Do you get a balanced view of the Syrian conflict?

By Dark Politricks

Compare and contrast the coverage given by the Western media to the conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan.

This morning on the BBC News channel they are reporting again that the Syrian Army - loyal to President Assad has been bombarding the homes of rebel fighters including those of the free Syrian Army and other insurgents in Tremseh.

Whilst their internet coverage is a little more even handed it still leans towards the US position of a massacre and the US government is parroting Syrian rebel reports that around 220 people were massacred labeling Syria's leaders murderers even though other western media is even reporting the attack as a "lopsided" attack by the army against the home of insurgents and what would we would call terrorists if they lived in Gaza, Iran or Afghanistan.

A statement by the U.N. mission who have returned to Tremseh today said:

"The attack on Tremseh appeared targeted at specific groups and houses, mainly of army defectors and activists," the spokesman for the U.N. observer mission to Syria said in an emailed statement.

"A wide range of weapons were used, including artillery, mortars and small arms."

Opposition activists say government forces killed about 220 people in the village. U.N. observers said they had found a burned school and fire-damaged houses.

The state media in the UK (and I haven't seen US coverage but I guess it's the same) are reporting this attack in Tremseh as if the word of opposition fighters was God and as if the Assad regime was bombing the homes of innocent people and killing them for fun.

Lest no-one think I support President Assad I don't.

I don't support any dictator unlike the USA/UK/French axis of war that seem to pick and chose their fights not on "human rights" as they like to sell it to the dumbed down public but whether or not the dictator is "their man" or "helpful" to their foreign policy objectives.

If the Axis of war had a fair and balanced foreign policy they would be attacking Israel, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for their human rights abuses and attacks on protesters in the same manner as they have attacked Libya, forced an army coup in Egypt and are carefully planning for war with Iran by funding, aiding and training the rebels that are fighting the Assad regime. All roads lead to Iran as awakened people say at the moment.

The hypocrisy of our mainstream news coverage is that if Assad were "our man" like Saddam Hussein was in the 80's before we turned on him and bin Laden was in the Soviet war in Afghanistan then there wouldn't be so much news coverage of these attacks in Syria.

However unlike Afghanistan in which another insurgency is going on - one in which we are fighting not supporting. Where segments of the population in Afghanistan e.g the Taliban have decided to fight against the US/UK occupation, the corrupt puppet leader they installed to rule over them e.g the major of Kabul Hamid Karzai.

This is the US installed leader who has helped increase the amount of opium produced from almost zero in 2000 when the Taliban last ruled the country to the massive amounts produced now.

The Taliban admittedly ruled the country brutally in Western eyes, but in the eyes of a lot of Afghans they brought law and order after a time of unruliness. They actually punished corruption and other criminal acts (admittedly brutally in our standards) that are carrying on unabated under the US/Karzai rule.

Plus they almost wiped out the lucrative drug production calling it Un-Islamic as you can see by the chart above where the amount of opium dropped when they were in power. For reasons why drug production seems to increase whenever there is war and instability please read the four part series on my site titled "CIA Involvement in Drug Smuggling Parts 1 to 4".

The main contradiction between our coverage of the Syrian civil war and other news channels that don't have a western bias like Russia Today or Press TV is that when the US attack the homes of insurgents with drones and missile attacks in Afghanistan and innocent children, women and non combatants are killed they are considered legitimate and just casualties of war - or "collateral damage" as we like to call it. Often this massacre of innocents  is somehow covered up or ignored by our media.

However in Syria where Assad is fighting an influx of Western and Saudi backed terrorists, insurgents, the Free Syrian Army and of course al-Qaeda (why are again fighting on the same side as our mortal enemy again?) these collateral damages are called massacres and the western TV media laps up the stories of unverifiable bloggers and citizens as if they were truth itself.

So lets compare the two wars we are involved in the link being al-Qaeda e.g in Afghanistan we are supposedly fighting them whilst in Syria we are fighting alongside them - or arming, training and supporting them as we did in Libya.

• We have two countries Syria and Afghanistan both fighting an insurgency against the ruling power.
• Both insurgencies contain members of the general population as well as foreign terrorists and members of al-Qaeda.
• One insurgency the West supports, the other it is fighting.
• One government fighting the insurgency is considered a corrupt puppet with links to drug dealing brothers and other corrupt behaviour, the other is a dictator who is on the path to reform (admittedly slowly - who was praised in Western media not too long ago)
• When innocent people are killed in one country they are called collateral damage or not reported on at all in the other it is called a massacre and the mainstream media goes crazy over it.
• When terrorists and insurgents are killed by drones or night raids by special forces in one country their deaths are acclaimed as a success for the anti-government forces, whereas the deaths of insurgents in the other are reported as assassinations and targeted killings in the UN.

I am sure you can work out which is which.

Therefore the question is how far does our hypocrisy go and will you get your news from the tools of Western imperialism or try and get a balanced view on the subject first.