Yes, CNN actually has a guy like this, and he is as dumb as you might imagine. Who else but a moron or a psychopath would take a job like that at CNN? - and he's not smart enough to be a psychopath, unlike CNN's senior management.
Imagine. CNN has a reporter whose beat is “disinformation.” That’s satire, right? Nope. It’s true. Donie O’Sullivan is CNN’s “disinformation” reporter. CNN’s O’Sullivan has written a smear piece on American Herald Tribune. The disinformation reporter’s effort is, to put it mildly, decidedly disingenuous. One of the many problems with O’Sullivan’s disinfo essay is that he wrote it without even trying to interview the person who has been Editor In Chief of AHT since its inception. I am that person.
O’Sullivan has quickly made himself notorious in media circles for his pompous sanctimoniousness. His pomposities have drawn fire from the likes of Tucker Carlson at Fox News and from David Harsanyi at the National Review. O’Sullivan has been singled out especially for his dim witted and humourless attack on a satirical piece that has attracted a lot of positive buzz to its publisher, Babylon Bee.
Babylon Bee specializes in satire from a Christian conservative perspective. O’Sullivan expressed dismay at the large number of Facebook shares triggered by Babylon Bee’s spoof. This spoof explains the “Democrats Call For Flags To Be Flown At Half-Mast To Grieve Death Of Soleimani.” The satirist went on to imagine Congresswoman Ilhan Omar announcing, "As a nation, we need to stop and grieve this great, austere, revered religious scholar. He was one of the good ones."
The fact that this example of gallows humour earned many more Facebook shares than the top stories on CNN and the New York Times prompted O’Sullivan to suggest that Babylon Bee should be deplatformed. It seems the disinformation reporter at CNN is enamoured with censorship as an instrument of spin doctoring.
O’Sullivan worried that the popularity of the satirical item was caused because many Internet surfers apparently took its content to be true. The joke was illustrated by a photoshopped image of Congress flying a US flag at half- mast. O’Sullivan described the tongue-in-cheek story as “clickbait” and “misinformation.” As justification for his outrage O’Sullivan cited a Facebook comment exclaiming, “I wish this was a joke. Half of the left has gone full Anti-America, full terrorist supporter this week.”
The controversy stirred up enough attention in mainstream media for Tucker Carlson to invite onto Fox the CEO of Babylon Bee, Seth Dillon. As the duo warmed up for their critique of the CNN gong show, Dillon and Tucker shared a joke. How “hilarious” it seemed to both of them that Babylon Bee should be accused of “disinformation” by CNN, a notorious purveyor of disinfo. The light-hearted exchange was interspersed with serious commentary about CNN’s propensity to promote the Internet censorship of those with whom the network disagrees.
Some might go as far as observing that Donie O’Sullivan is making a fool of himself and his network for his ill-considered missteps as CNN’s disinformation reporter. In its headline describing the half-mast fiasco, the web site Twichy exclaimed in its headline, “CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan accidentally proves the ‘garbage state’ of media in a thread whining about Babylon Bee.” In a more probing commentary on the Babylon Bee/O’Sullivan dust up, the National Review’s senior writer observed,
“What’s most annoying about all this situational and insincere freakout about the veracity of social-media news feeds is that the people who claim to be most concerned about it have done far more damage to the public’s trust than has any satirical site — not only by spreading half-truths and stoking political hysteria, but by undermining their reputation and leaving millions of Americans without any reliable mainstream news organizations to count on.”
American Herald Tribune exists as a rich source of varied commentary on international affairs for those who understand the mainstream media is awash these days in power-serving disinformation. Our pluralistic coverage of recent news events like the drone strike assassinations of General Qassem Soleimani, Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and their murdered entourage is, for us, far from a laughing matter. It is not a subject that AHT would treat as a suitable topic for satire. It would only add insult to injury, however, to criticize a Christian conservative satire site for looking at the astonishing developments of January 2020 through an entirely different lens than we do.
Many of the writers and readers of American Herald Tribune tend to share a view that finds merit in the stance of the Axis of Resistance as opposed to the stance of the US and Israeli-led side in the fast coalescing conflict. This conflict is now engulfing the Middle East even as it threatens to become fully global in scope.
Rather than stoke the flames of intolerance and antagonism as Donie O’Sullivan, CNN and the Trump White House are doing, AHT prefers to promote dialogue and negotiation as an alternative to hateful war mongering.
The people who tend to collect in and around AHT are prone to identify with the urge to self-defence of the Houthi and other Yemani people. Hence we condemn the Saudi Armed Forces that continue to use Western weaponry in the mass slaughter of Yemeni civilians. Where do Donie O’Sullivan and CNN stand on the issue of genocide in Yemen?
We recognize that General Soleimani was a soldier genuinely devoted to fighting the mercenary forces of Daesh (aka ISIL, ISIS) Like its predecessor, al-Qaeda, Daesh was created as a proxy army largely funded, directed and equipped by the USA and Saudi Arabia with the Israeli government pulling many of the strings in the background. Daesh has been moved around in the Middle East and Eurasia to give justifications for many US military operations where the cause of fighting terrorism is nothing but a pretext.
How come the US government has supported in Syria the mercenary forces of al-Qaeda/al-Nusra, the very entity that the US government points to as the 9/11 culprits? Why doesn’t CNN properly investigate the apparent contradictions between the US support for al-Qaeda in light of the official US explanation for the 9/11 crimes?
When it comes to the reasons General Soleimani flew to Baghdad on January 2 the readers and writers at AHT are generally inclined to believe more the account of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Abdul Mahdi, than that of the Christian Zionist Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. AHT has reported extensively in support of the argument that the Quds Force leader was invited by the Iraqi Prime Minister to engage in diplomatic peace talks. He did not come to Baghdad with the intention of doing “imminent” damage like killing diplomats and blowing up embassies. Where is the evidence for the US claim that President Trump did not commit a war crime with his order to conduct drone assassinations in Baghdad on 2 January 2020?
As for myself, I am 68 years old and have recently retired to become Professor Emeritus at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. I have travelled to and from Iran several times over the last six years. I have taken part in New Horizon conferences and have given a paper at an academic event at the University of Tehran. I have also participated in a large event in 2017 emphasizing Muslim solidarity with the plight of Palestinian people living under Israeli control.
In the course of these visits I have developed friendships and collegial relations with some Iranian people. Some of this networking is reflected in the very wide array of contributors to AHT. Our contributors reside in many lands all over the world.
Compared to AHT’s international representation of international affairs, CNN is a very narrow and parochial venue. Among the contributors at AHT that one would never see at CNN is the renowned Iranian film maker, journalist and public affairs commentator, Nader Talebzadeh.
I believe I have been making much better use of my time than the partisan spin doctors at CNN who have taken the side of Hillary Clinton Democrats in the efforts to impeach Donald Trump. Trump should be impeached, but not for his involvement in the Hunter Biden mess in Ukraine. Rather the US President should be impeached for the extrajudicial assassinations executed on his orders through the Baghdad drone strike of 2 January, 2020.
It would not be wrong to fly some flags at half-mast because of the tragedy that has befallen so many otherwise sane Americans who have succumbed to the derangements of Islamophobia, Arabophobia and Iranophobia. What are the chances that the world’s peace loving people, including many anti-war activists in the United States, can hold back the global catastrophe set in motion by the most destabilizing drone strike ever?
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