[Nettime-nl] Syria: Poisonous Gas & Poisonous Information

[Tjebbe van Tijen via Chello <t.tijen@chello.nl>]

SANA Syrian Government News Agency 

"new false allegations that the Armed Forces used toxic gas in Damascus..." 

being caught in a deadly lie?

the full text and documented news-tableau with external links can be found at my Flickr web site:

http://flic.kr/p/fz7Bd8

The awkward situation is that the suburbs of Damascus that seem to have suffered a gas attack on 21/8/2013, also suffered "regular" attacks by government troops on that day. This last thing has not been denied by the government information spokesmen. It could well be that the attack has been a mixture of both "regular" and biochemical (gas) attacks. In a way camouflaging the gas attack with regular artillery and/or aerial bombing or surface to surface missiles.
Awkward, because if one is killed by a knife, gunfire, a bomb, arson or gas, death is the end result. With hesitation one enters a hierarchy of evil, with gas being worse than bullets or bombs. The term "false allegations" used by the Syrian government information officers, draws public opinion into what should be labeled as 'a false way of arguing'.

'Weapons of mass destruction' and the search for them in the case of Iraq, are an example how perverse the debate from the outside of the conflict may get. One can not exclude even the option that some opposition fighter fraction has made a provocation by using gas themselves, though one hopes that this option will prove to be untrue.

Poisonous gas in Syria... maybe. Poisonous information spreading to the outside world, for sure. In both cases it is hard to defend oneself against that.


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