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google images for europe+gas+doha+syria, take a closer look at the maps.
So, Western involvement in Syria is due to wanting to protect one of the oil pipelines that supplies it's oil?

And Russian involvement is to stop that I assume?

What are you implying here?

The thrust of the article used this merely as an illustration of distrust, manipulation and outright lies from all sources of news/information that we have.

I'm deeply interested in "fake News" and I suspect, like many do, that Facebook is merely an enabler rather than the source (ie. Facebook tells us what we want to hear, thus amplifying confirmation bias). I recently exposed the New York Times for being a cultivator of divisiveness and manipulation (but they are not alone). The NYT are far more likely to be a source of the problem than Facebook.

The article, for me at least, was a recognition of system-wide manipulation, misinformation and intent. It was also a recognition that things are dire. It was also a recognition for unity.

The challenge we face is that we are divided. Not just on national boundaries, but on our essences of self-identity which have become extremely fragmented and extremely hostile. I believe people need to pull together more than ever, yet, we are tearing apart. We are being manipulated on so many fronts that we can't see the wood for the trees. The discussion on Syria was merely one example of this confusion.

The article calls for recognition of the importance of truth. Excellent. However, the root cause of problems is squabbles over power leading to division. You're never going to stop squabbles for power. Truth can always be re-packaged until it suits. No matter how we try to bring people together, there will be more to gain through differentiation and divisiveness.

This rabbit hole runs deep. I am grateful to this article for challenging my views on fake News and social fragmentation.

If you look hard enough it's easy to see what's really happening in Syria. I think all these veiled attempts to fuzz the truth only fool the ones who vaguely look for it.
I get it, but disagree. WW I and WW II is was both a lot more than a bit of misinformation. And by ops definition, we've been fighting a war ever since we invented language and the ability to lie and make up reasoning. A very sensationalist headline.
I think you miss the point. The article is not saying every war is about mis-information; it is saying every war is the inevitable culmination of a techno-social shift that begin long before the war itself.

So different wars have resulted from different shifts. In this view, WW1 resulted from advances in gun and related technologies; WW2 from further advances in war technology and the collapse of the old order wrought by WW1, and WW3 will result (and indeed has began) from the loss of meaning and mis-information resulting from the misuse of current information technology.