Putin & Trump and Journalists

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Am 01.02.2017 um 20:22 schrieb Joseph Tracy:
> I remember when I learned from one of these the
> simple fact that the majority of people in Aleppo were in West
> Aleppo. I had not heard there was a an east/west division despite
> many news pieces. I went to the web and did a search obout Aleppo. In
> mainstream article after article there was no mention of West Aleppo.
> I read about 6or 7 and never found one. Somethiing very profound is
> missing in that kind of journalism. The picture created is completely
> false.

West Aleppo was constantly shelled by the "moderate rebels":

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-civil-war-aleppo-conflict-latest-innocent-children-killed-isis-assad-russia-nusra-a7385791.html

There wasn't an "uprising" of the citizens of Aleppo against Assad, as 
an estimated 70 per cent of the population were pro-Assad in 2012. 
Eastern Aleppo was invaded and then occupied by the insurgent forces, 
many of whom were mercenaries:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/21/syrian-rebels-aleppo-local-hostility

(The Guardian has changed a lot since 2012.)

Mostly, the lies are by omission. This however is an open lie by CBS:

"Ever since it joined the uprising four years ago, eastern Aleppo tried 
to make itself a model for a Syria without President Bashar Assad. It 
elected local leaders, ran its own education system and built an economy 
trading with the rebel-held countryside and neighboring Turkey. Its 
residents were able to keep life going amid four years of ferocious 
fighting with the pro-government western districts."

Soon al-Nusra aka al-Qaida was the most important of these forces:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/03/syria-military-council-aleppo-rebels

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syrian-conflict-rebels-jabhat-al-nusra-no-rebels-a7462986.html

The reporting in the Western media has been so biased that Carmelite 
nuns in Aleppo have bitterly complained about it:

"Earlier this month Carmelite nuns in Aleppo wrote to Catholic charity 
Aid to the Church in Need to denounce skewed reporting in the 
international media, citing only the most recent examples of unreported 
tragedies in the western part of Aleppo that is under fire, not from the 
Syrian government, but from rebel-held East Aleppo:

As you already know from the reports that have reached the West, the air 
strikes on Aleppo are frequent. But the situation in West Aleppo is no 
better, even though the media won’t report it. This bias in the news is 
very painful to us, because of the things we witness each and every day, 
directly or indirectly, through the information we get from priests or 
from trustworthy people close by, of the plight of many of the 
neighborhoods in the West of the city, where more and more people are 
being killed by grenades, by missiles, and by ever-more sophisticated 
weapons, or are succumbing to the total lack of water and electricity, 
which have been cut off by the enemy; the West too counts dozens of dead 
and injured, daily.

(...)

WE CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE and we PLEAD FOR AN END TO THE FIGHTING in the 
city and EVERYWHERE, as well as for a greater OBJECTIVITY in the news 
reports, if only out of respect for all these poor people who are 
suffering (these families are very humble, in many cases poor and even 
utterly destitute!"

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/5143/christians_in_syria_help_us_pull_our_country_back_from_the_brink_of_the_abyss.aspx

Indeed: The media won't report it.

Right now, only Fisk and Cockburn seem to be in a position to provide 
unbiased reporting about Syria via the Independent and the estimable LRB 
which is also Seymour Hersh's new home.

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l