Eric Zuesse

A good test of the extent to which a given news-medium censors out news that the aristocracy (especially the people who control international corporations — the people who possess the ultimate authority to determine where the big advertising-dollars are spent) don’t want the public to know, is to submit important news reports to them on a regular basis, to find out which media will publish it — which ones will, and which won’t, publish a major and rigorously researched news story that reports something all (or virtually all) major advertisers want the public not to know. A news-story that exposes a fundamental lie ‘justifying’ a major U.S. foreign policy is of precisely this sort.

The following news-story of this type was submitted to all major mainstream and “alternative news” news sites, including the following; and only the nine that are shown here boldfaced-underlined (and linked, so that you can check out those honest ones by just a click) actually published it (the story you’ll see below); the others did not:

ABC
AP
Alternet
American Prospect
Asia Times
Black Agenda
Blacklisted News
Bloomberg
Business Insider
CBS
CNN
Commentary
Common Dreams
Consortium News Service
Countercurrents
Counterpunch
Daily Kos
Daily Mail
Democracy Now
Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten
Dissident Voice
Drudge Report
Empty Wheel
Euractiv
Eurasianet
Euronews
Eurosif
FAIR
Financial Times
Foreign Policy
Fort Russ
Global Research
Greanville Post
Hampton Institute
Harper’s
Huffington Post
In These Times
InfoWars
InformationClearingHouse
Institute for Policy Studies
Lapham Quarterly
MSNBC
McClatchy
Media Matters
Mother Jones
NBC
NPR
Naked Capitalism
National Interest
National Memo
National Post
National Review
New Cold War
New Statesman
New Yorker
Newshour

Oriental Review
PBS
Paul Craig Roberts
Politico

Raw Story
RINF
Rolling Stone
Russia Insider
Salon
Slate
Smirking Chimp
Sojourners
Spiegel
TIME
The Atlantic
The Daily Beast
The Guardian
The Independent
The Intercept
The Nation
The New Republic
The New York Times
The Peoples Voice
The Progressive
The Young Turk
TheAntiMedia
Thom Hartmann
Truthout
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post
Washingtonsblog
Zerohedge

Here was the news report:

Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS

Eric Zuesse

The British polling organization ORB International, an affiliate of WIN/Gallup International, repeatedly finds in Syria that, throughout the country, Syrians oppose ISIS by about 80%, and (in the latest such poll) also finds that 82% of Syrians blame the U.S. for ISIS.

The Washington Post summarized on September 15th the latest poll. They did not headline it with the poll’s anti-U.S. finding, such as “82% of Syrians Blame U.S. for ISIS.” That would have been newsworthy. Instead, their report’s headline was "One in five Syrians say Islamic State is a good thing, poll says.” However, the accompanying graphic wasn’t focused on the few Syrians who support ISIS (and, at only one in five, that’s obviously not much — it’s hardly even news). It instead (for anyone who would read beyond that so-what headline) provided a summary of what Syrians actually do support. This is is what their graphic highlighted from the poll’s findings:

82% agree “IS [Islamic State] is US and foreign made group.”
79% agree “Foreign fighters made war worse.”
70% agree “Oppose division of country.”
65% agree “Syrians can live together again.”
64% agree “Diplomatic solution possible.”
57% agree “Situation is worsening.”
51% agree “Political solution best answer.”
49% agree “Oppose US coalition air strikes.”
22% agree “IS is a positive influence.”
21% agree “Prefer life now than under Assad.”

Here are the more detailed findings in this poll, a poll that was taken of 1,365 Syrians from all 14 governates within Syria.

The finding that 22% agree that “IS is a positive influence” means that 78% do not agree with that statement. Since 82% do agree that “IS is US and foreign made group,” Syrians are clearly anti-American, by overwhelming majorities: they blame the U.S. for something that they clearly (by 78%) consider to be not “a positive influence.”

Here is the unfortunately amateurish (even undated) press release from ORB International, reporting their findings, and it links directly to the full pdf of their Syria Public Opinion – July 2015”poll-results, ". Though their press-operation is amateurish, their polling itself definitely is not. WIN/Gallup is, instead, the best polling-operation that functions in Syria, which is obviously an extremely difficult environment.

WIN/Gallup and ORB International had previously released a poll of Syria, on 8 July 2014, which reported that, at that time, "three in five (60%) of the population would support 'international military involvement in Syria'. In government controlled regions this drops to 11% (Tartus), 36% (Damascus) and rises in those areas currently largely controlled by the opposition – Al Raqqah (82%), Aleppo (61%), Idlib (88%).” In other words: The regions that were controlled by Islamic jihadists (Sunnis who are backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United States) were, a year ago, overwhelmingly wanting “international military involvement in Syria.” They wanted to be saved from ISIS. Government-controlled regions didn’t feel the need for international involvement. Syrians were, apparently, at that time expecting “international military involvement” to be anti-jihadist, not pro-jihadist, as it turned out to be (which is the reason why the current poll is finding rampant anti-Americanism there).

This earlier poll further found that, "There is also evidence to suggest that Bashar al-Assad’s position is strengthened from a year ago.”

So, apparently, the more that the war has continued, the more opposed to the U.S. the Syrian people have become, and the more that they are supporting Bashar al-Assad, whom the Syrian people know that the U.S. is trying to bring down.

Also on September 15th, Russian Television issued a video of their interview in Damascus of President Assad. Unfortunately, most of it is in Russian, and without subscripts. However, parts of it are in English, and this interview does provide English-speakers an opportunity to hear him speak, unmoderated by Western media.

UPDATE: To see how the U.S. major media have been covering this issue, a good example of that is here.

NOTE: The list of ‘news’ media that have blocked their audience from seeing any news reports similar to this, includes all (except 10 that will now be listed here) that are not boldfaced-underlined, all sites but the 9 that published this news report (and those 10 others). Those 9 must be considered to be the least-censored of all news sites. This news-report contradicts the propaganda-line that the Western press pump, the lie to the effect that the enemies of ISIS are the U.S.-led coalition (basically, the U.S. and the royals of Saudi Arabia and Qatar), not Bashar al-Assad and his allies (Russia and Iran). This truth — that the U.S. is waging war actually against Russia and its allies such as Syria, even more than it is waging war against ISIS, and that Russia and its allies are actually the ones which are trying to end ISIS — is heavily censored-out by Western ‘news’ media.

The following 10 ones of the abovelisted media have, on occasion, run other news reports that I have submitted to them that have been similar to this one in being banned and generally suppressed by aristocrats: Blacklisted News, Common Dreams, , Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, Huffington Post, InfoWars, Information Clearing House, Oriental Review, Oximity, Zerohedge. Even a non-censored site won’t necessarily be publishing everything that it receives that the individuals who control the major international corporations are wishing to be hushed-up.

Those 10, plus the 9 that published the news report just shown here (which 9 sites are the least-censored sites of all), may reasonably be considered to be the only 19 news sites that are not censored (or else not totally censored) by the international aristocracy.

The 9 least-censored sites are not at all censored by the aristocracy; the other 10 are less-uncensored, though at least partly uncensored. Those 10 might be considered to be in a middle category.

All of the other sites (virtually the entirety of the Western ‘news’ media) are rigidly censored by the international aristocracy. Their ‘news’ is propaganda, especially whenever the focus of a given news-report is on international relations.

For example, when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it was because both the U.S. Government and the U.S. aristocracy (who also control the press) did not want the public to know the truth, and so the public could be fooled into believing that Saddam Hussein constituted a threat to the United States. The same mechanism (of a lying government and press) still functions today, except at a small minority of rather small news-media, ones which are not controlled by (or else not totally beholden to) aristocrats, or else by people whose main aim is to satisfy aristocrats.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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