REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

How truth is manufactured in the West

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 30, 2023 13:03
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Sunday, March 23, 2014 1:18 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


One of the ways that "truth" is made in the west is to use unreliable sources who helpfully stage convenient narratives for the media.., which dutifully passes on the disinformation. And sometimes, the media just makes shit up.

THE KUWAITI INCUBATOR BABY HOAX
An earlier, well-proven fake narrative was the tearful nurse who sobbed as she described how Iraq soldiers ripped little Kuwaiti babies from their hospital incubators and tossed them on the floor to die.


Damn, she looks convincing, doesn't she? If any testimony swayed votes towards the first Gulf War, this was it.

Quote:

The Nayirah testimony was the controversial testimony given before the non-governmental Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 by a female who provided only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized, and was cited numerous times by United States senators and the American president in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was al-?aba? and that she was the daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign which was run by Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government. Following this, al-Sabah's testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern wartime propaganda.

In her emotional testimony, Nayirah stated that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.

Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International* and testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. An ABC report found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors...fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die."



* Amnesty International is one of those NGOs that is heavily infiltrated by our State Department. They had to issue an embarrassing retraction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_%28testimony%29
http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.htm

THE VENEZUELAN SHOOTING HOAX
In 2002, there were mass protests both for and against Hugo Chavez.
Quote:

The Venezuelan coup d'état attempt of 2002 was a failed coup d'état on 11 April 2002, that saw President Hugo Chávez ousted from office for 47 hours, before being restored by a combination of military loyalists and massive public support for his government... In Caracas, the coup led to a popular pro-Chávez uprising that the Metropolitan Police unsuccessfully tried to suppress.... The pro-Chávez Presidential Guard eventually retook the Miraflores presidential palace without firing a shot, leading to the collapse of the Carmona government and the re-installation of Chávez as president


But in the melee, shots were fired. It was easy to assume that untrained panicky troops might have fired on the crowd by mistake, but the shooting was presented as even worse than that...

Quote:

The opposition media immediately blamed these deaths on "Chavistas", whom they claimed to have actually filmed firing on unarmed marchers from a bridge. This narrative was largely accepted without question by the international news media.

The mainstream of Venezuelan media outlets are privately owned, [EVEN TODAY- SIGNY] and which side they were on was made abundantly clear in the way events were covered. It was ... Venevisión that claimed to have filmed "Chavistas" firing from the bridge. This footage was edited by Venevisión in a way that suggested a planned ambush of opposition marchers by pro-Chávez gunmen.... After Chávez supporters retook Miraflores, the major networks stopped providing news reports altogether, with two of the three major newspapers cancelling the Sunday edition, claiming "safety concerns" for the lack of will.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attemp
t


Having seen the unedited footage, it is readily apparent that the killings were made by SNIPER FIRE [SOUND FAMILIAR?-SIGNY] and that the police were shooting back at the sniper(s). But the event, of course, was presented as an outrage by the Chavez government.

You will never see this footage unless you seek it out in "The Revolution Will Not be Televised".



THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT CHEMICAL ATTACK HOAX
There are dozens of other recent instances, but the one that brought us closest to war (again) was the chemical attacks in Syria. The Syrian government was widely portrayed as the source of the chemical attack, although it didn't make any sense that the Assad would order one while the western world was just itching for an excuse to invade. But, still.. just like in Venezuela, it is possible that mistakes were made in the heat of battle.

Corroborating electronic/ communications evidence was "helpfully" provided by Israel, showing a spike in communication between government troops in the area and the main military base in Syria.

At the time, I was extremely doubtful that Assad's government was to blame. As you may recall, I said that government-made chemical weapons have stabilizers in them, which vary depending on who is doing the manufacturing, and that they're loaded and delivered in mass-produced shells. It should be possible, then, by collecting samples of the chemical agent and by looking for the shells in which the chemicals were delivered to assign blame with less uncertainty.

Many people question the narrative put forward by the Syrian insurgents. There is a Catholic nun in Syria, Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib, who reviewed videos of the victims (helpfully provided to the western media by the Syrian insurgents) who thinks many of the videos were staged. In particular, there is a series of stills showing dead children, some of whom are being injected with something (why?). A few children in particular - identifiable by their faces and clothing - are shown over and over, in different locations, in different positions, with different groups of (presumed) victims.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/169025372/Study-the-Videos-That-Speaks-About
-Chemicals-Beta-Version

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24358543

In addition
Quote:

According to a report in Turkey’s state media agency Zaman, agents from the Turkish General Directorate of Security (Emniyet Genel Müdürlügü) ceased [seized] 2 kg of sarin gas in the city of Adana in the early hours of yesterday morning. The chemical weapons were in the possession of Al Nusra terrorists believed to have been heading for Syria.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/turkish-police-find-chemical-weapons-in-t
he-possession-of-al-nusra-terrorists-heading-for-syria/5336917


You don't hear much about Assad's chemical agent attack anymore; I think it was a narrative that just fell part on further inspection.


AND THEN..
In view of all that: Digital alteration, dead men coming alive (and other staged events), planted CIA reporters, fake doctors, and...

http://rt.com/shows/the-truthseeker/media-staged-chem-attack-645/

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Sunday, March 23, 2014 1:33 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Honestly, the 'baby incubator' story is pretty damn anecdotal. I mean, Iraq DID in fact use military force to invade Kuwait, and yes, there were war crimes a plenty committed.



Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, March 23, 2014 2:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Holy F.....

I go through life sometimes wondering if I'm slipping on the brink of insanity.

Thank you Signy, for posting this. Just like I'd never voluntarily watch a "Saw" movie or "The Hills Have Eyes" or the newer worse movies where people are the monsters, i am so glad I'm largely without news.



I don't envy you, or anyone who's keeping up with any of this at all.

I'm not burying my head in the sand. I'm pulling it out by not listening to all the same shit they throw on everyone's heads.

Once you watch it, you can't unwatch it.....



HAHA:





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Sunday, March 23, 2014 2:08 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Honestly, the 'baby incubator' story is pretty damn anecdotal. I mean, Iraq DID in fact use military force to invade Kuwait, and yes, there were war crimes a plenty committed.

And I bet you fell for it too, huh? Along with a bunch of "liberals" that you seem to hate, and you ended up being on the side of.

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Sunday, March 23, 2014 2:19 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Honsestly Sigs... I'm saying that I didn't know anything about it before you posted, and I didn't learn much after you posted.

Maybe I'm missing out by not reading, but honestly by just skimming and hearing about baby's being tossed on the floor, hoax or not, i don't have time for that shit.

Maybe I should organize a Sea Shepherd party to go across the world and save babies that would have likely died because of the lack of medicine anyhow?

How is this any of my business? I'm not Superman. I found that out when I got my ass beat by 4 guys and stabbed in the back when I was 19.

I'm just one guy. I fight for me. I fight for my own. I've done all the things I've talked about here for myself. I've written legal-sounding letters to people for my parents knowing that my legit uncle would cover if I got in over my head (which I never had).

Would I be the person to go to in a Zombie Apocolypse? I'd like to think so, but those skills haven't been tested.

I don't know how to make money.

I know how to shelter it and protect it though, and I know how to build a budget from the ground up, based on your income, your debt and your DIY Ability.



Honestly, I'm just commenting on how what you're posting here, and a lot of the posts I see here are just so horrific that I'd have to imagine that one would have to be much less sane than I to always willingly say yes when asked "would you like to know more?"






Haha.... Doogie Howser before girls creamed after his gay ass.



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Sunday, March 23, 2014 2:51 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


6IX, I'm SO sorry!
I was responding to rappy, not to you! That wasn't clear at all!!!

YOUR post was a breath of fresh air. It was open and honest, and it lifted my spirits. Maybe you feel that you don't know or can't do a lot of things, but if you keep being honest and real, you'll help others just be being yourself, I know you will.

FWIW, not knowing how to "make money"... I don't either. All I know how to do, really, is work and save. I think the big "money-makers" like Soros and Diamon and Gates are dishonest sociopaths anyway, so not being in on the hustle is a good thing, in my book anyway.

BTW, if you affect 2 people each day, and they affect two people each day, you will have affected 2047 people in ten days. Hang in there.

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Sunday, March 23, 2014 5:53 PM

REAVERFAN


I was well aware of what you presented, and I'm always surprised by how many people don't know about it all these years later. I remember a military guy talking about the wholsale slaughter of retreating Iraqi conscripts, and that he told his men to get those "baby killers."

Did he know it was all a lie? Probably.

Bush II lied us into our current quagmire, and people still act like there was some merit to it. Astounding.

We've still got people believing Obamacare "horror stories" than don't check out when they're investigated. We've still got people who know no history before Jan. 2008, and blame Obama for things that aren't his fault, or are completely made up (birthers, anyone?).


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Sunday, March 23, 2014 6:02 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Bush didn't lie, and O-Care is 1000's x's worse than we're even being allowed to know.

I swear, the planet is getting dumber by the minute.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, March 23, 2014 6:09 PM

REAVERFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
Bush didn't lie, and O-Care is 1000's x's worse than we're even being allowed to know.

I swear, the planet is getting dumber by the minute.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

Not that facts ever phased you, but...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-lies-about-the-iraq-war/5327386

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Sunday, March 23, 2014 6:12 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!



Those aren't lies of the W administration, but red herrings and misinformation, by the Left.

Swing and miss.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, March 23, 2014 6:15 PM

REAVERFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:

Those aren't lies of the W administration, but red herrings and misinformation, by the Left.

Swing and miss.




Sorry. Those are well-documented facts, backed up by everything Bushco said.

You may ignore them, but there they are.

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Monday, March 24, 2014 2:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Hey Sigs... :)

No worries. I read it all, and I misunderstood. You're golden. ;)

I'm glad you genuinely liked what I posted too. I genuinely meant that too :).


I think we might unfortunately be in for a pretty dark storm on the horizon. I hope I'm wrong. I'm not all paranoid conspiracy theorist like I used to be. That's the major perk for having so little "bills" that even a kid can do it. I'm virtually my own mom and I live in my own basemnent, except my basement is my dysfunctional house that will continue to kick my ass literally until I get off my ass and get a real job and make enough to turn this relic into a living-breathing-machine.

I don't love anything. Well... maybe that's not true. If I were to love anything, it would be a word. No strings attached. No $300 buyout if you're dissatisfied.

I've heard it wasn't a real word, I've heard it was a real word. I believe that before I was in HS it wasn't a word recognized by Webster......

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/copacetic?s=t

BOOM BITCHES!

It's a real word now, Per Webster!

For many of the poor tired souls that have lived long after "the thrill of livin' is gone", Copacetic is the best we can strive for.

Copacetic isn't bad at all.

Some call it life... others call it a waste of a life...... I just call it biding my time.

Seriously, you're going to want a "me" as a neighbor during the impending Zombie Apocalypse ;)


"Wha'dja wake me up for? I drank 17 beers last night and was having an awesome dream about Kate Upton and a hotub?"



i sure do hope this is hell Sigs. Nothing I've ever met was worth making it work outside of a few brothers.

i don't know if they'd take a knife or a bullet for me. i don't want to know the answer to it. i'd gladly take one for them, having been through that in the past for some girl who meant no more to me at the time than she does now as i can't even remember what her first name was.

To all of my blood-brothers, I am your shield, both literally and figuratively.

I have next to nothing, yet I want for nothing.

Anything excess I aquire should be used to help family.

i don't know how people i assume love me would think about me, but for any of those left that weren't completely oblibious, i'd like to think that this song would play in their heads when I was gone.



If it didn't, at least from time to time..... I have a very disproportionate view of the "real" me and this fantasy life




BTW... Heathens, the lyrics are "Roman Catholic Choirs Singing", and NOT "Roman Calvary Choirs Singing".

Although I make great pains not to offend our Pro-Equine population, I have to say that TRULY anybody who believed that Mr. Ed sung a bar should immediately be put in charge of peeling potatoes on this boat. :)

No offence to our Equine followers here, but Mr. Ed was the product of the advanced alien technology that pervaded the mid 1950's when


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Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:32 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
Honestly, the 'baby incubator' story is pretty damn anecdotal. I mean, Iraq DID in fact use military force to invade Kuwait, and yes, there were war crimes a plenty committed.



Yeah. SignyM would rather you forget that Iraq did actually invade Kuwait.

BTW: Farther down in the Wiki article SignyM cited was this.

Quote:

Following the end of the war, Reuters reported that Iraq returned "98 truckloads of medical equipment stolen from Kuwait, including two of the baby incubators". Abdul Rahim al-Zeid, an assistant under-secretary at the Kuwaiti Public Health Ministry, said that by returning the incubators the Iraqis had unwittingly provided proof that they took them.[79] Kuwait's chief ambulance officer, Abdul Reda Abbas, stated that "We think the Iraqis might have returned the incubators by mistake."


So incubators apparently were stolen.



Might also note that the Wiki article about the Venezuela shootings contained this caveat.

Quote:


This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
- The neutrality of this article is disputed. (March 2011)

- This section lends undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. (July 2012)

- This article's factual accuracy is disputed. (February 2014)

- This article's introduction may be too long for the overall article length. (July 2013)



So not too trustworthy.




Then again, the article about Syrian chemical attacks is by ISTeams, which is pretty much a tool of the Syrian regime, which you'll see if you google it.








"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:57 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


GEEZER: Maybe you should look at the less unedited video before your start talking about truth? Not that you would ever dismiss factual information... you being such an objective observer and all. [/snark]


Meanwhile, another item for you whine about...

Syria: Three Years of Lies

Diplomatic Negotiations

In April 2011, a Human Rights Council Resolution (A/HRC/RES/S-16/1) requested “to dispatch a mission to the Syrian Arab Republic to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law and to establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and of the crimes perpetrated”. Interestingly, this came to pass only ten days after it was revealed that the uprising had in fact been secretly backed by the United States all along. The initial stage of the uprising was punctuated by provocative acts that seemed deliberately designed to elicit a response from the Syrian government, which would in turn draw international condemnation, such as setting fire to the Palace of Justice in Deraa in March and the deployment of snipers to shoot at protesters; those snipers, incidentally, were later apprehended by the Syrian police and turned out to be Lebanese nationals. In fact, as early as March 2011, the Syrian security forces had confiscated a large shipment of weapons and explosives smuggled from Iraq.

By May 2011, most of the reports on Assad’s “brutal crackdown on the protesters” which tended to make the headlines were essentially copies coming from Associated Press and Reuters, distributed to mainstream media around the Western World – always with the caveat that the sources were unnamed activists, and that “[t]he accounts could not be independently confirmed” (see here, here). Indeed, in some cases footage shot in different countries was used and claimed to portray scenes from the Syrian uprising. This, however, was enough for US State Secretary Hillary Clinton to announce, at a press conference held in Rome, that there would be consequences for this brutal crackdown that had been imposed on the Syrian people, and that the U.S. was looking at boosting sanctions it had already imposed on Syrian leaders. Obediently, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Italy would support similar measures by the European Union – one-sided measures which completely ignored the acts of infiltration, sabotage and terror that the Syrian institutions had been subjected to.

In August, when it became necessary to step up the familiar propaganda to stir further public outrage against the “brutal dictator”™ of the month, CNN promptly released this article about babies left to die in incubators due to a power cut deliberately ordered by the Syrian regime, supposedly corroborated by images circulated online and by a number of tweets, variously placing the horrific event either in late July or early August, and in such different places as Hama, Albukamal, Bokamal… It turned out to be a complete hoax: the picture was in fact found to be part of an article published on the Egyptian newspaper al-Badil al-Jadid, denouncing the “poor conditions in the maternity ward of the al-Shabti hospital in Alexandria” [source:Electronic Intifada]

On 22 August 2011 the UN Human Rights Council, citing Syria’s non-collaboration with its fact-finding mission, decided to form a Commission of Inquiry to dispatch to the territory as soon as possible (RES-S-17-1). However, before said commission could even be put together and begin working to establish who was really responsible for what, the Obama administration was already impatiently calling for the resignation of Bashar al Assad (video and video). Which made perfect sense, considering that a new Syrian leadership to replace the current one had already been put together in NATO-friendly Istanbul, gathering various elements from the exiled Syrian elite, eager to take over: the Syrian National Council, which announced its formation on 23 August 2011, was supposed to form the structure of the new Syrian government, according to Washington. Their mantra: no negotiations with the current Syrian government, ever. Assad had to go. Full stop. Regardless of how the Syrian people might feel about it. Does that sound almost like the textbook definition of a coup d’état? But after all, why would the SNC even want to waste time in diplomacy, knowing that such powerful friends were behind them – for the time being anyway?

Throughout the Autumn, as the conflict raged and foreign mercenaries kept pouring into the country to fight against the Syrian regular army, UN Security Council and GeneralAssembly members with a vested interested in the removal of Bashar al-Assad variously tried to push for resolutions to step up sanctions against Syria, without addressing the issue of the violation of Syria’s sovereingty, security and territorial integrity by those countries that were sending weapons and fighters into the territory, all activities which had been suspected for some time and were eventually revealed in December 2011, with the news that Qatar had Created an anti-Syria mercenary force based in Turkey; predictably, the Security Council Resolutions were vetoed by Russia and China. Clearly, more propaganda was needed, and that’s when the British newspaper The Guardian stepped in with this revelation on a nuclear weapons site, from a copy it purchased, once again, from Associated Press in Washington, and whose source was identified in the headline as “UN investigators”, when in fact the article conceded it was “a senior diplomat with knowledge of IAEA investigations and a former UN investigator” who, needless to say, spoke on condition of anonymity.

And never mind if the article itself had to concede that “The complex, in the city of Hasakah, now appears to be a cotton-spinning plant, and investigators have found no sign it was ever used for nuclear production.”

At the nineteenth session of the Human Rights Council, held in February 2012, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey successfully pushed for a resolution which exclusively condemned “the violence by the Syrian authorities against its population” – a peculiar wording, considering that Saudi Arabia had dispatched its own troops to fire at unarmed protesters in Bahrain on a number of occasions six months prior to the resolution. Later that month, those same states, visibly impatient to remove Assad no matter what, formed the loose international diplomatic group called ‘The friends of Syria’, along with – unsurprisingly – the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Egypt. When United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan presented his six-point plan, which entailed “an inclusive Syrian-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people”, it was apparent that this idea was not what the ‘Friends of Syria’ wanted to hear, considering how much effort was devoted by four of its members in the European Union to enable their proxy armies to continue to fight against the Syrian regular army and eventually topple Bashar al-Assad, by endeavouring to end the arms embargo on Syria, and finally provide weapons to the Western-backed militias. After all, why bother with political reforms and referenda, when you have an army to do the dirty work for you? Former White House Middle East expert Elliott Abrams – famous for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal – was completely behind the idea.

Nor was Kofi Annan’s plan welcome by influential US-based think-tanks, such as the Brookings Institute, busy as it was Assessing Options for Regime Change.

Be it as it may, despite President Bashar Al Assad’s launching of several political and governance reforms, including a referendum on a new Constitution, held on 26 February 2012, parliamentary elections, held on 7 May, and the appointment of a new Government, on 23 June, the opposition boycotted the elections. According to the Report by the UN Commission of Inquiry, president Bashar Al Assad did not succeed in engaging the opposition in a meaningful dialogue: the report published seemed clear enough that this was not from lack of trying. However, as a result, the elections’ outcome preserved the supremacy of the Baath party in Parliament as well as in the new Government, thus failing to bring emerging political forces into governance institutions.

Opposition groups represented in the Syrian National Council – the report continued – refused to engage with President Assad, calling for him to leave power – and not, as one might expect, for free and democratic elections: this raised serious doubts as to whether the majority of Syrians would indeed welcome a regime change in their country.

Similarly, a communiqué issued in June 2012 at the Action Group Conference on Syria (now known as Geneva I), stating the necessity to offer “a perspective for the future that can be shared by all in Syria” did not go down well with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who, while purporting to support Annan’s plan, stated that the removal of Bashar al-Assad was still a priority (see 3' 40” into this video and 40 seconds into this one).

This was primarily justified by the Houla massacre of May 25th, in which 108 civilians had reportedly been executed, according to UN findings. Accounts accusing pro-Assad militias – known as Shabbiha – of this massacre came from the usual anti-government sources, even though several investigative reports cast doubt on this version, pointing to a possible involvement of anti-Assad Sunni militants (see here, here and here), in particular an article written by German Damascus-based journalist Rainer Hermann.

The report by the Commission of Inquiry, published in August 2012, said it was ‘unlikely’ that this atrocity had been committed by anti-government forces, although it acknowledged that, “with the available evidence” it could not rule out any possible perpetrator.

Nevertheless, this dubious evidence was sufficient for thirteen Western countries to expel the Syrian ambassadors from their respective territories.

With regards to the C.o.I. reports, a mention was made in it to the “alleged” presence of unspecified and mysterious “foreign advisers” (paragraph 19) fomenting the conflict and supplying arms and training to the rebels. This was more than just a marginal fact, when one considers that supporting violence against another State through aid to proxy forces which threaten its security and territorial integrity constitutes a violation of the U.N. Charter. As international jurist Curtis Doebbler informs us, an exception might be made only if the foreign-backed rebels could describe themselves as a national liberation movement, by showing that they were being oppressed to such an extent that the exercise of their right of self-determination made the use of force necessary. This was clearly not the case, as opposition forces were repeatedly offered to participate in the parliamentary elections, held on 7 May 2012. At the September session of the Human Rights Council, which this author attended, US Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe’s address to the Council on 10 September left little room to doubt that, while it was all well and good to talk about Human Rights and violations thereof, what the United States government was really itching for was a good old Libya-style regime change in Syria. If anyone had trouble reading between the lines, the following quote, placed in the middle of her statement, was probably designed to help the hard of hearing see the bottom line: “Let’s not forget how we got here: it is a direct result of a brutal regime that reacted violently to peaceful demonstrations and to this day remains bent on denying its people universal human rights. There can be no doubt that the architect of this destruction is Bashar Al Assad, and his regime must end”. Quite frankly, it was not all that tricky to see that human rights protection was not exactly the top priority for the US administration: had that been the case, Barack Obama would not have officially authorised clandestine support to the rebels since June (although we do not know when said support really began), in disregard of the fact that, according to the same report of the CoI, which Donahoe endorsed and repeatedly referred to, those same rebels had perpetrated war crimes and summary executions (paragraph 60), violations of the rights of the child (paragraphs 114-5), violations of International Humanitarian Law, as well as torture (paragaph 134).

Furthermore, one could at least expect some mention to the fact that, according to the report, one of the most prominent anti-government forces to gain relevance in this non-international armed conflict was “the Jabhat Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant, a group allegedly linked with Al-Qaida” (paragraph 30), especially considering that (a) the statement was delivered on the eve of September 11th and (b) not a day had gone by over the preceding 11 years without some White House spokesperson reminding us of the necessity to fight Al-Qaida – “smoke ‘em out” – wherever they happened to be hiding (Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia). And yet, not even a token mention on terrorism escaped the ambassador’s lips on that occasion. Was it because these were “good” terrorists?

Round about this time, when news of gruesome atrocities committed by the Western-backed ‘rebels’ was reaching the West, the US State Department suddenly decided that the Syrian National Council didn’t really represent the Syrian people after all (video).

But not to worry because, presto, a new leadership was manufactured in Doha, Qatar – of course – and given the catchy name of National Coalition for Syrian Opposition and Revolutionary Forces.

With the November 2012 launching of this new tool, whose scripted lines were pretty much the same as its predecessor’s – that is to say, no negotiations with Bashar al-Assad, ever – the process to derail Kofi Annan’s 6-point plan was once again on track, much to the frustration of new Syrian peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and his attempts to restore peaceful negotiations.

The war kept raging throughout the Autumn: in October, the Turkish armed forces fired artillery into Syrian territory, supposedly in retaliation to civilian deaths caused by a mortar attack originating from the area, even though, as the media reporting the incident stated: “It was unknown whether the mortar shells were fired by Syrian government forces or rebels fighting to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad”. In a further provocative move in January, NATO began deploying Patriot missiles in Turkey, on the border with Syria – a process which continued until February.

The same month, the Commission of Inquiry published another report. While the previous report published in August did briefly acknowledge the presence of “foreign fighters among some armed groups” (paragraph 26 and 10 of Annex I), rushing to explain that none of this was verified or significant, this new February report noted that their number had increased (paragraph 27), with a consequent exacerbation of the conflict (paragraphs 120, 134 and 168); again, this was followed by the caveat that their number was still somewhat trascurable although, apparently, relevant enough for the authors of the report to quietly drop the classification of a “non-international armed conflict”, which had appeared in the previous document (paragraphs 3 and 143). In reality, Syrian government officials pointed out – as early as November 2012 – that the number of anti-government foreign fighters in Syria exceeded 10,000, according to conservative estimates. In its methodology, this new C.O.I. report did state: “the [Syrian] Government shared a number of documents, including reports of investigations conducted by national authorities, as well as lists of casualties. Such information is reflected in the present report, where relevant ”. Well, apparently, the invasion of the Syrian territory by over 10,000 foreign mercenaries was not considered “relevant” by the Commission.

The spring of 2013 did not bring many positive developments for the agenda of the ‘Friends of Syria’ and their public relations machine that had been trying to give the anti-government fighters a positive branding: first, there was a chemical attack on Khan al-Assal, west of Aleppo, which turned out to be perpetrated by the jihadidsts. Then, in a sweeping counter-offensive, the regular Syrian army, with the aid of Hezbollah troops, managed to recapture the city of al-Qusayr, which had been under rebel siege for a year. Needless to say, this wasn’t framed as a ‘liberation’ by Western media and think-tanks. In fact, in the June session of the Human Rights Council, dismayed to see their boys being defeated, Western representatives who could barely pronounce the city’s name of al Qusayr, promptly put on a sad face and denounced the event by calling it a siege.

All their statements were directly or indirectly informed by yet another report by the Commission, whose methodological flaws were the same as ever: namely, their sources, which were almost entirely made up of members of the armed opposition, Local Coordination Committees, deserters, “activists”, and their families and supporters, not to mention the fact that the C.o.I. accepted – and still accepts – testimonies from anonymous witnesses, delivered, as usual, via phone and Skype connection with their office in Geneva. In other words, unsubstantiated claims from dubious and unverified sources, something that no true international criminal court could even remotely consider as admissible. All this same criticism could also apply to numerous YouTube videos the C.o.I. relied on as evidence, much like as did so many International Non-Governmental Organisations. These videos, even when they did show effects and victims of the atrocities, did not reveal the perpetrators.

After the regular Syrian army recaptured al Qusayr, the opposition armed rebels, the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’ was no longer looking like a viable tool to get rid of Assad. In the aftermath, Gen. Salim Idriss himself, chief of staff of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army at the time, admitted in an interview: “We, as FSA, acknowledge that we cannot face up to the regime’s regular army when it is in full-strength […] The best way for us to fight this regime is by guerilla warfare or hit and run tactics without holding on to territory [emphasis added]. Clearly, it looked like the Free Syrian Army needed the aid of a much more powerful military machine, which had in fact been waiting in the wings for some time. All that was needed was a pretext.

And, sure enough, with the chemical attack in Ghouta, which took place on August 21st, the group of state actors impatient to remove Assad from power had exactly what they needed to start whipping up public support for a military intervention led by NATO forces, at which point the White House could now relax and quietly drop the familiar line of Assad having to step down in Syria, now that they could finally abandon diplomacy and count on military might to do the job.

And never mind if the perpetrators of the horrific attack were not yet identified, and if past evidence pointed to the Western-funded rebels to be the most likely culprit. The drums were beating once again, for yet another humanitarian war (see, for instance, Joe Biden, 9' 4” into this Democracy Now video].

US Vice-President Joe Biden was evidently hoping on his audience’s defective memory, considering that, as early as December 2012, the news that US forces were training the rebels to secure and use chemical weapons had already been in the public domain, and that in January, those same rebels, obviously eager to start using those chemical weapons, had released a disturbing video where they demonstrated the lethal effects of the gas in their possession on some rabbits. Not to mention the fact that in March the jidaists had been found guilty of a chemical attack in Khan al-Assal, in May Commissioner Carla del Ponte had uncovered evidence of the rebels’ use of nerve gas and that the Turkish police had seized 4 Kilos of sarin gas from a group of Al-Nusrah rebels based in Turkey. Apparently the public was asked to forget all this and undewrite a “surgical bombing” on Syria, whatever was meant by that. At that point, any diplomatic solution was pretty much discarded as Western powers were looking forward to reshape the country to their liking through military means.

However, despite all the best propaganda efforts, the public was not fooled. on August 30th , the British Parliament voted against joining US-led strikes. A few days later, as the White House seemed to start panicking at the prospect of a defeat in Congress, State Secretary John Kerry had the temerity of announcing that the President, as leader of the Free and Democratic World, was contemplating the idea of going to war regardless of how Congress might vote and regardless of how the American people might feel about it. Because, after all, this was the removal of a war-mongering dictator in the name of democratic values, right? (video and video).

Luckily, the Barack Obama administration was wise enough not to go ahead with the military strikes; instead, a compromise proposed by the Russian Federation was accepted whereby the Assad government would agree to surrender its chemical weapons to international control. This must have been considered a viable solution by US-based global planners, represented by the Obama administration, who knew from Iraqi experience that you have to render a country defenceless and must strip it of all its deterrents before you can attack it.

Therefore, this temporary solution must have been viewed as a postponement of the inevitable military attack, whenever the next opportunity might arise. At this point, the approach changed, turning into a game of setting unrealistic deadlines for Assad, with the idea of then portraying him as a clever manipulator who had fooled the International Community and managed to buy himself more time, while not even remotely wanting to comply. For instance, on September 9th, John Kerry demanded that Assad hand over his chemical stockpile within a week: a very odd demand, when one considers that the USA itself had failed to meet the final, extended deadline for the destruction of its own chemical weapons stockpiles, which should have been destroyed in 2007, as per Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, which mandated signatory states to do so within ten years of the treaty’s entry into force. In fact, as of October 2013, the Nuclear Threat Initiative reported that a facility set up by the United States government for that purpose, the Pueblo Chemical Agent Destruction Facility, would not be able to complete disposal of its chemical agents before 2019. This was the same country that was now putting pressure on Assad to destroy its own chemical arsenal within a week.

In October 2013, an enraged Saudi Arabia announced its rejection of a seat at the UN Security Council, in protest of the United States’ failure to go to war against Syria. Clearly, in many diplomatic circles among the so-called ‘Friends of Syria’, a sort of panic was being felt at the prospect that the conflit might have a diplomatic solution after all, leading to a possible democratic transition, as opposed to the military aggression the ‘Friends of Syria’ were looking forward to. Shortly after, a second Action Group Conference on Syria was announced: this came to be known as Geneva 2 (you might need the video); attempts to disrupt it came from various sides almost immediately. First, Free Syrian Army Commander Salim Idriss said that his men would take no part in the Geneva II conference and would not cease fire during the period in which the conference would be held. The United States Congress, after arrogating the right to decide who could and could not join, protesting at Iran’s possible participation at the negotiation table, did not waste a minute in stepping up aid to the anti-government forces. Meanwhile, the practically defunct Syrian National Council quit the Coalition in protest of its decision to participate to Geneva 2. If this wasn’t enough to discredit the conference and paint it as doomed to fail, a shocking report was released by London-based law firm Carter Ruck, alleging the systematic mass killing and torture of detainees by the Assad regime in Syria. The report was commissioned and paid for by – that’s right – Qatar. It was claimed that the source of this report was an anonymous deserter, named ‘Caesar’, who had supposedly worked as a photographer for the Syrian police for 13 years, photographing dead bodies of detainees killed by police forces. The authors of the report claimed to have 55,000 photographs in their possession, of which they only released ten. A detailed exposition of the background of the authors of the report, and of its many dubious aspects would be beyond the scope of this analysis, and will have to be postponed to a later study. Suffice it to say that, although mainstream media almost universally accepted the report as genuine, many inconsistencies became immediately apparent.

When the Geneva 2 talks finally did take place, they were promptly described as showing no progress, a failure, and an exercise in futility. And a failure they were indeed, for those parties who were in a rush to form a transitional government without Assad. During the conference, the Syrian delegation submitted a political communiqué which rejected terrorism and all forms of extremism and racism, and asked countries to stop supplying terrorist groups with arms and training, in accordance with international resolutions relevant to combating terrorism.

Needless to say, both the US representatives and the National Coalition for Syrian Opposition and Revolutionary Forces refused to acknowledge the communiqué.

At the time of writing, a new report by the UN Commission of Inquiry is being made publicly available. It will form the basis for a Human Rights Council resolution on the last week of March 2014. Its many flaws and inconsistencies have been documented in a paper written by investigative journalist Marinella Correggia, and available at this link.

http://apophenia.altervista.org/syria-three-years-of-lies/

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Wednesday, March 26, 2014 8:51 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Strange, but for some reason I can't directly reply to SignyM, instead getting a "We apologize, but an unknown error was encountered.
If the problem persists, please email haken[at]fireflyfans.net" message, so I'll have to just copy and quote her comments,

Anyway...

Quote:

Meanwhile, another item for you whine about...

Syria: Three Years of Lies



Whine?

Just point out that it's an anonymous posting on a site that has no information as to who or what it is, but that publishes pretty much exclusively pro-Syrian-regime, and pro-Iran stuff. I know you consider this credible information. Me - not so much.





"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Wednesday, March 26, 2014 10:00 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Yes, whine.

I noticed that rather than provide real reasons for questioning specific items, you attempt to dismiss the article out-of-hand by where it came from, not by what it says.

That may work for people like you who automatically give western news site more credibility than news from elsewhere, but all THAT does is blind you to the world outside your comfort zone.

I have a strange idea, Geezer, altho I know it's a little though to wrap your brain around: Instead of assessing whether something is true or false by "where" the information comes from, how about assessing it by testing it against the facts as can best be determined, or check to see if it is internally inconsistent? Be a news detective. I realize it means that you'll have to set your biases aside for a little while, but you'll be able to explain events that you couldn't see before.

FWIW- I think the database is getting too big for the software to handle. Perhaps it needs repacking.

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Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


1989 -



Neither of the Bushes are any more culpable for the destruction of America than Obama is.

They were all equally culpable of it.

Part of me thinks that's the true reason that whether they serve the entire 8 years or our ousted after 4 they all seem to look 20 years older when they're done.

The night after the Inagural Party everything changes for him. They are then privy to bucketloads of human truth that maybe only 5000 people in the history of mankind knew about before him. Not only that, but they had to continue lying to all of the people he promised change to for the next 8 years.

In his position, with the knowledge he now has, all of his pre-presidential promises were total bullshit.

I'm not talking about Obama. I'm talking about Obama and anybody who is brave and/or stupid enough to take on that role. Republican or Democrat..... "Hey Everybody!!!!! Who wants to spend the next 4 to 8 years of their life as the captain of a sinking ship?????!!!!!!

You can look many decades in the past to find origins of the pain we're all suffering now. The sooner we stop fighting each other and actually get to the bottom of the truth together, the sooner we can evolve together as a Civilization.



Quote:

Originally posted by reaverfan:
I was well aware of what you presented, and I'm always surprised by how many people don't know about it all these years later. I remember a military guy talking about the wholsale slaughter of retreating Iraqi conscripts, and that he told his men to get those "baby killers."

Did he know it was all a lie? Probably.

Bush II lied us into our current quagmire, and people still act like there was some merit to it. Astounding.

We've still got people believing Obamacare "horror stories" than don't check out when they're investigated. We've still got people who know no history before Jan. 2008, and blame Obama for things that aren't his fault, or are completely made up (birthers, anyone?).



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Wednesday, March 26, 2014 7:17 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

noticed that rather than provide real reasons for questioning specific items, you attempt to dismiss the article out-of-hand by where it came from, not by what it says.


That's because it's pretty obvious that what it says is informed more by where it comes from than any interest in truth or impartiality. An article that makes such outrageous claims with no substantiation, that comes from an unknown source with no credibility, and obviously goes in with an agenda and fits suppositions to support that agenda, has no currency.

Quote:

That may work for people like you who automatically give western news site more credibility than news from elsewhere, but all THAT does is blind you to the world outside your comfort zone.


But your cites are very seldom "news". They're Wiki articles that either are ambiguous (incubators were apparently stolen and returned), or are highlighted for their bias and lack of balance (like the Venezuela coup one), or are pretty much blog posts from anonymous sources.

Quote:

I have a strange idea, Geezer, altho I know it's a little though to wrap your brain around: Instead of assessing whether something is true or false by "where" the information comes from, how about assessing it by testing it against the facts as can best be determined, or check to see if it is internally inconsistent? Be a news detective. I realize it means that you'll have to set your biases aside for a little while, but you'll be able to explain events that you couldn't see before.


It's not only where it comes from, but whether it is obviously propaganda.

Besides, you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I believe everything the Western Media says. Of course I don't. But the fact that, for example, they were willing to publish a story about Iraqis stealing Kuwaiti incubators does not change the fact that Iraq invaded Kuwait.


"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Wednesday, March 26, 2014 11:24 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

That's because it's pretty obvious that what it says is informed more by where it comes from than any interest in truth or impartiality. An article that makes such outrageous claims with no substantiation, that comes from an unknown source with no credibility, and obviously goes in with an agenda and fits suppositions to support that agenda, has no currency.
Geezer, the more you say that something is "obviously" anything without any basis whatsoever, the more you're "obviously" doing what you're complaining about. You're obviously only interested in pushing a POV without any interest in truth or impartiality. In essence, propagandizing.

Quote:

But your cites are very seldom "news". They're Wiki articles that either are ambiguous (incubators were apparently stolen and returned), or are highlighted for their bias and lack of balance (like the Venezuela coup one), or are pretty much blog posts from anonymous sources.
Except that I, and others, have provided links to on-the-ground videos. Marked the times on these videos for events of interest so that you could see and judge for yourself the events in context. Again, propagandizing.

Quote:

It's not only where it comes from, but whether it is obviously propaganda.
Again, YOU are "obviously" propagandizing, because you keep repeating YOUR OPINION over and over with absolutely no backing whatsoever. If that isn't propaganda, what is?

Quote:

Besides, you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I believe everything the Western Media says.
You disbelieve anything that anybody else says, even if there is robust evidence in its favor.
Quote:

Of course I don't.
Obviously, you do.
Quote:

But the fact that, for example, they were willing to publish a story about Iraqis stealing Kuwaiti incubators does not change the fact that Iraq invaded Kuwait.
So, if it was so "obvious" that the Iraqi invasion required a response, why did the Kuwaitis have to stoop to engineering a fake story? Obviously, they felt they needed a little propaganda on their side.

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Thursday, March 27, 2014 8:29 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Geezer, the more you say that something is "obviously" anything without any basis whatsoever, the more you're "obviously" doing what you're complaining about. You're obviously only interested in pushing a POV without any interest in truth or impartiality. In essence, propagandizing.


And what point of view do you see me pushing? Have you seen much of anything from me that's pro-Syrian rebels or pro-the new government in Ukraine?

I'm just interested in your belief in what to me is (yes) obviously propaganda, and the fact that you try so hard to push it on everyone here. Even folks usually on your side in disagreements have called you on it.




"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Thursday, March 27, 2014 1:36 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Rappy often says that science isn't determined by consensus. Well, neither is truth.... or, for that matter, reality. Just because everyone believes/thinks they know something doesn't mean its true. At one time everyone knew that the earth was flat. Why? Because that's what everyone knew. All you had to do was go look out your door and there is was: a flat earth. It's obvious!

So to me, it doesn't matter if people "on my side"- whatever that is- disagree with me. Or if people "on YOUR side" disagree with me. Hell, I don't care if EVERYONE disagrees with me. Why not?? Because, as I said, reality isn't determined by sides, it isn't determined by consensus. Its like arguing what 2+2 equals: it's pointless.

You've been pretty quiet about Syria (and Libya, and Iraq) but you've also been blazingly wrong. You're falling once again into the pattern of behavior which will allow people to ask (again) You present yourself as such as master-mind of history, but where were YOU when this all started? Why didn't YOU speak up? Why didn't YOU see what was happening, and what was coming?

So, here I am, speaking up. I've asked for - and hunted down- information, I've made my observations, I've brought data to the table, I've made my predictions, I've made my moral reaction very clear. Time and events will tell whether I was right or wrong- not opinions voiced today.

Once again, if you disagree with me- as I know you do- I welcome the discussion. But please bring something to the table other than "obvious" opinion.

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Thursday, March 27, 2014 3:17 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

So to me, it doesn't matter if people "on my side"- whatever that is- disagree with me. Or if people "on YOUR side" disagree with me. Hell, I don't care if EVERYONE disagrees with me. Why not?? Because, as I said, reality isn't determined by sides, it isn't determined by consensus.


Apparently it's determined by what YOU believe.

Quote:

You've been pretty quiet about Syria (and Libya, and Iraq) but you've also been blazingly wrong. You're falling once again into the pattern of behavior which will allow people to ask (again) You present yourself as such as master-mind of history, but where were YOU when this all started? Why didn't YOU speak up? Why didn't YOU see what was happening, and what was coming?


This is why. I get tired of lectures from Ms. Know-it-all.

Quote:

Once again, if you disagree with me- as I know you do- I welcome the discussion. But please bring something to the table other than "obvious" opinion.


What do I disagree with you about? That in Syria, Egypt, Venezuela, Libya, Ukraine, Russia, etc. there are no good guys, maybe just less bad guys, depending on the day? that people fighting for their cause - whether it be good or ill - will use propaganda as well as other means to win?


"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Thursday, March 27, 2014 8:58 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

This is why. I get tired of lectures from Ms. Know-it-all.
Well, if you keep bringing tired-old ad hominens (like you just did) and strawmen and appeals to authority and all of the other rhetorical tricks that you normally use in place of intelligent and honest discussion to the table, you'll get the response that you've been getting. Here's the question: Are you interested in finding out what's REALLY going on? Or do you only want to keep justifying your pre-set understandings?

Yanno- blue pill or red pill?


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Friday, March 28, 2014 9:25 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Well, if you keep bringing tired-old ad hominens (like you just did) and strawmen and appeals to authority and all of the other rhetorical tricks that you normally use in place of intelligent and honest discussion to the table, you'll get the response that you've been getting. Here's the question: Are you interested in finding out what's REALLY going on? Or do you only want to keep justifying your pre-set understandings?

Yanno- blue pill or red pill?



This is why. I get tired of lectures from Ms. Know-it-all.




"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Friday, March 28, 2014 11:46 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

I get tired of lectures from Ms. Know-it-all.
You don't seem to mind them from rappy, though. Heck, HE tells people all the time how wrong they all are, and how right he is, and how nobody else knows "the truth" except him and maybe a few of his fellow right-wingers. Every post, he brings up the blue pill-red pill analogy. And you're OK with that. Am I right? Well, at least you've never complained before about what a know-it-all rappy is!



Yanno, everybody here is a know-it-all. Whenever someone posts their opinion, they are implicitly saying that they believe it to be correct. (Unless they're being trolls and sockpuppets, but that's another story.) The question is- Are they willing to discuss their opinion? Are they willing to change their minds as a result of that discussion? If not- what does that say about them?

----------------------------------

This really deserves a separate thread- or at least a separate post if it's own, but seeing as that "unknown error" message is coming up at nearly every attempt to post, this will have to do as an edit to the previous post:

WOW there've been a lot of leaked conversations, haven't there?

1) Nuland picking the winners and losers in Ukraine (Oh, and "Fuck the EU")


2) Estonian Minister Paet passing along the evidence/suspicion that the Maidan sniper-fire actually came from pro-Western provocateurs.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/ukraine-bugged-call-cathe
rine-ashton-urmas-paet


3) Yulia Tymoshenko wanting to nuke Russians...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/03/25/in-latest
-wiretapping-leak-yulia-tymoshenko-appears-to-say-nuclear-weapons-should-be-used-to-kill-russians
/


4) Turkish PM Erdogan instructing his son to dispose of ill-gotten gains
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/25/leaked-tapes-calls-erdoga
n-resign-turkish-pm


Well, here comes a leaked conversation worthy of a PirateNews post:

TURKEY PLANNED FALSE FLAG ATTACK FROM SYRIA
A leaked conversation between head of Turkish Intelligence and the Turkish Foreign Minister, planning to attack Turkey from the Syrian side of the border as a cause for war:

Ahmet Davutolu “Prime Minister said that in current conjuncture, this attack (on Suleiman Shah Tomb) must be seen as an opportunity for us.”

Hakan Fidan “I’ll send 4 men from Syria, if that’s what it takes. I’ll make up a cause of war by ordering a missile attack on Turkey; we can also prepare an attack on Suleiman Shah Tomb if necessary.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-27/here-youtube-false-flag-attac
k-syria-clip-erdogan-wanted-banned

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/turkey-youtube-ban-full-transcript-leaked-syr
ia-war-conversation-between-erdogan-officials-1442161


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Monday, November 23, 2015 9:39 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:


FWIW, not knowing how to "make money"... I don't either. All I know how to do, really, is work and save. I think the big "money-makers" like Soros and Diamon and Gates are dishonest sociopaths anyway, so not being in on the hustle is a good thing, in my book anyway.





Soros funded


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Thursday, December 3, 2015 11:08 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Trump was quoting Drudge, on Savage radio and talking with Alex Jones....you can say what you like about Trump he does have flaws, he has some mistakes but he will speak his mind and he ain't tv mainstream

Biggs


deep inside the Catskill Mountains of New York

named it "Holy Islamberg"

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Thursday, December 3, 2015 5:01 PM

REAVERFAN


Sorry. Iraq invaded because our diplomat said the US wouldn't intervene.

The incubator story was entirely fabricated. If you have actual proof of atrocities, post it up. It still doesn't justify what the US did.

The actual facts about the incident in Venezuela are best deconstructed in this documentary. You get actual footage that proves what was really going on.


Looks like it won't load. Google "The Revolution won't be Televised."




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Thursday, December 3, 2015 6:01 PM

RAHLMACLAREN

"Damn yokels, can't even tell a transport ship ain't got no guns on it." - Jayne Cobb


Try removing the 's' in the ' https';.



Find here the Serenity you seek. -Tara Maclay

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Friday, December 4, 2015 1:12 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


One of the points I found unrealistic about the movie "Serenity" was the idea that if you just tell people "THE TRUTH!" the scales will fall from their eyes and they will revolt em masse.

From my experience here ... of fans devoted to an intelligent, nuanced, and unpredictable scifi show... I've found nothing could be further from the truth!.

You present people with opinions and events that run counter to their programming, even if ... no, especially if ... it's important and meme-shattering ... and they run screaming from the sound, with their hands over their ears!

It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad. Most people are purely devoted to protecting their emotional comfort-zone. Hardly ANYbody is interested in "the truth"!

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, December 5, 2015 12:51 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"Wrong again. That's just your meme, your programing."

He said without a shred of evidence.

As always.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Saturday, December 5, 2015 10:40 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

"Wrong again. That's just your meme, your programing."- GSTRING

He said without a shred of evidence.- KIKI

Speaking of over-used, unsubstantiated memes...- GSTRING



And there is GSTRING: Providing the very evidence he claims doesn't exist.

Adding to the pile of crap, son?

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Saturday, December 5, 2015 11:13 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Wow, all you can do is parrot people?
I'm sorry that you feel that the statement (about people running screaming from the truth with their hands over their ears) was personally directed at you. It's a pretty common phenomenon across the board (not THIS board, ALL boards) even yours truly is subject to it.

I mostly post here what I believe to be is true i.e. correspondent to reality (altho I do post specifically without comment some items just for discussion). I've spent a great deal of time thinking about things and attempting to dig into what's REALLY going on, but I also know that there's no way I can see all of reality. Therefore, I appreciate my ideas being challenged. But by "challenged" I don't mean with bullshit, invective, and prejudice tossed in my direction, I mean RIGOROUSLY challenged, with evidence and logic. That's the point of discussion, isn't it? (Unless you just want your prejudices stroked, that is.)

It seems to me that if you want to know what's REALLY happening, you would be intent on eliminating your own biases, not protecting them. So, do you want to know what's really going on? Or not?

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Sunday, December 6, 2015 9:23 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


You clearly have a pro-western, "exceptionalist" bias. If you don't know what that means, the end result is that you think the rules that apply to "everyone else" don't apply to the west. You weigh facts and events on a very uneven scale ... even if there are awful events of equal import, it's TERRIBLE when "someone else" (especially Russia, or Russian-backed) does it, and worth only a remark or two when "we" do it. You place "isms" ... your "isms" particularly ... on a weightier scale than actual living human beings.

For example, you're in a complete froth about "Russia invades Ukraine" (have been unable to demonstrate that it's a true invasion instead of a rebellion, or how that's necessarily a bad thing for the people living there) but except for -literally- one (maybe two) sentences, you have no comment to make about the fact that Kiev is shelling urban centers and has killed over 9000 people (German intelligence says 50,000) by now and displaced millions.

Now, I'm willing to discuss the effect of invasions (or interference/ intervention, which I think is more the model) disrespecting national boundaries, which is one of the reasons for a Ukraine/ Syria point to point comparison.

Turkey (with Saudi/Qatari/American backing) has followed the same model in Syria as Russia in Ukraine: porous border for refugees in one direction and foreign-born military men in the other, arms and weapons flowing to "friendly" combatants, treatment of "friendly" wounded in national hospitals, trade and aid, intelligence sharing, etc. But there are important differences too, which I'm not going to discuss here.

The point being that instead of simply counting the bodies ... is this nation/ group doing more harm than good?.... you tend to give a free ride to western "intervention" no matter how destructive or improperly motivated.

Now, the original point of this thread was "How truth is manufactured in the West" and rather than making you, with your incessant narcissism, the subject of YET ANOTHER thread, I'm not going to discuss YOU any further. If you have any intelligent comments on anything OTHER THAN YOU, I'd be happy to talk about them.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, December 6, 2015 3:26 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"Adding to the pile of crap, son?"

Maybe he thinks that if he keeps piling it on, instead of becoming a bigger and bigger pile of crap it will magically turn into non-crap.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Friday, December 11, 2015 4:32 AM

SHINYGOODGUY


Really!? Bush didn't lie about WMDs, and the media, on all sides, wasn't complicit. They weren't foaming at the mouth to "present" Cheney's, er...I mean, Bush's case.

Well..........you're entitled to your opinion, my friend.

I see things differently.


SGG


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:

Those aren't lies of the W administration, but red herrings and misinformation, by the Left.

Swing and miss.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall


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Friday, December 11, 2015 5:16 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Talking about truth being 'manufactured' in the West, but using obscure examples from decades ago. Says it all really.

If I wanted to point out truth being 'manufactured' in Russian media, I wouldn't have to go back more than a couple of weeks.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Friday, December 11, 2015 7:48 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Talking about truth being 'manufactured' in the West, but using obscure examples from decades ago. Says it all really.

If I wanted to point out truth being 'manufactured' in Russian media, I wouldn't have to go back more than a couple of weeks.- KPO



There's KPO and his obsession again.

You just can't stop talking about Russia, can you KPO? It's like, when you get your ass handed to you in one thread, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-oil-idUSKBN
0TT2O120151210
you hop to another with more ridiculous talking points.

OK, manufactured truth, from the west, that's more recent than "decades" ago:

1) Qaddafi "massacring his own people".

2) Assad using Sarin gas on his own people. (It wasn't "decades" ago, despite the fact that you would like people to think so.)

3) (Lack of) Information about Turkey's and the Saudi's support for ISIL.

4) KPO, with this post, trying to convince people that this is a long-ago problem in western media.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, December 11, 2015 10:03 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


KPO- on any day, son, I can read western media and find another whopper. And I just found one. Look, here it is, in Reuters:

Quote:

Islamic State militants have made more than $500 million trading oil with significant volumes sold to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and some finding its way to Turkey, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Thursday.
Because, yanno, US government officials would never lie!

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-oil-idUSKBN
0TT2O120151210


--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, December 11, 2015 12:48 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
KPO- on any day, son, I can read western media and find another whopper.




The problem with you comrade SIG is that you have a cancer called Mother Russia. This is a quote of Putin’s as the Berlin Wall was coming down.

“Moscow is silent.’ I realized that the Soviet Union was ill. It was a fatal illness called paralysis. A paralysis of power. “

Putin’s Soviet Union was collapsing and he has been trying to rebuild it ever since. He has worked diligently to reconstruct the stifling presence of government over its people. He is recreating a Constitutional Monarchy. Supposedly independent institutions of his Republic that are apparently subordinated to him the Tsar. And, he is once again expanding Russia’s borders covertly hiding behind the hostilities of its outgoing migrant population. Georgia and the Ukraine being the obvious examples.

When compared to the United States and the west Russia shows itself to be riddled with disease. It’s why you spend most of your waking moments searching out ways of attacking America. Posting a story of police brutality here and suggesting something sinister may be going on there. The title of this thread is laughable and yet distressing. It shows you again casting America and the west as flawed by suggesting their news outlets spew anything but the truth. All, in an attempt to deflect from Russia’s disastrous state controlled media.

The problem you keep running up against in your scrutiny of the United States and the west, is that the two philosophies, the west and Russia's aren’t comparable, so your disease metastasizes. Your need to hold Russia up as a bastion of a free society grows. Yet Russia falls further and further behind the rest of the civilized world in the pursuit of morals and honoring human rights. It is backsliding to its past which is why YOU’RE HERE and NOT THERE. No one choses less for themselves SIG and neither did you.

Not to worry though, I am not your biggest threat when it comes to revealing your psychosis or disclosing your mania, delusions and distorted perceptions of reality. No SIG, it is Putin’s pursuits of reestablishing a world order that locks people behind walls to keep them from escaping that exposes your posts as schizophrenic. Putin’s propaganda flows into your head which you carry like a vessel till you deliver it onto these threads. Yet Putin’s deeds paint a completely different reality for those who can express free thought and it is there you are revealed.



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Friday, December 11, 2015 2:06 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Uh huh.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, December 11, 2015 3:07 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Uh huh.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.



Frankly I am surprised how quickly you capitulate. Perhaps you are tired of carrying Putin's water.


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Friday, December 11, 2015 4:34 PM

REAVERFAN



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Friday, December 11, 2015 4:35 PM

REAVERFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by RahlMaclaren:
Try removing the 's' in the ' https';.



Find here the Serenity you seek. -Tara Maclay

Thanks! Fixed now.

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Friday, December 11, 2015 8:27 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Oh, yeah, one more "manufactured" western "truth": Russia invaded Georgia.

There was a lot of discussion about that here, at the time when people actually believed in discussing things instead of just calling people "comrade" and attempting to discredit others by name-calling, and AT THE TIME I said it was clear that- despite western media- Georgia fired the first shot. That was true then it's till true now, and the western media lied (again) and people swallowed it whole.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, December 11, 2015 9:02 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, yeah, one more "manufactured" western "truth": Russia invaded Georgia.

There was a lot of discussion about that here, at the time when people actually believed in discussing things instead of just calling people "comrade" and attempting to discredit others by name-calling, and AT THE TIME I said it was clear that- despite western media- Georgia fired the first shot. That was true then it's till true now, and the western media lied (again) and people swallowed it whole.



I am tempted to say I am astounded by someone who does nothing but maliciously attack others including whole countries, cry foul over being called a name. I say tempted because I am not surprised at all with this coming from you, because after all, you are clueless.

To put a finer point on it SIG, you reap what you sow. It is all deserved.


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Saturday, December 12, 2015 1:59 AM

SHINYGOODGUY


And you know this How, exactly!?

Let me see, a blanket statement that governments lie - Quelle surprise!


SGG


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
KPO- on any day, son, I can read western media and find another whopper. And I just found one. Look, here it is, in Reuters:

Quote:

Islamic State militants have made more than $500 million trading oil with significant volumes sold to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and some finding its way to Turkey, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Thursday.
Because, yanno, US government officials would never lie!

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-oil-idUSKBN
0TT2O120151210


--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.


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Saturday, December 12, 2015 10:56 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:


Oh, yeah, one more "manufactured" western "truth": Russia invaded Georgia.

There was a lot of discussion about that here, at the time when people actually believed in discussing things instead of just calling people "comrade" and attempting to discredit others by name-calling, and AT THE TIME I said it was clear that- despite western media- Georgia fired the first shot. That was true then it's till true now, and the western media lied (again) and people swallowed it whole.- SIGNY

I am tempted to say I am astounded by someone who does nothing but maliciously attack others including whole countries -THUGR

If I post the truth of what a nation (or the media) is doing, how is that "maliciously attacking"? Since when in the truth an "attack"? Only YOU would see it that way. That's because you, apparently, have no respect for the truth. It looks like you're very afraid of it. You see the truth as an attack.

--------------
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Saturday, December 12, 2015 11:53 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

KPO- on any day, son, I can read western media and find another whopper. And I just found one. Look, here it is, in Reuters:
Quote:

Islamic State militants have made more than $500 million trading oil with significant volumes sold to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and some finding its way to Turkey, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Thursday.
Because, yanno, US government officials would never lie!
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-oil-idUSKBN
0TT2O120151210

-SIGNY

And you know this How, exactly!?
Let me see, a blanket statement that governments lie - Quelle surprise!
SGG



How do I know this?

Because, among other things, it is presented ENTIRELY WITHOUT EVIDENCE. You, like G, KPO, and THUGR, don't even have the good sense to notice when you're dealing with 'allegation" versus "evidence".

Now, I have read reports and seen pictures posted by others - aside from Russia- which details the number of oil tankers trucks going from Syria and Iraq to Turkey. The reporters have calculated the amount of oil, followed it to Turkish refiners and to Turkish ports, and watched ship-to-ship transfers offshore etc. There is nothing like that in this article which, internally, doesn't even make sense.

Here, let me analyze the article for you.

Quote:

Islamic State militants have made more than $500 million trading oil with significant volumes sold to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and some finding its way to Turkey, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Thursday.
Okay then. As it stand, this is a bald, and somewhat garbled, allegation. An accusation with NO PROOF.

First of all, how does he know the value of the oil being sold? He would have to know both the volume and the prices of the various markets that its being sold into. That would require deep knowledge of Syrian state finances, Turkish finances, and other prices on the illegal market - information that I doubt that he has.

But, taking his statement at face value, and assuming a 50% (or more) discount from legal per barrel prices... If illegal oil is being sold at

$20 a barrel (or less) that means
250,000,000 (or more) barrels of oil sold, or
131,000 (or more) tanker trucks of standard USA size (about 8000 gallons)
11,000 (or more) tanker trucks a month
370 (or more) tanker trucks a day

That's a lot of tanker trucks! That would be visible by drone, or even by satellite! Where are they all going?

"SOME" is going to Turkey.
A "SIGNIFICANT VOLUME" is supposedly going to the Syria government

Now, there are a few things to think about:

1) Where is THE REST going? The statement, in its face, doesn't account for what seems to be a rather large remainder.

2) How is the oil supposedly transported to Syrian government-controlled areas? There are only two paths that the oil can follow ... (a) either out of ISIL-controlled Syria thru a neighboring country (which one? Iraq? Turkey?) and back in thru port, which would reveal a significant line of trucks going out, and ships coming in, or (b) directly into Syrian government-controlled territory, again, creating a significant line of trucks from ISIL territory into Damascus or other areas.

And if not trucks... if pipeline ... don't they know where the oil is coming from and going to?

With all of this oil-traffic supposedly going into government-controlled territory, don't you find it strange that there are no photos of roadways and trucks, no coordinates of pumping stations and pipelines, or ANY OTHER evidence presented in favor of this allegation?

ALSO, don't you find it strange that the USA and its "partners" have somehow NOT NOTICED this oil traffic until JUST NOW? Not targeted it at any time in the previous 14 months of bombing???

Quote:

The United States, France, Britain and Russia have vowed to defeat Islamic State, which uses an extreme interpretation of Islam to justify attacks and brutality in large parts of Syria and Iraq that it controls.
Uh huh. What does this have to do with oil, especially oil to government-controlled Syria?

Quote:

A U.S.-led coalition is bombing the hardline Sunni group, as is Assad's only big-power supporter Russia, in an attempt to kill its leaders and cripple the oil wells which the group uses to finance its rule and attacks abroad.
Uh huh. The USA didn't start bombing ISIL's oil assets until Russia helpfully point them out in several forums such as the G20 and UN.

Quote:

In one of the most detailed public explanations of Islamic State's oil trade, U.S. Treasury Department official Adam Szubin
The same person that you have faith will stop terror financing networks

Quote:

said militants were selling as much as $40 million a month of oil at the installations which was then spirited on trucks across the battlelines of the Syrian civil war and sometimes further.
And again, he just noticed this now. And has no evidence for his characterization of where the oil is going. Allegation, no proof.

Quote:

"ISIL is selling a great deal of oil to the Assad regime," Szubin, acting under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence with the Treasury, told an audience at Chatham House in London.
Once again, a bald statement with no proof.

Quote:

"The two are trying to slaughter each other and they are still engaged in millions and millions of dollars of trade," Szubin said of Assad's government and Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
More bald statements, with no proof.

Quote:

The "far greater amount" of Islamic State oil ends up under Assad's control while some is consumed internally in Islamic State-controlled areas. Some ends up in Kurdish regions and some in Turkey, he said.
More bald statements, with no proof.

Quote:

"Some is coming across the border into Turkey," Szubin said when asked for details on the money trail.
More bald statements, with no proof.

Quote:

"Our sense is that ISIL is taking its profits basically at the wellhead
That is an impossibility. ISIL still has to sell the oil somewhere in order to realize that profit

Quote:

and so while you do have ISIL oil ending up in a variety of different places that's not really the pressure we want when it comes to stemming the flow of funding - it really comes down to taking down their infrastructure,"
In other words, bomb the oil wells, so that if the Syrian government retakes the oil-producing regions, it will have a big rebuilding job to do. (My speculation is that the USA is afraid that the Syrian government WILL prevail, and therefore is setting the stage for a "scorched earth" retreat. But that's just speculation so far. And I doubt they will be successful since Russia has basically just said they will shoot ANY unfriendly plane out of the sky.)

Quote:

Szubin said it was unclear whether the $40 million a month estimate could be multiplied over a year. But in remarks prepared for delivery, he said Islamic State had made more than $500 million from the oil trade, but did not give a more specific time period.
Szubin is behaving like a guy who really wants a permanent appointment: he's saying exactly what his boss wants him to say.

Quote:

After Turkey downed a Russian fighter jet last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had intelligence that large amounts of oil and petroleum products were moving across the border from Islamic State territories to Turkey.

The son of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has denied Russian allegations that he and his family were profiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory.

"There is no question that better security, closing the Turkish border to flows is a key component right now and we are looking to the Turks to do more in that respect," Szubin said.

"It's not just a financial issue - it is about foreign terrorist flows, it's about weapons and it's about financing. I think securing that border would pay major dividends in terms of intensifying the pressure and also reducing the threat."

Here, he seems to be intent on saving Recep Erdogan's son, Balil, from being linked to terrorist oil flows. So while he acknowledges that the Turkish border allows fighters and weapons to flow into ISIL-controlled Syria and stolen antiquities, opium, and (been said) human transplant organs to flow OUT of ISIL-controlled areas, this activity all magically stops with oil.

Uh huh.

Quote:

In an attempt to cut militants' links to the global financial system, Szubin said the United States had worked with Iraq to close down dozens of bank branches in Islamic State-held territories. Szubin said militants had looted up to $1 billion from bank vaults in Syria and Iraq, but he said Islamic State's oil trade was the main target.
Because somehow $1 billion is less important than $500 million.

The rest is just other stuff, interesting but not relevant. Basically, the article is just one long propaganda piece for which the USA has not even bothered to cook up the faintest shred of evidence, published on the well-founded faith that most readers will swallow the article whole.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, December 12, 2015 12:06 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

If I wanted to point out truth being 'manufactured' in Russian media, I wouldn't have to go back more than a couple of weeks.- KPO
How would you know? You don't even READ Russian media.

You haven't the faintest clue what Russian media publishes because- as you have pointed out time and time again- you refuse to read "unreliable" sources.

So, once again, you're splattering the board with your own special brand of scheiß. Here, I have a proposition for you: why don't you actually go READ some articles in Russian media, then come back and detail for all of us how it is a "lie".


In the meantime, a self-parody of how Kremlin propaganda works. Enjoy!

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/12/rt-self-parody-how-kremlin-propag
anda.html


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