[Peace-discuss] Followup on the ongoing OPCW scandal: Aaron Maté interviews Theodore Postol on "Pushback"

[J.B. Nicholson]

I wrote:
> I still maintain that Amy Goodman's dismissive review of Pres. Trump's media chastisement is 
> problematic. The issue of what to make of the modern media is more complicated and includes failures 
> of Goodman's own news outlet Democracy Now, which I believe Maté chastised without naming when he 
> introduced the above interview thusly:
> 
>> One of the biggest stories of 2019 was undoubtedly the OPCW's Syria scandal -- a coverup inside
>> the world's top chemical watchdog that was used to justify US-led military strikes on Syria.
>> [...K]ey findings [...] were kept from the public when the OPCW published its final report.
>> Ignoring its own data and experts, the OPCW concluded that there were "reasonable grounds that
>> the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place... This toxic chemical contained reactive
>> chlorine.". But even now as the suppressed findings come out via brave whistleblowers and
>> WikiLeaks, they are still being kept from the public. That is because the Western media,
>> including top progressive adversarial outlets, have ignored or whitewashed the story. And that
>> media self-censorship has become a scandal in itself.

Just to be clear and thorough about this, here's what Aaron Maté said about The Intercept and 
Democracy Now on this at 18m46s into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IML3FpuLH_Q :

> Aaron Maté: I want to also point out that this is not just the corporate media who, you know,
> there's a history there of the corporate media silencing stories that undermine establishment
> narratives. But in this case I've been really disappointed to see that this extends to
> adversarial progressive media as well. Now I want to ask you about two examples: one is The
> Intercept -- they've published a number of stories that advance the narrative that Assad was
> guilty of this attack. You were interviewed for a story that offered sort of a, that took sort of
> a neutral stance on it; it was sort of back and forth, it was back in February 2019. Since these
> revelations have come out nothing in The Intercept at all; have they contacted you at all for an
> interview--
> 
> Theodore Postol: No, no, no. Not at all.
> 
> Aaron Maté: Okay. Democracy Now, which is a very prominent progressive show. The reason I had
> your phone number to be able to interview you here at The Grayzone is because I used to work
> there for 10 years and we used to interview you pretty often, especially when you did your work
> around Gaza exposing that the Iron Dome missile system sold to Israel by the US was basically a
> fraud. Have they contacted you at all?
> 
> Theodore Postol: No, no, no. Dead silence from them.
So it seems that Maté was chastising both The Intercept and Democracy Now, by name, and rightly so.

Toward the end of the interview watch Postol's reaction to the New York Times seriously publishing 
that Bellingcat co-founder Eliot Higgins "attributed his skill not to any special knowledge of 
international conflicts or digital data, but to the hours he had spent playing video games, which, 
he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked." (from 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/01/business/media/open-source-journalism-bellingcat.html ). Postol's 
reaction is remarkable, correct, and part of the reason why one should have a lower opinion of the 
New York Times.

-J