CIA-linked private “security” companies are fighting in Yemen for the US-backed Saudi military campaign. Al-Qaeda-affiliated mercenaries are also being deployed. Melding private firms with terror outfits should not surprise. It’s all part of illegal war making.
The problem is not just that foreign reporting is being stripped of financial resources as the media find it harder to make a profit from their core activities. It is, as Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky pointed out long ago in their book Manufacturing Consent, that the corporate media is designed to reflect the interests of power – and the corporations that control our media are power. They select journalists through a long filtering process (school, university, journalism training, apprenticeships) precisely designed to weed out dissidents and those who think too critically. Only journalists whose worldview aligns closely with those in power reach the top.
Recruitment of foreign terrorist fighters, facilitation of their cross-border movement into Syria and the supply of weapons to the terrorist groups active there. Reportedly, representatives of ISIL — with help from the Turkish intelligence services — have established an extensive network in Antalya for the recruitment of individuals who have arrived in Turkey from the post-Soviet States, to enable their participation in the Syrian conflict and possible transfer to Russia.
The Turkish government has become almost apoplectic over Washington’s support for the Kurdish militants in Syria. Erdogan this week repeated an ultimatum to US President Barack Obama “to back us, not the terrorists” – referring to the YPG. Ankara fears that the emboldened Syrian Kurds might eventually carve out a separatist state with their PKK comrades in southeast Turkey.
Turkish forces have allegedly left 150 Kurds to burn to death while trapped in basements in the Cizre district as troops enforced a curfew after this week’s bombing in Ankara.
The allegation was made Friday by a Kurdish lawmaker in the Turkey’s parliament, Feleknas Uca.
The fresh gains also tightened noose on Daesh as they included two strategic roads that used to serve as supply routes for the terror group: the main road connecting Shaddadah to Daesh-held city of Mosul in Iraq and another road connecting it to Raqqah, the takfiris’ de facto capital. Having lost these two routes, the Takfiris in the area were forced to retreat towards the Dayr al-Zawr province, which is mostly under their control.
Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.
To judge from the few reports coming out of Syria from journalists actually on the ground it becomes increasingly obvious the Western corporate media is stretching readers’ credibility beyond breaking. The decreasing number of comments sections on contentious issues left open, often bulge with posters expressing utter disbelief. We can only surmise our leading media outlets are facing a crisis of credibility.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to think so. In fact, Erdogan is acting like Wednesday’s explosion in the capital was a gift from God. You see, Erdogan and his fellow Islamists think that if they pin the blame for the bombing on luckless patsy, Salih Neccar, who has links to the Kurdish YPG, then they’ll be able to convince Washington that the YPG is a terrorist organization. And if they can convince Washington that the YPG a terrorist organization, then Obama will have to break off relations with the YPG even though the Kurdish militia has been helping the US defeat ISIS in Syria.
President Obama, who once called the idea of “moderate” Syrian rebels a “fantasy,” has maintained the fiction to conceal the fact that many “moderates” are fighting alongside Al Qaeda’s jihadists, an inconvenient truth that is complicating an end to Syria’s civil war, explains Gareth Porter.
In early January, 2016 Syria Researcher Vanessa Beeley found herself in the midst of a Twitter debate with none other than terrorist supporter and death squad organizer Robert Ford. The former U.S. Ambassador was apparently upset with Beeley’s challenge to the official State Department narrative of “Assad’s brutality” and shortly commenced to debating her in a private message.
Peter Oborne speaks to residents of government-held areas about their fighting for ‘civilisation’ and latest drive to root out ‘terrorism’ in Syria.
