Putin & Trump and Journalists

[Thomas Eckhardt]

One more longish comment which I want to get off my chest, then it is 
back to short replies and Pynchon- or Pynchon-related stuff. Thank you 
rich and Joseph Tracy for your thoughtful comments.

Am 28.01.2017 um 13:24 schrieb ish mailian:

 >The suffering, the murder of countless children of women, of men, the
 >destruction of property, of the good earth, its waters and plants and
 >beasts, the waste of resources and monies, the fractioning and
 >sullying of cultures and peoples is far worse than the propaganda
 >reports.

And:

 >It doesn't seem to make sense since all sides are out to exaggerate the
 >war crimes of their enemies while making themselves out as saviors or
 >at least on balance the better devils in a battle that must be waged.
 >This war is not merely a figment of mass propaganda and mass media
 >simulations. It is not a war game. It is not rhetoric and images. The
 >rhetoric, the images, the mass media feeds from embedded propagandists
 >paid for with Western greed and US Empire, do not exceed the
 >real-world suffering and barbarism. This is not a chessboard of
 >deterrence where pivots and real-politic are the real war, what's
 >really going on. What's goin on as Marvin Gay says, is that, "there's
 >too many of us dying."
	
Are you saying, in so many words, that propaganda is not important 
because it is only images and words whereas the suffering in war is 
real? Implying that there is no connection between propaganda and war? 
If so, I honestly don't know what to say.

We are talking about specific actions. In my opinion, it would be 
impossible to uphold the official narrative about events in the Ukraine 
and in Syria if certain facts were known, that is, if the mainstream 
media were doing their job. They are not doing their job, they don't 
want to, for reasons one may well speculate about, and this is made 
easier for them by specific propaganda outlets that have intentionally 
be put in place in order to promote the Western narrative and suppress 
other points-of-view. These media outlets include the White Helmets 
(funded with at least one hundred million dollars by Western governments 
and promoted as "heroes"), the Aleppo Media Center (funded by the French 
government) and the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center (funded by NATO, the 
US embassy in Kiev, the NED and George Soros' International Renaissance 
Foundation, amongst others -- follow the money, as the wise man said). 
Most Western media receive their information only through these embedded 
media outlets.

Embedding media outlets in the opposition groups of the country you want 
to destabilise in order to bring about regime change is a rather 
sophisticated means of perception management / propaganda / 
manufacturing of consent. David Atlee Pillips would be proud. In the 
final analysis, what the White Helmets peddle is, of course, good old 
atrocity propaganda:

"Atrocity propaganda is a term referring to the spreading of deliberate 
fabrications or exaggerations about the crimes committed by an enemy, 
constituting a form of psychological warfare. The inherently violent 
nature of war means that exaggeration and invention of atrocities often 
becomes the main staple of propaganda. Patriotism is often not enough to 
make people hate, and propaganda is also necessary. 'So great are the 
psychological resistances to war in modern nations", wrote Harold 
Lasswell, "that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a 
menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who the 
public is to hate.'"

Wiki, "Atrocity propaganda"

Old, simple and obvious but surprisingly effective. Children work best.

What is new, at least in terms of the meticulous preparation that went 
into it, is that the information/propaganda is attributed to "citizen 
activists" on the ground.


In this case, I have suggested that Western governments have created, in 
the form of the White Helmets and the Aleppo Media Center, a propaganda 
apparatus within the ranks of the insurgents in Syria and in particular 
eastern Aleppo specifically for the purpose of peddling atrocity 
propaganda to the Western mainstream media, and that the Western 
mainstream media have uncritically forwarded to the public whatever 
"activists", "citizen journalists" and "citizen first responders" told 
them. This was presumably intended to prepare the ground for more robust 
Western action up to the establishment of a NFZ. I will come back to this.


But first, some more specifics (I will not be able to avoid lapsing into 
polemics/cynicism  -- which you will have to excuse):

As Patrick Cockburn pointed out in the article that rich thankfully has 
linked to, there have been no independent journalists in eastern Aleppo 
for fear of having their heads cut off by Western supported "moderate 
rebels". Interesting.

Still, the Western media portrayed the insurgents as victims of a 
barbaric attack by Russian and Syrian bombing, even though the most 
powerful faction in eastern Aleppo was Al-Nusra -- i.e. Al-Qaida who are 
supposed to be our foremost enemy because of 9/11 -- and the US have 
shown no compunction whatsoever with regard to bombing al-Qaida-members, 
their relatives and some unrelated wedding parties through the years.

(There is a cognitive dissonance at work here that you can drive several 
tanks through. Right to the Russian border. As is happening right now.)

To be sure, there were also moderate rebels in eastern Aleppo. These 
were, in breach of the international law which was oh so important in 
the case of Crimea, rather openly supported by the US. There is, for 
example, the Al-Zinki militia. Some members of which, I repeat, beheaded 
a child, on camera, with a small knife:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/20/fighters-from-us-backed-moderate-syrian-rebel-group-filmed-cutti/

You are aware of this "incident" (Mark Toner), no? If not, ask yourself, 
why not.


The Western mainstream media never reported that the White Helmets were 
founded and trained by a former British military intelligence officer. 
You certainly were aware of this? If not, ask yourself, why not.

You are surely aware of the fact that the White Helmets, who are said to 
be "fiercely independent" and impartial, only work in territory held by 
the insurgents? If not, ask yourself, why not.


You have heard about the aid convoy that was supposedly attacked from 
the air. This happened rather conveniently shortly after the US broke an 
armistice negotiated, which is interesting in itself, between the US and 
Russia by "mistakenly" attacking the Syrian army, killing about a 
hundred soldiers and effectively acting as the Daesh air force.

A White Helmet member, who just happened to be there when the aid convoy 
was attacked, told us all about it -- while being filmed by a camera man 
who also just happened to be there:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/sep/20/syria-aftermath-of-airstrike-on-un-aid-convoy-video

US officials immediately claimed that Russia was the culprit:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/20/un-aid-convoy-attack-syria-us-russia

Everybody was enraged. Had the Russians committed a war crime? Surely 
they had.

General Dunsford (proving once again that satire is dead): "I don’t have 
the facts. There is no doubt in my mind that the Russians are responsible."

You have certainly heard about the attack on the aid convoy. It was 
frontpage news everywhere. Have you also heard about the report of the 
UN team that was charged with investigating the incident?

Here is the summary of the report:

https://dpa-ps.atavist.com/summary-of-un-headquarters-board-of-inquiry-report

What does it say? The Russians didn't do it, the Syrians probably did do 
it, but are for various reasons cleared from the allegation of having 
committed a war crime. One country claimed that it did not have enough 
time to provide satellite imagery for the investigation. This was 
probably the same country that claimed it had proof that Russian 
sparatists/federalists in eastern Ukraine had shot down MH-17 but 
refused to provide the satellite imagery.

You are aware of this UN report, no? If not, ask yourself, why not.


 >The barbarism of Assad and Putin is far worse than anything
 >that has been reported by  anyone thus far. How do I know this?

Good question. How do you know this?


If the people in the West were aware of the fact that their governments 
fund, arm and train neo-Nazis in Ukraine (this is official, David Morris 
at least had the balls to state that he thinks funding neo-Nazi militias 
is okay if it helps to spread freedom and democracy and oppose the 
Russian threat) and Al-Qaida in Syria (presumably only by proxy) and 
consciously let ISIS grow (according to John Kerry and the DIA memo) in 
order to bring about the desired regime changes, they just might begin 
to ask questions.

I happen to naively believe that the media has the responsibility to 
make the people aware of these facts.

But you just have to compare the NYT's take on Kerry's remarks to the 
members of Syrian opposition groups with the full transcript to see that 
our trusted liberal media consciously lie by omission:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/30/world/middleeast/john-kerry-syria-audio.html?_r=0 


What? No mention of this:

"The reason Russia came in is because ISIL was getting stronger. Daesh 
was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus at some point and 
that’s why Russia came in. Because they didn’t want a Daesh government 
and they supported Assad. And we knew that this was growing, we were 
watching.

We saw that Daesh was growing in strength and we thought Assad was 
[indecipherable]. We thought however, that we could probably manage that 
Assad might then negotiate. Instead of negotiating, he got Putin to 
support him."

Is this an admission that the US let ISIS intentionally grow in order to 
put Assad under pressure? I should think so, especially if I read the 
DIA memo alongside Kerry's remarks.

But why is there a military alliance of several Western states engaged 
in Syria? That's right, because they want to fight ISIS.

I will spell it out: The West let IS grow, let them behead and crucify 
whoever they wanted to, because the first and foremost goal was regime 
change in Syria.

Not to mention that regime changes are blatantly illegal under 
international law anyway...


 >It's a slippery slope that Thomas has veered onto here because his
 >analysis implies that the dying and killing, the barbarism of Putin
 >and Assad can't be measured or condemned because there is no truth we
 >can count from, no truth we can stand on. Who knows what's goin on?
 >There's too many of us dying. We know this much is true.

"Brother, brother..."

"Barbarism" is Samantha Powers' propaganda term. All we have is 
international law and the UN, however compromised both may be. Russia's 
actions in Syria are in accordance with international law, like it or 
not. The US and its allies are not acting in accordance with 
international law in Syria. Kerry himself has pointed this out in the 
conversation quoted above.

The important thing on the propaganda level was therefore to manufacture 
consent about Syria and Russia committing war crimes as opposed to 
conducting a "normal war" -- like presumably the US and its allies do 
(Cockburn rightfully pointed to Mosul for comparison of the reporting). 
This is where the White Helmets and their atrocity propaganda became 
important.

Riding on the propaganda wave, Clinton thought the time had come to 
establish a unilateral NFZ which would have been illegal and, again 
according to General Dunsford, would have provoked war with Russia:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/11/west-must-confront-russia-over-aleppo-syria-emergency-commons-debate-to-hear

This is how dangerous organisations like the White Helmets are. They 
just might bring about nuclear winter.


But you are certainly right in that this is a slippery slope: If we 
cannot trust the liberal mainstream media any longer, to whom do we turn 
for truthful reporting, for discerning facts from propaganda? After 
Ukraine I am afraid that, basically, we are on our own.

That the American people elected an habitual liar (not to mention a 
racist and misogynist) to be their President surely does not help. But 
at least it seems that WW III has been deferred.

What more can one ask for?





		
	
		
	
	
	
	
		
	
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