DISINFORMATION RADAR: The Idlib bombing story —it’s Aleppo redux

Patrice Greanville

Prefatory Note
[dropcap]P[/dropcap]eople sometimes ask me, how do you KNOW these reports are deep state-directed propaganda? The answer is surprisingly simple. First, look for the usual signs: (a) complete alignment with the President's and/or State Department's foreign policy line; (b) complete uniformity in the script disseminated, often down to details. (This is sometimes hard to believe, considering the sheer number of American/Western media. But this is merely numerosity, not diversity of views or coverage. (For more on this topic, see my entry So much for diversity of media message in America). (c) Lavish use of language codes calculated to denigrate a foreign leader, nation or government. Whenever you bump into alarmist, tendentious headlines and hear the word "regime" describing any government, prick up your ears. Big lies will probably follow.

None of the preceding means that the huge US government apparatus, congenital and compulsive liar as it is, and its totalitaran media, cannot one day tell the truth about something. They can. However those instances are now so rare, and the motives for telling the truth so suspect, that they do not invalidate our assessment.

The Big Lie technique is a matter or record
Then there's another big telltale sign.  For all intents and purposes history shows that the US media and its numerous international satellites and accomplices (i.e., BBC, DW, etc.) rarely if ever report any crime—no matter how heinous— when it is committed by allies, or by regimes the US ruling elite regard as friendly or unobtrusive to their global agenda. I am talking here about serious reporting—in depth, impartial, contextually clear, and persistent, as nothing else will register on the mental screens of Americans bombarded 24/7 by too many garbage messages and suffering already from a ridiculusly short attention span. If a major issue forces its way to the fore, then the media, as true apologists for the imperialist status quo, will do their best to take the sting out of it, and either abruptly or gradually turn the story around, or simply bury it.  (Omission of the truth is of course the best way to tell a lie.)  Examples of this abound. Just vide Operation Djakarta, or dictator Rios Montt's genocide of indigenous Guatemalans, both commited at the behest or with ample support of the US government. On the other hand, Washington's "designated enemies" receive near-obsessive malicious coverage. Once a nation or a leader is in the US billionaires' crosshairs, America's gianormous hybrid war apparatus quickly swings into full attack mode, and this will persist until the masters call hounds off.  The whole thing is quite transparent, really. Repulsive, too (proving the indecency of the implementers), and extremely cynical, as befits a sociopathic ruling class.

Well, this kind of reporting on the truth of any substantive issue does not exist in the mainstream media; it hasn't been seen in generations, perhaps never really existed, not even under the watch of television icons like the fabled Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow. After all, if foreign news reporting had been adequate, let alone consistently truthful, neither Vietnam nor Korea could have happened. A properly informed public would have seen to that. And we (and the world) would have been spared most of the ugliest chapters in the history of the past century: the anticommunist psychosis, the isolation of China and Russia, the scores of coups around the globe to empower brutal tyrants or reactionaries, from Guatemala and El Salvador to Argentina, Brazil and Chile, along with South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia and more recently Libya and certainly the Ukraine. The list of nations assaulted and subverted by the US is so long and blatant that it is fair to say US foreign policy is  almost criminal project worthy of a new Nuremberg tribunal. The only thing matching the brutal criminality of these sordid maneuvers and interventions is the thick layer of hypocrisy and cynicism shielding them from impartial judgment.

The symbiosis between a criminal and bankrupt foreign policy and a servile media is laid bare in our  unwarranted preferential treatment of Israel, a warmongering apartheid state which remains (like its main anglozionist patron) in shameless violation of scores of UN resolutions.

No examination of the toxicity of the American media can exclude a supremely important effect of their longstanding complicity in whitewashing Washington's foreign policy, and that is capitalism's ruthless destruction of the planet's ecosystems, an global ecocide carried out for umpteen years in broad daylight with not a single instance of in-depth analysis and consistent denunciation as the issue requires. In this regard, humanity, and supposedly its eyes and ears, the media, have failed miserably, despite having been served ample notice.  Long before BP's Deepwater Horizon calamity in the Gulf of Mexico, we had been given fair warning by the Exxon Valdez catastrophe in Alaska's pristine waters, not to mention scores of less notorious tanker accidents all over the planet. This should have been the wake up call to a truly independent media to mobilise its resources to make the defence of the environment, and the denunciation of its multitude of enemies, from business executives, to lobbyists and corrupt politicians, a front page story. (Now, that is a bunch of people that deserved to be demonised!). The backend of this story, the search for immediate renewable, ecologically safe alternatives to oil should have also been a major, continuing, intensively reported story. Polticians should have been given no quarter, no place to hide. The issue should have become a household item of conversation and discussion a long time ago. Not a mere flash in the pan, often using a spurious "objectivity" to present the oil industry viewpoint (or any other ecologically destructive industry) as if it were equally valid. In any case, the lawless reign of the multinational corporation, especially the oil corporation, is indeed a big but still largely untouched media story deeply embedded in the history of many countries afflicted by the long arm of the United States government.

Summation
As sketched out above, understanding the American media's m.o. is not rocket science. It just takes a bit of focus and mental discipline. Granted thes eare not exactly qualities in big supply in American cilture, especially now, after generations of constant debasement. Still, American citizens, as passive accomplices in what their government does around the world are morally obligated to pay attention to these matters. They should learn the syntax of American disinformation, and apply it whenever they see stories bearing the signs already enumerated. We know from painful experience that any campaign to demonise a nation, leader or group is often a mere justification for more direct hostile actions, from color revolutions, to economic sabotage and outright war. This applies these days to any sovereign nation daring to chart its own course despite Washington threats and dirty tricks: China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Bolivia, and so on.

The US media posture toward any country should serve as an alarm mechanism, a sort of diagnostic tool telling us what Washington's plutocrats reallly think about any nation on this tormented planet. This is an alarm that rarely fails. Keep that in mind.

Use the stories below to flex your media detection muscles.

—PG

Idlib is Aleppo redux

IDLIB: Children hide from bombs inside Syria's Idlib

Main disinformer: Holy Williams, CBS
Comment: Notice how well trained presstitute Holly Williams, an old hand at Western propaganda theatrics, and with White Helmets running around in the background, itself a telltale sign of manufactured deception, literally hisses the word "regime" when alluding to the legitimate Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad. not sparing venom for his Russian allies, either. Williams, an Australian hired by CBS in 2012, had previously worked for the BBC.  The Brits, who share Washington's imperialist goals in their current role as chief vassals/accomplices in international crime, and are quick to spurt venom toward anyone standing in their way, are old hands at propaganda theatrics. They provide America's own huge engines of disinformation with many competent and often more intrepid and affordable pseudo-journalists. Williams certainly has a distinguished track record in this field, if we can use the word "distinguished" in such insalubrious context, while, Canadian Elizabeth Palmer, also an expert in such antics, shares the dubious honors. A funny note: Watch in the second video how Holly does her schtick for the cameras while a bunch of White Helmets prance about in the background. Knowing who these guys really are, how credible is this kind of story?

ALEPPO: Bana Alabed's full interview on Syrian attack

ALEPPO: An Interview with the famous Syrian Little girl from Aleppo : Bana Alabed

Closing note