“The first casualty of war is the truth.”

Reporting on Syria in the Western media is as close to fake news as propaganda can get. It is the most one-sided and on-side messaging we have seen since NATO intervened in Libya to put  Sunni extremists and al Qaeda sympathizers in power.

First, the rebels in Aleppo are al Qaeda’s Jabhat al Nusra Front forced by the US to change their name last Summer to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. These are Sunni extremists who slit throats on camera, kill minorities, especially Christians and Shiites, throw civil servants off the roves of five-story buildings (people like postal workers and clerks), send suicide bombers into markets and so on. (see 2013 BBC report) These are the people the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been financing, arming, training and now the loyal western press crying over. 

The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is right when he says the US “continue to avoid taking aim at Nusra Front militants any way possible.” Lavrov is right also when he says the only reason the West wants a ceasefire in Aleppo “is to help terrorists, to give terrorists a break, to get new weapons and arment to them. That’s what happened in Palmyra.”

Funny how nobody is calling on the Saudis to respect a ceasefire in Yemen where Ryad’s despotic monarchal Sunni extremists, western allies, are targeting schools, hospitals and markets. Nor in Iraq where the fighting in Mosul is just as nasty as in Aleppo. Nor in Libya where the different militias torture and kill and are also Sunni extremists of the al-Qaeda ilk fighting others of the IS scum.

White Helmet Liars

The White Helmets are al-Nusra and al-Qaeda’s propaganda arm fully funded by the US, Great Britain, France and Germany.  They only operate in areas where Sunni extremists impose their law. Their videos are not only professionally tailored but also lie. And when they get caught, they apologize as if that makes it all better and CNN can continue to quote them as credible sources like when they used mannequins last month to stage an event.

Why is it not a story that a video the White Helmets posted at the end of November claiming civilians were killed by Russian and Syrian bombs were really people cut down by the rebels as they tried to flee? Why is the West not calling the rebels out for using civilians as human shields? A story on France 2 TV evening news, on December 14, gave over two minutes to propaganda from the White Helmets and then in the last sentence told us, as an after thought, that the UN accused the rebels of preventing civilians from leaving East Aleppo and that they had executed people.

Sky News aired the video of a woman in East Aleppo claiming to be a citizen reporter who just happened to have had a drone with a Go-pro to do beautiful aerial shots of children which were professionally edited into a heart-wrenching story about how their “hope for freedom” was being crushed because the West refused to intervene. The proof that this al-Nusra video is legitimate? Sky News tells us her husband is a White Helmet.  This is the sort of circular reasoning on which propaganda is based.

Where are the interviews with civilians who managed to escape the rebel zone and who are denouncing the West’s “Freedom Fighters” for the evil extremists they are?  Why do I have to go to Russian news to hear these people. On December 14, Russia’s  Pervee Kanal news showed long excerpts of interviews and reports from western media, including CNN and Sky to back up their slant.  Yet, this was a lot closer to the truth than what I am getting in France, Britain, the US and Germany (four countries where I get my TV news).

Western pundits are telling us the West should have helped these extremists by intervening directly, forgetting that Western interventions created the monster in the first place. There never was a moderate opposition in Syria. That was a myth from the beginning. Even Amnesty International has finally called a spade a spade.

Here are the 12 MAIN groups fighting Assad:

• – Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS)
• – The Islamic Front
• – The Islamic Liberation Front
• – Jaysh al-Islam
• – Harakat al-Islamiyya
• – Tajammu Ansar al-Islam (Gathering of the Supporters of Islam)
• – Liwa al-Tawhid (Battalion of Monotheism)
• – Liwa al-Haqq (Battalion of Truth)
• – Al-Nusra (al-Qaeda offshoot)
• – Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade
• – Martyrs of Syria Brigade
• – Free Syrian Army (a Turkish-founded militia enforcing SHARIA and slaughtering Non-Muslims. . .  guilty of war crimes)

Another one CNN and others like to present as proof in their one-sided coverage is the Syria American Medical Society which chose the rebel side years ago (see this 2013 WSJ article or just listen to interviews with them) and only operate in rebel areas.  And why is it not a story that wounded terrorists are being taken to Israel for treatment?

We expect this from Fox News which misrepresent reality daily, such as showing us in October a hospital in the government zone of Aleppo shelled by rebels but telling us it was a hospital in the rebel zone bombed by the government. But what the BBC, CNN, ZDF, or France Televisions are doing is of the same level. Why are we not hearing from reporters like Robert Fisk or Jürgen Todenhöfer who can challenge the propaganda machine without being accused of pro-Assadism?

I can hear western apologists claiming “Oh, you think Assad is so good, don’t you?” or coming at me with “Yes, you Putin lovers covering for the dictator.” when in reality, the Assad regime is the lesser of evils. The new Constitution, approved in a referendum in February 2012,  which ushers in multi-party politics and a two-term ceiling to presidential mandates was totally rejected by the West and their Syrian proxies in favor of a war they thought they could win. This Constitution is obviously the best option for peace in Syria but nobody is talking about it in the western press. Why is that? How is it that this Constitution, which has been on the table for five years, has been totally ignored by the western press?