George W Bush was mocked for his “Mission Accomplished” stunt in which he tried to declare the war over as it began, but we can’t mock the corporate media for what it accomplished. Disappearing hundreds of thousands of deaths that resulted from a very recent and extensively covered war is quite a feat. We should fear what the “free press” could easily accomplish in the future.
How can Washington and its allies even begin to justify to their public sending weapons to al-Qaeda terrorists? That conundrum was highlighted with reports last week of the US Congress secretly voting to step up its munitions supply to Syria.
Since mid-January forces that remain allied with the former Jamahiriya political and economic system set up by Gaddafi have taken control of several cities and towns in the south. Clashes have also been reported around the capital of Tripoli, where nationalist forces have fought pitched battles with militias and military forces backed by the GNC regime.
Elite proprietors and parent companies naturally select editors to represent the interests of elite power. Because the same interests run all major media outlets, it is no surprise that they flip as one, like a flock of starlings, towards favourable sources and away from unfavourable ones. The autocratic nature of the media system means that the public has no way to ask even the most basic questions about these decisions. We, for example, are largely dismissed as annoying malcontents.
I believe that the architects of the plan (Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and others) were so sure that the anti-Muslim, anti-Mid-east feelings among Americans brought on by media lies over the past 25 years would allow them to get away with almost anything. If they created a big enough lie they could get the American people to “go along” with their plan.
The Geneva II conference, which claims to be seeking to end the war in Syria, seems designed to fail and instead to provide an excuse for military intervention by the United States and its allies. Human rights activist Ajamu Baraka describes the negotiations as an “Orwellian subterfuge” designed to provide justification for war and a lot of facts support his view.
Mike Raddie discusses today’s agreement between UK and France on future drone technology development
The war on terror is mutating, growing and spreading. Drone attacks, which have escalated under Obama from Pakistan to north Africa, are central to this new phase. And as Dirty Wars – the powerful new film by the American journalist Jeremy Scahill – makes clear, so are killings on the ground by covert US special forces, proxy warlords and mercenaries in multiple countries.
Although in some respects the document is detailed – showing the exact times and locations of strikes, for example – it also has striking omissions: none of 2007′s five strikes are shown, and the report almost never notes the names or alleged militant affiliations of the dead. Most strikingly, almost all civilian casualties after the start of 2009 are missing, even in incidents where the Pakistani government has acknowledged civilian deaths.
“We’ll unleash the dogs of hell, we’ll unleash ‘em… They don’t even know what’s coming – hell is coming! If there are civilians in there, they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A useful analogy would be the conflict in Northern Ireland, which was not about theological differences between Catholics and Protestants, but about political differences between British loyalists and Irish republicans. Since these political tendencies so closely paralleled religious identities, however, extremists on both sides targeted civilians based on their faith tradition. This is essentially what has transpired in Iraq, only on a much larger scale.
All the wars and attacks, which were started by the U. S. and its so-called allies in the wake of 9/11, have wreaked havoc. You name it, you got it: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and perhaps even Iran. The Islamic Republic is not yet off the hook. There are strong forces in the U. S. and in the Middle East that prefer war to peace at the expense of the U. S. Right now, there is a war going on in Libya against the Western installed puppet government, without notice of the corporate media.
