Written by Eric Zuesse; Originally appeared on strategic-culture.org
On Sunday April 15th, Britain’s Guardian bannered “OPCW inspectors set to investigate site of Douma chemical attack” and pretended that there was no question that a chemical attack in Douma Syria on April 7th had actually occurred, and the article then went further along that same propaganda-line, to accuse Syria’s Government of having perpetrated it. This ‘news’ story opened [and clarificatory comments from me will added in brackets]:
UN chemical weapons investigators were set on Sunday to begin examining the scene of a chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma, which had prompted the joint US, French and British strikes against military installations and chemical weapons facilities near the capital, Damascus.
The arrival of the delegation from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) came as the Syrian military announced that it had “purified” [no source provided, but this — from 7 March 2018 — is the only source that existed prior to the April 14th missiles-invasion of Syria, and its meaning is very different: the region of eastern Ghouta, of which Douma is a part, after a two-month campaign that killed nearly 2,000 civilians [no source provided as regards either the number, or that all of them were ‘civilians’ and that none of them were jihadists or “terrorists”], following years of siege.
The propaganda-article continued directly:
“Units of our brave armed forces, and auxiliary and allied forces, completed the purification of eastern Ghouta, including all its towns and villages, of armed terrorist organisations,” the general command statement said.
No source was provided for that, but this sentence is a sly mind-manipulation, because here is what the Syrian Government’s General Command had actually said: “Statement of the Army General Command declaring Eastern Ghouta clear of terrorism” as headlined by the Syrian Government itself. In other words: the Guardian’s ‘journalist’ had substituted the word “clear” by the word “purify” and did this after having already asserted but not documented, that the Government had just completed “a two-month campaign that killed nearly 2,000 civilians.” When the Syrian Government announces that an area has been “cleared of terrorists (or of terrorism),” the US-allied propagandist uses the word “purify,” such as “purified the region of eastern Ghouta” or “the purification of eastern Ghouta, including all its towns and villages, of armed terrorist organisations.” But by the time that the reader gets there to “purification … of armed terrorist organisations,” the reader has already been indoctrinated to believe that Syria’s Government is trying to “purify” land, or perpetrate some type of ethnic-cleansing.
Later, the article asserts that, “The OPCW mission will arrive in Douma eight days after the chemical attack, and days after the area fell to the control of Russian military and Syrian government forces. That delay, along with the possibility of the tampering of evidence by the forces accused of perpetrating the attack, raises doubts about what the OPCW’s inspectors might be able to discover.” However, a fierce debate is being waged over whether this was not any real “chemical attack” but instead a staged event by the jihadists in order to draw Trump back into invading Syria. In other words: any journalistic reference yet, at this time, to the event as “the chemical attack” instead of as “the alleged chemical attack” is garbage, just as, prior to the guilty-verdict in a murder trial, no journalistic reference may legitimately be made to the defendant as “the murderer,” instead of as “the defendant.” That is lynch-mob ‘journalism’, which Joseph Goebbels championed.
The Joseph-Goebbels-following ‘journalist’ has thus opened by implying that the Russia-allied Syrian Government is trying to crush a democratic revolution, instead of the truth, that the US-allied Governments are trying to overthrow and replace the Russia-allied Syrian Government. It’s a big difference, between the lie, and the truth.
Another story in the April 15th Guardian was “Pressure grows on Russia to stop protecting Assad as US, UK and France press for inquiry into chemical weapons stockpiles” and this one pretended that the issue is for “Russia to stop protecting Assad,” who is the democratically electedand popular President of Syria, and not to stop the invasion of Syria since 2011 by US and Saudi backed foreign jihadists to overthrow him. Furthermore, as regards “press for inquiry into chemical weapons stockpiles,” the real and urgent issue right now is to allow the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into Douma to hold an independent and authoritative investigation into the evidence there. Russia pressed for it at the U.N. Security Council and the US and its allies blocked it there. But the OPCW went anyway — even after the US-allied invasion on April 14th — and this courageous resistance by them against the US dictatorship can only be considered heroic.
That type of ‘news’-reporting is virtually universal in The West, among the US and its allied governments, which refer to themselves as ‘democracies’ and refer to any Government that they wish to overthrow and replace by their own selected dictator, as ‘dictatorships’, such as these regimes had referred to Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria forever, and Ukraine in 2014.
The extent of the lies and treacheries of our time seem to be unmatched, I hope we in Western countries will be free of those hidden dictators who control everything important and hide this and even their control from the knowledge of the people whom they manipulate by mass-media-propaganda and school indoctrination in systematic lies.
Well i could think a few in ancient times. Stealing of wife, promised land, murdered his father, bringing culture to natives, etc.
Sorry folks, “New Speak” of Orwells’ Government of 1984, has actually been in effect long before 1984,. It has taken the powers that be since end of Viet War, remember all the Warhawk Nations of today ran with US military killing the “Little Yellow Man, as all Eurocentric belligerent blamed the media for their loss. Great Britain even before then had its National Security Censors in place, and Canada held out far longer against Brit control than did the queen loving Sissies, but today is no more than subset of British US military censored news. The damned blatant dumbing down of not the students but the teachers and educational establishments, ( the most easily swayed) succumbed first, aand indoctrination by them began in Earnest under Regan Bush and “Iron Lady ” of England. It is called full context manipulation and most of those , especiamy the job or under educated and not chosen of real higher Gov directed college fields have no way to know how certain words abuse images and F’n up dogma in their heads, none. The dumbing down of reading skills, enough to get entry to job markets for serfs, does not condone thinking out of box or using cognitive reasoning. IN other words we are totally screwed today because almost all info comes from top down channeled news sources. To talk of Guardians Skahill as some kind of “Independent journalist” is a blatant lie. He is the Loyalist Opposition, a part of the gatekeepers smoke and mirrors butt kissers. He has had years of luring by use of word manipulation, how journalist of today must know in order to gain employ. As I said now damned hard to find independent journalist, mainly because no major outlet will publish their works or else they are attacked by GOOGLE, YOU TUBE and clandestinely by Eurocentric security.
Even the writer of this piece succumbed to the lure of faked propaganda with his phrase, “That is lynch-mob ‘journalism’, which Joseph Goebbels championed.”
This is utter bollocks!
Anyone with any familiarity with Goebbels’ beliefs and speeches would know that Goebbels believed the most effective propaganda was the TRUTH, not the phantasmagorical lies spewed by his serial-lying enemies – lies those vermin are still spewing, decades later, like a sewer gutter splashing into the Thames.
If we’re going to win this battle against Darkness we need to follow his advice and speak the TRUTH – not misrepresent history to make a weak, dishonest and easily discredited point.
To back your words, readers please have a look at the following posters: http://madefrom.com/history/world-war-one/anti-german-propaganda-posters/
The British propaganda in WWI used to promote that Germans rape all the women and eat babies, no kidding, Great similarity between this narrative and “Assad gassed his people”.
You know what? Actually spend a few minutes and search yourself. Look at the propaganda material of the both sides, “British propaganda WW2” and “Nazi propaganda”. I’d say there’s a noticeable difference.
PS. There’s a poster circulating re. German eat babies with the text “SOLDIERS EAT BABIES – THAT’S A FACT, it’s contemporary art with modern fonts, not authentic WW1 propaganda poster. Don’t get fooled. But the articles of WW1 era are genuine, naturally.
Yes, I do find the Guardian to be the worse among the western news media of bringing anti Assad fake news non stop.
I do not read their bs
The hijacking of The Guardian (from being a left-intelligentsia-peace promoting paper) by the neocon forces was part of the same project that promoted Tony Blair and hijacked the Labour Party to the neocon movement. Without the Guardian the Brits would not have gone to Iraq war in 2003. The right wing papers could never have garnered popular support, but when the Guardian joined them in justifying and promulgating war it became a reality. The rag has been The Guardian of Israel ever since. Too many people still take it seriously.