Saturday 22 November 2014

Richard Seymour- The press in service of imperial foreign policy

"Why is it that every national newspaper with the exception of the Independent supports this war?"
Back to front as usual. Most of the media is reflecting the shock at ISIS atrocities (which get more publicity than those of Assad), but there is no clamour for British forces to go and fight there. The Independent takes its line from Robert Fisk, whose most recent contribution was a friendly interview with a commander in the shabiha, the thugs who rape and torture where their aren't enough of Assad's soldiers to do it, and Patrick Cockburn, who now promotes a Western alliance with Assad, having seen him as the lesser evil all along. Richard goes on to discuss classic lies in support of US foreign policy, like the story of Kuwaiti babies being ripped from incubators. The big lies of the Syrian conflict last year were that it wasn't Assad who used chemical weapons to kill 1500 people, and that the claim was a ruse to justify an American invasion. It should be clear today that there was never going to be an American invasion, and our concern about media lies should be on the actual victims of this conflict, the Syrians murdered in their hundreds of thousand by Assad, the tens of thousands tortured every day in his prisons, today. I did not bother to watch any more of this video.

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