What exactly is "fake news"?

On April 20, CNN finished a report on fake news with this statement:

If the channels are monetized -- which InfoWars has previously claimed they are -- the major newspapers could have unknowingly supported disinformation and conspiracy.
Ads also appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show channel, a far-left YouTube channel that peddles conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Syrian chemical weapons attacks are hoaxes.

Jimmy Dore questioned whether the attack even happened, and if it did happen, who did it.
That made him a kook, even with liberals.

Yea. False Flag Attack. That would be nuts, amirite?
So the OPCW released their first report on the Douma chemical attack.

The OPCW released the results of their fact-finding mission regarding allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma on April 7, 2018. The mission included on-site visits to collect environmental samples, interviews with witnesses, and data collection. The OPCW writes that lab analysis of the samples “show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties.” The report does state that “explosive residues” and “various chlorinated organic chemicals” were found in samples from two sites. The fact finding mission team is still working on drafting final conclusions.

No organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties.”

These findings contradict the White House assessment which was released on April 13th, just days after the alleged attack. “A significant body of information points to the regime using chlorine in its bombardment of Duma, while some additional information points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin,” the White House stated.

Without waiting for a proper investigation President Trump ordered the United States military to drop more than 100 Tomahawk missiles on Damascus. The U.S. relied on alleged blood and urine data to justify this attack, but the OPCW makes no mention of any blood or urine samples.

Despite the fact that the interim OPCW report only mentions chlorine two times, the corporate media ran several headlines which state that chlorine was found in the samples. “Interim OPCW report finds proof of chlorine used in Syria’s Douma,” Al Jazeera wrote. Reuters ran a story titled “Chemical weapons agency finds ‘chlorinated’ chemicals in Syria’s Douma,” and later issued a correction to clarify that it what the OPCW found was “‘various chlorinated organic chemicals’ instead of chlorine.” The BBC also changed its headline from “chlorine gas” to “possible chlorine.”

So the OPCW found evidence of a chlorine attack then?
No, that isn't what they reported. Check out what the MilitaryTimes said about the report.

The team said in its initial report on Douma that two industrial gas cylinders were discovered at different locations in the town: one on a top-floor patio and the other on a bed in a top-floor apartment. It said it is working to establish how they got there and whether they are linked to the alleged attack.

The team said it “needs to continue its work to draw final conclusions regarding the alleged incident and, to this end, the investigation is ongoing.”

Louis Charbonneau, the U.N. director for Human Rights Watch, said the OPCW should “move quickly to finish its investigation and determine whether a chemical weapon attack occurred.”

So this is essentially what we know and don't know:

1) no nerve agent attack happened
2) the OPCW still hasn't determined if a chemical attack occurred, despite the mainstream media saying otherwise (i.e. fake news).
3) the only chlorine found was in cylinders on the top floors of apartments.

As for those cylinders, is it likely the Syrian army would sneak them into rebel-held areas, and carry them to top floors before releasing the chlorine?
Or would they more likely simply drop the chlorine from helicopters?

4) Jimmy Dore has not been proven wrong, and some of what Dore has claimed has been proven right. Only the MSM has made patently false claims.

So the people doing the most screaming about fake news are the ones most wrong.

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thanatokephaloides's picture

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

@thanatokephaloides I suspect their decision to be on the front ranks of rabid Russian hysterics was a business decision.

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@MrWebster So what does that make him?

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@SancheLlewellyn It's hard to say. He's either a real dissident whom they keep on and allow to talk so that they don't lose all their left-wing viewers, or he's another Markos, building up credibility until the day comes for him to use that credibility to protect and defend the status quo. I have an open mind on this point.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@SancheLlewellyn @SancheLlewellyn While in youtube went to TYT's channel and found no "Jimmy Dore only videos." The closet was from 2016 when he was on an election panel.

But when I go do down the list of videos I do see many videos of Cenk and his sidekicks engaging in the worst sort of Russian xenophobia that if said against Mexicans would be considered racist. I see a deliberate and continual stream of videos that demonizes both Putin and the Russian nation, and sees anything the Russians do as automatically criminal and part of world Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. I have seen Cenk act like he is anti-war while using the same sorts of language and rhetoric about the Russians that Bush used to justify war against the Iraqis. I have seen Cenk engage in thee worst homophobic slurs to attack Trump/Putin.

But they are for single payer. And you know why it won't happen, well one of the reasons. Because the rhetoric of Cenk and his buddy Ana and their buddies give justification to an ever expanding militarism to combat the Russian Menace.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@thanatokephaloides Cenk,Ana, and TYT as an organization were bought round about the time Unavision/Fusion cut a nice lucrative deal with them in the midst of the 2016 election season. I always assumed they allowed Dore to continue under their aegis so that they wouldn't lose all of their left-wing audience, which would be embarrassing for a purportedly left-wing anti-establishment news source. Now it appears that they are using him as a dartboard on Twitter, from what motivation I cannot guess--there are two schools of thought on that.

That's assuming that Cenk and his people weren't just Markos 2.0 from the beginning. The trajectory Markos and DKos went through is a fairly standard way of fucking with people's minds, and the establishment does it often. Begin by saying how liberal you are and offering a kind of sanctuary for those with left-of-center beliefs--and also those who just object to propaganda generally. Then, after you've worked for a while to gain their trust, use the credibility you've built up to cover for you while you bully and bash them, steer the conversations into dead-ends and flame wars, recapitulate propaganda and lies, and do hatchet jobs on actual left-of-center people and opponents of bullshit, whatever their leanings. That credibility will enable you to respond to anyone who calls you on your shit with outrage, hurt feelings, all more or less within the framework of "How can you say that after all I've done for you?!?" It will also neatly divide your audience/community/voters into camps: those that defend you because they still trust you, and those who see your bullshit. That is very useful because then your defenders will also do hatchet jobs on those who call you on your bullshit, making your defenders, who at the beginning were reformists critical of the status quo, into its most ardent and unscrupulous defenders. All standards of logic, evidence, decency and civilized behavior will fall by the wayside, and the newly-digested will believe themselves to be fully justified in ignoring all of them in their defense of the poor, embattled leader who has done so much. At this point, the shallow joiners will chime in. Anywhere there are lots of homo sapiens, you get a certain number of people who simply want to be where the action is, on the side of whoever has the most power. These will nicely bolster your ranks.

Now, where you used to have, for instance, a large group of people who generally respected each other, were civil to each other, and were united almost without exception in their opposition to a certain leader and his policies--let's say George W. Bush, just to pick a name out of a hat--now you have an ideological war over whether one leader--let's say Markos--or one institution--let's say Daily Kos--is good or bad. You will have transformed a significant percentage of the people who came there in dissent into advocates for the status quo, willing to do and say spiteful things they never would have done or said when they arrived. You have thinned the ranks of dissidents, and to some extent marginalized them; with a little effort, you can make them feel more marginalized than they are, which is very useful indeed. You want all your political opponents to feel that they are standing with a tiny group of people on a sandbar in the middle of a raging ocean of those who disagree with them, whether that is true or not.

Technology enables you to buttress all these efforts with invented identities, or sockpuppets, who can turn one voice into twenty voices quite easily. You can even invent identities that fight on different sides of the same issue, so as to take control of each side and steer the conversation where you want it to go.

Rinse, and repeat.

Barack Obama was the most effective use of this strategy to date. He did a brilliant job, which should earn him and his family seats on whatever lifeboat the very rich are planning to take out of here, but they may leave him here to burn with the rest of us. Hard to say.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@thanatokephaloides
As long as the take on an issue doesn't conflict with the priorities of the Democratic Party.
Anything related to Russia is one of those issues.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@gjohnsit

up to a certain point. Just don’t get in his car.

Al From/Bill Clinton’s Turd Way Koch-Brothers-Financed Neo-liberal ‘New’ Democratic Party’s priorities were NOT Single Payer, $15 an hour minimum wage, etc., UNTIL they actually had the fact rubbed in their collective faces that that is what the majority of the actual voters want. The Dims happily ignored how damn serious the issue of income disparity had become while The Empty Suit was allowing Wall Street to use the taxpayers as overdraft protection after their near-universal destruction of half the planet’s economies. The didn’t give a damn that ACA was a piece of shit program that was doomed to eventually fail. All they cared about was ensuring a captive clientele for the healthcare insurance industry and Big Pharma. Obama was the perfect guy to pull it off and still be able to look like he really did something for the Great Unwashed. Up until Sanders came along. That changed everything and blew the Dim’s boat right out of the water.

The only honest one out of the whole TYT line-up is Dore. I figured the reason he still stays associated with TYT and they with him is exposure as someone else pointed out. Plus considering Sanders huge popularity factor, TYT have to have at least one Bro in the group.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Thanks, gjohnsit.

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The lead-up to the Iraq war was a blatant con job.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@Mickt

the talking heads and ‘experts’ were as footage of us blowing one of the most modern Middle Eastern sovereign nations back to the Stone Age was playing in the background. There were a couple who were really into the light flashes and exploding buildings. So much so It was sickening.

That was shortly before I gave up cable as well. (But that wasn’t the reason I gave it up,)

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Unless JD has gone off the rails recently (haven’t watched in a while) his show and guests used to be what we just called “the left”.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter If they think Jimmy is hard left, wait till they get a load of me.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

k9disc's picture

Fake News is the 21st century version of Conspiracy Theory.

It is an evolution of conspiracy theory, not requiring any kind of convoluted logic or story telling that used to be required for conspiracy theory to stick. Fake News allows for simple, truthful, and logical information to be dismissed out of hand, without examination.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

edg's picture

Here's an ad about COCs (PDF) from 1942. They're used for tanning leather, in soaps and perfumes, as insect repellents, for dying cloth, as antiseptics, and for many, many other commercial and industrial purposes.

Damn those Syrian butchers for dropping perfume on civilians!

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divineorder's picture

@edg @k9disc

Fake News allows for simple, truthful, and logical information to be dismissed out of hand, without examination.

and then they use that as justification for MIC actions.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

Has quotes from former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and others, also castigates the BBC and others for their reporting on this.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@divineorder
It was big news. But failure to report it as false with just as much (or more) attention and timing was journalistic malpractice. They should have been outraged to have been conned into spreading false propaganda. IF they were legitimate journalists.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness In the dim reaches of pre-history, when Walter Cronkite was reporting, a real journalist wouldn't report that someone launched a chemical weapons attack unless the journalist had at least two credible, independent sources providing solid evidence that the story was true. Newspaper editors and television producers knew their reputations were on the line and that their competitors would make sure the egg on their face stuck if they reported something blatantly wrong.

Nowadays, there are no competitors, because journalists and news outlets are mostly hanging out together in one big cheery cartel, every member of which will defend every other member to protect the reputation of the whole. The goal is not to outdo competitors and gain more eyeballs or a greater distribution or greater authority over public opinion. The goal is to defend the status quo by any means necessary, while somehow maintaining the credibility of the press.

But no, they shouldn't have published a story that Assad had launched a chemical weapons attack unless they had a significant amount of solid evidence that it was true.

I have a hard time understanding how people can even begin to credit this crap, given how close it is to what they told us about Saddam Hussein. But it's actually even worse, because at least Hussein did, at one time, use chemical weapons on the Kurds. I mean, at least he did it once, even if he didn't have weapons of mass destruction ready to aim at Israel, or the Saudis, or the U.S.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
I don't know that anyone waits for confirmation anymore. And the two sources could be the CIA and VOA or one of their tame journalists.
Credibility is in the eye of the beholder. After they all jumped on Saddam's WMD one can hardly compare them with Cronkite.

I do remember web blogs asking to please wait for the UN inspectors report. When that report did come out, anyone with integrity, even if not a professional journalist, would have highlighted that report and retracted the original and not figuratively bury it on page 56.

But we are substantially together on this. They reported is as fact not as an unsubstantiated claim.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

fakenews's picture

Chomsky's Five News Filters: A little dated but a good starting point.

The first filter is Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation of the Mass Media. Mainstream media is essentially owned by corporations and the government, because those are the very agents who fund them. Any favourable studies, studies or information that the government or corporations want the public to know (or don’t want them to know) either ends up being aired or buried as a result.

The second filter is Advertising License to do Business. Mass media isn’t interested in attracting viewers to educate them, but rather to sell them on something. They’re more interested in engaging an audience with higher buying power than actually making a difference through education and information. Chomsky provides an excellent example, explaining:
“CBS proudly tells its shareholders that while it “continuously seeks to maximize audience delivery,” it has developed a new “sales tool” with which it approaches advertisers: “Client Audience Profile, or CAP, will help advertisers optimize the effectiveness of their network television schedules by evaluating audience segments in proportion to usage levels of advertisers’ products and services.” In short, the mass media are interested in attracting audiences with buying power, not audiences per se.”

The third filter is Sourcing Mass-Media News. Whatever is aired on mass media needs to be 100% credible, meaning it’s viewers need to completely trust what’s being aired, without the need of them using their critical thinking skills. Since the majority of the public trusts the government and mass corporations, AKA the propaganda machines, most of the “news worthy” content comes from them. Plus, whatever’s aired needs to be approved by corporations or the government and/or mass media must avoid airing anything that would offend their contributors and funders.

The fourth filter is Flak and the Enforcers. “Flak” refers to negative responses to a media statement or program aired on the network. Perhaps the most influential producers of flak are corporations and the government. Corporations have created large scale organizations whose sole purpose is to produce flak. The government is also a large producer of flak, as it constantly corrects or threatens the media based on their interests.

The final filter is Anticommunism as a Control Mechanism. Everything at home seems to be a lesser evil if there’s something on the news that seems much worse (fake terrorist attacks, false enemies, and/or “radical” states). Anything that sounds too left can also be dismissed if it sounds too much like “communism.” By creating an extremely anti-communist state, the elite will never have to worry about losing control over society because their wealth and power remains safe and sound.

Peace
FN

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"Democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppressor. Capitalism is the boss and democracy is its spokesperson." Peace - FN

lotlizard's picture

@fakenews  
namely big, opinion-policing non-profits and their lobbyists and followers, ranging from religious denominations, to AIPAC and the NRA, to the ADL and SPLC.

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The reality appears to be that Assad used chlorine gas. I don't know about you guys, but that makes him a major P.O.S. in my book. Spare me the distinctions between Sarin and Chlorine because I really don't care. Indiscriminate gas attacks are no better than indiscriminate bombings.

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@Blueslide
a) that there is still no proof that a chlorine gas attack happened
b) if it had happened, it doesn't appear likely that Assad's forces did it

You really should read the essay before commenting.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@gjohnsit Evidence, and the lack thereof, are optional data points these days. The important thing is maintaining the frame narrative.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
It's like the Russiagate. It's supposed to be really really important.

russia_2.jpg

Even after two years of being bombarded with Scary Russia, the public flat-out doesn't care.
But the narrative demands that Scary Russia remains at the top of the agenda.

Personally I'd like to see a poll that asks "Why don't you care about Russia?"

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@gjohnsit It took long enough for them to get a majority to even believe in Russiagate. I thought they were going to have to abandon the effort. The narrative had been around for a year, including nine months of saturation-level promotion through all media outlets, and they were still below 50% compliance.

But they just doubled, tripled, quadrupled down. They know that if they repeat something long enough, they will achieve compliance.

The lack of caring you mention is the residue of the American people thinking the whole thing is a pile of shit. There are a couple other reasons for it too, which I might write about soon.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
it still amounts to them revealing that 1) the DNC/Hillary rigged the primaries, and 2) an insignificant amount of BS facebook/Twitter ads.

Any amount of critical thinking will bring you to the conclusion that this "meddling" isn't important.

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lotlizard's picture

@gjohnsit  
Israel? Not even mentioned anywhere.

And yet, the Senate is about to vote on, and will undoubtedly pass, this bill:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/s2497/text

The House version:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr5141/text

(TL/DR — too long / didn’t read: I think this is the continuation of Obama’s program providing $38 billion in military aid to Israel over 10 years)

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@gjohnsit I did...then I went on to read the analyses about Saraqib (not mentioned here).

The FFM determined that chlorine, released from cylinders through mechanical
impact, was likely used as a chemical weapon on 4 February 2018 in the Al Talil
neighbourhood of Saraqib.

You can read the whole report here - warning pdf

So I get that the witness testimony claiming a helicopter dropped gas is not "proof" that Assad did it, but it's good enough for me. And the fact that the identical m.o. appears to be at play in Douma is speculative on my part.

Speculating that this is all a made up conspiracy to justify attacks against Assad tends to fly in the face of evidence provided by OPCW. But that's just my opinion.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Blueslide @Blueslide The investigation ain't over till it's over, and I'm still willing to hear new data, but this:

No organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties.

doesn't look good for your (and the U.S. media's, and the U.S. military's) version of history. I'm also noticing that the evidence of chlorine is limited to two sites. I want to know what's up at those two sites, and what's up with those canisters. But that sounds like only limited parts of the attacked area demonstrate evidence of chlorine. If it were a chlorine gas attack, wouldn't we expect to find evidence of chlorine in most of the attack zone? I'm not a chemist, but if you spray poison gas on people in an open area, wouldn't residue of that poison spread throughout the area? If it is confined to two sites, doesn't it bear asking whether the chlorine found was, in fact, weaponized? As edg mentioned above, people use chlorine, unlike sarin, for many things other than killing people.

Then there's the question of credibility. We're living in a time where this happens:

Millions of YouTube viewers have been captivated by the 'Syrian hero boy' who manages to rescue a little girl while under gunfire. Now a group of Norwegian filmmakers have told BBC Trending they are behind it. They say it was filmed on location in Malta this summer with the intention of being presented as real.

Lars Klevberg, a 34-year-old film director based in Oslo, wrote a script after watching news coverage of the conflict in Syria. He says he deliberately presented the film as reality in order to generate a discussion about children in conflict zones.

"If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope," he said. "We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous movies like Troy and Gladiator," Klevberg said. "The little boy and girl are professional actors from Malta. The voices in the background are Syrian refugees living in Malta."

Were they comfortable making a film that potentially deceived millions of people? "I was not uncomfortable," Klevberg said. "By publishing a clip that could appear to be authentic we hoped to take advantage of a tool that's often used in war; make a video that claims to be real. We wanted to see if the film would get attention and spur debate, first and foremost about children and war. We also wanted to see how the media would respond to such a video."

A tool that's often used in war; make a video that claims to be real. Well, that sounds like warmongering propaganda to me, but hey, if Norwegian filmmakers want to wrap it up in a candy coating of concern for children, well, that, too is a tool that's often used in war. When all else fails, the proponents of war always pull out "save the little children." It used to be "keep that brute from molesting your women," but now that women are emancipated, sort of, it's usually "save the little children."

So once the film was made, how did it go viral? "It was posted to our YouTube account a few weeks ago but the algorithm told us it was not going to trend," Klevberg said. "So we deleted that and re-posted it." The filmmakers say they added the word "hero" to the new headline and tried to send it out to people on Twitter to start a conversation. It was then picked up by Shaam Network, a channel that features material from the Middle East, which posted it on YouTube. Then it began to attract international attention.

It didn't get enough hits? Add the word "hero" to it. That should do it. Regular Mother Teresas these folks.

Since being uploaded to YouTube on Monday the video has been watched more than five million times and inspired thousands of comments. There has been a big debate about whether it is genuine. How those viewers will react to learning that it's a work of fiction remains to be seen. "We are really happy with the reaction," Klevberg said. "It created a debate."

If you were concerned with the fate of children in war, would you want a debate over whether or not your film was real? Why would that make you "really happy?" Won't at least some of the viewers "react to learning that it's a work of fiction" result in people becoming cynical and jaundiced about similar images, rather than passionately inspired to stop war, or at least to get more children out of war zones?

Why couldn't you just use one of the many pictures of actual children in war zones? Like this:

children_0.jpg

Oh, I'm sorry. That was a Palestinian kid. They don't count.

Actually, images from Gaza are very useful in promoting the war in Syria:

fakesyria.jpg

A Cleveland-based user who goes by the name of Sami Sharbek has posted two photos on his Twitter account – one showing Middle Eastern-looking residential blocks being bombed from the air; the other depicting a man carrying a crying child. “This is not a movie. This is Syria,” he wrote in the caption.

The post was widely retweeted and liked. As of Wednesday morning, it had racked up over 125,000 shares and 154,000 likes. However, what many people failed to notice is that the photos portraying the perils of war were shot outside Syria.

Some users have shared the links to news stories featuring the original photos. “Wrong,” John Mangun, BusinessMirror Columnist, tweeted, sharing a link to a 2014 Independent story covering Israeli air raids on Palestine.

This photo shows the same airstrike featured in the photo tweeted by Sharbek. It comes from Reuters’ coverage of an Israeli strike on eastern Gaza city.

If you want a comprehensive analysis of false images used to promote war, this is a good article.

So that's the world we live in. People make movies and music videos with images of war, and those images are circulated as real, sometimes with the consent of the filmmakers, sometimes not. People take footage from other times and other places and hold them up as documentary evidence of something happening in Syria. Interestingly, those other places seem often to be Gaza, Iraq, or Yemen.

Under these circumstances, it's hard to blame people for being skeptical and not simply leaping to the conclusions they are offered. It's not surprising that some are unwilling to say "Oh, a witness said it was the Syrian government? OK by me. It must have been the Syrian government." How the hell do I know who that witness was, or whether or not he was actually in the pay of someone? How much goddamned corruption and how many lies are we supposed to swallow before we become suspicious? Aren't the people who are spreading these stories in many cases the same people who spread stories of WMDs in Iraq?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal Can't Stop the M...I am not sure which event you are referencing. My point is, the OPCW did state what I had quoted about the Sareqib incident. I think it is reasonable to conclude Assad's forces are dropping chlorine canisters from helicopters in Douma too.

I am all for a healthy dose of skepticism. And it may be that there was no weaponized chlorine in Douma. So what does that tell us exactly ? I think the inference here is that the entire scenario in Syria is fake news - maybe. But any prudent observer would do well not to discount Assad's actions in the past.

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@Blueslide
Sounds clumsy to me. Can't Russia supply real bombs. Maybe white phosphorus?
Or was it more faking to implicate Assad? The CIA does a lot of that.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Blueslide Assad's a bastard. I hear his mother was worse. That doesn't mean that he's guilty of this particular evil act, though he may have committed scores or hundreds of others.

Just the facts, ma'am. Smile

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

mimi's picture

@Blueslide

Spare me the distinctions between Sarin and Chlorine because I really don't care.

Be careful about what you do not care about. Others may do the same and guess who would be hurt. Probably you as well.

Sarin,

Sarin, or NATO designation GB (G-series, 'B'), is a highly toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound.[5] A colorless, odorless liquid, it is used as a chemical weapon due to its extreme potency as a nerve agent. Exposure is lethal even at very low concentrations, where death can occur within one to ten minutes after direct inhalation of a lethal dose,[6][7] due to suffocation from lung muscle paralysis, unless antidotes are quickly administered.[5] People who absorb a non-lethal dose, but do not receive immediate medical treatment, may suffer permanent neurological damage.

compare to this:
What is Chlorine Gas and how did it become a weapon

Chlorine Gas - Use as a weapon

Fritz Haber (1868-1934) knew about the toxicity of chlorine when he chose it as his agent of warfare in 1915. He had already come up with the Haber-Bosch process, patented in 1910, for the fixation of nitrogen as ammonia, which won him the 1918 Nobel Prize in chemistry. This made the manufacture of artificial fertilizers possible and the survival of millions of people today depends on it.

But it also enabled the mass production of nitric acid, source of the explosives that Germany used in World War I. Haber was an intensely patriotic German Jew. He was head of the chemistry section in the Ministry of War, coordinating the production of ammonia needed to fight the war. He was also in charge of chemical warfare, choosing chlorine gas as the agent.

Haber supervized the installation of the first chlorine gas cylinders in the trenches on the Western front, near Ypres. He and the specialist troops waited for the wind to blow from the east towards the Allied trenches and launched the first gas attack on April 22 1915. As clouds of chlorine drifted towards the Allies, panic set in. It was no good diving into a trench, as the dense chlorine was heavier than airand poured in. Of the 15,000 or more casualties, 5,000 soldiers were killed.

Haber’s story ended tragically in several ways. He returned home to a celebration of the success of the attack on May 1 but that night his wife Clara committed suicide after an argument—possibly over the morality of what he was doing. A few years later he developed a system for getting rid of insect pests, using hydrogen cyanide. It became known as the Zyklon system. A derivative pesticide, Zyklon B, was used to exterminate millions in Nazi concentration camps, where many of Haber’s close relatives died.

You know, I like Sarin better, just because it kills faster and then for sure and for good. With Chlorine, holy cow, you don't know for sure if it kills you or just makes your lungs sick for good. (ok I better say this is meany bitter sarcasm, just to make sure you get it)

Anyway, just saying, I would say that is an issue worth caring for, no?

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@mimi Using either as a weapon is equally hideous.

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is that which seeks to substitute for truth. Barring that it's function is to sow doubt, enough to render truth ineffective.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

and don't want us to know.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.