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Finian Cunningham
Watching or listening to Western news media is a bit like observing goldfish swimming around in a glass bowl. Scientists reckon that so short is the memory of these fish that by the time they have swum back across the tank they have forgotten that they were there only moments ago. So, luckily for these little creatures, they think that their miniature environment is a limitless universe.

Human beings have no such excuse for limited thinking. But you would not think so from listening or reading politicians, pundits and news presenters on the Western mainstream media channels. It is a stultifying mental exercise of trying to swim with goldfish.

For example, the United Nations report on Syria’s refugee crisis was prominently highlighted this week with all sorts of heartbreaking images and stories of human suffering among the nearly 11 million displaced population — almost half of the entire nation. The Western media coverage was accompanied by earnest public appeals for humanitarian aid.

So your average austerity-clobbered European or American worker is being hit for charity donations to help millions of displaced Syrians.
That act in itself is not the issue. What is at issue is that these wretched brothers and sisters of ours have been inflicted with misery by Western governments running a covert war of aggression and these governments and their controlled media are now leading appeals for our public assistance to the victims. In other words, the Western public is being asked to subsidise Western aggression and state terrorism through charitable donations.

Added to the Syrian humanitarian toll are some one million Iraqis who have fled their homes since violence escalated in that country in recent months. The Western media quote the banal words of the likes of French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius saying that the humanitarian crisis in Syria is linked to that of Iraq — without exploring any meaningful link. The Western media permit the mention of the very partial fact that the extremist group, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), operates across both countries. But like the proverbial goldfish, the Western media coverage of these issues and many others besides, does not allow the proper and intelligent integration of these news stories. Rather, they are all compartmentalised into small, seemingly disconnected fragments.

The latest “viral story” of the young British medical student who appears in an ISIS recruitment video is another case in point. The 20-year-old male, identified as coming from the British city of Cardiff, in Wales, is filmed calling upon other young British Muslims to “join Jihad” and to take up arms in Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern conflicts.

The video has sparked all sorts of anguished soul-searching on the BBC and other mainstream media. How could a young British lad, it is asked in pious tones, take up a Kalashnikov assault rifle and join a terrorist group?

Such media discussions revolve around an extremely narrow picture, which dwells on the alleged radicalisation of young British Muslims in mosques and through the internet.

In one lengthy interview on the BBC’s News Night programme this weekend, there was not one mention of how systematic British state repression of Muslim communities, the targeting of Muslim schools with wild claims of anti-terror security crackdowns, the racial abuse on streets by British police and ordinary thugs, have all led to huge disaffection among many young people.

And that is not even touching on the much bigger and more relevant issues of how British governments have been waging criminal wars of aggression and crimes against humanity in several Muslim countries for over a decade or how the British government has covertly created extremist terror networks such as Al Qaeda and its ISIS offshoot to work as proxies in their geopolitical criminal scheming of regime change or creating the pretexts for imperialist invasions of resource-rich countries.

The humanitarian crisis that is haunting Syria and its neighbouring countries, as with the crisis of armed violence in the region, as with the implosion of Western societies, are all linked to Western governments and their deliberate, reckless policies that serve the anti-democratic interests of elite power groups.

Of course, the Western media channels, serving the same elite power interests of banks, corporations, political aristocracies and monarchies, are there to prevent the necessary holistic understanding of the problems. They operate like goldfish bowls, trying to keep the mass of people in a state of perpetual illusion and bewilderment.- Press TV.