{"id":32465,"date":"2018-03-17T05:47:59","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T10:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32465"},"modified":"2018-03-17T05:48:37","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T10:48:37","slug":"syrian-war-for-dummies-three-versions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32465","title":{"rendered":"Syrian War For Dummies – Three Versions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Syrian War For Dummies – Three Versions<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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As the Ghouta campaign continues<\/a> to unfold, we should expect that both politicians and mainstream media will give us – in the words of philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr<\/a> –\u00a0“necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications” <\/strong>intended to shape our perceptions of events.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that such “emotionally potent oversimplifications” on Syria have formed the dominant paradigm through which the American public has received its information over the past seven years of war. From the State Department officials to think tank “experts” to the Graham\/McCain axis to CNN panelists to the neocon\u00a0twitterati and all the usual interventionistas<\/a> who cast everything in terms of Manichean good vs. evil, darkness vs. light, bloodthirsty tyrants vs. noble populace – we’ve had to endure and fight seven years of a constant stream of propaganda on Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image source: Thierry Ehrmann via Flickr<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This worldview is what BBC filmmaker Adam Curtis accurately characterized<\/a> as a ‘goodies and baddies’ dualistic vision of global events<\/strong>which keeps the Western public under the illusion that its own political leaders are perpetually driven by concern over human rights, defending the weak and oppressed, and spreading democracy over and against the unenlightened megalomaniac dictators of the world who are simply bent on brutalizing their own people.<\/p>\n

The BBC’s Curtis concluded of the “humanitarian” wars that followed in the wake of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ (especially Libya and Syria)<\/a> :<\/p>\n

The question at the heart\u00a0of\u00a0this whole story is –\u00a0Who was the ventriloquist? And who was the dummy?\u00a0Maybe we were the dummy? By allowing perception management with its simplifications, falsehoods and exaggerations to create a simplified vision\u00a0of\u00a0the world – we fell into a fake universe\u00a0of\u00a0certainty when really we were just watching a pantomime.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Syrian War For Dummies – Three Versions As the Ghouta campaign continues to unfold, we should expect that both politicians and mainstream media will give us – in the words of philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr –\u00a0“necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications” intended to shape our perceptions of events. It goes without saying that such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[2864,1426,19326,19327,621,655,776,4318],"class_list":["post-32465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-lies","tag-misinformation","tag-misperception","tag-oversimplification","tag-perception","tag-propaganda","tag-syria","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32466,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32465\/revisions\/32466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}