, their political managers, their politicized military and intelligence chiefs - who after all have clear financial interests in having a permanent Russian bogeyman hanging over America - and their media shills no longer can be bothered with evidencing the calumny they call news stories -- all they need do these days is to shout an accusation from their front pages and tens of millions of Americans flock down on their knees wailing and accept their words without hesitation. No critical thinking needed. George Orwell eat your heart out.
And based on this post of yours that's all you have, that's all you're presenting.... the self-serving words of a wholly compromised community. There's not a glimmer of fact involved.
David you do understand that hacking the emails is one process (done by one party), and then the handing off of them to Wikileaks is another process (probably done by another party). There could very well be evidence for the first event, and not for the second.
"Besides that, it has been a feature of American law since its beginning that it is the accuser who has to evidence their allegations against the accused - not the other way around."
Yes, and you're saying that the emails were leaked by a disgruntled insider, yet provide no real evidence to support this. Your post above is filled with a lot of rhetoric and assertions, but I'm still waiting for someone to outline a Deep Politics scenario for all of this that makes any sense at all. You can't just make vague, fuzzy hints about shadowy actors and that's it. Come on, give me something.
Paul Rigby Wrote:...Ukrainian Fascist salutes...
Blimey! - That's them busted then. Easy-peasy.
Tracy Riddle Wrote:David Guyatt Wrote:It seems to me Tracy that you're purposely missing the point about Clapper's statement. If US intelligence doesn't know how or when the emails were passed to Wikileaks, then they can't know who passed them either. Ergo, it could have been anybody. No Russian fingerprints involved because no evidence/proof is involved.
I frankly find your additional comments about the various whistleblowers not providing evidence to be bizarre. What are they supposed to do? Provide information that would almost certainly lead to the identity of the leaker/s - just to prove a point? And then walk away and watch him/her/them face the cruel retribution of a failed and vindictive state? Of course they're not going to and I'm really flabbergasted that you are arguing for that to happen.
Besides that, it has been a feature of American law since its beginning that it is the accuser who has to evidence their allegations against the accused - not the other way around. But you're suggesting that the US has now we've reached that stage of their decline where the accused must evidence their innocence against unsubstantiated and unproven allegations. Really?
Meanwhile, isn't it a great pity that our elite, their political managers, their politicized military and intelligence chiefs - who after all have clear financial interests in having a permanent Russian bogeyman hanging over America - and their media shills no longer can be bothered with evidencing the calumny they call news stories -- all they need do these days is to shout an accusation from their front pages and tens of millions of Americans flock down on their knees wailing and accept their words without hesitation. No critical thinking needed. George Orwell eat your heart out.
And based on this post of yours that's all you have, that's all you're presenting.... the self-serving words of a wholly compromised community. There's not a glimmer of fact involved.
David you do understand that hacking the emails is one process (done by one party), and then the handing off of them to Wikileaks is another process (probably done by another party). There could very well be evidence for the first event, and not for the second.
"Besides that, it has been a feature of American law since its beginning that it is the accuser who has to evidence their allegations against the accused - not the other way around."
Yes, and you're saying that the emails were leaked by a disgruntled insider, yet provide no real evidence to support this. Your post above is filled with a lot of rhetoric and assertions, but I'm still waiting for someone to outline a Deep Politics scenario for all of this that makes any sense at all. You can't just make vague, fuzzy hints about shadowy actors and that's it. Come on, give me something.
Tracy, I don't even agree with your basic premise about hacking. I think it was a leak. As I said a number of times before, it is unrealistic of you to expect anyone to finger a disgruntled employee/s of the US intelligence community who leaked material because the US is now proven to be thoroughly nasty and vindictive in the way it treats all whistleblowers. On the contrary it is incumbent on those laying the allegation to evidence them or cease and desist their BS.
Meanwhile, in the world of reality, the Russians did it meme seems to be gradually collapsing from its own internal inconsistencies - not least, apparently, from comments made by a CIA insider who says "it's an outright lie" adding that no one in the CIA or FBI have ruled out .... ta da .... "a possible internal leak within the DNC".
Read on. ::popcorn::
Quote:CIA: Washington Post Report Linking Russian Government to Trump & Election Hacking Is "Outright Lie"
Posted on December 12, 2016 by admin
The Central Intelligence Agency is declaring the Washington Post's much-hyped story linking the Russian government to hacking the presidential election to help Donald Trump an "outright lie," according to CIA personnel with direct knowledge of the case.
The Washington Post, in a front-page splash on Friday, fingered the CIA for allegedly confirming the wild rumors of Russian hacking that were concocted and spread by Democratic lawmakers for months preceding the election and the weeks since the GOP win. The Washington Post's story, however, contained no CIA sources and in fact, no credible U.S. intelligence agency sources whatsoever. Instead, it hinged on what unnamed lawmakers had supposedly been told by unidentified, supposed CIA-linked sources in "secret" briefings: That the CIA had developed proof the Russian state waged an orchestrated campaign to destabilize the U.S. election to benefit GOP-candidate Trump.
"It's an outright lie," a CIA analyst divulged to True Pundit. "There's nothing definitive like that. There are leads from activity originating in Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Britain, France, China and Russia."
Multiple CIA sources are now denouncing the Washington Post for knowingly reporting misleading national security intelligence. Intelligence insiders said no one in the Agency or in the FBI, who is running at least one parallel inquiry, has ruled out a possible internal leak within the Democratic National Committee from actor(s) inside the United States who funneled private DNC emails to Wikileaks.
On the rabid Sunday morning political talk show circuit yesterday, fueled by the Washington Post's thinly-sourced yet highly-lauded reporting, Sen. John McCain implored President Elect Trump to look at the CIA-Russian information which he said was credible. McCain, however, as the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, had strangely never publicly disseminated such intelligence prior to Sunday. And no other elected officials have stepped up to echo his narrative or that of the Washington Post.
CIA and intelligence sources, however, quickly countered McCain's claims as speculative at best, saying his information is simply not accurate and he, as the Arizona senator has done previously, was grandstanding for the media without knowing key facts.
"If he (McCain) in fact is being told that information, it is bad information," a CIA source said, pondering whether McCain had perhaps been briefed by outgoing CIA Director John Brennan or his loyal Agency underlings. Multiple sources said Brennan and his inner circle in the Agency could not be trusted to disseminate any true intelligence, especially in their final days on the job, without tainting raw data with political ideologies that parallel their White House boss.
Trump has already named Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo as Brennan's successor and CIA personnel anxiously anticipate Brennan's departure, sources said. (But you won't read about that in the Washington Post.)
Could the Russian state be linked to hacking to influence the 2016 U.S. election? Intelligence analysts, again, reiterate there is no overwhelming current evidence to definitively link any government to such rogue actions.
CIA personnel said any official information released by Brennan or the White House on this issue prior to President Barack Obama's departure from office should be discounted and tuned out as partisan "white noise."
The CIA sources' collective assessment that the Washington Post purposely and brutally misrepresented the CIA's findings is the third blow to the embattled newspaper in the last week, having been busted writing two other high profile fake stories on national security that were quickly proven to be problematic and ultimately bogus.
A veteran beltway journalist, author and award-winning professor said very little has changed at the Washington Post since he worked as a Beltway journalist covering politics in Prince George's, Maryland. Sadly, he said, the Washington Post's recent practices are not the exception but the rule at the newspaper.
"They just make news up, fabricate whatever news was required at the time, especially when they were scooped or embarrassed by other publications," said Gregg Morris. "Sometimes they did it because they believed they were entitled. Nothing has changed."
Morris worked for Time Magazine, the New York Post, Gannett's Democrat & Chronicle newspaper in Rochester, NY and Washington Star, D.C. A graduate of Cornell University with a bachelor and Master's degree, Morris is currently an award winning journalism professor at Hunter College in New York City.
Morris has chronicled the decline of the mainstream media, especially the Washington Post, for 30 years as a professor and journalist and is currently working on a new book about corruption in undergraduate higher education.
Morris said the Washington Post's latest foray into make-believe journalism with the CIA Russian story had several glaring inconsistencies that are often hallmarks of fabricated, fake news, including:
Story debates itself. Certain parts of the story directly contradict other so-called facts of the same story. The reader is rendered bewildered; the narrative's "facts" prove untrustworthy.
Haphazard construction. The story's sloppy foundations and reporting were likely the result of it being constructed on a rush basis or under pressure from editors or the publisher.
Weak sourcing. The story fails to nail down a true link between what the Post claims and DIRECT confirmation from CIA sources.
"There are no sources with direct knowledge, it's just all hearsay," Morris said. "Who cares what some partisan Senators or lawmakers say they were told. The Post needs real sources on this. Without CIA sources, this story wouldn't even make it out of my classroom alive.
"The editors should be fired. If you're covering national security as a reporter for the Post or New York Times, LA Times, and don't have CIA sources at your fingertips, find another job."
Morris is far from alone when questioning the Washington Post's credibility on its concocted narrative of the flimsy CIA-Russian allegations story.
Trump, in an interview with "Fox News Sunday," dismissed the "revelations" as complete partisan nonsense.
Since Trump's presidential victory, the Washington Post has trumpeted itself as the left's self-appointed Fake news Czar but what is has truly uncovered is how the Washington Post itself spreads fakes stories and the outlandish lengths the paper will stretch to defend such problematic pieces of shoddy fiction disguised as objective journalism.
And last week The Washington Post's malfeasance reached epidemic proportions.
On Monday, The Washington Post began the week attacking General Michael Flynn Sr., Trump's nominee for National Security Advisor for supporting a True Pundit story in early Nov. which the Post said detailed allegations that Hillary Clinton and her campaign director John Podesta were part of a child trafficking ring in D.C. and beyond dubbed "Pizzagate."
Sounds quite intriguing except True Pundit never wrote any such story. Flynn on Twitter, had backed a True Pundit story detailing an active FBI investigation into Clinton and her foundation. The Washington Post ignored basic facts and instead anchored its story, again, on fake assertions in an attempt to paint Flynn and True Pundit as "conspiracy" agents disseminating fake news. Simply not true.
More alarming, however, instead of apologizing for smearing General Flynn or True Pundit or even simply admit its glaring errors Washington Post personnel tried to cover up the gaffes. Post personnel edited the online story at least eight separate times throughout the day until its contents no longer resembled the original, fabricated edition. The Post then assigned a second story about General Flynn and True Pundit to another reporter to help mask the paper's first botched story. The Post never mentioned that the original story was altered, edited, or patently incorrect. Also, no reporters ever contacted Flynn or True Pundit prior to publication, a professional tenet which would have saved the newspaper national embarrassment.
By Wednesday, the Washington Post was in the news again but this time with a public apology for publishing a Nov. 24th story on fake news which the newspaper was now publicly admitting was likely based on fake sourcing. That story, titled "Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news' during election, experts say," contained a black list of supposed phony news providers. This week the Washington Post admitted it might have unfairly besmirched and ultimately slandered the named sites by labeling them as Kremlin-backed agents of fake news. The newspaper said its reporter had no way to vet the source, a spooky anonymous website called ProporNot. Strike two.
Let's recap this not-so-epic week in fabricated Washington Post journalism:
Monday: The Post prints a story about fake news attacking General Flynn and True Pundit. That story turned out to be fake.
Wednesday: The Post admits its blockbuster Russian propaganda story on fake news, complete with a libelous blacklist, was indeed based on phony, unknown sourcing. That story? Fake too.
Friday: The Post ends the work week how it started it: publishing another false story, but upping the stakes by misrepresenting the CIA, another work of fiction now proven false by True Pundit.
If the Washington Post had any pride or professionalism left, a big "if" at this point, reporters and editors would be fired after last week's brutal display of fake news on parade. However, with Amazon-magnate and billionaire owner Jeff Bezos underwriting the money-bleeding operation at his newspaper chronic mediocrity, bias and lack of integrity are apparently not shunned, but instead rewarded. Reporters are not lauded for excellence, only for writing to further the political ideology du jour. This is welfare journalism at its best where alleged professionals are paid despite mistakes that not long ago would seriously jeopardize a journalist's integrity and career.
If a news organization refuses to correct itself when exposed for reporting, spreading, and publicizing chronic falsehoods, how can it hold any moral high ground to denounce fake news?
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