In a comment Juha wrote
I listened on radio Elisabeth Rehn (former high-ranking UN human rights official) discuss what is happening in Aleppo, comparing it to what happened in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Sarajevo.Well, I didn’t know Elisabeth Rehn even by name, but from her Wikipedia page it is very likely that she knows what she talks about and what Juha heard. Having been Minister of Defence under a conservative government in a country, that has long had a stressed relationship with Russia, that does not make her seem neutral though. Do I trust her? Can I trust her? Do I trust anybody? Can I trust anybody?“This will never happen again” usually means it will happen again and again. Terrible times.
Actually I’d be happy if I could rely on anyone to thruthfully tell us what’s happening in Aleppo. Or elsewhere. Anything could be true. Or not. Anything could be a conspiracy theory. Or not. The problem with conspiracy theories is, that some of them turn out to be actually true. Basically all of what Snowden revealed was deep in the territory of conspiracy theories. Now it’s confirmed as true and his adversaries don’t even deny it. How’s that for proof?
What really happens in Aleppo and why? The Russians seem to have won it for the government. Nobody in the West seems to like that. I see western media collectively (like “with one voice”) blame the Russians and the Syrian government for fighting the very organization that instructs its members to drive trucks here in Europe into assemblies of innocent people. Our media and our politicians blame them for winning against the very organization that prides itself of beheading western journalists. How crazy is that?
People die, and that’s a tragedy, but who is responsible? I hear of evacuation buses having been blown up, but seemingly not by the government and not by the Russians. Who was evacuated anyway? I constantly read of moderate rebels and civilians. “The last rebels and civilians have left eastern Aleppo”, they say. Does that mean, the regular Syrian troops have taken a ghost town? All civilians gone? We read of around 40,000 people, around 7,000 rebels and their families.
If I search, I find a Reuters story from December 1, 2016, claiming around 200,000 people in the enclave. In my book that makes roughly 40,000 enemies of the regime, who were allowed to get away, and roughly 160,000 who now most likely celebrate their freedom from those who used them as human shields. Or not? The media don’t tell us. It does not fit into the official narrative. You find information if you look for it, but it is not what is constantly shoved down your throat. If you just skim the news, you get a totally distorted picture.
I hear of a Russian ambassador being shot by a Turkish policeman using typically islamist phrases and claiming “revenge for Aleppo”. What game is Turkey playing? Are they in line with their NATO partners? Do they play their own game? Meanwhile we have to read articles like this. It didn’t stay undisputed, but still, Kuntzman’s article is in one league with the worst of Nazi propaganda, and I find it extremely irritating, that a major newspaper publishes that kind of smut.
But this is only a symptom. I see world politics again completely overshadowing a local conflict, just like it was “normal” during the Cold War, but while Vietnam was lost for Capitalism by the US military, it was won for humanity by US journalists.
That age is gone. Since Gulf War One we have “embedded journalists”, who see what the propaganda machine wants them to see.
Whom can you trust? That’s the fundamental question of our time.
Again, I don’t want to question what Elisabeth Rehn said on radio. I haven’t even heard it, I don’t know what it was. I just have a hard time trusting anybody today.
I’d be much more happy if we’d have something like unquestionable facts again. Authorities to believe in. Politicians who actually earn their money.
And if we can’t have that, if there is nothing “unquestionable” (which truly there is not and truly there should not be, if you think about it), then I’d like to have us agree upon probabilities and temporary axioms.
Let’s agree on the single fact that we can’t exactly tell what facts are, but that we can pretty well tell what, based on evidence, likely facts could be, at least until one of our axioms turns out to not hold true. Let’s agree on axioms and their temporary nature. Let’s agree on an evidence-based method of looking at the world and what’s happening in it. Let’s agree on a complete ban of “Lying to the Public for the Greater Good”. Let’s agree on completely tolerating beliefs, but never basing our politics on them.
What we see at the moment, is the complete opposite though. Different propaganda machines blaming their respective Goldsteins. 1984 and Forever War. We’ve truly had times of greater hope in our pasts.