The reason you think these points are unsupported is because there is a large context that people on the left are familiar with but the rest of us opinion is not because it is not regularly discussed in corporate media.

For instance, the work by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent documents how mainstream news consistently reinforces government narratives, even when they are based on lies (Iraq, Vietnam, etc). These organizations you mention are in fact propaganda outlets intended for foreign audiences or literally government agencies, they don't regularly directly criticize US foreign policy on other than a tactical basis.

The Jeff Bezos story is an example of the larger story of media consolidation where the majority of US media is owned by a handful of corporations. How often will such news organizations report conflicts of interest or report critically on their bosses?

The establishment position is bloodthirsty. That's a big point of contention.

Bad example. When the Roman empire fell the average life expectancy increased in all regions [0] and [1].

Turns out complex societies are used to funnel wealth to the richest at the expense of the poorest. Who would have thought, apart from anyone who has studied them.

[0] The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, chapters 15 and 16

[1] Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070

>Many of these arguments seem vague and conspiratorial. For example, it asserts that plutocrats really control all of our media. For this, it cites another article by the same author, which talks about Jeff Bezos acquiring Washington Post.

This one isn't exactly a secret.

90% of US media is controlled by 5 companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...

These 15 Billionaires Own America's News Media Companies http://archive.li/hWTJt

I haven't followed Skripal, but in the case of all attacks, I would like the fp establishment to wait for UN inspectors to render a report based on evidence before declaring whodunit.

The mainstream political opinion got us into Iraq, Vietnam, sold arms to the Indonesians in East-Timor, and concocted a nuclear missile gap with Russia that never existed. I don't think it deserves any credence except where concrete evidence is provided (and this goes for everyone else outside the mainstream too).

Now that there are actually investigators on the ground, we can begin to answer those questions. Until the OPCW releases their report, we don't know that their was any gas released there at all. If there was, we won't know who released it.

If one were to ignore political biases, I think they would admit that there was more motive for the rebels to stage a gas attack to create international pressure for a cease-fire that allows them to escape a surrounded and hopeless position, than for Assad to bring the wrath of the world down upon himself to gas a completely surrounded and hopeless enemy. If you don't at least admit that such a thing warrants investigation, you are not being honest.

Were you troubled at how quickly the "political mainstream" came to consensus on what happened there, before any investigation had occurred?

Oh good grief. "Kremlin line", really? Why are we even worried about what she thinks on topics besides the one under discussion? Does this person's suspicions of various war pretexts have anything to do with her disapproval of a proposed truth ministry?