UK Massive Syria Propaganda

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, 26 Oct 2020

Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service

Dear Antonio,

20 Oct 2020 – It was satisfying to read Ben Norton’s exposé of the NATO propaganda machine in Syria. How right he is! A recent analysis posted on TMS in 13 Jan 2020 of press reports in Swiss and Austrian media, showed that 80% come from AP, AFP or Reuters: our ‘free’ press is not free of bias.

The New York Times has not learned the lessons from its terribly bad reporting on America’s Iraq invasion in 2003, which was revealed to have been largely written by NATO and then published under her own name by a naïve or flawed NYT journalist who no longer works for that paper.

So now we discover that up to $66 million of US and UK taxpayers’ money was wasted on trying to create the impression that Muslim Brotherhood exiles in Europe, and Al Qaeda look-alikes in Iraq, were offering some sort of ‘democratic opposition’ to Assad. Who believed it? The propaganda did not fool me and other TRANSCEND members, although this nonsense certainly filled the Western media and was repeated frequently by Hillary Clinton and William Hague.

The famous White Helmets were always Western-funded stooges with well-established connections to Al-Nusra Front, Furqan Brigade and other armed groups, while doubtless also doing good work to help victims in the war-zone created by NATO. But the White Helmets were created mainly for use as NATO propaganda.

Rick Sterling emphasized this on TMS in 29 Oct 2018: Western Media Attacks on Critics of the White Helmets. The October 16 issue of NY Review of Books has an article by Janine di Giovani titled Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets. The article exemplifies how western media promotes the White Helmets uncritically and attacks those who challenge the myth.

Historians in 15 years’ time will write the analysis that sensible and moderate Russian policies in Syria avoided an Alawite genocide, saved from annihilation the world’s oldest Christian communities, stopped the takeover of Syria by foreign Sunni extremists, negotiated between the ambitions of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and brought some form of peace to a prosperous region of Mesopotamia that was totally destroyed by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Tony Blair. And no, I am not a fan of Vlad Putin! But Sergei Lavrov does seem smart.

Meanwhile THANK YOU to the community of TRANSCEND members for keeping us all informed about the truth, while Western media supply NATO’s ‘alternative facts’ to the general public.

Best wishes,
Robin

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Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and the Founder of the EPES Mandala Peace Consultancy. He is a sometime faculty member of the European Peace University (Austria) and an Affiliate Research Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and is a consultant advisor on Africa to governments, the U.N. and the European Union. He is a specialist in terrorism, disarmament, conflict transformation, and peace building. He has 25 years of field experience with UNDP, EU, USAID and NGOs. He is the author of several books in French and English on development and disarmament. He received his Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France. repoulton@epesmandala.com

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 26 Oct 2020.

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2 Responses to “UK Massive Syria Propaganda”

1. rosemerry says:

   26 Oct 2020 at 19:06

   I see that the BBC now has another programme praising the White Helmets and are suing Vanessa Beeley who has decades of real experience for her daring to criticise their false presentations.

2. Robin Poulton says:

   28 Oct 2020 at 15:31

   I am not sure that Vanessa Beeley is old enough to have “decades of experience” and I am not certain that her judgements can always be trusted. However there are some areas in which her ideas and mine certainly coincide ….. although that does not mean we have taken the same route to reach the same conclusion.