This GRTV production by James Corbett was first released in January 2012. In the light of the recent media disinformation campaign in relation to Syria, we bring this carefully researched video-documentary report to the attention of GR readers.

As the drums of war begin to beat once again in Iran, Syria, the South China Sea, and other potential hotspots and flashpoints around the globe, concerned citizens are asking how a world so sick of bloodshed and a population so tired of conflict could be led to this spot once again.

● To understand this seeming paradox, we must first understand the centuries-long history of how media has been used to whip the nation into wartime frenzy, dehumanize the supposed enemies, and even to manipulate the public into believing in causes for war that, decades later, were admitted to be completely fictitious.

● As the US and Iranian governments escalate tensions in the already volatile Straits of Hormuz, and China and Russia begin openly questioning Washington’s interference in their internal politics, the world remains on a knife-edge of military tension. Far from being a dispassionate observer of these developments, however, the media has in fact been central to increasing those tensions and preparing the public to expect a military confrontation. But as the online media rises to displace the traditional forms by which the public forms its understanding of the world, many are now beginning to see first hand how the media lies the public into war.…

Russia and the US continue to trade barbs over President Vladimir Putin’s recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, in which he took issue with America viewing itself as “exceptional” and the dangers it posed in Syria and beyond. ● On Friday, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said he was bemused that the United States continued to insist that it occupied an “exceptional” role in the international arena. “Democracy implies the existence of competition, but at times there is the perception that the US has estranged itself from this competition.” Peskov insisted that Putin had no intention of pushing a confrontation or offending anyone with his words. He continued that as far as international affairs were concerned, Putin had no interest in wagging his finger at anyone. "However, our American friends over the last decade have gotten into the habit of giving everyone a patronizing pat on the back, which has served to shape the world’s attitude towards the United States,” he said. ● The Kremlin’s reaction came after a tough response from the White House regarding Putin’s Op-Ed on Thursday, saying Russia’s own actions had served to demonstrate how the US is in fact “exceptional.” "Unlike Russia, the United States stands up for democratic values and human rights in our own country and around the world," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

We as Americans largely ignore when our own government, in countries around the world, murders innocent children but when an American child dies, our media and our nation can focus on nothing else. Meanwhile, U.S. drones are killing children and terrorizing families abroad. Earlier this year, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 176 children have been murdered in Pakistan alone. And along with drone attacks, an average of 4.8 children are killed per day in Afghanistan where earlier this year, a U.S. sergeant is reported to have killed 9 children. Will these murders be deemed worthy of our thoughts and prayers, or even our news headlines?

Hawkish American Senator John McCain has decided to write a column in a Russian newspaper to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who criticized the United States. ● Russian paper Pravda has agreed to publish a column by McCain that will attack the leadership of Putin one day after The New York Times published Putin’s Op-Ed, Foreign Policy’s The Cable reported. "If John McCain wants to write something for us, he is welcome," Dmitry Sudakov, the English editor of Pravda, said.

Prominent American academic Noam Chomsky has lashed out at the United States for its continued policy of ‘torturing’ the Iranian nation over the past six decades.
“For the past 60 years, not a day has passed in which the US has not been torturing Iranians,” Chomsky said in a Wednesday interview with Democracy Now. “That’s 60 years, right now, began with a military coup, which overthrew the parliamentary regime in 1953, installed the Shah, a brutal dictator,” he added. In late August, the CIA spy agency for the first time published a document that confirms Washington’s role in the 1953 coup d’état against the democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. The explicit acknowledgment by the US intelligence community comes some six decades after the British- and American-backed military overthrow.

■ Russia and the US believe that the most efficient way to resolve the problem of the Syrian chemical weapons is to remove them under the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' supervision and then destroy them outside Syria as far as possible, says a Russian-US joint document adopted following three days of negotiations in Geneva.
■ Russia and the US have set an ambitious goal of removing all types of materials and equipment related to chemical weapons from Syria and destroying these, so that this process be completed in the first half of 2014, a Russian-US joint document says also.
■ The document says the matter concerns chemical weapons, depots, precursors, special equipment and mechanisms for developing and manufacturing such weapons.

SANA: Russian-US agreement on Syria wins broad support
SANA: UN Secretary-General informed that Syria joined Chemical Weapons Convention
LA Times: Israel also facing questions about chemical weapons
BlackListedNews: Assad: Israel should be first to disarm
VoR: US welcomes Russia's 'significant' plan on chemical weapons
IntelliHub: Russian plan forcing U.S. backed rebel group to show true colors
Tony Cartalucci: Preempting The Next Round of Lies Against Syria
Bill Van Auken: Washington maneuvers in Syrian negotiations to lay groundwork for war
Alex Lantier: As talks open in Geneva, US begins direct arming of Syrian militias
Jason Ditz: US, Russia Reach Deal on Syria Disarmament
Christof Lehmann: CIA delivers Weapons to Insurgents in Syria
MoA: A Short History Of The War On Syria - 2006-2014

A leaked US military document reveals that an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group possessed and produced sarin gas to be used in chemical attacks in Syria. ● The classified document obtained by WND, confirms that poison gas was confiscated earlier this year from members of the al-Nusra Front, a militant group that has been responsible for some of the most gruesome terrorist attacks directed at both Syrian soldiers and civilian population. The National Ground Intelligence Center report states that al-Qaeda in Iraq produced the sarin gas and then shipped it to the al-Nusra Front in Syria. Turkish anti-terror police seized a two-kilogram cylinder of sarin gas from members of the notorious terrorist group near the Syrian border.
TheKurdishCause: Turkish prosecutor indicts six Jihadists for alleged attempts to acquire chemicals with intent to produce sarin