Anti-Russia hysteria reached parodical proportions in the ‘mainstream’ media in the wake of the Sergei Skripol ‘novichok’ incident in recent days but what this burlesque spectacle actually reveals is the toxic interdependence between the corporate state and the corporate media – the operative word there being ‘corporate’ – exposing how they always work together to sweep us all along on a tide of fast-rising nationalistic fervour into the next geopolitically convenient conflict.
I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather […]
The Kurdish region of Afrin in northern Syria has become a new geopolitical pivot point in the conflict. With so many actors’ interests overlapping, whose positions will be weakened and whose solidified if hostilities escalate? With so many different agendas now converging along the borderlands, many fear that Turkey’s latest military masterplan and march towards Afrin threatens to open up […]
Something quite extraordinary has been happening on Twitter. Corporate journalists have gone into meltdown after two British media analysts – known as Media Lens – tweeted some friendly advice to idealistic youngsters contemplating a career in journalism. Twitter is a social media forum much loved by corporate journalists – probably because media training hones their skills at pithy aphorisms and […]
Western governments, their corporate news media, and even the United Nations’ chief Antonio Guterres are once again playing a disgusting, emotive propaganda game over the Syrian war.
“In calm retrospect we can appreciate better the disastrous effects of the poison of
falsehood, whether officially, semiofficially, or privately manufactured. It has been
rightly said that the injection of the poison of hatred into men’s minds by means of
falsehood is a greater evil in wartime than the actual loss of life. The defilement of the
human soul is worse than the destruction of the human body. A fuller realization of
this is essential.”
Are the White Helmets heroes or villains? The mainstream narrative has them as a neutral, unarmed, grassroots (and Oscar-winning) humanitarian group with no political affiliations, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Independent journalists, notably Vanessa Beeley, Eva Karene Bartlett, Patrick Henningsen, and Khaled Iskef, among a few others, suggest a radically different picture, in which the White Helmets are nothing more than a propaganda front for terrorist groups like the Al Nusra Front.
On January 8, Fiona Bruce introduced an item about Syria on BBC News at Ten with the phrase: ‘Syrian government forces, backed by Russia’. Why does BBC News not regularly use the phrase, ‘Saudi government forces, backed by the United States and the UK’ when reporting on bombs dropped on Yemen? The answer should be obvious.
Open a corporate media website on any given day and you will find someone, somewhere blaming social media for something. No claim is too absurd.
Rather than indulging drum-beating hawks like Carter, politicians, journalists and anyone else really concerned with understanding and challenging British militarism might find in such places much more useful information and critical direction.
What kind of psychopaths deliberately target children? How is it possible that our politicians and journalists still refer to these terrorists as ‘moderate rebels’? What is moderate about cold blooded murder of innocents?
It is time for George Monbiot’s legion of supporters to call him out. Not only is he a hypocrite, but he is becoming an increasingly dangerous one.
