Friday, October 07, 2016

Anne Barnard on Syria: the propaganda narrative continues

Now this video by the pro-Iranian regime Harakat An-Nujaba' is pretty grotesquely sectarian and it is led by a pro-Iranian regime kooky cleric. But it made me wonder: since Anne does not know Arabic, how does she find those videos in Arabic? Also, it is indubitable that there are far more blatantly exterminationsist sectarian videos put out daily by Syrian rebels, but how come Anne Barnard does not cover them, and does not provide one example in this article, or in this passage: "“Aleppo is Shiite, and she wants her people,” goes a song overlaid onto a video posted online"??  And notice that Barnard does not mention that Al-Qa`idah is a leading force among the rebels in Aleppo: "and against a mix of rebel groups, some of them backed by the Obama administration.".  And notice the mild language (and not video links) she uses for the sectarianism of the rebels: "Some Sunni insurgents use slurs against the Shiites who lead their archenemy — Iran — and against the Alawites, the sect Mr. Assad belongs to."  And notice that Ms. Barnard, just like most other Western correspondents, they never mention the religion of Alawites without identifying it as the "sect to which Assad belongs".  Imagine if one is to always mention Christianity as "the religion to which Adolph Hitler belonged", or to refer to Wahhabiyya as the "sect to which House of Saudi belong", or to Judaism as "the religion to which Benjamin Netanyahu belongs".  Lastly, notice that she is at pains to mention the foreign troops fighting on the regime side, without mentioning that there are foreigners also fighting on the rebel side.  But these are details, and why detract from the dominant narrative of the Western government propaganda?