West
Media Starves Truth in Syria

By
Finian Cunningham

January
11, 2016 “Information
Clearing House”
– “Sputnik”
–  The
Western news media are at it again – telling barefaced lies and
half-truths about starving towns in Syria being liberated from
sieges. Fake images of emaciated children are also being published
to shore up their fraudulent narrative.

Take
the image of the malnourished little girl whom the BBC and
the British
Independentnewspaper claimed was from the Syrian town
of Madaya. Turns out the girl is from south
Lebanon. Her name is Marianna Mazeh. The photo published widely
this week by Western media is from three years ago, yet
the same media are claiming that she is one of the residents
of the Syrian town of Madaya, which the Western media
also say is being blockaded by the governments forces
of President Bashar al-Assad. 

Turns
out too that Marianna’s family are infuriated that
her forlorn image is being circulated for propaganda
purposes. “I live in Tayr Filsey [south Lebanon], not
Madaya, and I am fine,” the little girl told Al Manar news
agency. She is now aged seven and apparently has made a full
recovery from her earlier emaciated condition. The reason
for her previous illness is not clear.

A
toddler is held up to the camera in this still image taken from
video said to be shot in Madaya on January 5, 2016

But
what is clear is that Western media have been caught — once
again — falsifying reality about the siege towns
in Syria now being liberated.

British
state-owned broadcaster BBC tells us that there are up to
400,000 people being held in some 15 besieged towns
across Syria. The BBC and other Western media refer to these
places as “rebel-held”, and by a process
of outright lies or half-truths, it is inferred that the
locations are being besieged by the Syrian army, supported
by Hezbollah militia and Russian air power.

Occasionally,
the Western media let slip, like when the New York
Times reported this
week on “people being shot as they try to escape”
the captive towns. The people are being shot — by the
so-called rebels holding the residents as hostages, but the
NY Times omitted that fact.

The
half-truth that the Western media don’t tell is that many towns
in Syria have been, and are still, taken over by
foreign-backed mercenary militia. They are terrorists, not
“rebels”, belonging to such groups as the
so-called Islamic State (or Daesh), al Nusra Front and Jaish
al-Islam. All of them espouse a twisted, corrupted version
of Islam, which ordains that anyone opposed to them can
be beheaded or their children gang-raped.

The
Western media portray the “Syrian regime” forces
as having blockaded the towns and using starvation as a
weapon against the residents. Nothing could be further
from the truth.

The
populations have been held hostage by the terror groups and
used as “human shields” to prevent the Syrian army
advancing to liberate those being held against their
will.

This
week, the siege towns being reported in the news are Madaya
near the capital Damascus, as well as the northern
locations of Kefraya and Foua. But the same siege situations
and eventual liberation were repeated previously in many
other towns and villages, such as Zabadani, Kessab, Adra,
Homs and Maloula.

In
all cases, the residents have welcomed the Syrian army with open
arms as “liberators” — grateful to have been
freed from the nightmare of captivity under the
foreign-backed mercenaries. Their conditions of starvation
and general brutality were not due to alleged blockade by the
Syrian state forces, as the Western media claim, but rather
as a direct result of being kidnapped en masse by the
mercenaries.

Irish
peace activist, Dr Declan Hayes, told this author how he witnessed
the liberation of Maloula near the border with Lebanon
back in 2014.

“It
was Easter Sunday, April 24, when we entered the town with Syrian
army forces. It had been held captive by the mercenaries
for several months. We were greeted by cheering,
flag-waving children, by young and old, by Christians
and Muslims. The atmosphere was euphoric,” recounted Hayes.

“You
had to see the destruction of Maloula to believe
it. Everything had been destroyed by the occupying
mercenaries. People were still in a state of shock
from the brutality they had been subjected to. Beheadings,
shootings, kidnappings, rape. There was graffiti on walls
written by the so-called jihadists which said, ‘We get
closer to God by cutting the heads off our
enemies’.”

These
are the same mercenaries that Western governments and their media
refer to as “rebels”. As with the siege
of Madaya and other towns being ended this week, the Western
media contrived a narrative that Maloula was similarly under siege
from the Syrian army.

Of
course, the reason why the West refers to “rebels” and
not “terrorists” is because the terrorists are supported
by Western governments and their regional allies in Saudi
Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Half-truths are invented because the
full truth is a shocking revelation of the real, criminal
nature of Western governments and how they have sponsored a
covert war in Syria for their illicit scheme of regime
change against the Assad administration.

Dr
Hayes says there is a clinical method in the madness that
Syrian towns and communities have been plunged into. The objective
is to destroy the rich pluralist fabric of Syrian
society and culture.

“Maloula
is one of the earliest Christian dwellings in the world.
People there speak Aramaic dating back to the time of Jesus,”
explained Hayes. “But the community there also include
Muslims, Sunni, Shia, Alawite, Druze and other faiths. They have
been living peacefully together for centuries. Maloula is an
epitome of larger Syrian society. It is pluralist, peacefully
coexisting.”

What
the foreign-backed mercenaries have tried to do since the
conflict erupted in March 2011 is to destroy the
tapestry of Syrian society by brutalizing communities
and trying to hack open sectarian schisms.

Hayes
believes that the mercenary brigades running amok in Syria
for the past five years have been directed by Western
military intelligence, the American CIA and British MI6,
along with Turk intelligence. “The command and control
of these terrorists is outside Syria. The terrorists are
following a demonic, but deliberate, plan to destroy
the society.”

The
Western news media are the propaganda arm of the
state-sponsored terrorist assault on Syria. A country has
been brought to within a breath of being demolished
totally, of being turned into failed state like so
many other countries where Western powers have illegally
interfered “to bring democracy”.

Russia’s
military intervention at the end of September pulled
Syria back from the brink. And it is Russia’s air power,
along with the ground forces of the Syrian army,
Hezbollah and Iran, that is now forcing the terrorists
to capitulate. Hence the rapid ending of so many sieges.

Spinning
with ever-more lies, Western media are now trying to tell
their public that the “evil Assad regime” is
(inexplicably) having a change of heart and allowing in aid
convoys to the stricken, starving populations.

The
plain truth is that people in Syria are being held siege
by Western-orchestrated terrorists.

A
siege of another kind is also being forced on the minds
of the Western public by the Western media; it involves
starving them of the truth.

Finian
Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with
articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s
graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific
editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England,
before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a
musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an
editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The
Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.