The War on Syria: Debunking “Progressive Left” Narratives

Global Research News Hour episode 196

By Michael Welch, Mark Taliano, and Sarah Abed

Global Research, October 29, 2017

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“The media lies about Syria …and I think media heads should face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the one-sided false narrative they’ve been spreading since the Syrian War began.” -Janice Kortkamp (November 2016) as quoted in Voices from Syria. [1]

“A really important point that I’ve made before and I want to make again here on your show is that they (Kurds) have actually already worked with Daesh and other terrorist groups.” -Sarah Abed (on this week’s show)

The Western powers have been officially waging a Global War on Terrorism for about a generation now. This multi-lateral offensive is more than likely a cover for military enterprises geared toward enlarging America’s sphere of influence not only in Central Asia and the Middle East, but also into the Indian sub-continent and the Far East. [2]

From Afghanistan in 2001, to Iraq in 2003, to Libya in 2011. Now Syria is in the cross-hairs.Where is the anti-war movement?

Less than two years after 9/11, millions upon millions around the world took to the streets determined to thwart US President Bush’s criminal assault on the people of Iraq. Today, civilian populations in the US, Canada and other NATO countries seem to no longer mobilize against war.

Disturbingly, supposedly “progressive” social justice groups seem to echo the rhetoric of the interventionist lobby.

Democratically elected President Bashar Al-Assad is denounced as a brutal dictator. Terrorist attacks by opposition forces are ignored. The conflict is presented as a civil war and a popular uprising by freedom-loving Syrians as opposed to a foreign-backed insurgency by Islamist extremists.

Groups such as Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and AVAAZ have lent their credibility to these imperialist narratives.

This week, on the Global Research News Hour we devote the program to a defusing of the propaganda weapons being used to trigger another ‘humanitarian intervention’ this time on the people of the Syrian Arab Republic.

In the first half hour, guest Sarah Abed challenges the heroic narratives around Kurdish freedom fighters in Syria and explains how Kurdish nationalism has been and continues to be an instrument of US and Israeli imperial ambitions. We then hear Mark Taliano correct the record on a ‘democratic revolution’ in Syria. Finally, a member of the Syrian-diaspora in Canada provides some insights into who the anti-Assad Syrians in Canada are, how they have helped derail social justice movements in Canadian cities, and how they continue to sabotage the unity of the Syrian people.

Sarah Abed is a Syrian American independent investigative political commentator who focuses on exposing the lies and propaganda in mainstream media news and social media. She is a truth advocate who uses her social media accounts and website The Rabbit Hole www.sarahabed.com to counter Western media disinformation about Syria. Several of her articles have appeared at Global Research.

Mark Taliano is a former high school teacher, an author and an independent investigative reporter, as well as a research associate with the centre for research on Globalization. In September of 2016, Mark traveled to Syria to corroborate his own research into the Syrian conflict and the distortions of reality presented in mainstream and some alternative media discourse. Earlier this year he compiled his findings in the book Voices from Syria, which is on sale now from Global Research.

Majd Zooda is a Ph.D. Candidate in science education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She was born in Kuwait but moved to Damascus in 2005 where she lived until 2012 before moving to Canada. She still has family in Damascus that she visits annually.