Monday, October 12, 2015

Liz Sly and her celebration of the TOW missiles in Syria

Of course, Liz Sly, in the course of the Syrian war, takes at face value every single claim of every Syrian who supports the rebels and every claim of the rebels themselves. She never exercises the basic faculty of critical thinking or journalistic skepticism in reporting. This renders her dispatches undistinguishable from the Ba`thist media but from the other side. Look at this article: it is all based on claims by the Syrian rebel groups.  But the rebel groups make military claims of victory more fantastic and more bombastic than the military communiques of Yaser Arafat.  I was looking at military communiques of Suqur Al-Ghab (US-supported, as they say in US media): it is clear that they are lying and exaggerating and fabricating in order to receive more Western aid.  And look at the statements of Tajammu` Al-`Izzah: and notice that they raise the same banner of "No God but God and that Muhammad is his messenger".  Yes, the same group that is now being described as secular and democratic and feminist.  But this Youtube video (and Liz Sly's article cites Youtube videos as irrefutable evidence) does not prove that a tank was hit. It only proves that something was set on fire. Do you know how easily one can stage that, and I am not dismissing the possibility that a tank was hit.  But skepticism in the press is healthy, toward both sides and all sides.