Exclusive: In covering the new Cold War, The New York Times has lost its journalistic bearings, serving as a crude propaganda outlet publishing outlandish anti-Russian claims that may cross the line into fraud, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
In a fresh embarrassment for The New York Times, a photographic forensic expert has debunked a new amateurish, anti-Russian analysis of satellite photos related to the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, labeling the work “a fraud.”
Last Saturday, on the eve of the second anniversary of the tragedy that claimed 298 lives, the Times touted the amateur analysis asserting that the Russian government had manipulated two satellite photos that revealed Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles in eastern Ukraine at the time of the shoot-down.
New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)
The clear implication of the article by Andrew E. Kramer was that the Russians were covering up their complicity in shooting down the civilian airliner by allegedly doctoring photos to shift the blame to the Ukrainian military. Beyond citing this analysis by armscontrolwonk.com, Kramer noted that the “citizen journalists” at Bellingcat had reached the same conclusion earlier.
But Kramer and the Times left out that the earlier Bellingcat analysis was thoroughly torn apart by photo-forensic experts including Dr. Neal Krawetz, founder of the FotoForensics digital image analytical tool that Bellingcat had used. Over the past week, Bellingcat has been aggressively pushing the new analysis by armscontrolwonk.com, with which Bellingcat has close relationships.
This past week, Krawetz and other forensic specialists began weighing in on the new analysis and concluding that it suffered the same fundamental errors as the previous analysis, albeit using a different analytical tool. Given Bellingcat’s promotion of this second analysis by a group with links to Bellingcat and its founder Eliot Higgins, Krawetz viewed the two analyses as essentially coming from the same place, Bellingcat.
“Jumping to the wrong conclusion one time can be due to ignorance,” Krawetz explained in a blog post. “However, using a different tool on the same data that yields similar results, and still jumping to the same wrong conclusion is intentional misrepresentation and deception. It is fraud.”
A Pattern of Error
Krawetz and other experts found that innocuous changes to the photos, such as adding a word box and saving the images into different formats, would explain the anomalies that Bellingcat and its pals at armscontrolwonk.com detected. That was the key mistake that Krawetz spotted last year in dissecting Bellingcat’s faulty analysis.
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins
Krawetz wrote: “Last year, a group called ‘Bellingcat’ came out with a report about flight MH17, which was shot down near the Ukraine/Russia border. In their report, they used FotoForensics to justify their claims. However, as I pointed out in my blog entry, they used it wrong. The big problems in their report:
“–Ignoring quality. They evaluated pictures from questionable sources. These were low quality pictures that had undergone scaling, cropping, and annotations.
“–Seeing things. Even with the output from the analysis tools, they jumped to conclusions that were not supported by the data.
“–Bait and switch. Their report claimed one thing, then tried to justify it with analysis that showed something different.
“Bellingcat recently came out with a second report. The image analysis portion of their report heavily relied on a program called ‘Tungstène’. … With the scientific approach, it does not matter who’s tool you use. A conclusion should be repeatable though multiple tools and multiple algorithms.
“One of the pictures that they ran though Tungstène was the same cloud picture that they used with ELA [error level analysis]. And unsurprisingly, it generated similar results — results that should be interpreted as low quality and multiple resaves. … These results denote a low quality picture and multiple resaves, and not an intentional alteration as Bellingcat concluded.
“Just like last year, Bellingcat claimed that Tungstène highlighted indications of alterations in the same places that they claimed to see alterations in the ELA result. Bellingcat used the same low quality data on different tools and jumped to the same incorrect conclusion.”
Although Krawetz posted his dissection of the new analysis on Thursday, he began expressing his concerns shortly after the Times article appeared. That prompted Higgins and the Bellingcat crew to begin a Twitter campaign to discredit Krawetz and me (for also citing problems with the Times article and the analysis).
When one of Higgins’s allies mentioned my initial story on the problematic photo analysis, Krawetz noted that my observations supported his position that Bellingcat had mishandled the analysis (although at the time I was unaware of Krawetz’s criticism).
Higgins responded to Krawetz, “he [Parry] doesn’t recognize you’re a hack. Probably because he’s a hack too.”
Further insulting Krawetz, Higgins mocked his review of the photo analyses by writing: “all he has is ‘because I say so’, all mouth no trousers.”
Spoiled by Praise
Apparently, Higgins, who operates out of Leicester, England, has grown spoiled by all the praise lavished on him by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and other mainstream publications despite the fact that Bellingcat’s record for accuracy is a poor one.
The Dutch Safety Board’s reconstruction of where it believed the missile exploded near Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014.
For instance, in his first big splash, Higgins echoed U.S. propaganda in Syria about the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack — blaming it on President Bashar al-Assad — but was forced to back down from his assessment when aeronautical experts revealed that the sarin-carrying missile had a range of only about two kilometers, much shorter than Higgins had surmised in blaming the attack on Syrian government forces. (Despite that key error, Higgins continued claiming the Syrian government was guilty.)
Higgins also gave the Australian “60 Minutes” program a location in eastern Ukraine where a “getaway” Buk missile battery was supposedly videoed en route back to Russia, except that when the news crew got there the landmarks didn’t match up, causing the program to have to rely on sleight-of-hand editing to deceive its viewers.
When I noted the discrepancies and posted screenshots from the “60 Minutes” program to demonstrate the falsehoods, “60 Minutes” launched a campaign of insults against me and resorted to more video tricks and outright journalistic fraud in defense of Higgins’s faulty information.
This pattern of false claims and even fraud to promote these stories has not stopped the mainstream Western press from showering Higgins and Bellingcat with acclaim. It probably doesn’t hurt that Bellingcat’s “disclosures” always dovetail with the propaganda themes emanating from Western governments.
It also turns out that both Higgins and “armscontrolwonk.com” have crossover in personnel, such as Melissa Hanham, a co-author of the MH-17 report who also writes for Bellingcat, as does Aaron Stein, who joined in promoting Higgins’s work at “armscontrolwonk.com.”
The two groups also have links to the pro-NATO think tank, Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of pushing NATO’s new Cold War with Russia. Higgins is now listed as a “nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative” and armscontrolwonk.com describes Stein as a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.
Armscontrolwonk.com is run by nuclear proliferation specialists from the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey, but they appear to have no special expertise in photographic forensics.
A Deeper Problem
But the problem goes much deeper than a couple of Web sites and bloggers who find it professionally uplifting to reinforce propaganda themes from NATO and other Western interests. The bigger danger is the role played by the mainstream media in creating an echo chamber to amplify the disinformation coming from these amateurs.
Just as The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major outlets swallowed the bogus stories about Iraq’s WMD in 2002-2003, they have happily dined on similarly dubious fare about Syria, Ukraine and Russia.
The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing the reverse flight paths of two missiles — from the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack — intersecting at a Syrian military base. As it turned out, one missile contained no sarin and the other had a range of only two kilometers, not the nine kilometers that the map assumed.
And just as with the Iraq disaster, when those of us who challenged the WMD “group think” were dismissed as “Saddam apologists,” now we’re called “Assad apologists” or “Putin apologists” or simply “hacks” who are “all mouth, no trousers” – whatever that means.
For instance, in 2013 regarding Syria, the Times ran a front-page story using a “vector analysis” to trace the sarin attack back to a Syrian military base about nine kilometers away, but the discovery of the sarin missile’s much shorter range forced the Times to recant its story, which had paralleled what Higgins was writing.
Then, in its eagerness to convey anti-Russian propaganda regarding Ukraine in 2014, the Times even returned to a reporter from its Iraq-falsehood days. Michael R. Gordon, who co-authored the infamous “aluminum tubes” article in 2002 that pushed the bogus claim that Iraq was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program, accepted some new disinformation from the State Department that cited photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers in Russia and then reappearing in Ukraine.
Any serious journalist would have recognized the holes in the story since it wasn’t clear where the photos were taken or whether the blurry images were even the same people, but that didn’t give the Times pause. The article led the front page.
However, only two days later, the scoop blew up when it turned out that a key photo supposedly showing a group of soldiers in Russia, who then reappeared in eastern Ukraine, was actually taken in Ukraine, destroying the premise of the entire story.
But these embarrassments have not dampened the Times’ enthusiasm for dishing out anti-Russian propaganda whenever possible. Yet, one new twist is that the Times doesn’t just take false claims directly from the U.S. government; it also draws from hip “citizen journalism” Web sites like Bellingcat.
In a world where no one believes what governments say the smart new way to disseminate propaganda is through such “outsiders.”
So, the Times’ Kramer was surely thrilled to get fed a new story off the Web that claimed the Russians had doctored satellite photographs of Ukrainian Buk anti-aircraft missile batteries in eastern Ukraine just before the MH-17 shoot-down.
Instead of questioning the photo-forensic expertise of these nuclear proliferation specialists at armscontrolwonk.com, Kramer simply laid out their findings as further corroboration of Bellingcat’s earlier claims. Kramer also mocked the Russians for trying to cover their tracks with “conspiracy theories.”
Ignoring Official Evidence
But there was another key piece of evidence that the Times was hiding from its readers: documentary evidence from Western intelligence that the Ukrainian military did have powerful anti-aircraft missile batteries in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, and that the ethnic Russian rebels didn’t.
Makeshift memorial at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport for the victims of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 which crashed in the Ukraine on July 17, 2014, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 people on board. (Roman Boed, Wikipedia)
In a report released last October, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country.” MIVD added that the rebels lacked that capacity:
“Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude.”
Since Dutch intelligence is part of the NATO intelligence apparatus, this report means that NATO and presumably U.S. intelligence share the same viewpoint. Thus, the Russians would have little reason to fake their satellite photos showing Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile batteries in eastern Ukraine if the West’s satellite photos were showing the same thing.
But there is a reason why the Times and other major mainstream publications have ignored this official Dutch government document – because if it’s correct, then it means that the only people who could have shot down MH-17 belong to the Ukrainian military. That would turn upside-down the desired propaganda narrative blaming the Russians.
Yet, that blackout of the Dutch report means that the Times and other Western outlets have abandoned their journalistic responsibilities to present all relevant evidence on an issue of grave importance – bringing to justice the killers of 298 innocent people. Rather than “all the news that’s fit to print,” the Times is stacking the case by leaving out evidence that goes in the “wrong direction.”
Of course, there may be some explanation for how both NATO and Russian intelligence could come to the same “mistaken” conclusion that only the Ukrainian military could have shot down MH-17, but the Times and the rest of the Western mainstream media can’t ethically just pretend the evidence doesn’t exist.
Unless, of course, your real purpose is to disseminate propaganda, not produce journalism. Then, I suppose the behavior of the Times, other MSM publications and, yes, Bellingcat makes a lot of sense.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17: Two Years of Anti-Russian Propaganda” and “NYT Is Lost in Its Ukraine Propaganda.”]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
If one out of a thousand people who read this article understood it, I would be shocked. If Russia was guilty of any part of this tragedy, the evidence wouldn’t have so mysteriously been hidden from the public. Here are some details on this issue, Share: http://ukrainereferendum.blogspot.com/search?q=%23MH17+air+traffic+controller
Jeffrey Lewis, listed on the Opinion pages at the New York Times as a “scholar” at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, struggles to be relevant with more “independent analysis”:
“I agree that it is important that NATO deter Russia. That’s why I am willing to try consolidating existing U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe instead of withdrawing them. Russia has invaded two of its neighbors and seems committed to destabilizing others – including NATO members in the Baltics.”
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/07/20/should-the-us-pull-its-nuclear-weapons-from-turkey
Lewis has been proliferating NATO boilerplate cloaked as “independent analysis” for years.
In late February 2014, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of NATO, reaffirmed that NATO membership was an option for the new post-coup regime in Ukraine.
Yulia Tymoshenko, eager to fulfill Kiev’s “European aspirations”, infamously declared “It’s about time we grab our guns and go kill those damn Russians together with their leader; and nuke 8 million Russians who are now exiles in Ukraine.”
When Tymoshenko’s recorded remarks were released to media on March 24 2014, Lewis “independently” jumped up to “expertly” assure anxious readers of Foreign Policy online that Ukraine’s destiny lies with NATO:
“If Ukraine wants to preserve its independence from Moscow, Kiev has to complete its turn westward. Over the long run, that means reforming its economy and political institutions to the point that it can join the European Union and NATO.”
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/24/the-ukes-and-their-nukes/
Nice work by Perry to expose the lies and the State connections of those at Bellingcat and of the MSM predilection to operate as State sponsored propaganda repeating stations. What we have in essence is one vast ecumenical cabal of corruption where money is no object as the head of the syndicate owns the printing press. The Times reputation has long vanished as a wanton whore spilling specious lies at the behest of its Pimp, Wall Street and the Deep State. Only the extraordinary gullible or intellectually myopic would consider anything published by any main stream western news media outlet as factual and properly researched, especially on any major news story attached to the western sycophant political structures in any manner.
Over 260 comments have appeared on the Bellingcat blog since 15 July 2016, the day Bellingcat’s glorious “MH17 – The Open Source Investigation, Two Years Later” appeared.
The last blog comment was by Dude (July 23rd, 2016)
“Isn’t Jerry Skinner the same man who won the case of Pan Am flight bombed by Quaddafi?
“Hehe… then Putler’s fears are well justified?”
Buoyed up by Jeffrey Lewis’ glorious “independent analysis”, the “citizen investigative journalists” at Bellingcat appear to feel well justified.
Bellingcat trolls are on constant alert for those KremlinTroll™ haters or anyone not loudly applauding Higgins’ brilliance.
Intrepid citizen investigative journalist and researcher Fu Xi has attempted to alert the “citizen investigative journalists” at Bellingcat that fraud is afoot https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/07/15/mh17-the-open-source-investigation-two-years-later/#comment-82094
Fu made sure to create her own archive of her comment, just in case, because that’s what good citizen investigative journalists and researchers do.
Now that the press is even more agog over a fellow named Eliot Higgins, how long will the comment by Fu (July 24, 2016) be “awaiting moderation”?
Fu – July 24th, 2016
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Will NYT Retract Latest Anti-Russian ‘Fraud’?
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/22/will-nyt-retract-latest-anti-russian-fraud/
‘Fraud’ Alleged in NYT’s MH-17 Report
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/19/fraud-alleged-in-nyts-mh-17-report/
MH-17: Two Years of Anti-Russian Propaganda
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/17/mh-17-two-years-of-anti-russian-propaganda/
August 1, 2016
After eight days and over 110 other commenters’ posts, the comment by Fu (July 24, 2016) is still “awaiting moderation” at the Bellingcat blog.
No comments have appeared on the Arms Control Wonk blog since the day after Jeffrey Lewis’ glorious “independent analysis” appeared.
The last blog comment was by Leandro (July 16, 2016 at 3:46 pm). It reads:
“Not exactly into the tech details, that would mean that the Buks are inserted in the images, matching the results obtained by the ACW crew, right?
“What took the investigators so long? How time consuming was this effort for you guys? Why the USG hasn’t got an official take on this issue? How come neither NATO nor the EU or any other body of countries where Russia can’t exercise veto produced and released this kind of proof?”
Not exactly into the tech details either, the “researchers” at the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) appear to have battened down the hatches.
Betcha those KremlinTroll™ haters are to blame.
Intrepid citizen investigative journalist and researcher Fu Xi has attempted to alert the Wonks that fraud is afoot http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1201635/mh17-anniversary/#comment-1200703
Fu made sure to create her own archive of her comment, just in case, because that’s what good citizen investigative journalists and researchers do.
Now that the press is agog over a fellow named Jeffrey Lewis, how long will the comment by Fu (July 23, 2016 at 8:33 pm) be “awaiting moderation”?
Fu
July 23, 2016 at 8:33 pm
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Will NYT Retract Latest Anti-Russian ‘Fraud’?
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/22/will-nyt-retract-latest-anti-russian-fraud/
‘Fraud’ Alleged in NYT’s MH-17 Report
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/19/fraud-alleged-in-nyts-mh-17-report/
MH-17: Two Years of Anti-Russian Propaganda
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/17/mh-17-two-years-of-anti-russian-propaganda/
August 1, 2016
After eight days and zero other commenters’ posts, the comment by Fu (July 24, 2016) is still “awaiting moderation” at the Arms Control Wonk blog.
My memory could be mistaken. I believe that I read somewhere that shrapnel is packed with the explosive missile payload to tear into the structure of the targeted aircraft. I am fairly certain that I also read there has been a shrapnel design change and the older model missile shrapnel is in the older Ukrainian antiaircraft missiles and is what damaged flight 17.
Eliot “Hasbara” Higgins can handle it, people, like “water of [sic] a duck’s back”
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/756769561358237696
It’s gotten so bad for Bellingcat, Higgins has to step up trolling his own Twitter account.
Hasbara 101: The “anti-Semitic KremlinTrools™ send me abuse so don’t listen to all those other ‘hack’ haters” troll.
Every time Bellingcat work frauduct gets exposed, Higgins shrieks that he’s being menaced by Russkies.
The “poster child for citizen journalism” ‘splains “the future of Bellingcat and the various difficulties we faces [sic]”
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/756029772854157312
Have you ever seen the doctored Soviet photos of the 1930’s? If it was possible then to almost perfectly eliminate a person and perfectly restore the background behind them, then anything is possible today. Russians may lie. Kramers may lie.
I tend to believe the Dutch investigators. There were many Dutch passengers on that plane. The Dutch investigators have no incentive to lie to their families.
What to do when both sides dive deep into blatant propaganda?
The US is indulging in crude propaganda. So did Russia. The truth has been deeply buried.
It is not always true that both side do it. It does not make them equal. But in this case as it happens both sides are doing it, and with equal crudity.
The commenter uses the logical fallacy of false equivalence.
False equivalence describes a situation where there is a logical and apparent equivalence, but when in fact there is none.
In false equivalence, someone will state that the opposing arguments have a passing similarity in support, when, on close examination, there is large difference between the quality of evidence.
There is no equivalence between the two sides when one is supported by evidence, and the other side with little or no evidence, of which most is of low quality.
I stopped trusting the NYT and the MSM when it published the lies about Saddam’s WMD as justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Corporate media serves the corporate agenda. War is big business.
How about the crash of TU-154? Most of my Polish friend believe it was the Russian’s.
Well written. Think Parry makes a good case here does but the NY Times really have any credibility and is the 4th Estate held to journalistic standards at this point? I think not. Frankly I’m a little amazed that Parry hasn’t had an accident, That the heads of foreign governments and especially Intelligence services in Netherlands , England , France, Germany etc. do not know what happened and have not required that the US present it’s satellite Data publicly to justify the reasoning behind why Russia was put under sanctions for something it did not do shows how deeply corrupt NATO is. If Trump wants to dissolve it maybe I’d vote for him. There is the rub. As bad as sanctions and US foreign policy hegemony in NATO have been for Europe , as long as Merkel is ‘the man’, there appears to be no hope that dissent can change the policy. That’s what we should worry about. Does anyone expect the USA to become more moderate under either Hillary or Trump? If so I recommend Detox right away.
If I recall, for the first time ever, if one of the four investigating bodies objects, then nothing official about MH-17 can be released. Ukraine, oddly enough, is one of the four.
Yup… There’s a suspect investigating the case, and it has the power to veto any publication related to said investigation.
It’s very simple, the investigation does not hold up in terms of basic standards for conducting a sound and transparent investigation.
Seeing mr Higgins claim arms control wonk and bellingcat are two different entities does not look very trustworthy for the reasons explained in this article.
Now, mr Kravetz to be truly honest has caught some flak before for his criticism of a world press photo, but I lack the technical knowledge to understand who is right.
But it seems odd that some “hack” can write a piece of software that Bellingcat uses happily until the “hack” complains, only to have another go through arms control wonk using different software.
What are Mr. Higgins’ own qualifications, I start wondering. Because for a supposed professional he goes about insulting people quite easily. People I presume to have actual qualifications in their respective fields no exception.
I’m just a busdriver… An overqualified one, but a busdriver nonetheless. Don’t tell Higgins lol.
Kravetz’ forensic analysis of the Paul Hansen World Press Photo 2012 winner was entirely accurate.
See “Neal Krawetz responds to Hany Farid’s comments” at http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/16/photo-faking-controversy
Higgins has been repeatedly debunked and his cowardice in the face of criticism is well known.
I had read his response, but I really can’t judge because I simply don’t have that knowledge.
But the whole situation seems odd to me. I am inclined to believe Krawetz, but I try not to jump to conclusions.
Of course the whole Bellingcat thing is dubious. That is very clear. Higgins and his team hardly strike me as anything near professional.
Dr. Neal Krawetz’ analysis is not about what one is inclined to believe, and is definitely not a matter of jumping to conclusions.
Back in May 2013, Krawetz correctly showed that Paul Hansen’s World Press Photo image was a digital composite.
On 8 June 2015, Krawetz correctly showed that the Bellingcat MH17 “report” presented a bogus analysis.
On 18 August 2015, Higgins Tweeted that Krawetz’ “analysis has been wrong” accompanied by a link to a 13 May 2013 CNET article on the Hansen photo that featured arguments by Hany Farid and Eduard de Kam.
However, in a 16 May 2015 WIRED article about the Hansen photo, Krawetz had rebutted the inaccuracies presented by Farid and de Kam.
On 18 August 2015, Krawetz Tweeted in response to Higgins’ accusation, “That’s funny — because I wasn’t wrong about World Press Photo. Even the photographer said he did the edits”
https://twitter.com/hackerfactor/status/633745224230002688
Now in July 2016, Krawetz has correctly shown that the latest Bellingcat MH17 “report” is intentional deception: “making the exact same mistakes as they did last year, their report can only be interpreted as a work of fraud.”
Krawetz’ work is not up for debate in any way.
Two years after the crash of MH17, it is beyond debate that Higgins’ and Bellingcat’s work on MH17 is a fraud.
And that fraud is on its way to court.
Although World Press Photo (WPP) upheld their decision to award the 2013 Photo of the Year to Hansen, the use of post-production editing techniques in photojournalism remains controversial.
On 17 May 2013, Krawetz further discussed Hansen’s use of high dynamic range (HDR) picturing layering approach to generate a digital composite.
See Hacker Factor Blog comment #21.1 http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/550-Angry-Mob.html
“The picture layering approach he used is called HDR — High Dynamic Range. In the interview with the photographer (linked above), he uses the phrase “larger dynamic range”.
“It appears that I’m not the only one who calls HDR made from layers a composite:
” http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/tips/4329498
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dynamic-range_imaging
http://photo.net/learn/digital-photography-workflow/advanced-photoshop-tutorials/hdr-in-photoshop-cs5/
http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/photography-techniques/aperture-creating-an-hdr-image.html
http://photo.net/learn/digital-photography-workflow/advanced-photoshop-tutorials/creating-hdr-images/part-2/ “
Dear Consortiim news,
You are deleting too many replies to a thread which may, or may not have revelence to you and your ‘editors’
Please stop deleting things you feel don’t touch your loins. It’s too early in your news venture (and I mean the new people who are learning from your site) to edit things that your 12 year old editors find ‘in the weeds’ in their colloquial version of news. Please stop with your deletions if people complain, give it its due value. So far this site is close to the propaganda you dislike so much by using people who don’t have a clue.
And I mean this intake most constructive way…. Some of your deletions lack the very thought one should put into a discussion of such importance, independent of the topic. Get rid of the 12 year olds, or I’ll give them a break, 17 year olds with no lifes’ knowledge to gadge right from wrong.
By all means repost. Or email me.
I would be dissapointed if what you say is true.
Hasbara 101: The “deletion” troll
Patiently awaiting the repost :)
Having been born in Leicester, where I spent the first twenty years of my life, I am familiar with the phrase “all mouth, no trousers”. Meaning boastful, it was mostly used by boys taunting one another in the school yard. It can be translated as: ‘you talk a lot but I don’t see any evidence to back up your claims.’ Ironic when it comes from a loudmouth like Elliot Hggins.
My own take on another one of Elliot Higgins’ pieces of ‘research’ can be accessed here:
https://bryanhemming.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/bellingcat-the-dead-cat-factory/
Koan: What is the sound of dead cat belling?
Answer: Budgies breed in sewers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crIJvcWkVcs
Budgies: The Open Source Investigation
“apparently you can either hit them with the Buk, or you can shoot them just there, just above the beak”
Ridiculous op-ed by Paul Krugman in Friday’s Times. Headlined “The Siberian Candidate” (as in “The Manchurian Candidate”), that is indeed its thesis: that Trump may well be an agent of … Vladimir Putin (da-da-duhh; cue dramatic gopher).
Atlantic Council (AC) was mentioned in Robert’s excellent article above. To add to its questionable cred as a “think tank,” attached link provides commentary by rt.com on AC’s latest “study” in which it concludes that a Russian attack into the Baltics is a real contingency and threat now “is imminent.”
This really is pathetic but fits the pattern of attempting to make NATO relevant.
https://www.rt.com/news/352712-poland-russia-atlantic-council/
Link to the study:
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/Arming_for_Deterrence_web_0719.pdf
All of our institutions have been captured by the global corporate banking cartel. We are a bonafide banana republic. Truth is now the enemy of the rulers so never expect to hear it from government or the press.
I so much appreciate writers like Robert Parry and other independent professional journalists. The internet is our last refuge for real information. If the TPP is rammed down our throats, that will be taken from us as well.
If the TPP is rammed down our throat,Trump will puke it up.
Do you really believe anything he says? He is cognitive dissonance on steroids. He’s frighteningly authoritarian. We are supposed to choose between two fascists. Such a choice.
I have just emailed the NYTimes Public Editor this below:
“IF the NYTimes is now engaging in outright fraud, you should gird yourselves
because a lot of us are prepared to make a very big stink about this…..
Forget that I have held your newspaper in high regard since I was a schoolboy–
which was a very long time ago…..
THIS you are not going to get away with:
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/22/will-nyt-retract-latest-anti-russian-fraud/ ”
2LT Dennis Morrisseau USArmy Officer [Vietnam era] ANTI-WAR, retired.
POB 177 W Pawlet, VT 05775 802 645 9727 [email protected]
Here’s the first thing. When it comes to “digital” imaging, you still can’t get as many “pixels” per square millimeter as you can get silver halide crystals on a conventional film emulsion. Simon and Garfunkel were right about Kodachrome. But that’s neither here nor there. People like Higgins would have you believe that, because an image is “digital”, it should somehow demonstrate certain optical properties which would reveal a “true” image unless it had been subjected to tampering. That is simply false. In the first place, satellite images record light which has already passed through MILES of atmosphere fraught with temperature, pressure and humidity gradients. ALL satellite images contain inherent flaws due to the subsequent refraction. Determination of what exactly is represented by satellite photos usually requires comparison of multiple exposures, unless the “object of interest” is extremely large. For a BUK missile battery, which is not a stationary object, that criteria would seem to be totally lacking.
The second thing is this stuff about reading license plates in Moscow from a satellite. Satellite cameras can’t see sideways or around corners, so use your common sense. The “blind man’s bluff” game of claiming, “We have satellite photos of [accused politician] in the back seat of a car with an underage female, and we know it’s him because we can read the prescription label on his Viagra bottle,” is simply a crock of slop. Both USA and Russia have played this bluffing game for years, and they always “fold” before having to “show their hands”. Sure, the USA showed the pictures of the Cuban Missiles at the UN. Those were taken by high speed, low altitude photoreconnaissance jets using gigantic conventional film – as I recall, 300X300 mm in order to get adequate resolution. Digital pictures – sorry all you geeks out there – still don’t produce that level of image quality.
The third thing is, we’ve finally come full circle. It’s a well documented fact that the CIA came up with the “conspiracy theory” meme in order to discredit anyone who questioned the official lie. Those people used to be called, “assassination buffs”, “ufo buffs”, “conspiracy buffs”. etc. because they were untrained, uninitiated, unqualified, unprofessional or unsophisticated AMATEURS evaluating evidence which was better left to professional, trained experts. Suddenly, enter “Bellingcat” and Eliot Higgins. He works with the Atlantic Council, whose board of directors hosts FOUR former CIA directors. But, as a “citizen journalist”, he somehow escapes the “conspiracy buff” moniker. He’s an “amateur”, so that’s supposed to enhance his credibility. Sorry, folks, but you just can’t have it both ways.
And, finally, nobody has produced a satellite picture with a vapor trail or a midair explosion. Those would have been easily detected by surveillance satellites. I can’t prove what did or didn’t shoot down MH-17. The “empirical evidence” has been officially sequestered. But based on common sense, I refer you to my July 20 comment under Mr. Parry’s July 19 article:
Twinkle, twinkle, classified, I wonder what they aim to hide,
Up there in the sky so blue, there must have been a conflagration,
If the pictures don’t explain what bloggers claim is real and true,
Then I suspect a fighter plane is what’s behind the constant obfuscation.
Wow, I learned something there. But remember that’s coming from a guy who grew up believing Sherman and Mr Peabody were intellectual.
Joe,
Mr Peabody and Sherman were intellectuals and ahead of their time too.
Thanks, because of them I love learning history. Now, I’m looking for the episode where Mr Peabody tells us how to comprehend and retain what we have learned. Thanks for the reply, I have to go now before I forget to say good bye…what!
Mr.Peabody(the dog)yes,Sherman,no.
Mr. Peabody and Sherman Travel WayBack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpgJzlY9y8A
F.G.Sanford,
I often enjoy your insight into the ether behind the vapors told by many in the news. I do have to say however that I have personal knowledge of some of the resolution from satellites and the result is impressive. But as many things digital there are tricks. For example, the only way we could broadcast HD TV on a satellite was to take out digits, or pixels and transmit the signal to the ‘bird’ and then down convert the HD by adding pixels back into the signal. Since these added signals are not part of the original image they are at best an approximation of the image by duplicating pixels that have a similar color, or gray scale image. I often enjoy letting people know they are looking at duplication and manipulation when they are so proud of their TVs.
But you must be right about the 300×300 and this is not known to me. Emulsions have their failings too of course, but black and white at such a resolution would be tough to match.
To digress, I always like to point out items that tend to let people know they are often seeing eye tricks rather than reality. The simple example is a double rainbow. How many people realize the upper rainbow has the inverse colors of the main rainbow?
When ‘Gone With the Wind’ was shot it was recorded on a 3 strip process of black and white film, using panchromatic film and the 3 primary color filters of red,blue, and green. The “color version” was then projected back through the cyan,magenta, and yellow (subtractive colors) to create the illusion of color. The studios put people in the seats in Hollywood to find out the percentage of those who thought something looked “white”, or “red” etc It was all an illusion of color created by the saturation of the main black and white film and yet they needed people to give them a good idea if it was an approx. I would suspect most people don’t know this, and also may not care.
But if you have a pretend expert like Higgins I would doubt he could tell you the primary colors from the subtractive colors and how the eye perceives these composites. If you project red,blue, and green light properly you will see a white image, while cyan, magenta and yellow will project a black image. This knowledge is helpful when one dissects an image as Higgins pretends he has done. Duplicated pixels have a bit of their own characteristic vs the pixels that were not duplicated by a computer or an algorithm, but it requires a skill he apparently doesn’t have.
I have seen some of his early work and it was so abysmal I stopped paying attention. But then, shadows were in the same direction of the sun with other trees having shadows opposite the sun, in the same frame. The rooftops of buildings had the same errors as the shadowing was off, as if we had two or three suns. Maybe he does on his planet, so it must seem normal to him.
I’m glad Mr Parry has the honor of being a “hack” as he is in good company. I’m also glad the MH-17 story hasn’t faded with Higgins at the controls.
The way I see it, pherhaps wrongly so, is that am actual criminal case will prove it all.
If there is to be a criminal case (unless it’s a completely botched one) it will need solid proof. Bring in the satellite images Kerry spoke of and Dutch intelligence has seen.
If no such case is forthcoming, it was bullshit all along. A propaganda circus designed for political purposes, never even intended to find any perpetrators.
Years ago, before Bill Clinton allowed the complete deregulation of the media in 1996, independently-owned media outlets would serve as a check on the veracity of each other. The NYT would have been quickly taken down by the WP, 60 Minutes or 20/20 as a purveyor of blatant propaganda in the service of a corporatist political agenda. Now they are ALL–print, broadcast and digital–owned by a mere half dozen mega-corporations with virtually all stock owned by a handful of filthy-rich oligarchs. And they are now all in cahoots, covering each other’s backs. The power structure in the U.S. is exactly the same as in the Latin American countries recently engulfed in right-wing transitions fueled almost entirely by a very few ultra-rich families monopolizing the media. These people totally control the view of reality that most voters have and, as we have come to realise, it is mostly a fraud, meant to prop up only their political puppets and economic interests. The NYT, run by useful idiots and served by word-vending turncoats against the working classes like Paul Krugman, is just a tool to, in this case, economically emasculate and politically destabilize Russia so its owners can personally benefit from the fallout. And, it doesn’t matter to them who and how many innocent people have their lives ruined in the process. It is only about THEM and their lust for power and money. That makes it all right, because America was built on the Calvinist ethic which proclaims that only the pre-ordained godly are rewarded in this life and the hypothetical next. Their power is in itself proof of their goodness. They’ve got their evil ways covered by God himself. And, they’ve got the masses believing it, as usual.
Exactly. This is a terrifying prospect for most, but we must come to terms with the fact that we cannot trust corporate media. I know for the baby boomer generation this is going to be very difficult to accept, but times have changed, and so has the nature of those who ‘lead’ and report to us. Those with integrity have been given the boot (a la Mr. Parry), leaving behind only those with no moral center, willing to lick the boots of power in exchange for money.
I’d call them whores but that’d be an insult to honest sex workers. I prefer the term ‘presstitutes.’
I don’t know any boomers who would have any trouble accepting that. The mass media are crooks to all generations of the intelligent; it is the fools of all generations who accept their propaganda.
What makes you think baby boomers have trouble accepting corporate news is a propaganda tool?
Do you think boomers do not know that the Hearst publishing empire ran a propaganda campaign blaming the Cubans for blowing up the USS Maine as support for the Spanish/American war?
Etc etc etc.
In my opinion it is the younger people who have forgotten that deficit spending destroys democracy and the republicans own the issue so that democrats can hide behind them while using borrowed money to fund an endless holocaust.
But how do we put an end to their activities?
Actually, for the most part, to be chosen by God in this reality means that you have next to nothing or that you have had to sacrifce greatly to obtain your wealth. Jesus had next to nothing and John the Baptist lived in the wild and ate locust and wild honey. The Calvinist doctrine only states that God chooses people and knows who will follow her and who will not – because God knows the future.
The only time God allows a person to be wealthy is when he requires something of that person that is according to his plan. In the end, if this person does not do what God wants then God destroys them in this reality – either due to health or otherwise.
So, with the exception of King David and Joseph – there are very few of God’s chosen people that are given actual physical wealth – and that wealth may not have come from God but may have been the result of actions that occurred due to the sinful choices of that person before they came to God or could have been the result of the sinful actions of others – that God bestowed upon them at a certain time through some sacrifice.
There is no such thing as Prosperity Gospel or wealth given by God – God does not need physical things and therefore physical things in this reality are not the result of God. In fact, I would say that most of those that have wealth in this reality are on the wrong side of God – depending on how that wealth was achieved and is being used – but this is tricky and the difference between the evil rich that exploit people for gain and the good rich that are rich because their wealth is the product of the evil of others or because God wants them to do something – is difficult to distinguish by humans.
Really, if you want to know who is good or evil – all you need to do is look at their actions – if their actions cause the dealth and hopeless of millions in some way or if they use people for their own ends you know them by their fruits – the good ones will work for the good of all and they will not leave a wake of dead bodies in their path or chaos in society or hopelessness.
Remember “Camels through the eye of a needle” is there for a reason – and some of these religions and some of these rich people need to start trying to determine how their wealth is to be used to actually helping people now – because their time may be short.
Um, Light, that may be your rosy idealized view of Western Christianity, but one phrase, rife throughout the history of the past five hundred years or so will epitomize the representation that I made (but not what I believe–I personally do NOT believe that goodness or virtue is evidenced in one’s material wealth) and that phrase is… “Divine Right of Kings.” Kings were said to hold and deserve their absolute power because they were pre-chosen by God. That attitude (in which worldly rewards and inherent virtue were equated) was characterised as “Calvinism” in all the history courses I took. It was also referred to as “pre-destination”–not something I made up. Today, you might extrapolate the same nonsense to the presidency or to vast power and riches on Wall Street. It’s what a great many Americans still believe, not the way things should be. Let’s be clear about that. It’s what was used to justify slavery, “Manifest Destiny” and the theft of the North American continent from native Americans and Mexicans. Clearly, God “wanted” us well-off white folks to have all that, the thinking went, and because you can’t argue with God, you’d better get out of our way. Otherwise, feel free to characterise the way you personally think the universe should work.
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) is the publisher of Arm Control Wonk.
Lewis had been a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank: a loop of “experts” offering “independent analysis” and serving as “contributors” on defense and security issues.
Lewis is a “contributor” at ForeignPolicy.com.
In 2013, Lewis offered an “expert” reach around for Eliot Higgins
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/05/keep-us-in-the-loop/
It’s a revealing read.
Lewis was very enthusiastic about how the press was “agog over a fellow named Eliot Higgins, who blogs under the name Brown Moses. Higgins has been documenting the appearance of a new Syrian artillery rocket that seems to be linked to many purported chemical weapons attacks. The Guardian, Channel 4, and CNN International have all carried stories on this man”.
Higgins’ claims about the chemical weapons attacks in Syria were debunked by real experts.
Nevertheless, Lewis was eager to have “private citizens to independently assess what happened in Syria” and to “mobilize a significant number of independent voices that would support the administration’s case for acting in Syria”.
So you see, before there was Bellingcat, Lewis and Higgins were already doing it “in the loop”.
Lewis and other “experts” at Arms Control Wonk soon became “contributors” at Higgins’ new Bellingcat site that opened on 15 July 2014, immediately before the crash of MH-17 in Ukraine.
In 2016, Lewis’ offered another “expert” reach around for Higgins:
“The James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey offered an independent analysis”
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1201635/mh17-anniversary/
https://www.bellingcat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mh17-two-years-later.pdf [page 38]
Jeffrey Lewis, not on edge about NATO military exercises or the nosedive of his reputation for “independent analysis”
https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/756854264186765313
More than two years on, terrible tease Higgins returns all the “expert” favors and finally finishes off Lewis.
Not a happy ending.
Way before there was Bellingcat, Jeffrey Lewis was flogging Brand Higgins.
Higgins’ “Brown Moses” propaganda campaign against the Syrian government went into overdrive with the August 21 Ghouta chemical attack near Damascus.
In September 2013, Jeffrey Lewis jacked in some “expert” upkeep, using his column on Foreign Policy to pleasure Higgins.
Sy Hersh published his December 2013 “Who’s Sarin” piece, asserting that the Obama administration had evidence that al-Nusra Front rebels had sarin gas capabilities, but cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.
Higgins got busy attacking on Hersh.
In January 2014, professor Theodore Postol in the Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group at MIT. He published “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21st, 2013” along with Richard Lloyd, an analyst at the military contractor Tesla Laboratories who previously served as a United Nations weapons inspector and also boasts two books, 40 patents and more than 75 academic papers on weapons technology.
In an interview, Postol said that Higgins “has done a very nice job collecting information on a website. As far as his analysis, it’s so lacking any analytical foundation it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about.”
Higgins got busy attacking Postol and Lloyd.
On 17 June 2014, one month before Higgins launched Bellingcat and MH-17 crashed in Ukraine, arms control “experts” Lewis and Aaron Stein were wanking hard
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4582/open-source-and-arms-control/
Higgins’ shiny new Bellingcat propaganda campaign against the Russian government went into overdrive.
On 24 July 2014, the Arms Control Wonks were back at it with a vengeance, tugging furiously on Higgins’ behalf.
The July 2016 “independent analysis” episode is nothing more than the latest wank.
With so many reach arounds, Lewis and Stein have a verifiable arm control issue.
Thanks to you Perry for exposing the intent of our Gov. to used propaganda to create regime change in Russia. This is at the expense of millions of Russian Lives, the people in eastern Ukraine & Crimea never did want to be Ukrainians. Even if old Chrushev gave this land to the Ukraine Gov. in 1954, and wanted the hole country to grow corn. My wife is going to Crimea to get her Russian citizenship and proud of it as I’m Hank
I am agnostic on this issue, but I thought I remembered that there was Tweet from the Russians at the tine, exulting in shooting down a plane, and it was quickly deleted. Am I mistaken?
There are several stories about that IIRC.
Couldn’t tell you what is true.
Yes. You are. The message was parroted by one account holder that is not related to rebels, although it used rebel commander’s name in the account name. The original message came from the confused accounts in one forum, where people with no information were just guessing. Deletion of the post happened by this particular account and not on original forum. So the whole story is just a hype blown out of proportion.
Thanks Robert! for this and other articles that confirm what many of us know – the power structure that is controlled by global criminal bankers are using the MSM and governments and NATO to prop up their agenda for a war with Russia. Those of us with knowledge of criminal multinational corporations and power structures already know what the globalist criminal bankers are doing – you cannot hide anymore! – and that goes for the World Bank, the IMF, and the BIS too that enslave billions in debt structures for which there is no escape.
To all in the Feral Government I say this – Your job is to support the Constitution of the US and you work for the citizens of this country and the good of our children’s future. Your job is not to side with criminal bankers or terrorist governments or agendas coming through the UN from the likes of the Bilderberg cult. The American people are tired of your lies – your actions show what you are – human devils that need to be turned into frogs.
The people of the United States are NOT GOING TO SUPPORT a war with Russia. The majority of Americans in the know are no longer going to support a criminal banking system and power structure that ensures the poverty of billions at the hand of criminal globalists in government and industry. Those of you in the US government that cannot support the US Constitution because of your ties to criminal bankers and rogue governments need to resign now! Those of you in government that do not have the level of integrity or the intelligence to understand how to do your jobs according to what is best for this country, not globalist organizations, need to resign now! Those of you in the MSM that are not willing to print truth in order to maintain your lifestyle that is financed by those committing treason against the citizens of this country need to resign now!
Get out of our country traitors! Don’t let the door hit you in the bum on your way out!
IAL Ph.D., MBA
Don’t blame the Bilderbergs or the Jews, you idiot! It’s the 1% that’s the problem!
No, the percent that is actually the problem is must smaller. Also, when you do not understand complex issues and the drivers of social reforms in the technocratic model (such as that of the Bilderberg’s and other global organizations) calling me an idiot only leads me to understand that you do not understand how policies in gobal organizations originate.
I know what I am talking about – I recommend that you review this map – for starters – http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-the-bilderberg-groups-connection-to-everything-in-the-world-2012-6 – so you can get up to speed on the actual reality of global organizations – that say they work for the “good” of the masses.
IAL Ph.D., MBA
R.I.C.O statutes should be brought to bear upon those colluding to defraud, deceive and cover-up state-sponsored criminality.
Pehaps citizens could band together to form grand juries, hear evidence and publicly proclaim their findings (indictments).
RICO allows for seizure of assets. Complicit media should lose their privileges (licenses) and be subject to seizure for their facilities to be operated by real journalists.
What are schools of journalism doing about the massive lying?
Violence may seem inevitable as we explore the last remaining non-violent remedies.
Looking for an honest man …
Hello Ed, a very good point.
I must say I never thought of such an angle against the outright lies of the NYT, Post, etc and even the AP on occasion which is parroted in most papers since these papers can’t afford their own journalists.
There is enough within the RICO laws to include lies to a foreign government, lies to the people of the US etc and it’s not just about racketeering as the law is written. What a great concept to have the NYT accused of defrauding the public, and foreign countries with deliberate lies, and have their property, records, and assets seized for a great trial. First Amendment aside, I doubt they will win since mouthing the lies of the government, and deliberately misrepresenting facts, cannot be interpreted as ‘freedom of the press’ if it collusion.
I am not a lawyer of course, but can collusion be equated with “freedom” ? I do wonder what our schools of journalism think of outright lies to the public.
RICO requires evidence of criminal acts and a willing federal attorney, compliments of the same oligarchy that owns the mass media. You would have to find a poor but independently wealthy or suicidal federal attorney just to get it started. Then you would have to apply RICO against the federal judiciary first, because protecting the oligarchy that appoints and promotes them is their job. Guess how far that would go.
The mass media live in fear of the judiciary, because one slip against the oligarchy, and the next judge will decide that those statements against oligarchs and politicians which were not libel yesterday, are libel today. So they just lie for the oligarchy and all is well.
Now you could sue the federal government for failing to apply RICO against the judiciary, but guess who would judge that. As for checks and balances against the judiciary, there are none at all – so they invented their own court to whitewash judicial matters, and amazingly it never finds them guilty of anything. So they must not be guilty, right?
Don’t think for a moment that gross hypocrisy and contradiction for indirect career gains would be too much for the judiciary – that is their job, and they love it. Hey get with the program, everybody’s doing it – if you ain’t corrupt, you ain’t a patriot, right?
For the record: The Associated Press Media Editors Statement of Ethical Principles – http://www.apme.com/?page=EthicsStatement. Like the Constitution it seems to apply only when desired and ignored when politically expedient.
Yes, they’re completely biased and evil. Now you know, too, Mr. Parry.
I completely lost my respect for “journalism” during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s. So many false reports published unquestioningly, even after being debunked, and so much evidence of evil actions by the West’s “good guys” buried or marginalized, showed that the misreporting was no accident. The journalists on the ground later openly admitted to taking sides and trying to use their coverage to bring in the West’s firepower (to kill their favored sides’ enemies, the Serbs).
Ever since then. I’ve tried to refrain from ever giving a dime to any mainstream newspaper. And I’ve watched their death throes with grim satisfaction. Because their dishonesty and lack of professionalism has helped lead to millions of people unnecessarily dying in pain (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc.).
Of course, the NYT is just doing one of its primary jobs acting as the mouthpiece for the Establishment, a task that is replicated throughout the nation by regional and local newspapers and other media. It is mind-boggling how so many people in the journalism profession appear to have no shame or not suffer embarrassment when their incompetence and mendacity are exposed.
Bill, I don’t think these opportunistic journalist feel any embarrassment, when it comes to their climbing up the ladder of success. I think the term ‘selling your soul’ would best befit them. When I watch the ‘White House Correspondence Dinner’ and see these news journalist traipsing themselves all over the red carpet, it makes me wonder where their journalistic heads really are. Are they news journalist, or are they celebrities? I guess in someways it doesn’t matter, but getting to the truth of a story does, and this is where they fail us almost every time.
Joe:
One of the most obscene must have been the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner –March 24, 2004 = http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/181100-1 when Dubya included the non-existent WMDs that built the case for the war on Iraq in his “humorous” skit. Skip the BS before the 22-minute mark.
That’s where David Gregory loss his liberal identity…right?
That was sickening to watch then, I don’t need to see it again, but thanks for including the link (something the clowns at Bellingcat can’t be bothered with doing). And yes , Joe Tedesky, although he didn’t even try to be liberal most of the time. His softball questioning of the Bush cabal was hard to watch.
True! However, you do these propagandists a great honor by calling them “professional journalists.” I guess they figure it’s a fair trade-off: they have no shame, but they have a nice paycheck.
The establishment?The zionist establishment maybe.
Why do people tip toe around reality?
I admit to not having followed the issue too closely although the evidence is overwhelming that our government lies through its teeth but is the NATO contention that the separatists fired the missile or is their another one that says the Russians transported in then transported out missile launcher that shot down the plane. I have heard something like that bandied about and if it isn’t, then evidence is likely to be “discovered” that is what happened. What is odd is, if the contention that the Russians did it is the one NATO owns, why print something in the Times pointing to the separatists when the Dutch report you refer to is out there.
Herman, to satisfy your quest for the truth, go to moonofalabama.org, along the websites left of the front page go to July 2014. When you get there see July 11th, and July 17th. You will read how the Kiev junta was bogged down in between the Donbass freedom fighters and Russian border. This was strange how the Kiev junta would allow themselves to get in such a fix. I seem to recall Webster Tarpley also mentioned this dilemma the junta got themselves into as well. Although, many have said that the MH17 flight was attacked by a plane in the sky, it would be hard to pin this shoot down on the Donbass freedom fighters being they don’t have an air force. So it was necessary to have a BUK in place, and blame the Donbass freedom fighters for stealing it, and thus the rest is history.
Another thing to consider, is what benefit would Russia or the Donbass freedom fighters have to gain from such a god awful attack upon a civilian plane?
Herman you do your own research and see what conclusions you come up with…just thought this comment of mine could help you.
So why were the Russian troops in dombas cheering and celebrating about shooting down a Ukrainian freighter if they never fired the missile. Ukraine lost a few fighters in the days leading up to this airliner being shot down. We will see what the Dutch investigators conclusion is, but I think that the rebels will be found guilty of this shoot down and I hope the guilty parties are dealt with severely!
They weren’t. There or yukking it up. Like the leader of Donbass militia said at the time of the press conference – if the Russians were in Donbass, the press conference they were having would have been in Kiev…
Thanks for an excellent and highly informative article, Mr Parry.
Fifteen years ago you could count me in as a N.Y.Times true believer.
I swallowed whole the Iraq imminent threat narrative, as I swallowed whole the Anthrax attacks (fraudulent) attribution to Saddam.
I cannot say I was a fool to believe the Times,then, but I would certainly be one today if I did not take with a huge grain of salt, any narrative they espouse when it comes to US foreign policy.
The New York Times has lost nearly all credibility for serious readers who do not enjoy wasting their time being fooled.
It is very, very sad this is the case ,and quite shameful too.
Maybe, one day, the Times will be reborn in the minds of all the millions of people they have deceived, but it will take a huge and sustained effort on their part to reclaim the trust of those readers.
Concocting ever more propaganda, as the above mentioned MH-17 story, is not the way to go.
Higgins responded to Krawetz, “he [Parry] doesn’t recognize you’re a hack. Probably because he’s a hack too.”
Robert Parry can add that remark to the I. F. Stone Award that he is an accomplished journalist.
My hat is off to Robert Parry for keeping this MH17 story alive. If it were not for certain writers, like Robert Parry, this story would have gone the way of the gook coo bird. Although, give any story like this enough of time, and just like the 28 page Saudi 911 story, then the story within a story becomes the new narrative. Confusion is the game that is played. This confusion when administered properly frustrates the public so bad, that they either give up trying to learn anything relative to the incident in question, or they accept a new lie to replace the old lie they were told the first time. It doesn’t get better, it just gets more mixed up. Bellingcat & Higgins are masters of this deception, and more people should learn what these informative characters are all about.
Another thing besides the MSM’s constant belittling of Vladimir Putin, is how the U.S. is chasing after this Russian Olympic athlete doping scandal. Is there no end to America’s poking their fingers in Russia’s eyes? The sad part is America and Russia could do a lot of good if partnered up to each other. It’s no wonder how many Europeans have become wary of their American leadership. Another example of America’s overreach may be found inside Erdogan’s meeting with Putin. Is it possible that America has overstayed it’s welcome?
Joe,
As person who comes from another part of the planet, you may like to describe the Gook coo bird for me as I am a person who studies birds.
Obviously, it is extinct like the ability of the US media to tell the truth on the MH 17. Well, expanding on that point, tell the truth about anything these days in their wild frantic efforts to prepare for Clinton’s World War iii, soon to be in a country near you.
I think all the gook coo bird are gone. Pappy Boyington killed them all, while fighting in the Pacific during WWII. Sorry, I have no picture references since that’s still classified…on second thought ask Hillary. I just know that she will be thrilled to email you back.
We probably couldn’t handle the truth, but it would be more honorable than being lied to. All this lying is going to have a serious backlash. I didn’t use the word ‘blowback’ because the backlash will be the blowback America will receive from all our friends and allies once they have finally had it with all our worldly empire ambitions. The dishonesty that has prevailed the scene looks to be evaporating rather quickly.
What do I know…I just spotted a gook coo bird!
All this lying is going to have a serious backlash.
The American people (and people of other nations) have been lied to ever since they began learning to understand the spoken word. Backlashes followed immediately in the form of raising gullible people who were willing to be lied to and who acquiesced to monumental blunders and crimes against humanity. The estimated 3- to 5-trillion dollar war on Iraq is but one of many massive catastrophes that are consequences of this ingrained ignorance.
And the pendulum swings.
I never heard of the World Doping Body,before this Russian slander.Did they make it up on the fly?
Trump will make it up to Russia,and maybe he’ll open up that day that changed everything,once in power.
The zionist media must fear that,look at their poison coverage of him.
What used to be considered good journalism by the NY Times and the Washington Post now passes what I call the ‘official” party line of the US govt. Yes there are still some good editorials and the Post keeps the best records of police shootings, but they just repeat what ‘govt officials’ say without the critical eye needed for good analysis. I get the Post because Amazon owns it and it’s cheeper than any other but I get my ‘news’ from other carefully vetted sources which takes time. We need our large institutional papers to get away from govt garbage and get bact to real reporting for Americans to see what’s really happening and not govt lies. This I believe would be a good start, you know, good journalism. And yes I support the consortiumnews.com.
Yes, the Times and the Post are essentially now the equivalent of Pravda and Tass back in the height of the original Cold War, functioning not as sources of truth but propaganda to prop up the entrenched power structure. Thank, firstly, Ronald Reagan for eliminating the Fairness Doctrine back in the 1980’s, and, later, Bill Clinton for pushing the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996. The Clintons only posed as populist liberals when, in fact, they were always in the political game for themselves. They have amassed a personal fortune using their political connections, and now they are going for another bite at the apple in the form of a Hitlery presidency. They married Chelsea off into Zionist wealth, and she will soon become one of the richest women in the world. Don’t think she will not grasp for political power in her time.
Try RT.com-it is not Russian propaganda and has some of the best world wide news coverage I have found. Of course, it givespolitical hacks such as mccain serious vapors.
Check out Russia Insider ,another good source IMHO
Hard times for NT Times believers. Great reporting Consortiumnews!
Anyone who still believes anything published in the NY Times about Russia is a fool. Its reportage was less unrealistic at the height of the cold war and examination of it reveals the deterioration of free thought in the yankee press. The Nazi era German press acted similarly, as did Pravda in the Stalinist era.
Consortium News! The only reliable source left for investigative journalism.