by Patrice Greanville for the Greanville Post
Taking no chances, CBS also manages to denigrate the brave Syrian Arab Army, just about one of the most heroic forces fighting ISIL and other brutal terrorists in the Middle East.
The Treachery of The Western Media
Patrice Greanville
There’s a mystery at the heart of American journalism. How can normally mediocre ignoramuses—I refer to the rank and file of US media, especially television (yes, in case you haven’t noticed, the overwhelming majority of US journalists are ignorant and arrogantly proud about it, too)—suddenly become virtuosi of insidiousness and underhanded manipulation—which requires some brains and a talent for finesse— when it comes to squeezing the truth out of any story that interests the empire? Who does the actual massaging? The editors? The owners? The highest councils of the ruling class via their multiple indirect channels, think tanks and pundits? Are the on-camera reporters who impersonate journalists briefed beforehand on what questions to throw at the victims? Are they coached about the proper intonations to use…the pregnant pauses, the studied reaction shots? Or has the profession reached such a level of robotic indoctrination that the practitioners really need not much ad-hoc preparation to perform their loyal duties to the deep state, having become accomplished actors?
Such questions come to mind when we observe the almost uniformly disgraceful, in fact downright Orwellian, coverage of events in the Middle East, particularly Syria, where Washington’s Neocons are obsessed with the toppling of Bashir al-Assad, and equally sensitive places, like Ukraine, where the Anglo-Zionists are still busy trying to build a beachhead to harass and strangle Russia. (Equivalent plans are afoot for China and Iran, of course, even if not so transparently admitted.) There are distortions galore everywhere else, for that matter, but we will keep the focus only on Russia and Syria on this post.
BELOW: VIDEO OF 60 MINUTES CLIP (Please be patient with all the commercial garbage that American TV programs put in front of the actual material.)
http://www.greanvillepost.com/videos/60%20Mins-Hatchet%20(2)%20job%20on%20Russian%20in%20Syria.mp4
Here’s the lowdown on this topic.
On 10 January 2016, the American CBS television newsmagazine 60 Minutes, the network’s flagship program, showed a segment purporting to describe the scale, purposes, and effect of the Russian military intervention in Syria.
The report, focusing on the Latakia air force base, which the Russians have substantially overhauled and hardened, was filed ostensibly by one of their regular correspondents, Mike Whitaker. I say “ostensibly” because Whitaker is only the tip of a large enterprise of deception with many hidden and anonymous participants. CBS is, after all, along with the rest of the American and in general Western television networks, a major disinformation factory serving the strategic needs of the Anglo-Zionist empire.
The object of this repugnant exercise in blatant propaganda was to reinforce America’s current disinformation campaign slandering the Syrian government, and more broadly Russia, correctly perceived by the Anglo-Zionists as the chief supporter of Bashir al-Assad and a major competitor in world affairs. As usual, the not too subtle (but by repetition effective) high-handed falsifications sought to convince the clueless American public of the following:
(1) That Assad is not popular and rules by terror. Ergo, Assad must go, or, better, end up like Gaddafi;
(2) That Assad is not motivating the people, and therefore, to better fight ISIS, he must leave;
(3) That Assad himself caused this war by being a tyrant, and that by his ruthless, criminal attacks on civilian populations—notice CBS’ Whitaker obliging mention of the “barrel bombs” fraudulent charge (1)—he has alienated his people and the international community of nations who now rightfully demand his departure;
(4) That the Russians are in Syria not to fight ISIS but to prop up Assad, and to do some imperialistic chest-thumping of their own.
Leaving aside the fact the last invidious imputation is a case of irrefutable projection—the empire’s media henchmen cannot conceive of anyone doing something for decent or even noble purposes—the proposition that fighting the enemies of Assad and helping him to stay in power at the same time are mutually exclusive is fallacious upon simple inspection. Fighting ISIS and its many arms and imitators in the region is indeed not only a legitimate purpose but one that is inseparable from objectively strengthening President Assad’s hand. This is self-evident to any semi-alert observer, besides being a desirable outcome, because Assad represents the only sane agent in the mix whose removal would immediately collapse Syria into a bigger chaos and tragedy than it already is.
CBS and its minions, along with its colleagues in the industry, are obviously not concerned with such trifling things, their purpose being solely to mislead and obscure otherwise transparent- facts. Self-contradictory statements, even laughable ones—always delivered with the practiced air of stern authority—do not faze such actors. After all, what do they have to worry about? For decades, the powers that be and their agents have banked for their impostures and crimes on the disturbing fact that anything flies when addressing the US public, whose vast majority understand absolutely nothing about foreign policy matters (and next to nil, also, about domestic matters). Syria, despite the barrage of “news” on the subject, provides no exception. The only thing that gets through to the dumbed-down US population is what the opinion manipulators want it to see, that, yea, Assad is a bad guy. A very bad guy.
It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that Washington’s main meme to denigrate the Russians, that they are not in Syria to fight the “real” terrorists and ISIS (whose actual paternity no Western media outlet ever acknowledges), but “just to prop the tyrant Assad, for motives that remain forever murky, a clearly false dichotomy, remains unchallenged.
So, let us offer these poor, willfully obtuse people some help, and in the spirit of Socrates, ask the following question:
If Washington and its cynical accomplices in the Gulf, NATO, and especially Turkey, executing the Anglo-Zionist Neocon script, have created, recruited and mobilized proxy armies of terrorists and mercenaries—ISIS and a multitude of other groups—with the express and self-evident, single-minded purpose of overthrowing Assad, and do the empire’s bidding in the region (a filthy imperialist scheme that the Russians are now fighting and successfully destroying)…who, besides these terrorists already mentioned is threatening Assad? The simple answer, no matter how hard we look, is no one, of course, except in the duplicitous disinformation mind of the American spin-masters, who at every turn show their utter contempt for the intelligence of the USer population.
In that regard, as previously mentioned, their confidence may be grating but is not unfounded. After many generations of a press and political class dedicated to the evasion of reality, a civic culture grounded in mendacity, the nonstop injection of self-serving lies and tons of escapist spectacles, the US has become a society in which massive ignorance and intellectual indifference to facts reigns supreme. Nobody cares, everyone is into his or her “own thing” whatever the hell that may be at the moment, sports, the Kardashians, struggling with the rent or unemployment…whatever may be preoccupying the mass mind, while matters of supreme import go begging for serious attention, leadership, and remedial action.
This is a political soil ideal for plutocratic usurpers to flourish, and they have.
Pathetic lies and attacks on common sense that a slightly more alert public would have little trouble disarming go practically unchallenged in America. This is the cross the world bore for much of the 20th century and is still bearing.
I say “practically” because I stay away from absolutistic statements, as a matter of discipline. But the sorry fact is that the system’s lies do go unchallenged. Dissenting voices have been completely and totally eradicated from the mass mind, and true dissenters, of the genuine leftist or anti-imperialist kind, are safely confined to an information ghetto.
Such critics never had a foothold in the national debate in the first place. That’s why at least since the close of WW2 the US has committed dozens of international crimes of the highest order with total impunity, and the end of this orgy of hypocrisy and brutality is still not in sight, even if the steady rise of Russia (and China) as world players offers hope to humanity.
A better educated and less intellectually lazy populace, more aware of the rapid disintegration of the last shreds of their democracy, never as vibrant as their propaganda would have it, would not have permitted such processes to take place. A public that really understood the US role in the world would have stopped the plotters and warmongers in their tracks. There would have been no Korean War, no Vietnam, no overthrow or lethal harassment of legitimate governments in dozens of nations, from Chile to Iran to Nicaragua and beyond; no ruthless invasions and destruction of Iraq and Libya on transparently trumped-up charges, with a horrid aftermath that counts ancient civilizations now in ruins and millions of victims, dead or displaced; no spawning of Islamic lunatics and reactionaries, first to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and turn the clock back on a culture that badly needed social justice and modernity, and more recently to aid the empire’s utterly hypocritical interventions in Syria and Ukraine, both of which have quickly turned these two nations into fully dysfunctional states.
Given the literally catatonic state of US public opinion, the grating indifference and bovine passivity one observes in America toward one and all insults hurled at the ordinary citizenry by the powers that be, one really has to wonder why these creeps at the top even bother to keep up the façade, that there’s a vibrant national political culture in the United States, and more importantly, that the rulers are afraid of what the brainwashed masses might actually think—or do. With independent thinking so effectively neutralized, that conceit, superfluous as it is, may be the crowning glory in the history of American propaganda. But friends, what do you know, times are a-changing.
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APPENDIX
A more credible look at the Russian operation in Syria
ISIS lost most of its ammunition & heavy vehicles in Russian airstrikes
Published on Oct 13, 2015, the above video post on YouTube carries the following explanation:
Islamic State militants have lost “most” of their ammunition, heavy vehicles and equipment in Russian airstrikes, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. At least 86 ISIS targets were hit during 88 sorties in the last 24 hours.
COMMENT: Its clear that if NATO was collaborating with Russia instead of playing obstruction games and surreptitiously defending ISIL, the terrorist threat in the Middle East and elsewhere would be promptly eliminated.
Sukhoi Su-24M and Su-34 bombers, together with Su-25SM ground support aircrafts targeted Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) sites in the provinces of Raqqah, Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo, according to the ministry. The jets hit command posts, ammunition and armament depots, military vehicles, plants producing explosives, field camps and bases.
Su-24M bombers also targeted an IS field headquarters near the city of Anadan in the province of Aleppo from which the terrorists coordinated their activities. There was an ammunition depot at the site, the ministry said.
One more IS field post was destroyed near the city of al-Bab in Aleppo Province. According to intercepted communications, the militants suffer from shortages of ammunition, small arms and grenade guns. Several commanders allegedly say they will withdraw their units unless their ammunition needs are satisfied.
“Russian airstrikes resulted in the elimination of the majority of ISIS ammunition, heavy vehicles and equipment,” the Defense Ministry tweeted.
Far from being ineffective, as CBS claims, the Russian deployment in Syria has been an unqualified success, especially considering the limited scope of the military assets brought to bear. That is a fact that makes NATO commanders green with envy. Of course, you are unlikely to hear that from the docile US networks, even if some of the American military are frank enough to admit it.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrice Greanville serves as editor in chief of The Greanville Post. He regards the Western machinery of disinformation as one of the main obstacles to the survival of the planet and the securing of a just social peace, anywhere it may manage to show its face.
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