There is something strange about the media coverage of the Grenfell tragedy. The BBC is giving over acres of space to the pain and anger of the residents. The Guardian’s front page currently looks the The Canary, and in it Opinion section Jonathan Freedland is saying Grenfell will “forever stand as a rebuke to the Right”.
by Catte Imagine the Cuban Missile Crisis – only the Cuban Missiles may not even exist. The most important aspect of the latest Syrian crisis is the one getting least attention in many quarters. Yes, Trump’s actions were deplorable. But let’s not forget they were also a response to an alleged chemical attack that may never have happened. It’s not just that we don’t know who was responsible for this attack (which of course we don’t, even slightly). It’s not just that this might be another Ghouta, which would be tragic and farcical enough, it’s that the attack itself has been so sketchily reported and so poorly validated that its reality remains far from certain. No investigation has yet been conducted. No independent witnesses have been cited. The main source for imagery and information is the White Helmets – who are known and admitted to have faked or distorted previous events. Some of that photo evidence is frankly questionable. The hilarious fact is we are currently – as Russian PM Medvedev said – on the …
Do we have a responsibility to silence views we consider morally repugnant or simply untrue? Claims that the Holocaust didn’t happen are insane and revolting. Should we prevent people from airing those views? Refuse to debate with them? Should we declare that some opinions do not deserve to be heard?
On December 26 the UK Independent revealed that five people had been arrested in Egypt for faking footage of civilian suffering in east Aleppo. But suppose instead of being presented to us as a proven and clumsy fake this image had been in the Indy or on our Facebook feed as a genuine example of child-suffering? How would that red paint look then?
by Catte Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtueMaximilien Robespierre, 1792 Fifty-three years ago on November 22, President John F Kennedy was shot to death in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Sixteen years after the fact the House Select Committee on Assassinations found a “probable conspiracy” to have been behind his death, though it was also careful to exonerate all the popular candidates for the source of such a conspiracy. It’s an interesting reflection on the nature of consensus reality that, even with this official endorsement of the dreaded “c” word, still the mere idea that more than one person fired shots that day, or that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act entirely alone, is media cryptonite. It’s as if even acknowledging the bare possibility that Oswald may have had help, in any form, even if it was just some buddy from the Book Depository holding the spare bullets, is something …
Fifteen years ago the idea of large scale false flags or government deceptions seemed absurd to all of us. But the unraveling of so many official narratives in recent years; the lies over WMDs, the lies over Ghouta, the lies over Libya and Ukraine, the repeat evidence for wholesale manipulation, if not fabrication, of events to promote war, means we don’t feel able to simply take the events of 9/11 on trust any more
Why are Counterpunch and the Socialist Worker choosing such a time to present a piece on Syria by Ashley Smith that reads like a briefing from the Clinton campaign or Kagan’s Foreign Policy Initiative?
This is our second look at the work of Robert Stuart, concerning the controversial BBC Panorama documentary “Saving Syria’s Children. ” When did the alleged chemical attacks actually occur? Why do accounts of the timing differ so widely? And why did producer Darren Conway become defensive and incoherent when asked one simple question?
That ISIS/al Qaeda, or whatever name we want to use, were to some extent packaged and marketed as designer fear porn seems beyond doubt. Nothing else explains their unparalleled success as media-manipulators or their immunity to any kind of retribution. It’s possible a lot of the guys in the ubiquitous promo pics never did anything more violent than pose with a black flag or an assault rifle. But some of them apparently did a lot more than that. They didn’t just take the money and fight either. They tortured people. En masse. On film.
It may be hard for some to believe the BBC was guilty of the degree of blatant fakery suggested by RT, but at the same time we have to admit the separation between “edited reality” as portrayed by the BBC and wholesale fabrication as portrayed by the fictions shown here, is not clear or specific.
by Catte A 17 year old boy from Virginia, USA has just been sentenced to 11 years in a federal prison (which means no parole) for allegedly putting info on his website about how to send bitcoin funds to ISIS. Virginia teen gets 11 years in prison for backing ISIS on Twitter http://t.co/lrsOrN4BY8 pic.twitter.com/LY57hnqIX8 — Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) August 28, 2015 Eleven years. Eleven years. Not for murdering people in the name of ISIS, or being part of ISIS. But for telling people how to send them money. Do you feel safer? This is the same ISIS, by the way that the US and the Saudis are accused of funding and arming under the guise of helping allegedly non-existent “moderate” rebels in Syria. The same ISIS who inexplicably acquired those seemingly endless fleets of matching Toyotas the US was supposed to have gifted to Al-Nusra or someone. The same ISIS with an “army the size of a Junior College” that is somehow magically able to avoid being destroyed by the largest war machine on earth. The …
