Important world events are tough for The Guardian’s ‘coverage’ factory to deal with – I mean things that actually happen as opposed to the shit they make up about antisemitism to protect Israel or their wet dreams about Keir Starmer or their fantasies about their heroic relevance to the world (for which they endlessly demand money) – no real events like the extra-judical murder of Qassem Suleimani and five others by the US.
The language of the establishment media is always illuminating when the west and its allies are up to no good.
When unarmed Palestinian protesters are gunned down by Israeli snipers the Guardian and the BBC record the factual reality of their deaths but remove any contextual language that might imply that the people who fired the bullets might have done something wrong.
Readers are cynically invited to embrace the professional transmutations of the news factory instead – thus the story does not read ‘Palestinians murdered by Israeli soldiers’ it reads ‘People in Gaza killed in clashes’ – the fact that all of the people were Palestinian, all unarmed, all shot at range with live ammunition and all shot by the same people…are mere trifles, not considered relevant to mature erm ‘journalism’.
Were the crimes of Jack the Ripper to be committed by an Israeli in the 21st century, doubtless the BBC would muse that ‘some women unfortunately became involved in clashes with butcher knives in London during which a number died’.
By any basically rational standard Qassem Suleimani has been murdered – not ‘taken out’ via a ‘flawless precision strike’ or merely killed as the BBC would have us believe.
Suleimani, a very senior government official of a sovereign nation was illegally murdered via a remote control drone strike to further the interests of the USA but most pointedly to boost the strong man image of the person who currently holds the office of President of the USA.
This murder is wrong. All extra-judicial murders are wrong.
Would The Guardian come out and say so in one of its tiresomely pompous editorials? Not a chance! That would require morality and The Guardian has none – they studiously avoid taking mortal stands against establishment power – saving their ire for more deserving targets like Jeremy Corbyn and Julian Assange.
The Guardian editorial on the matter is as spineless as it could possibly be.
Kath Viner deploys a standard institutionally racist media formulation to airbrush the murder of Suleimani into something else. Via their lexicon of approved phrases they note that Suleimani wasn’t murdered by Donald Trump to boost his electoral chances – he was the victim of a foreign policy decision to assassinate him.
Murder would be indefensible – but assassinations in support of foreign policy objectives are statecraft – or at least they are in the eyes of the western media when the west is doing it.
One can contrast the hyperbolic outrage of The Guardian over the alleged murder of Sergei Skripal by Russian agents with their altogether more sanguine tone adopted in this case. Putin is a safe depository for moral outrage – Trump is not.
There is not a single word of moral condemnation from The Guardian for Trump who whistled up the deaths of six people while playing golf at Mar Del Lago – no suggestion AT ALL that this might be…WRONG – no just concern that it might have unforeseen consequences.
It’s not that the likely reason for the strikes is lost on The Guardian as they noted:
Maybe, with an election looming, preceded by an impeachment trial, the president’s gut told him that the elimination of another notorious US enemy would help his cause.
if you are wondering quite why Suleimani was a nominated bogey man for the west – the Guardian happily parrots the propaganda lines supplied to it:
General Suleimani was a ruthless and cynical fomentor of lethal violence against western interests
and with typical slipperiness added
and played a part in mass killings of civilians at the height of Syria’s civil war
The Guardian declines to specify Suleimani’s role in ‘mass killings’ or to supply any evidence.
The Guardian declines also to note that a great many other people – not least those ‘involved’ in western air/drone strikes and western backed Islamic terrorist groups are at least as implicated in civilian deaths in Syria.
Its worth remembering that the ‘interests’ the west are defending in Iraq are the spoils of war crimes, of an illegal invasion, an illegal occupation and the ongoing wholesale theft of Iraqi oil wealth. The Guardian declines to mention this – they are ‘western interests’ and thus Viner just shrugs her morally indifferent shoulders and moves on.
If you want to understand the hubris, the amorality and the intellectual vacuity of the western media coverage of world events you need look no further than The Guardian and the BBC – shining beacons of indifference towards moral standards.
The Guardian et al can be always be replied upon to breezily absolve the sins of their establishment masters, no matter how grisly or self serving their crimes might be. They will sing whatever tune the intelligence community hums – they know the way things have to be couched and the limits of permissible critique.
Perhaps if the next person Trump murders is a journalist then the Guardian might rouse itself to call it murder – as long as they aren’t from Palestine or another country where civilian deaths are just statistics related to western…
…’interests’.
But don’t forget to give them money so they can fearlessly continue to provide public relations camouflage for the most powerful and amoral people on the planet.
While the gatekeeper at the Guardian is arch Zionist Jonathan Freedland, nothing will change. The sole purpose of the Guardian is to protect the racist State of Israel by spinning against anyone who challenges Israeli atrocities and feeding readers dumbed down reports.