Left I on the News

The absurd lengths that the U.S. corporate media will go to to demonize Syria stagger the imagination. Just before Christmas, and again yesterday, bombings in Syria have killed dozens of people; 44 in December and probably 25 yesterday. And in both cases, corporate media have dutifully reported "opposition claims" that the government itself was responsible for the bombings, in order to make the opposition look like terrorists rather than a "peaceful opposition."

Why is this absurd? Well, to begin with, we know that the opposition is not simply a nonviolent movement (although certainly some of it is). Hundreds or perhaps thousands of members of Syrian security forces are acknowledged, even by the Western media, to have been killed in attacks, and the opposition itself even announced a "cease-fire" in advance of the arrival of the Arab League monitors.

But the real reason this contention is laughable on its face, and why such absurd charges do not deserve to be repeated, much less featured as an equally plausible explanation by the media, is that the target in both cases has been the Syrian security forces themselves - the intelligence services in December, and a police bus yesterday. If, hypothetically, the Syrian government wanted to set off a bomb to "prove" that they were facing terrorists, they could choose all sorts of targets to do so. Choosing themselves, and not just any part of the government, but the very part of the government accused of doing the repressing? The idea is simply laughable. But not so for the Western corporate media, always ready to do its part in demonizing the latest target of imperialism and helping to beat the drums of war.

Update: CNN's coverage seems particularly despicable in the extent of coverage it gives to the ludicrous opposition claims, although I admit I haven't surveyed all the news sources, so they may well be some that are even worse.