Speaking after U.N. chemical weapons experts came under sniper fire on their way to investigate the scene of the attack, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the use of chemical weapons was undeniable and “there is very little doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime is culpable.”
Wroughton, Lesley and Erika Solomon. “Syria chemical weapons attack: Kerry accuses Assad of ‘a moral obscenity’.” Chicago Tribune, August 26, 2013.
Russia has no evidence of whether a chemical weapons attack has taken place in Syria or who is responsible, Russian President Vladimir Putin told British Prime Minister David Cameron in a telephone call, according to Cameron’s official website.
Tehran Times. “Putin to Cameron: No evidence Syria chemical weapons attack occurred.” August 27, 2013.
* * *
Syria stinks.
Not only does Syria stink for Syrians — keep in mind this latest imbecility takes place in a war zone that has killed more than 100,000 and displaced upwards of four million souls — but it envelopes everyone with a hand in it.
Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the US think tank the Heritage Foundation, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Monday that in response to an attack on their Syrian ally, Russia could “expand supply of dual use nuclear technology” to Iran as its nuclear energy company, Rosatom, is anxious to sell more reactors.
Solomon, Ariel Ben. “Expert: US-led attack on Syria may lead to increased Russian cooperation with Iran.” The Jerusalem Post, August 27, 2013.
Let’s do business, shall we?
* * *
Because that’s what Syria’s about.
I happen to have the audacity to think the west wants to earn back some part of its investment in oil; Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey would seem to want to expand the Sunni side of the Islamic enterprise in the middle east; Israel could do with a weakened Iran-Hezbollah-Syria structure on its flanks; and God bless him, truly, for Christian Russia, President Vladimir Putin wants to use Iran’s errant ambitions to keep an old Soviet Era cash machine (we could call it “Cash Mir”) chugging along, Ayatollah –> Assad and Associates –> Post-Soviet, Neo-Oligarch Russia.
It wasn’t a chemical warhead that took lives in the Damascus suburbs last week.
It was the money.
Follow it from Doha to Moscow on its twinned tracks and you will have the outline of the implosion I might just refer to hereafter as “Syria Dark Star”.
Two of the world’s three most powerful states have a business interest in their relationship with the Assad regime.
Analysts say both China and Russia have their reasons to maintain good relations with Syria.
Russia is one of Syria’s biggest arms suppliers. And China ranked as Syria’s third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission.
Yan, Holly. “Why China, Russia won’t condemn Syrian regime.” CNN, February 5, 2012.
What is the effect of that, information-wise?
In one video appearing in an alternative or dissenting context in World Net Daily (WND), you will see a frame referring to Saudi Arabia’s “Saudi Factory for Chlorine and Alkalais” (Sachlo) in relation to last week’s chemical attack — again: follow the money and do note, please, the production values — the addition of music and titles to what should be as straight as timely documentation gets — on two of the three videos promoted.
What’s true?
What’s not true?
The money is true — and the reportage may be consigned to following state presentations.
The sucker punch is NATO vs. Russia all over again but for no good reason apart from from the ginning of foreign trade receipts.
It’s business.
Conscience has no role in it.
With China perhaps fat, smiling, and unperturbed, that same money will loan out to the United States and others who will happily accommodate this absurd state of affairs between themselves.
As the chips make their way around the Grand and Global Poker Table, all that will be missing comes to (green shades on and lick the nub of the pen) about 355 souls permanently and about 3,245 incapacitated or traumatized souls.
BBC. “MSF-backed hospitals treated Syria ‘chemical victims’.” August 24, 2013.
* * *
One has to ask of conscience and desire: are the worlds now “imaged” by CNN and RT — presented to us with many questions left unasked — anything like a world in which one should want to live?
The early 2010 “Question More” advertising campaign created for RT in Britain by McCann Erickson was highly controversial.[33]One advertisement showed American President Barack Obama “morphing” into Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and asked: “Who poses the greatest nuclear threat?” The ad was banned in American airports. Another shows a Western soldier “merging” into a Taliban fighter and asks: “Is terror only inflicted by terrorists?”[34] One of RT’s 2010 billboard advertisements won the British Awards for National Newspaper Advertising “Ad of the Month.”[35]
Wikipedia. “RT”.
CNNi’s pursuit of and reliance on revenue from Middle East regimes increased significantly after the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the network to suffer significant losses in corporate sponsorships. It thus pursued all-new, journalistically dubious ways to earn revenue from governments around the world. Bahrain has been one of the most aggressive government exploiters of the opportunities presented by CNNi.
Greenwald, Glenn. “CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news.” The Guardian, September 4, 2012.
The human rights-oriented modifications that may come to autocratic states will neither bring to them nor emulate democracy.
That’s life.
However, bending and twisting it some in journalism to suit The Money — yes, you have just been dragged from chemical weapons reports into international trade and on to integrity in journalism (even from my Second Row Seat to History) — will erode and eventually destroy democracy.
American conservatives know the litany: “Without the First Amendment, all of the others are useless.”
Add to it: without a press free of all but ambitious good conscience and readers, there will be no freedom.
Only political programs and programmers — God give them all the money they want because on this most dismal, obscene, and tragic of today’s war stories, The Money would seem the hidden alpha-omega of all motivation, coverage, and presentation — and the feckless programmed, which would be everyone else.
Additional Reference
CBS/AP. “Fearing a U.S. strike, Syria warns of global ‘chaos’.” August 27, 2013.
Corsi, Jerome R. “Evidence: Syria Gas Attack Work of U.S. Allies.” WND, August 26, 2013.
CNN Press Room. “CNN International’s Response to the Guardian — Update.” September 5, 2012.
Whether with CNN or RT, we have journalists working in the vicinity of the wheels of history, which for this BackChannels post seems to be a Qatar-backed Sunni-NATO alliance helped into being by the need to address the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran that is in turn supported, in part, by Syria’s geopolitical view and Russian greed (we know for Putin that cooperation is not about the endorsement of Shiite Islam as laid down by Ayatollah Khamenei). While that plays, the journalism story plays too, for whether in Russia, the United States, or elsewhere in the world authentically or nominally subscribed to open democracy, if one cannot trust the main run of journalists to report “accurately, clearly, and completely” — add “relentlessly” — on the stories of their day, then one returns to subjugation, and whether with such power cloaked in the name of God or for the cause of Gold makes not the least difference.
Eltsov, Peter. “Putin Stumps for the Orthodox Church in a Film Celebrating the Kievan Rus Anniversary.” The Atlantic, July 29, 2013.
Keath, Lee and Zeina Karam. “Syria Chemical Weapons: UN Inspectors Probe Allegations of Nerve Gas Attack.” Huffington Post, August 26, 2013.
Stack, Liam. “Videos Show Aftermath of Possible Syrian Chemical Attack in March.” The Lede, The New York Times, April 25, 2013.
Walker, Peter and Tom McCarthy. “Syria: US secretary of state John Kerry calls chemical attack ‘cowardly crime’ – as it happened.” The Guardian, August 26, 2013.
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