by Shiu Hung (2005)


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Inculcating stupidity: Syria and Edward Snowden

by Toni Solo, 26 August 2013



Only the most foolish, thoughtless and inexperienced could possibly believe the latest propaganda warfare lie about chemical weapons in Syria, hardly different from the blatant lies justifying the war against Iraq. The main reason to consult Western news media now is to find out what the enemies of humanity have to say about their latest crimes. For readers in English, the most prestigious, quasi-plausible media tend to be NATO psychological warfare outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, Independent Television News, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Independent, the Irish Times and the main corporate owned news agencies.

Anyone interested in the spin applied by NATO country governments to their crimes against humanity has only to quickly scan these media to see what the latest propaganda line happens to be. In fact, it is absolutely true that chemical weapons have been used in Syria. But they have been used by the cruel, sadistic terrorists 100% supported by the wretched time-serving mephistophiles currently leading the main NATO powers, US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President François Hollande.

So well-oiled is the NATO propaganda machinery that the merest tip of a wink from these governments' officials triggers a global pyschological warfare campaign to justify total war against the people of the latest NATO target, in this case of Syria. Before, it was Iraq, then Ivory Coast and Libya. Now it is Syria and later, if the NATO leaders can generate enough aggressive momentum, Iran. Only systematic media induced stupidity explains the carnivorous complacency of North American and European taxpayers who sheepishly pay out huge sums of money to fund their oligarchies' overseas wars while accepting damaging cuts in their own public services like health care and education.

At the same time, the Punch and Judy pantomime sideshow of the Snowden-Greenwald theatre ("Oh, he betrayed us!" – "Oh no he didn't!") allows the Western media to pretend they are defenders of fundamental human rights. The Snowden smokescreen serves to conceal a deep policy disagreement among the North American and European elites about how to handle their countries' relative economic decline. The briefest look at the Snowden case should be enough for any rational person outside the NATO media bubble to understand that it is a massive non-sequitur. Western populations gave up most of their fundamental rights long before the attacks of September 11th 2001 which served as a perfect pretext for the NATO oligarchs to consolidate repressive practices already in place.

NATO camp follower Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has posed as victim and defender of universal civil and political rights. That pose could hardly be more absurd given his own deep personal involvement in and clear commitment to the structures of influence and power that have sanctioned the categorical abuse of those rights around the world for decades. As a media institution the Guardian is obviously commited in the same way. That is why an individual like Rusbridger is its editor. How could it be otherwise? Similarly, journalists Glenn Geenwald's and Laura Poitras' careers have advanced through their association with the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Working Assets NGO supported by Wall Street financier George Soros and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Nothing by way of anti-imperialism emanates from Snowden himself, because as an individual he too is very clearly committed to the NATO imperialist system. Snowden has offered no anti-imperialist Philip Agee-like epiphany to explain his actions, sticking hard to conventional Western rhetoric advocating freedom and democracy. Snowden's embrace of Russia or one of the progressive Latin American ALBA countries as a potential refuge is certainly based on humanitarian need rather than any positive political affinity. The same is true of Julian Assange whose Wikileaks party in Australia is negotiating first preference votes in the approaching elections for Australia's Senate with the racist Australia First party.

The Edward Snowden affair and the subsequent media campaign in the Guardian and the Washington Post and other NATO psy-warfare media outlets coincide with the shamelessly deceitful media campaign justifying a military assault against the government of Syria and thus too against the Resistance alliance of Syria, Iran and Hizbollah contesting the Occupation of Palestine. Obviously, it is too much to suggest that the Edward Snowden affair was deliberately contrived so as to provide a progressive propaganda alibi to corporate and alternative media advocating yet another imperialist aggression – this time against Syria.

It is a fact however that the Wikileaks/Snowden freedom of expression and civil liberties debate is promoted by a media network almost entirely funded by the US financial elites through institutions like the Rockefeller, Macarthur and Ford Foundations as well as the various funding channels made available by George Soros and his backers. The network's beneficiaries include, for example, The Nation, Mother Jones, Z Communications, The Progressive, Democracy Now and FAIR. Those outfits' funders are part of the same corporate network backing the Guardian and Glenn Greenwald.

So it is small surprise that while individuals like Alan Rusbridger and Glenn Greenwald pose as defenders of fundamental rights, their media outlets and the network of which they are leading protagonists promote imperialist aggression against Syria and the Resistance alliance of Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. The foreign affairs motifs promoted by that network have included long standing hostility to the Iranian government, to the Sandinista FSLN in Nicaragua and support for the war against Libya.

For people outside North America and Europe, the internal spat within the West's ruling élites offers little of interest. Very clearly, almost the entire Western corporate and alternative media network operates on the basis of psychological warfare criteria ultimately at the service of the imperialist tendencies of their countries' societies and the aggressive élites that control them. Like that of their corporate counterparts, the role of the West's supposedly alternative or progressive media, and the similarly funded non-governmental sector, is to provide a moral alibi for their countries' imperialist crimes against humanity.