We live in the time, where different pieces of information swarm around us, making it almost impossible to escape it.

Over the course of mass media’s existence, its role in opinion and attitude shaping has increased dramatically, particularly because of how much more accessible it has become.

With an average person finding themselves listening to evening news after coming back from work, or even those, who bravely say “I do not watch TV”, but feed their need for information on the internet, we are surrounded by data flow.

And it is hard to stay neutral, as we involuntarily choose sides, depending on what agenda we are most exposed to.

A study conducted by the University of Southern California, used the analogy of an 85 page long newspaper and showed that in 1986, around the time of the Soviet Union’s downfall, people were receiving about 40 newspapers full of information, while in 2007 the number rose to 174.

There is nothing new about the fact that mass and social media provide valuable tools for politicians, who seek to push their own rhetoric into the crowd’s minds. Those, who manage to master the art of using these tools, are arguably capable of creating their own reality.

The classic example which is known by the majority, is 1997 movie, Wag the Dog, where such use of media is being shown in all its glory, even if it is exaggerated.

The West has been the dominant power on the global arena ever since the end of the Cold War, where after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia started to integrate into the world politics as  a renewed player, with a new ideology and new political appearance.

The modern post-Soviet era world dictates certain requirements for contemporary participants, among them are free trade, technology exchange, advancement towards green energy solutions and a strong emphasis on free mass media. These are a part of the modern political courtesy, post League of Nations table manners, if you will.

Practice shows that those who choose to turn their countries into resources-only based economies, and to completely or partially ignore these requirements, will forever be on a passenger seat in this car called “global politics”. This is not what Russia is ready to settle for though.

While Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, managed to incorporate the country’s mighty natural resources industries into global economics, giving him a strong political leverage, he chose to be very selective when it comes to anything else.

Power and straightforwardness are seen as few of the main things that Russia respects, and its politicians are proud of the fact that they refuse to participate in this so-called free media theater. But is this sense of pride justifiable?

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, mentioned that he was amazed to see mass and social media being used as the main sources that shed light on chemical weapons being used in Douma, Syria.

“Apart from social media accounts and the video that was shared there, there are no other pieces of evidence, which can be seen as ridiculous by some specialists” – he stated during Russia’s XXVI Assembly of Foreign and Defense Policy Council.

Mr. Lavrov’s speech was brought to the international audiences by pro-Kremlin news channel, Russia Today and failed to make any ripples on the surface of people’s opinion, which was already heavily bombarded by horrible images of the chemical attack, the whole rhetoric of people’s suffering and the West’s responsibility to protect.

Social media or not, nowadays, people like to believe in the power of freedom of speech and share the awareness. After all, it was Twitter that brought us the Arab Spring.

Another prime example of storm clouds gathering around Russia’s reputation is the latest poisoning of Russia’s former military intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal. The incident took place in the middle of UK’s very peaceful city of Salisbury and has awoken the memories of a similar poisoning from several years ago of Alexander Litvinenko, who used to be a part of Russia’s Federal Security Service.

Mr. Skripal’s poisoning happened exactly two weeks before Russia’s presidential elections, which is hardly the best international PR campaign for President Putin.

The event was quickly used by the Western media to even further demonize the people’s vision of Russia’s politicians, portraying them as very conniving and not trustworthy.

Yet, OPCW-designated laboratory, based in Spiez, Switzerland has officially confirmed, that the poison, used on Mr. Skripal, shows traces of certain elements, which can be found only among NATO’s arsenal.

The news were delivered through Russia’s highest possible diplomatic level – the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. One would assume that this scandalous piece of information would get an intense coverage by the mass media. But the reality shows the absolute opposite.

It is not enough to simply “share the truth” with the world, this truth has to be imbedded into people’s minds through constant exposure and endless repetition, just like certain Western media repeats time and time again that Russia is a criminal state.

If you run a quick internet search of Mr. Skripal’s poisoning, the vast majority of non-Russian speaking newspapers and media channels would give you same old information about the attack itself and the following clean-up, while Russian sources would be screaming about Western conspiracy and the revelations from the Swiss lab.

If this information is indeed that vital (and it is), why don’t we see it on every TV channel here in the West? Where are the Russian foreign public relations specialists, pressing BBC, CNN and the others to get a minute of their time to spread this information, even though it is against those news outlets’ agendas?

Russia’s politicians, who are mainly Soviet-era raised, seem to be stuck in the late 80’s mindset, where people were not that exposed to the power of media and where the country had very little ability to influence anything that the average person “consumes” outside the Soviet Union.

It is not any longer enough to win only your citizens’ hearts, but as an international political player, Russia has to realize the importance of the global public’s believes and opinions.

The country’s Foreign Ministry actively chooses to be passive about this information war. This war is conducted not only behind the curtains, not only on the floor of the UN’s Security Council, it is also in people’s minds.

Source: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/04/22/russias-demise-in-the-age-of-information/

The post Russia’s demise in the Age of Information first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

 Syrian civilians flee airstrikes in eastern Ghouta, February 2018. Photograph: Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images

Syria is a European crisis as well as a Middle Eastern one, and the world’s worst human rights disaster in decades. Historians may one day tell us to what degree the west wasted a chance to force Bashar al-Assad to the negotiating table, had sufficient and timely pressure had been brought to bear on his forces, in particular through targeted strikes. That’s how Slobodan Milošević was forced to sign the 1995 Dayton agreement, which put an end to mass atrocities in Bosnia.

In the summer of 2013, a window of opportunity was arguably lost as a result of American hesitation. If archives are ever opened up, we may learn that it was the US failure to uphold red lines over chemical weapons use in Syria that emboldened Russia’s Vladimir Putin to launch his military intervention in support of a dictator whose army had been massacring civilians since 2011.

I’m not writing this to whitewash European policies. British restraint, or rather abstention, on Syria predated Barack Obama’s. And France, whose fighter planes were ready to take off in August 2013, could hardly go it alone. Still, trying to connect the dots between the Middle East, Russia, Europe, and how the US chooses to act or not act, remains important. The ravages of war in Europe’s vicinity, and the spillover effect of Middle Eastern chaos, are developments whose impact is yet to be fully measured.

There have been half a million deaths in Syria, and we’re still counting. The first victims of the slaughterhouse were in the Middle East, not Europe. Yet we are connected to these atrocities in ways that go beyond our on-and-off capacity for indignation as we sit watching television images of children being bombed in their hospital beds in eastern Ghouta.

In the heyday of post-cold war optimism, Europe was supposed to be able to export stability. Instead, in recent years, instability and chaos have spilled into Europe from the outside. The European project was born from the need to ensure the past wouldn’t repeat itself. Today Germany is a reluctant hegemon in Europeand an even more reluctant military actor. Britain and France are former colonial powers in the Middle East whose influence today looks insignificant.

Syria will haunt us for a long time yet. Since the fall of Raqqa last year, the crisis has gradually mutated into something resembling a world war, although the large powers involved in it – Russia, Iran, Turkey, the US – aren’t expressly in open warfare with one another. But they are vying for territorial control. Some experts like to draw a comparison with Lebanon’s 15-year conflict – by which measure Syria may be only at the midpoint of its proxy war.

Europeans are largely sidelined, however vocal our political leaders may at times choose to be. We haven’t yet fully fathomed how Syria’s catastrophe has affected how we relate to the world, to ourselves and to the values we like to profess. After 1945 we said “never again”, but never again is unfolding right before our eyes. Syria has become the absolute demonstration of our helplessness, and we collectively let that happen. Syria is the vortex in which a rules-based global order is fast unravelling. That should matter to us immensely because Europe has always had a greater stake in the UN system than the US has. When rules crumble, as happened with the 1930s League of Nations, we are well aware how beasts can rear their heads.

Syria is where autocrats and neo-totalitarians are winning the day right now. Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and Iran’s military theocracy hold the high ground – or are widely perceived as doing so, which matters perhaps even more. Meanwhile, the personality of Donald Trump hardly stands out as a reassuring beacon. When men such as these can define much of what happens, two contradictory but mutually reinforcing phenomena occur in Europe.

The first is the return of a fascination with the ruthless strongman. Europe’s far right, as well as its growing metastasis in mainstream politics, are the most fertile ground for this line of thought: no matter the human cost, nothing stops a leader for whom the end justifies the means. Civilians aren’t civilians: they’re “terrorists”. UN resolutions aren’t law: they’re just paper – stuff that can usefully lower the outrage of mushy liberals before bombers get back to the business of creating a desert that will be called peace.

Then there is the apathy of supposedly pacifist whataboutery. This is found on the radical left of Europe’s political spectrum, from London to Berlin and Athens. Its moral relativism drapes itself in “internationalism”. From the very beginning, Syria was too complex a crisis to identify sound allies, goes that thinking. The west is guilty, full stop. Regime change is bad – even when it is called for by desperate populations. Conflict is all about controlling oilfields. Sanctions and the stemming of financial flows can end it. Just talk and negotiate. Our pilots are as criminal as those of Putin – never mind the deliberate, repeated pounding of hospitals in eastern Ghouta. Beware the mainstream western media. If we stop meddling in Syria, things will improve. Iran and Russia are counterweights to age-old US imperialism.

The outcome is a dizzying European passivity and powerlessness in the face of total war unfolding just a few hours away. Of course, there are condemnations, statements by foreign ministers, and calls of “something must be done”. But our societies have fallen prey to inertia and confusion.

One day we will need to look back more closely at the chronology of events in which counter-terrorism, not the UN-backed notion of the “responsibility to protect” civilians, became our sole priority; and in which military intervention against Islamic State became politically palatable in 2014 not because Arabs and Yazidis were being butchered, but because western hostages had been beheaded. We’ll need to dig into how the necessary questioning of the west somehow morphed into widespread indifference to what authoritarian powers can get up to.

Syria is a tragedy for Europe not because it has occasionally awakened our righteous outrage (in fairly modest doses), nor because our continent’s politics have been upended by refugee arrivals. Syria is very much part of us because, while we like to believe we have looked at ourselves in the mirror after Europe’s 20th-century carnage, we’ve let a degree of nihilism creep into how we approach the hell that has been let loose not far from our borders. We’ve almost inoculated ourselves against shame. Syria is our moral defeat.

• Natalie Nougayrède is a Guardian columnist

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/27/syria-europe-moral-eu-helplessness

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Historians still muse about Britain’s motivations and its commitment to the declaration waned in the decades after it was issued. Yet the 67 words penned by a British Cabinet minister still resonate loudly 100 years later, with both the Israelis and Palestinians seizing the anniversary to reinforce its narrative and justify its positions.

Each side is marking the centenary in starkly different ways, shining a light on the chasm between Israel and the Palestinians that some say was cleaved on Nov. 2, 1917.

“It’s so divisive even today because Zionists think that the Balfour Declaration laid the foundation stone for modern Israel — and they’re right to think that — and by the same token non-Jewish Palestinians and Arabs see it as the foundation stone of their dispossession and misery,” said Jonathan Schneer, a historian who authored a book on the document.

“Everything stems from the Balfour Declaration,” he said.

The declaration was the result of discussions between British Zionist leaders seeking political recognition of their goals for Jewish statehood and British politicians embroiled in the First World War. Written by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour and addressed to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British financier and Zionist leader, the declaration promised British assistance to create a Jewish homeland.

“His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object,” the declaration goes, continuing with a caveat: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

British motives for issuing the declaration include imperialist political calculations meant to secure a foothold in the eastern Levant amid the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the messianism of British politicians steeped in biblical history, hoping to restore Jews to their ancestral home.

The declaration served as the basis for the British Mandate of Palestine, which was approved in 1920 by the League of Nations, a precursor to the United Nations. The following decades saw a spike in the number of Jews immigrating to Palestine and the buds of Zionist state institutions taking root. With that came increased friction with the Arab population, setting the stage for conflict that continues to this day.

That fraught history is being reflected today in how both Israel and the Palestinians are using the declaration’s centenary to enforce their stances.

Israel views the pledge as the first international recognition granted to the Jewish people’s desire to return to its historic homeland. It sees Britain as having played a supporting role in a narrative dominated by the determination, heroism and pioneering spirit of the early settlers who fought to build the state.

“While the state would not have arisen without settlement, sacrifice and a willingness to fight for it, the international impetus was, undoubtedly, the Balfour Declaration,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week.

Israel is planning a major campaign meant to drive home that narrative and zero in on its warm ties with Britain, an important ally when the European Union has taken steps against Israel’s West Bank settlements in recent years. Netanyahu will travel to London, where he will mark the anniversary on Thursday at a festive dinner hosted by the current Lords Balfour and Rothschild and attended by British Prime Minister Theresa May. An “anniversary concert” in London this weekend will feature British performers alongside a Jewish Israeli clarinetist and a pianist who is an Arab citizen of Israel.

The anniversary is being marked far more morosely by the Palestinians. They see the declaration as the original sin, a harbinger of their “nakba,” or catastrophe, the mass displacement that resulted from the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. That refugee crisis reverberates across the region today, and the Palestinians have cast Israel, through the declaration and its imperialist British patrons, as a colonial enterprise.

The Palestinians, who have spent recent years seeking recognition for their state at international institutions, are demanding British accountability. They want an apology and have threatened to sue Britain over the declaration.

“We asked them to make it right, to make this historical oppression right by recognizing the state of Palestine and apologizing to the Palestinian people,” said Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki. He said they have asked Britain to issue a new declaration that would be more favorable to the Palestinians, a request he said London rejected.

Protests are planned in the Palestinian territories, where thousands of students will stand in their schoolyards on Thursday demanding Britain dismiss the declaration, and in Britain, where dozens of cars will be emblazoned with posters condemning the declaration. In Jerusalem, thousands of letters from Palestinian schoolchildren are to be delivered to the British Consulate.

Britain, meanwhile, has treaded lightly, casting the anniversary as a commemoration and not a celebration.

“We will mark the centenary with pride and respect, but also with a degree of sadness, as issues between Israel and the Palestinians remain unresolved,” Middle East Minister Alistair Burt said last week.

By the 1930s, a new government in Britain was backing away from its earlier promise to the Zionists, with an official commission of inquiry deciding that Britain’s mandate over Palestine, with its constant internecine violence, proved untenable. The 1937 Peel Commission recommended that the land be split between Arabs and Jews. Relations between the Jews in Mandatory Palestine and Britain would further deteriorate before Israel declared independence.

Israel would later capture more territory in the 1967 Mideast war, including east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, land the Palestinians want for their hoped-for state. The years since have been pockmarked by repeated spasms of violence and hopes for peace dwindling.

“The Balfour Declaration is being used by both sides to advance a present agenda,” said Martin Kramer, a historian at Jerusalem’s Shalem College. “There are reasons for Israelis to be grateful for it and reasons for the Palestinians to regret it but it’s history. It can’t be changed.”

———

Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Jill Lawless in London contributed reporting.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/century-declaration-hardens-israeli-palestinian-rift-50853926

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