Navigating the Media Storm: Skripal, Trump and Syria

Sometimes it's hard not to be cynical.

Over the past week we've watched the Skripal nerve agent campaign begin to collapse. The laboratory at Porton Down contradicts the claims of the May government but in particular Boris Johnson who is left looking foolish and incompetent. He's assailed by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his admittedly politicised criticism of Johnson is being used by his enemies (many of whom are Blair-ites within Labour) to pile on the attacks. Corbyn is accused of not only being an anti-Semite, but pro-Moscow and a puppet of Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile the Skripals are rapidly recovering. Whatever it was that happened to them...  it does not seem to be the result of contact with a military grade nerve agent.

Trump then shocks the military establishment by his seemingly off-the-cuff announcement that the US will soon withdraw from Syria. As a consequence everyone in the White House, State Department and Pentagon are left scrambling and officials are made to look foolish in the eyes of the public. The media presses for details and when the officials admit ignorance, it either means Trump is acting spontaneously without advisors (something they don't want to admit) or the White House is in a state of chaos and no one knows what is going on (which they also don't want to admit). Undoubtedly both are true to some degree.

Within a very short period of the Skripal campaign coming into question and Trump's announcement....

Suddenly we have another one of these unsubstantiated gas attacks. I say unsubstantiated because the accusation is made and evidence is provided by the White Helmets, an organisation touted by Western media and yet has been demonstrably connected to Western intelligence agencies and Islamist factions of the Syrian Rebels.

Now the attention has shifted full-force to Syria (and its allies Russia and Iran) and within a matter of days if not hours Trump is forced to reconsider his position. The warmongering John McCain who has been pushing for war with Iran and Russia for many years insists that Trump's withdrawal announcement emboldened Assad and therefore the president is partly to blame. Trump is left looking foolish and tries to shift the blame onto Obama. Indeed at this point the media has largely turned on Obama and has criticised him for not being more bellicose and involved in the Syrian Civil War.... something the US likely had a hand in fomenting but this is not something that will be openly acknowledged.

When it comes to foreign policy Trump seems to be easily manipulated. Now meetings are being set up and John Bolton will at last have his moment. Unleashing attacks across Syria could easily generate casualties among Russian and Iranian troops who are there at the behest of the internationally recognised government in Damascus. You may or may not like Assad but in terms of international law he's the president of Syria and the Iranian and Russian presence are completely legal. The US occupation zones in the north and east are (at least in terms of international law) completely illegal.

These pending attacks are likely to end up being provocative and could escalate an already volatile situation leading to open conflict between Washington and Syria's allies... something figures like Bolton and McCain would very much like to see.

It has already been pointed out that it makes no sense for Damascus to engage in chemical attacks. They have all the momentum and are looking toward some kind of post-conflict settlement. Using these weapons will only worsen their standing and all but invite Western military intervention... something the US, France and the UK have already strongly hinted at. I have heard a few lame attempts by commentators to address this question. The usual method seems to be a variety of bait-and-switch. In reality there are no tactical reasons for their use by Assad. Every time there's one of these attacks the commentators use it to argue that Assad cannot remain president of Syria or have any part in post-war negotiations.

The rebels on the other hand, many of which are Al Qaeda affiliates (directly and indirectly supported by Western intelligence agencies and NATO member Turkey) have already been shown to manufacture and utilise chemical weapons. This has been admitted by the US State Department and even mainstream media outlets like Reuters and the Washington Post but for some reason this continues to be downplayed and ignored. Even when people on the ground insist that some of these alleged attacks were not conducted by aircraft, thus contradicting the claims of Russian or Syrian aerial attacks... no one on CNN or the BBC seems too interested.

What was the cause of this latest attack? We don't know but there's little reason to believe it was ordered by Damascus. The rebels stand to benefit from such attacks and yet at this point it should still be questioned if one took place at all. It very well might have happened but the White Helmets have already been exposed as faking footage and staging battle scenes.

By way of analogy if a White Helmets type group were rescuing pro-separatist civilians in the Donbass and trying to portray Kiev as indiscriminately bombing or shelling they would be decried by Western media as a propaganda outlet for the Kremlin. And yet our media not only fails to question them, they actively promote them.

The media is doing all it can to whip up a firestorm. Their frenzied coverage is geared toward suppressing any kind of reasoned analysis. That's the last thing these agents of the Establishment want to happen. Having access to television Sunday afternoon I watched about 45 minutes of the CNN campaign which blatantly pushed for a military assault and an escalation of US involvement. The faux-urgency of their coverage is meant to quash any voices of dissent or any calls for caution.

Just this morning the story of Assad murdering journalists has been revived and enhanced as the media continues to intensify the campaign. Did the Assad regime go after Marie Colvin and others? It's quite possible. Assad is not some kind of virtuous man who will go down in flames for the sake of human rights and Western values. That's not the world he lives in and like his father, he most certainly is a killer. Many world leaders are. But again, where's the coverage of all the journalists killed by the United States in places like Afghanistan and Iraq? Well, since they're mostly not cut-and-dry cases, the US media won't report on them. That would be conspiracy mongering and yet they have no hesitation in making such accusations when it comes to Syria, Russia and other US enemies. Overwhelming circumstantial evidence is only applicable to other countries. Likewise while apocalyptic scenes from Aleppo and Ghouta are run repeatedly and even misleadingly... the US led annihilation of cities like Raqqa and Mosul are either not covered or glossed over.

This is the strangest part about the whole discussion surrounding Fake News. Trump buffoonishly called them out on it and yet obviously he is plugged into his own world of 'Fake News'. And yet because the Establishment and Mainstream are now waging war on Far-Right wing news outlets and all forms of alternative media, the mainstream has been emboldened. They've always manipulated the news and how things are covered. But in the wake of their campaign against 'fake news' they themselves have taken 'fake news' to a new level. It leaves one's head spinning... and I think it's meant to. It's akin to the Homeland Security Advisory System launched in 2002 during the build-up to the US invasion of Iraq the following year. It was a farce. The colour-coded 'terror alert level' confused the public, scared people without any warrant and was eventually recognised for what it was... a deceitful tool utilised for political and public manipulation. Replaced in 2011, there's little talk of threat levels anymore.

And yet the media is once again (it seems) waging a WMD reminiscent campaign that is meant to push the public toward further military escalation, censorship and the surrendering of personal liberties and any notion of privacy. The crackdown on social media is turning fierce as the Establishment is alarmed by the way sites like Facebook are being used to organise wildcat strikes, demonstrations and opposition to the status quo. I am hardly a fan of Mark Zuckerberg and yet his head must be spinning as well. Taking Facebook public with its IPO in 2012 eventually made Zuckerberg a lot of money but it also meant he relinquished some control and opened up Facebook to Wall Street influence and manipulation. Now he's up against a wall and will either go down in flames or fully surrender to the dictates of the Washington/Wall Street power structure.

The entire situation has grown so complicated and confusing I don't think the average person can keep up... even if they had the time to do so. While that may or may not be deliberate you can be certain there are those seeking to capitalise on the furious tempo and frenzied chaos that is our current news cycle. I happened to be sitting in a public place on Sunday afternoon, watching the CNN coverage of the Syria gas attack. In addition to taking note of CNN's blatant warmongering campaign I was also struck by something else. All the other people in the room were basically uninterested. They watched for a few seconds and turned back to their phones. These happenings are so far removed from their daily lives and their own knowledge of events that they can't follow it. And yet when the time comes to support another war and the troops... they blindly salute and bow the knee.