As President Donald Trump tries to make the case for staying indefinitely in Afghanistan, the stakes for those actually living there are rarely broached by US corporate media. In dozens of write-ups, recaps and reports on Trump’s “major” Afghan War speech, almost no outlets took time out to note the plight or condition of the people the US is nominally […]
From The Observer: President Maduro strips Venezuela’s parliament of power Legislative powers taken from opposition-led parliament, as country’s fugitive attorney general alleges Maduro corruption links Dear Mr. Pritchard (Observer readers’ editor) First of all, article’s headline is false as even the article itself reveals. Venezuela’s constituent assembly (ANC), not President Maduro, took over various National Assembly functions. Nowhere does the article inform readers that […]
Robert Stuart has been single-handedly undertaking ‘analysis of the 30 September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ and related BBC News reports, contending that sequences filmed by BBC personnel and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a school in Urm Al-Kubra are largely, if not […]
Government and the security services are using the levers of control to manipulate the mainstream media and with it the public discourse like never before. Shadowy informational operatives use technology to stalk every newsroom in the land to gain political advantage. The public are now facing new threats as they are unconsciously herded and trapped inside self imposed informational bubbles. Loyal to the political framework and its corporate interests almost all media that you are reading and seeing today is largely fake, distorted or misrepresented.
It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of “fake news.” These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.
My latest trip to Syria was spent in Aleppo and Damascus. During my time in East Aleppo I was struck by the hive of activity, pockets of industry, rebuilding the stricken neighborhoods, stone by stone. Despite lack of electricity and water, in each street and alleyway, the sound of welders and the beat of hammers, rang out. The sparks from […]
The Syria Times e-newspaper is indeed honored to republish H.E. President Bashar Al-Assad‘s landmark address to the Syrian journalists at Journalists Union 4th Conference :Al-Umawyeen Conference Palace, Damascus: August 15, 2006 . Ladies and gentlemen members of the fourth general conference of the Journalists Union, Ladies and gentlemen, It gives me pleasure to meet you at the opening of the proceedings […]
The corporate mass media are well aware what side of the class war their bread is buttered. Their reporting of the events in Venezuela is a case in point. “Venezuela Leaps Towards Dictatorship” said The Economist. “Venezuela Flirts With Outright Dictatorship”, exclaimed The Independent. The New York Times headlined with “Venezuela’s Descent Into Dictatorship”, while The Guardian’s “Let’s Call Venezuela What it is under Maduro: a Dictatorship”, was […]
The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media. This was, in great part, a vote by those angered and […]
These past six months I have been getting to know the inter-media. They’re not formally part of mainstream, and they’re not very social, so I call them inter-media. They are like the maintenance team for the mainstream. To explain this, I’ll first say how I came to meet them. The context of these encounters is writing posts on Syria. Doing so, I rely entirely […]
In the current environment, to express even a mildly dissenting opinion, point out basic but unwelcome facts such as the presence of significant public support for the government in Syria, or highlight the frequently brutal acts of rebel groups, has seen many people ridiculed and attacked on social media. These attacks are rarely, if ever, reasoned critiques of opposing views; instead they frequently descend into personal, often hysterical, insults and baseless, vitriolic allegations.
When I first went to Palestine as a young reporter in the 1960s, I stayed on a kibbutz. The people I met were hard-working, spirited and called themselves socialists. I liked them. One evening at dinner, I asked about the silhouettes of people in the far distance, beyond our perimeter. “Arabs”, they said, “nomads”. The words were almost spat out. […]
