The so called “awakening”, that many in the “truther” movement are convinced is imminent, is, I suggest, nowhere in sight. Witness (as admittedly inconclusive evidence) John Nicolson on the BBC Andrew Marr program this morning (18/12/2016.)
In a brief roundup some of the major news stories of 2016 the guests were asked to choose an image that encapsulates their most abiding memory of the year.
SNP MP for East Dumbartonshire John Nicolson selected the now infamous image of Omran Daqneesh.
For those of you who don’t know, and clearly Mr Nicolson is among that number, this image, perhaps more than any other, is the epitome of Western hypocrisy concerning the Syrian conflict.
In fact this was not a photograph at all but rather a still taken from a video shown below by a tearful, and I’m sure genuinely upset, CNN reporter.
The first thing to note is the peculiar “staging” of the video. It leads us to believe that a young child has just been rescued from a collapsed building. He appears to have a head injury.
No one checks his injury. They just leave him, alone, with a bank of videographers and journalists clicking away. He sits, in what appears to be an almost brand new ambulance, staring blankly at the cameras.
Surely the first thing any medical professional would do is check the extent of his injuries? Nobody dressed his supposed wounds, put him in neck brace, or even on a stretcher presuming he might have had spinal injuries (standard first aid procedure) having just been rescued from ‘under the rubble’ of a bombed building.
So who captured this video that was distributed across the globe?
Mustafa al-Sarout is a video journalist working for an organisation called the “Aleppo Media Centre.” Is credited as the videographer. So who are the Aleppo Media Centre?
The Aleppo Media Centre is funded, via Turkish organisation called the Syrian Media Incubator, by Canal France International (CFI). CFI is the French media agency of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So the Aleppo Media Centre is funded by the French State.
The Aleppo Media Centre, as can be seen from it’s Twitter and Facebook page accounts is a vocal supporter of the Al-Nusra Front (now called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham). The Al-Nusra front is a salafist jihadist terror organisation also known as Al-Qaeda in the Levant. It is, in all but name, indistinguishable from Al-Qaeda.
The evidence is very clear that the image appears to come directly from the Al-Qaeda’s propaganda machine. They are apparently funded by the French government and have direct links to all the mainstream Western media organisations (such as the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, NY Times, The Guardian etc etc) who unquestionably distributed this image across the planet on their behalf.
But the provenance of this image get worse (no really it does.)
The still image (taken from Mustafa al-Sarout’s video) is attributable to Mahmoud Raslan. Of course this attribution is a lie in itself because it is actually a still from a video, not a photograph at all.
Mahmoud Raslan describes himself as a “photo activist” and others have referred to him as photo-journalist for Al-Jazeera Mubasher.
Firstly there is good reason to question how much Raslan cares about the welfare of children judging by the image of him here posing with child suicide bombers and proudly pronouncing their “impending joy.”
And here we see him posing with some of his chums from Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki. These scumbags filmed themselves decapitating a child claiming he was a “fighter”. Presumably they feel this makes it OK to behead children.
Now for his part Mahmoud Raslan says “I don’t know who killed the boy, and I don’t know [al-Zenki’s] leadership closely. I’m a journalist who works with Al-Jazeera. I’m a freelancer.”
That may be true but what is also clearly true is that Raslan has some very close and apparently quite friendly relationships with child murdering terrorists.
The irony that it should be him that is behind this now world famous image is bad enough. The fact that the Western worlds mainstream media then sold it to the public as a means of emotional, heart wrenching propaganda is truly stomach churning.
The video of the child having his head cut off by a group of terrorists, funded equipped and armed by the U.S government and it’s puppet Jordan, is also available online. None of the mainstream media have distributed that though.
So distressing though it may be, whilst our thoughts are with Omran and his family , the image that Nicolson felt encapsulated his year is terrorist propaganda bilge.
I suspect that, just like the vast majority of Westerners, John Nicolson has no idea at all about the origins of this image. He is seemingly oblivious of its propaganda value and, more importantly, who it is valuable for.
A former TV presenter, an MP and prominent member of the Scottish National Party, he would appear to have no idea at all what he is talking about. What’s worse is that he seems to have been so successfully brainwashed that he sees it as somehow “evidence” of the evil being inflicted upon the people of Aleppo by the Assad government.
This is feasible but we cannot discount the very strong possibility that it is actually evidence of the exploitation of a poor little boy by a merciless terror organisation.
Sadly John Nicolsons vote matters. He really can affect policy. He evidently understands nothing at all about what is happening in Syria. So it is probably just as well that this arch Europhile didn’t bother to vote on a proposed European Union directive on measures to combat terrorism.
So if we are close to a mass realisation of the scale of our government’s hypocrisy and murderous geopolitical exploits one of our leading MP’s appears to have absolutely no idea about it at all.
We are all hoping that recent events will lead to an increasing awareness amongst the general public of the extent to which our government and media lie to us.
That hope generally springs from a strong vein of anti-establishment sentiment running through the core vote behind Brexit, Trump and the Italian constituency referendum. Whilst many in the so called alternative media have quickly latched on to this as “evidence” of the much anticipated “awakening”, there is reason to be very cautious.
Firstly all of these votes are also indicative of a political lurch to the right. Often the dogma that underpins such rapid political swings away from the centre exploits emotion, rather than reason. In the case of a swing to the right that emotion is predominantly fear. Fear of anything other than that which you already feel comfortable with.
This tends to manifest itself in some rather ugly ways. Racism being the most obvious example. So before we all develop a pious sense of “I told you so” disease perhaps we should reflect upon the very real possibility that what these votes actually represent, far from increased awareness of reality, is a deepening acceptance the very worst kind of divide and rule propaganda? Namely that which fosters division as a means of social control in opposition to unity.
This is no help to our cause at all. In order for the people to truly take control of our political and economic discourse we need to get away from the concepts of fear and intolerance of each other. As ever the true enemy are the political and economic elite class. Their “raison d’etre” is division of the population they rule.
Whilst these apparent victories may have temporarily thrown a spanner in the works, the project of the centralisation of power forges ahead unabated. The recent signing of the CETA trade agreement between the EU and Canada is clear evidence of that.
Of course this doesn’t really matter. Politics is simply a distraction away from the crimes being carried out daily by the real brokers of power.
I suspect, despite his seeming ignorence, that is a fact that John Nicolson is accurately aware of.
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