Assad Gas Attack

An article on Quartz (link) began as follows:

In the aftermath of reports suggesting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had once again unleashed a deadly chemical weapon on civilians, at least one Western leader—embattled by human rights criticism at home—immediately responded with class and clarity. Issuing a bullish statement on Twitter, this leader called for a full investigation and declared, “there can be no future for Assad in a stable Syria.” 

That leader, of course, was British prime minister Theresa May. While usually one would expect such a strong statement to come from the US—the traditional leader of the free world—it was the leader of the UK who set the tone on Tuesday.

This nausea-inducing article was written by Max de Haldevang who reports on Quartz's global politics desk. His obsessions include Cities & Urban Development, and Global Corruption. He has reported in Mexico and London for Reuters, in Russia for The Moscow Times and worked for NBC at the Rio and Sochi Olympics. He speaks Russian and Spanish, and has degrees from Cambridge and Columbia. Source.

It's hard to stomach phrases like responded with class and clarity to describe someone like May and the traditional leader of the free world to describe a country like the United States. So who is Max de Haldevang, the author of such idiotic comments? Well, he's clearly not very old so we shouldn't be too hard on him. He's just trying to make his mark in the world of mainstream journalism. He's the guy on the right and looks like a teenager but must be older.

The article from where the photo was taken describes him as having been awarded a Reuters Fellowship from the Overseas Press Club Foundation at the Foundation’s 2015 Annual Scholar Awards Luncheon held at the Yale Club in New York City. The other guy in the photo is the Pulitzer-Prize winning David Rohde, now of Reuters. 

Further investigation shows that Rohde has more than a Pulitzer Prize as a claim to fame:

While in Afghanistan, Rohde was kidnapped by members of the Taliban in November 2008, but managed to escape in June 2009 after seven months in captivity. While he was in captivity, The New York Times collaborated with a number of media outlets, including al-Jazeera and Wikipedia, to remove news of the kidnapping from the public eye.

Rohde has reported on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US government's roundup of Muslims following 9/11. While clearly mainstream, he seems to have a reasonable track record. Aspiring journalists like de Haldevang must establish their reputations in a very competitive arena. He was one of 15 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 175 applicants from 50 different colleges and universities.

His LinkedIn account shows him as having finished a B.A. (Hons) in Modern Languages at Cambridge between 2009 and 2013. He's since completed an M.A. in Russian Studies at Columbia University 2014-2016. This would put him in his mid-twenties I guess. It's a pity talented individuals like him are forced into mainstream journalism where their motivation to delve behind the scenes of world events will be actively discouraged by those who decide whether stories will be published or not.

The real story about the alleged Assad gas attack is why he would have launched it at such an inopportune time. Here is a video in which Ron Paul discusses the event:

As for Theresa May, her barking about the need to remove Assad is no different from Tony Blair's barking about the need to remove Saddam Hussein before he could unleash his non-existent weapons of mass destruction. May has no class whatsoever. However, Reuters is head-quartered in London and maybe de Haldevang is hoping for a posting there. After all, following his Reuters Fellowship he was assigned to Mexico City. Maybe he's still there and his fatuous article for Quartz is a ploy to garner British friends in high places who will put in a good word for him at the Reuters desk in London.