by Arthur Foxake
Syrian-born journalist Harout Ekmanian has slammed the New York Daily News and the UK's Independent newspaper for showing bias in attacking forces of the Assad government of shelling rebel held areas, but not menioning that Barack Obama's beloved 'moderate rebels' have been shelling residential areas controlled by government forces. Ekmanian, who supports Assad because he knows the alternative is worse, laments that the MSM is not covering all sides of the war.
The journalist was speaking to RT about his disgust at the deliberate misreporting of the death of a Syrian swimmer and her 12-year-old brother. Mireille Hindoyan and her younger sibling were killed in the Villi district of West Aleppo on Friday.
“I think the first victim of the war is the truth, especially in the Syrian war where journalism and journalists suffered a lot. Preserving impartiality has become a very difficult task for journalists,” he said.
Ekmanian, who now lives in New York, wrote an editorial in the New York Daily News explaining what had happened, only for the publication to remove a section in which he said the rebels were responsible for the deaths of the brother and sister. Thus by giving the impression that Assad loyalists were the only ones shelling targets in the city, the report appears to exonerate the 'moderate rebels' war crime.
“The New York Daily News published my contribution, but a paragraph was removed. I don’t think personally that was a very serious editorial decision and I am still waiting for an explanation,” the Syrian writer told RT.
Ekmanian, who was born into Aleppo's Armenian community, says he has spoken to eyewitnesses who “specifically confirmed” the shelling that killed the young siblings was carried out by rebel forces. He complains that his reporting of the Syrian conflict for major US publications have also run up against a determined policy in mainstream media of not reporting any negative stories about the fabled 'moderate rebels'. It is disheartening to see how the conflict in Syria is being reported, he says.
“The issue of this media censorship or media bias about some facts about the Syrian war [shows] there is a general atmosphere of media bias or restricting the narrative to certain news trends. I think this is the general issue that I see to the experience that I went through.”
He also slammed the UK online news site The Independent (formely a newspaper, until the print edition was can celled earlier this year) which he accused of “trying to shift the blame onto the government side.”
“The Independent article didn’t actually say it was a result of the rebel shelling. They tried to blame it on the government shelling or its allies,” he told RT.
“We know that the government’s allies are no angels and there are also violations committed by that side, by the Russian airstrikes also. But this particular case was rarely documented and happened in a neighborhood that I come from, and I talked with eyewitnesses and they specifically confirmed this was carried out by rebel shelling.”
While the MSM has given blanket coverage to its reporting of western Aleppo, which is largely controlled by forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad, Ekmanian says that the same media is ignoring the plight of towns being bombarded by the rebels because it does not fit the Obama administration's narrative which aims to justify all out war in Syria.
“You rarely see any information about Kefreya or Al-Fuah that are besieged towns in Syria and are besieged by the rebels. They [the rebels] are not shying away from using the same tactics that they are criticizing,” he said.
“When we talk about double standards, it can work both ways. I rarely see pieces in the international media and even on social media by different activists or different public figures that talk about violations or tactics that are against international humanitarian law that are being committed by the anti-government sides.”
As Obama contemplates more airstrikes on Syria we wonder if there is anything left to strike (image source: Huffington Post )
Yesterday it was reported thar Russia had pulled out of a joint Plutonium cleanup effort with the US, and later that US State Department would end negotiations with Russia over Syria. In view of the collapse of the Kerry / Lavrov creasefire agreement, the likely next step may be one which John Kerry warned last week is "back on the table", the launch of air strikes and military action against the Assad regime.
Washington Post reports that the US national security agencies, ftotally frustrated by the resistance put up by Assad's forces with Russian, Iranian and covertly, Chinese assistance, have for weeks been looking for new options to recommend to the president to address the ongoing crisis in Aleppo and the removal of the Assad regime in Syria, which is currently an obstacle to US / Saudi Arabian geopolitical ambitions.
A meeting of the Principals Committee, which includes Cabinet-level officials, is scheduled for Wednesday while a meeting of the National Security Council, which could include the president, is likely as early as this weekend.
Reuters hinted last week, at a Deputies Committee meeting at the White House, officials from the State Department, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed limited military strikes against the regime as a "means of forcing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to pay a cost for his violations of the cease-fire, disrupt his ability to continue committing war crimes against civilians in Aleppo, and raise the pressure on the regime to come back to the negotiating table in a serious way." Or, in other words, to cut to the chase and go right back to what the US was hoping to achieve in Syria in the first place: another regime change.
It has been proved many times that President Barack Hussein Obama is a fool and is quite capable of deluding himself that he is actually president of the world rather than of one nation (albeit a large and powerful nation). It is also well known though officially denied that in any middle eastern conflict, in spite of his claims to be Christian, Obama's sympathies always lie with the proponents of Islamic extremism rather than with the secular Muslims, Christians and Jews these barbaric religious fundamentalists would slaughter en masse should The White House succeed in propelling them into government.
Among the options being considered in Washington for resolving the Syrian conflict are Uncle Sam's faithful standby, the 'humanitarian' bombing campaign bombing, declaring a no fly zone over Assad held Syrian territory and using cruise missiles and other long-range weapons fired from coalition planes and ships.
One proposed way to get around the White House’s long-standing objection to striking the Assad regime without a U.N. Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment, an official leaked. In other words, the warhawks in the administration are actively contemplating not only bypassing the White House, but flaunting the UN and launching incursions into the territory of a sovereign state (on humanitarian grounds of course), a course of action which Russia, China and Iran might interpret as a war, against Syria.
The CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, represented in the Deputies Committee meeting by Vice Chairman Gen. Paul Selva, expressed support for such “kinetic” options, the official said. That marked an increase of support for striking Assad compared with the last time such options were considered.
“There’s an increased mood in support of kinetic actions against the regime,” one senior administration official said. “The CIA and the Joint Staff have said that the fall of Aleppo would undermine America’s counterterrorism goals in Syria.”
And do these war crazy idiots in Washington really think they can do such things covertly, that Russia Today and Iran's Press TV, not to mention The Guardian, The Times, BBC World News and the rest of the UK's sensation hungry press corps, Le Monde and Der Spiegel English edition, Times of India, Straits Times of Malaya, press and broadcast news all over Europe, Asia and South America are going to keep quiet about such an enormous story with global significance?
The good news is that, at least for the present not everyone involved in the discussion is a hawkish neocon. According to Washington Post reporters there’s still skepticism that the White House will approve military action because Obama has previously been warned by Pentagon officials with military experience that it is unlikely the USA's gay army could win a war against either Russia or China let alone both. Other administration officials said this week that Obama is no more willing to commit U.S. military force inside Syria than he was previously and that each of the military options being discussed have negative risks or consequences.
However, as we noted yesterday, during testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services last week General Joseph Dunford rang the alarm over a policy shift that is gaining more traction within the halls of Washington following the collapse of the ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia in Syria saying that it could result in a major international war which he was not prepared to advocate on behalf of.
The notable exchange took place after Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi asked about Hillary Clinton’s proposal for a no fly zone in Syria in response to allegations that Russia and Syria have intensified their aerial bombardment of rebel-held East Aleppo since the collapse of the ceasefire (See video).
"What about the option of controlling the airspace so that barrel bombs cannot be dropped? What do you think of that option?" asked Wicker. "Right now, Senator, for us to control all of the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia. That is a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make," said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggesting the policy was too hawkish even for military leaders.
Since the idea is, at present only at the discussion stage, possibly being mentioned in public to gauge the Russian reaction to a potential US military incursion, we now wait to see what Putin's reaction to the possibility of a US military campaign in Syria will be. The big problem that hangs over all of it however is the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Mrs Clinton is crazy for war, by far the most hawkish politician in the USA, and a petulant, vindictive bully who, as president, would not hesitate to fire anyone who opposed her and put yes men in their places. She has in effect promised war with Russia will be high on her agenda from the moment she takes office.
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Harout Ekmanian
