Don't trust Western media

THE EDITOR: We, the people of the world owe a duty to ourselves, the well-being of our future generations and indeed to the very planet we inhabit, to question the information we are being fed daily by established western media corporations. We must all begin to understand that it is not only today but since the US was in its infancy, it has always been “America first!”

Its foreign policy – the attitude of contempt in which it holds smaller, weaker nations – has always been guided by the exploitative and profiteering motives of its monied class – the giant multinational corporations – whose executives move in and out through a revolving door between government and the plutocrats who head these transnationals. Giant US media corporations are as profiteering, immoral and self-serving as any other corporate entity in the US.

This attitude of selfishness and an egregious contempt for the lives of ordinary people both in their country and in others, poses a very real threat to international public health and should be examined from that perspective. Washington and its cronies excel in their ability to manipulate the truth for their aggrandisement. Even previously trusted media houses like the BBC have been exposed as pro-Western propagandists. Adding to this complexity is the plethora of NGO’s that appear on the surface to be innocuous groups whose purpose is to deliver help of one kind or another to segments of diverse populations that are oppressed in one way or another.

On April 7, 2018, the BBC along with every other major global media house reported that the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria had deliberately used "chemical weapons" against Syrian children in the city of Douma. The New York Times carried that story online. The "White Helmets" released videos of the alleged attack. They show a number of "corpses" lying around. Trump’s reaction was impulsive and immediate. His military launched almost 100 cruise missiles into Syria. Today we are told by the BBC Syria producer Riam Dalati, that the Douma hospital scene was staged on behalf of the western press by the white helmets. Other media houses – notably CNN – are alleged to have stage-managed fictitious reports to support the official narrative from Washington and its allies.

While it is said that the ‘truth can set you free’ it cannot restore life and health. Phony stage-managed, emotive propaganda can have lethal results that are irreversible. The US and its allies are not the people they want us to believe they are. Beneath their tailored suits and smooth talk lie beasts without a heart, whose consciences are dead. They will go to any length to get what they want.

Do we want a repeat of the US-sponsored bloodbaths that occurred in Syria and Ukraine at our back-door?

Steve Smith via e-mail