Aleppo, Syrian Civil War, Geopolitics, Genocide, Globalist Elite Media Narratives & Memes

paulvp (53)in #aleppo • 8 years ago (edited)

These days, the mainstream media narrative, and, therefore, social media narratives, have honed in on the tragic fighting in Syria, particularly on the most recent battle for Aleppo. The mainstream corporate media has been repeatedly exposed over the last few years, and especially this year, as being nothing short of a propaganda arm for the globalist elites and the military-industrial complex. Their modus operandi involves coordinated and relentless repetition of specifically selected and curated memes ("WMDs in Iraq", "Harambe", "Cecil", "fake news", etc.), pushing a single narrative about events domestic and foreign, in ways that obscure truth and import using means ranging from disproportionate emphases to outright lies. (On the plus side, at least, in this case, people are bemoaning war killing of innocents, instead of almost anything else!). So, when a narrative begins to take shape, it is wise to pay attention, and ask "why this? why now?".

Why Syria and why not Yemen, Iraq or Afghanistan? (Is it because Syria is bloodier than those other areas? Is it because there are more war crimes against humanity in Syria than in those other areas?)
Why now, after so many years? (Most importantly, is it simply a coincidence that Assad and Putin's ascendancy and almost inevitable victory over both ISIS and US and Saudi proxies, coincides with the exact news cycles where this becomes very important for us to pay attention?)
Why Aleppo and not other ongoing battles, or battles from the past 5 years? (Is it because this is a "humanitarian disaster"? Is this is a singularly bloody battle?).

At the very least, the feeds and the talking heads have brought the ideas of war, mass killing, massacre and genocide to the fore. It has also brought the Syrian conflict back into the public consciousness again, perhaps more stronger than ever. These have been two subjects that I have posted about many times over the past few years, and I would like to take this opportunity to summarize important historical facts that are worth noting. (Note that there will be unavoidable dismal statistical comparisons below. However, it is important to recognize always, with sad sobriety, that even one single innocent human death is an abomination and a tragedy).

The Syrian Civil War

It really should be the Syrian civil wars. 5 different factions all fighting each other, to various degrees : Assad, ISIS, Kurds, moderate rebels, Islamist rebels, the former of which is supported by Iran and Russia and the latter three of which, at least, are known to be supported by the United States, either directly or through Saudi Arabian and Turkish proxies. So, even when one completely disregards ISIS, which, admittedly, is a large, perhaps, most significant, part of this unfortunate story, one immediately observes at least two proxy wars -- Iran vs. Saudi Arabia and Russia vs. United States.
Has been ongoing for almost 6 years with 500000 dead
The recent "Aleppo Massacre" led to 82 deaths (consider, for perspective, that a recent US-backed, Saudi airstrike on a funeral in Yemen killed 140). Perhaps, this is a singularly bloody day in the war? Or, perhaps, the larger "Battle for Aleppo" is bloodier with 31000 dead over 4 years (an average of 21 killings per day) and this is why we should care urgently and the most about this? We know neither of these to be the case.

Since we are on the topic of massacres and genocides, here are the main genocides and mass killings of civilians in recent modern history.

20th century genocides and massacres

Event	Duration	Total Dead	Average killings per day
Communist Mass Killings (mainly, under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot), see also this	50 years	20 million to 100 million	1000 to 5000
Armenian Genocide	8 years	1.5 million	500
Nazi Holocaust	4 years	6 to 11 million	4000 to 7500
1971 Bangladeshi genocide	8 months	300000 to 3 million	1250 to 12500
Rwandan genocide	100 days	500000 to 1 million	5000 to 10000
Nanking Massacre	1 month	50000 to 300000	1500 to 10000
Srebrenica massacre (Bosnia)	10 days	8000	800

In this context, note that the "Aleppo Massacre", that has sparked the current media and social media frenzy, involved 82 deaths (tragic, such as it is) over 1 day.

#syria #narrativecontrol #mainstreammedia #elites

8 years ago in #aleppo by paulvp (53)

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