ISIS: How Selective Corporate Media Coverage Edangers Global Peace And Stability

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ISIS –not out of nowhere

[Black Star News Editorial]

When Corporate Media Downplays Inconvenient Truths — The Emergence Of ISIS

A toxic-brew of armies and militias in Syria and Iraq now makes it unclear whether it’s in Washington’s interest to help depose or to sustain in power Bashar Assad’s regime.

For years the West together with Saudi Arabia armed and trained the anti-Assad insurgency even though the brutal nature of many of the the militias had become clear a long time ago. Some of the fighters lined up scores of captured government soldiers in this ongoing civil war and shot them in the head on several occasions.

Rebel atrocities, including ISIS’s were sometimes downplayed by the major corporate media because it would raise questions about why the West was supporting insurgency in Syria in the first place. A rebel commander from one of the numerous anti-Assad forces even cut out the heart of a combatant he had killed and was videotaped biting into it.

This was a replay of what we saw in Libya where brutal insurgents sometimes lynched or beheaded combatants. Fighters from Misrata serving in “The Brigade for Purging Slaves, black Skin” targeted for ethnic cleansing Black-skinned Libyans and emptied and razed the city of Tawergha which had been inhabited by Black Libyans.

There was no major editorial by publications such as The New York Times because it would have provoked outrage and protests, especially among African Americans. So fighters who had already exhibited racism and sadistic violence were shielded from global scrutiny and well-deserved rebuke.

The rebels lived up to the destructive potential they demonstrated during the war and have quickly reduced Libya into a non-existent state.

Fast forward to Syria.

Here again corporate media which are married to the Hollywood “bad guys” versus “good guys” script focused on atrocities by the Assad regime army and ignored massacres by the rebels even though the United Nations determined that both sides committed war crimes.

A United Nations official even concluded that the rebels actually also were responsible for at least one if not more incidents of use of chemical weapons during the war.

As in Libya, the whole objective of the selective international outrage and disingenuous corporate media coverage was to shield rebels from proper scrutiny. Honest journalism would have exposed that there were no good guys in Syria and raised questions about supporting the insurgency. Imagine how irresponsible and even suicidal it would have been to install into power some of the rebel fighters who would have ended up in control of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

At least in Libya the chemical stockpile had already been destroyed by negotiations with the late ruler Muamar al-Quathafi. In Syria they have been similarly destroyed under a deal between Assad and the U.S. and Russia.

In the meantime hundreds of millions of dollars flowed to the insurgents from Saudia Arabia, which is now a major financier of global violence, with free passage through Turkey. Now, ironically, ISIS is also a security threat to Turkey.

This is how ISIS managed to capture significant territory in Syria from where it recently launched its attack into Iraq, seizing more territory, heavy armaments, including tanks and helicopters, and tens of millions of dollars from looted banks according to media reports.

So an odd alliance to block ISIS has now emerged as a result of the toxic mix of militias.

The United States and the Shiite-dominated Nouri al-Maliki government in Baghdad, Iran, and even Syria are all on the same side fighting to halt the ISIS advance in Iraq. Assad’s air force has even reportedly bombed ISIS’s positions inside Iraq.

On the other hand, the Western official position is to still support the anti-Assad insurgency in Syria. The U.S. last week announced a $500 million program. The aid is meant to benefit “moderate” rebels, even though it’s not clear how they will be identified  in a theater where there are shifting allegiances and porous borders and lines of demarcation. What’s more, since ISIS appears to have the upperhand in Syria compared to the other anti-Assad fighters, isn’t the possibility very real that they will end up wresting control of any weapons shipped to the “moderate” rebels?

In Iraq, ISIS has been committing the same type of atrocities it exhibited in Syria; mass execution of captured fighters.

ISIS did not just come out of nowhere. Corporate media downplayed atrocities by many rebel forces including ISIS so long as they were seen as “our very own bad guys” since they were all fighting against Assad.

So we may not see a cautionary editorial from a publication with major circulation like The New York Times until the entire region is engulfed in flames; as if the editorial writers there did not learn from the Libya war which was heavily promoted by The Times.

The lesson is clear. Selective corporate media coverage, by not speaking truth to power, always backfires.

It did so in Libya as it’s now doing so in Syria.

 

 

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