Tag: Washington Post

To Western Media, Prosecuting Bolivian Coup Leaders Is Worse Than Leading a Coup

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22 March 2021 — FAIR

Guardian: Cycle of retribution takes Bolivia's ex-president from palace to prison cell

The Guardian (3/17/21) pretends not to understand the difference between overthrowing a government and arresting someone for overthrowing a government.

One can imagine an editor of the London-based Guardian (3/17/21) shaking her head sadly as she typed the headline: “Cycle of Retribution Takes Bolivia’s Ex-President From Palace to Prison Cell.”  The subhead told readers, “Jeanine Áñez’s government once sought to jail the country’s former leader Evo Morales for terrorism and sedition—now she faces the same charges.”

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UN Rebuke of US Sanctions on Venezuela Met With Stunning Silence

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10 March 2021 — FAIR

Alena Douhan

UN investigator Alena Douhan (2/12/21) “urges the US government to end the national emergency regarding Venezuela.”

Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, published her preliminary report on February 12 on the impact of US and European sanctions on Venezuela.

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Purging Inconvenient Facts in Coverage of Biden’s ‘First’ Air Attacks

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5 March 2021 — FAIR

NBC: Biden orders airstrikes in Syria, retaliating against Iran-backed militias

NBC‘s headline (2/26/21) is more confident than the article it accompanies, which says that “Iranian-backed militias were most likely behind the attack the US said it was “retaliating against.”

When the Biden administration bombed Syria on February 25, the attack killed “at least 22,” most of them members of Iraqi militias, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring organization opposed to the Syrian government. The US said the bombing was retaliation for three rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq that it claims were carried out by groups allied with Iran (NBC, 2/25/21). In one of the attacks, rockets fired at Erbil airport killed a military contractor and an Iraqi civilian.

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After Socialist Victory in Bolivia, Media Still Whitewash Coup

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23 October 2020 — FAIR

Washington Post depiction of pro-Evo Morales mural in BoliviaBolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party won a decisive victory in the country’s presidential elections on Sunday, with its candidate Luis Arce apparently winning by a large enough margin to avoid a runoff, likely achieving an absolute majority. The leading opposing candidate, neoliberal Carlos Mesa, and the right-wing unelected President Jeanine Áñez congratulated Arce on his victory. Continue reading →

CHD Responds to Accusation of Spreading “Misinformation” on Facebook

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2 July 2020 — Children’s Health Defense

Children’s Health Defense has been accused of spreading vaccine “misinformation”, but it’s the government and major media who are deceiving the public.

By Jeremy R. Hammond and the Children’s Health Defense Team

In November 2019, the Washington Post and other major news media accused Children’s Health Defense (CHD) of using Facebook advertisements to spread “misinformation” about vaccines. The basis for these accusations, which have since continued, is a study published in the prestigious medical journal Vaccine that named CHD as a top buyer of vaccine-related Facebook ads. What the media failed to inform the public, however, is that the government-funded authors of this study failed to identify even a single example of a Facebook ad from CHD that contained any misinformation.

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WaPo Prints Study That Found Paper Backed an Undemocratic Bolivia Coup

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5 March 2020 — FAIR

WaPo: Bolivia is in danger of slipping into anarchy. It’s Evo Morales’s fault.

The Washington Post editorial board (11/11/19) stated as fact that Bolivian President Evo Morales “moved to falsify the results of the October 20 vote so as to hand him a first-round victory.”

President Evo Morales won re-election in Bolivia’s presidential election last October 20, as pre-election polls predicted. He received 47% of the vote in an election with 88% turnout. He beat his nearest rival by just over 10 percentage points, which meant a second round was not required.

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Jeff Bezos’s Politics By Eric Zuesse

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24 August 2019 — Strategic Culture Foundation

Bezos

Jeff Bezos is the owner of the daily newspaper in Washington DC, the Washington Post, which leads America’s news-media and their almost 100% support of (and promotions for) neoconservatism — American imperialism, or wars. This includes sanctions, coups, and military invasions, against countries that America’s billionaires want to control but don’t yet control — such as Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, Libya, and China.

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US Isn’t Leaving Syria—but Media Lost It When Possibility Was Raised By Gregory Shupak

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7 April 2018 — FAIR

Independent: US troops will remain in Syria despite Trump telling rally he ‘wanted’ to bring them home

The White House made clear that Trump’s talk of pulling out of Syria was just talk (Independent, 4/4/18)–but not before numerous media figures expressed alarm that the illegal occupation might end.

At a rally in Cleveland last week, President Donald Trump said that the US will get out of Syria “very soon.” It is now clear that the 4,000 US troops currently occupying Syria (Washington Post, 10/31/17) will in fact stay in Syria (Independent, 4/4/18), even though keeping troops in another country in defiance of that country’s government is a violation of international law. Yet the very possibility of US withdrawal from Syria rendered apoplectic journalists who are convinced of the legitimacy of Washington’s domination of the country—international law be damned.

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WaPo Defends Its Owner Against Charges That He's Very Wealthy By Jim Naureckas

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24 January 2018 — FAIR

WaPo: Bernie Sanders claims the world’s six wealthiest people have as much wealth as half the global population

The Washington Post (10/2/17) maintains that is unfair to compare the wealth of its owner with that of ordinary people.

The vaunted Washington Post fact-checking team (10/2/17) took a look at this assertion:

Bernie Sanders Claims the World’s Six Wealthiest People Have as Much Wealth as Half the Global Population

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Media: WaPo Fails to Note Raytheon, Saudi Funding of Advocate for Raytheon Arms to Saudis

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6 June 2017 — FAIR

Gerald Feierstein (image: Middle East Institute)

The Washington Post (3/8/17) quoted former Ambassador Gerald Feierstein on the wisdom of selling Raytheon weapons to Saudi Arabia–without noting that Feierstein’s Middle East Institute is funded by both Saudi Arabia and Raytheon. (image: Middle East Institute)

In a piece for the Just Security blog (6/5/17) about the impact of weapons industry contributions on a Saudi arms vote, Ryan Goodman notes that “money also pollutes other policy spaces that influence congressional votes”—including the news media:

In March of this year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invited former ambassador Gerald Feierstein—director of the Center for Gulf Affairs at the Middle East Institute—to speak about the situation in Yemen and about his views on the sale of US arms to the Saudis. As one might have anticipated from his interview in the Washington Post, Feierstein told the committee, “Accusations of war crimes leveled against Saudi and Coalition armed forces and threats to end arms sales to the Saudis have the potential to inflict long-lasting damage to these relationships.”

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Media: WaPo Provides Platform for Calls to Imprison WaPo Sources

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25 May 2017 — FAIR

Washington Post: No pardon for Edward Snowden

Washington Post editorial (9/16/16)

For the third time in a year, the Washington Post has promoted the prosecution of Washington Post sources.

Last September,  the Post controversially published “No Pardon for Edward Snowden” (9/16/16), an editorial calling for prosecution of the whistleblower who helped the paper win a Pulitzer Prize in 2014.

In the past weeks, two Post columnists have joined the Post editorial board in calling for Post sources to be jailed—this time in regard to the Post’s major scoop (5/16/17) about President Donald Trump leaking classified intelligence to Russian diplomats.

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WaPo’s Factcheck of WikiLeaks Highlights Paper’s Strange View of Facts

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11 January 2017 — FAIR

Washington Post: Julian Assange’s claim that there was no Russian involvement in WikiLeaks emailsThe Washington Post (1/5/17) “factchecks” Julian Assange’s claims without either proving or disproving them.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Fox News, 1/3/17) again denied that the leaked e-mails he published during the election came from Russia—an assertion contradicted by many anonymous US intelligence officials. “We can say, we have said repeatedly over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government, and it is not a state party,” Assange told Sean Hannity.

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