The “fifty Labour MPs” threatening to vote for military action in Syria, if they exist beyond the Guardian’s imagination, are still living in the Blair days. Back then, while the US empire was riding high, “New Labour” grew used to being handsomely rewarded for supporting genocidal war crimes. It was the kewl way to be. It got them shed loads of cash, seats at the high table, and total immunity from recrimination or justice.
On the one hand, just five individual Billionaires in Britain get to control 80% what you read in printed media and on the other hand, just five Internet Service Providers get to control what 87% of people get to see on their devices. Both are heavily influenced by government. It is no wonder what the public think is a misinterpretation of the truth. In fact, so far from the truth, it is more a departure from reality. Propaganda works!
The question that the supine Western media should be asking the NATO chief and his Washington superiors is this: if you can so clearly quantify and delineate the IS and Al Qaeda bases, then why has the US-led coalition evidently been wasting 12 months bombing empty desert spaces instead of degrading and defeating these groups, as vowed by US President Barack Obama over a year ago?
The media do not merely generate the political weather. They play a large part in creating the climate in which information is received and understood. A notion such as ‘electability’, to take the example at hand, is unthinkable without the media, which, in their every representation of a political leader, ask (and supply the authorities to help us decide) not only who is and is not electable, but what should be the criteria by which electability is judged.
Russia is bombing “terrorists” in Syria, and the US is understandably peeved.
Anonymously, US officials accused Russia of deliberately targeting CIA-sponsored “moderate” rebels to shore-up the regime of Bashir al-Assad.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an organization shrouded in mystery. This may be due mainly to the fact that the majority of people don’t even know of its existence.
In 2010, WikiLeaks became a household name by releasing 251,287 classified State Department cables. Now, a new book collects in-depth analyses of what these cables tell us about the foreign policy of the United States, from authors including Truthout staff reporter Dahr Jamail and our regular contributors Gareth Porter, Robert Naiman, Phyllis Bennis and Stephen Zunes. “The essays that make up The WikiLeaks Files shed critical light on a once secret history,” says Edward Snowden.
“ ‘More than 120 members belonging to the elite regiment [British SAS] are currently in the war-torn country’ covertly ‘dressed in black and flying ISIS flags’ engaged in what is called Operation Shader – attacking Syrian targets on the pretext of combatting ISIS.”
The US are trying to salvage the remnants of their comic-book Syrian narrative, hiding behind the transparent diversionary claim the Russians are bombing “non-ISIS rebels”, hoping, forlornly no one will be smart enough to realise this essentially means “al Qaeda/al Nusra”, and amounts to an admission the US is working with the group they used to claim were the embodiment of evil.
While it is important to recognise the sources of bias, the repetition of anti-Syrian stories based on partisan sources cannot be a matter of simple bias. We know from independent evidence that earlier claims of massacres were fabricated by the sectarian groups, then backed by Washington. This has been documented with respect to mass killings at Houla, Aqrab, Daraya, and East Ghouta
So a Su-30 enters a few hundred meters into Turkish airspace for only two minutes over Hatay province, and returns to Syrian airspace after being warned by a couple of Turkish F-16s. Then all hell breaks loose as if this was the ultimate pretext for a NATO-Russia war. NATO, predictably, went out all rhetorical guns blazing. Russia is causing“extreme danger” and should immediately stop bombing those cute“moderate rebels” the coalition of the dodgy opportunists refuses to bomb.
The Russian air-base at Latakia is perfectly situated for providing air cover or bombing terrorist targets across the country. The Russian airforce will also make every effort to cut off supply lines and escape routes so that as many jihadis as possible are liquidated within Syria’s borders. This is why ISIS positions along the main highway to Iraq were destroyed on Sunday. The jihadi thugs will be given every chance to die in battle as they wish, but getting out alive is not going to be so easy.
