When the blood is a lie
by BlackCatte
If we told you this child was covered in blood would you dare to tell us we were lying?
On December 26 the UK Independent revealed that five people had been arrested in Egypt for faking footage of civilian suffering in east Aleppo. The Indy commented:
The videographer, his assistants and the parents of two children who appear in the footage were detained after police managed to trail the would-be camera crew to a building site awaiting demolition, a statement on Monday said.
The team reportedly admitted they had planned to distribute their work on social media, pretending it showed scenes of the injured and destruction in Aleppo, the embattled northern Syrian city which has just fallen back under government control after four years of fighting between the regime and Sunni rebels.
The footage in question was widely discussed in non-western outlets. According to Sputnik:
According to the Ministry, the police witnessed the shooting process, which was taking place near the vestiges of a building destroyed as illegal under the decision of the local authorities. A girl standing in a white dress covered in “blood” that later proved to be paint drew attention of a police officer driving by. The girl held a teddy bear covered in the same “blood” and had her arm “bandaged”.
The images are indeed excruciatingly amateurish. The “blood” is too clearly paint. The teddy bear is mawkish overkill. The location too clearly a building site or something similar.
It couldn’t fool us for a moment. Could it?
But more on that later.
Fakery is, of course, a very zeitgeisty issue, because “fake news” has been discovered by the corporate media. The EU is very worried about it apparently. Germany is so concerned it’s setting up a “specialist centre” to combat all the untrue things being said by people like us.
That’s a “specialist centre” you understand – not (and we have to make this very clear) a Ministry of Enlightenment & Propaganda, or anything at all resembling anything Goebbels may have created back in the bad old days. Goebbels was just doing propaganda. Merkel is doing truth. Big diff there.
Curious that the state and corporate media’s new dread of fake news doesn’t extend to self-policing or questioning the news feeds issued by their own patrons is it not?
No, of course it isn’t. And anyone who is surprised has really not been paying attention. Endless promo reels of official-narrative-endorsement is now a majority of mass media output, and not just on news outlets but in movies and fiction. Since Obama took office and the “Left” stopped even pretending to offer a reality check, an entirely fake recent history has been created, and a degree of estrangement from truth exists within the heart of our media and intelligentsia not seen since the days of Stalinism. The entirety of the class that traditionally offers limited critique of the power structure is now subsumed in a cultist and delusional thinking that makes them the slaves and endorsers of that power structure.
Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes embodies this institutional malaise perfectly. Listen to it and despair. In her rictus-smiling circle the war criminals Obama and Clinton are angels of peace and progress, the foreign wars and dronings aren’t happening, the murders and brutalisations aren’t happening, the dangerous persecution of Russia and concomitant risk of nuclear war isn’t happening, the fragmentation of American society through poverty isn’t happening. In her circle only Trump is happening; the single threat to the Progressive Utopia they believe they are inhabiting.
The Hollywood and media elites really believe this and view those of us who don’t as dangerous heretics who need to be controlled. Screaming “fake news” at any fact they can’t bear to believe is just Donald Sutherland pointing and howling in the closing shot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
In recent weeks the sense of desperate fantasy is increasing exponentially as this cultist belief system is colliding more and more forcibly with the evidence for its own falseness. The “news” is a roll-out of sketchy dreamscapes, so poorly developed and internally inconsistent they collapse at the slightest interrogation only to be replaced by more of the same. Official “reality” is a thin translucent mesh of empty words designed to remain cohesive only for the lifetime of a hashtag.
The solution to the crumbling of their credibility is to up the pace. Just keep the rollout fast and furious so your audience has no time to question or adjust. Look over here…sad pictures of sad people in some place of strategic importance to neocon interests. Look over there …horrifying images of the latest “terror attack!” Look this way…nasty people being mean to nice people. That’s dreadful, right? Share it. Deplore it. Be shocked. Be upset. Look at the pain. Look at the blood. LOOK AT THE BLOOD!
When the entire fabric of our official reality is based on lies…why should we assume the blood is always true?
Let’s take another look at this picture:
Suppose instead of being presented to us as a proven and clumsy fake this image had been in the Indy or on our Facebook feed as a genuine example of child-suffering? How would that red paint look then? And even if we felt a tinge of doubt about that, how many of us would have the courage/crassness to see this on FB and comment “nah – that’s not blood, kid’s just an actor”?
And how would we react to anyone who did have that courage/crassness?
I wonder how many times a day we unwittingly or inattentively endorse some sort of fakery? If the image presented to us appeals to our sense of justice or just seems too heartbreaking to question we’ll probably look no further, share it, add an outraged comment and pass it on. We’ve just been manipulated and won’t even know.
In a fake narrative fake blood might be better than real blood because it can appear wherever you want it to and be wiped away without consequence when its fifteen minutes are over. Disasters and death that can be manufactured in a make-up trailer might be a better option than the real thing, with no inconvenient victims hating and suing you.
Can we assume every image of a bleeding and dusty child is the real deal simply because the Indy didn’t tell us otherwise? And if we refuse to volunteer that act of faith, what do we do?
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I don’t doubt that Assad’s ‘reforms’ exacerbated the situation, however, there are three ‘things’ re the ‘Syrian conflict’ that should be taken into account? “A December 13, 2006 cable, “Influencing the SARG [Syrian government] in the End of 2006,”1 indicates that, as far back as 2006 – five years before “Arab Spring”protests in Syria – destabilizing the Syrian government was a central motivation of US policy. The author of the cable was William Roebuck,at the time chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Damascus. The cable outlines strategies for destabilizing the Syrian government. In the cable, Roebuck wrote: We believe Bashar’s weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as the conflict between economic reform steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question, and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists. This cable summarizes… Read more »
You did not mention Genie Energy operations in the zionist illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
It’s strategic advisory board – among others – includes Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney and Jacob Rothschild.
See https://genieoilgas.com/about-us/strategic-advisory-board/ for further details.
As ever, the menacing spectre of the Yinon Plan also always lies behind all these sorts of developments.
See http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815 for details.
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.
Pretty much every picture/video I’ve seen from ‘activists’ is obviously staged.
Many of the videos since 2011 have been taken down that were shared by the media. The Guardian’s ME Blog had a long list of them. Eventually they started putting ‘not verified’ disclaimers.
When you get videos like Omran or other children who just look bewildered and not crying – which seems somewhat odd, the MSM shout – Oh the children are so traumatised they’ve even stopped crying now!
The best thing for the Egyptian Court to do here is to sentence these faker media liars to Death !
Then Amnesty International, UN Human Rights etc would start screaming so BBC & CNN would have to report it.
Great job. So nice to occasionally get confirmation that if I’m crazy, at least I’m not alone.
It did actually cross my mind that this bit of fakery might turn out to be fake fakery, like MemoGate. The Independent story would turn out to be entirely false, and then everybody who accuses the MSM of fake news from now on, or in the past, would be “proven” to be gullible paranoid saps. That’s what I might do if I was an elite-level maniac worried that people were catching on to my fakery. It’d be like fakery insurance.
But probably not. But you never know. Might wait a few days before sharing…
“… a degree of estrangement from truth exists within the heart of our media and intelligentsia…” Excellent BlackCatte. I for one, am beginning to consider that for TPTB – that degree of estrangement is reaching totality. They are so insulated in their individualized ‘Roveian Bubbles’; so convinced they are “history’s actors”; so disassociated from reality; so caught in ever diminishing circles; so fed by their own positive feedback loops – that they are living their own lies. The ability to distinguish fake from real is literally beyond them – and not just confined to the news. Of course, TPTB have always been delusional and intoxicated by power; but since 9/11 there is not even a residual fear – nor even any censure – they are free to act out their fantasies of ‘Empire’ with impunity. For us, left to ‘study’ in the ‘reality-based community’ – they pose an existential threat.… Read more »
I never pay any attention to the insane bubble people of Hollywood. They might be good or maybe fair actors, but if they had to make it in the real world, they’d be pushing a mop.
Hell, they can’t or won’t even make decent pics these days, most of them are filled with nudity, sex scenes and CGI violence that is way over the top, and they call that entertainment? I call it something else, but for the sake of OFFG, won’t repeat that term here.
. . . and then even when the images as such aren’t staged, the ‘interpretation’ is inverted to support ‘humanitarian intervention’ on behalf of the ‘victims.’ But I think that if once you begin to understand the essence of the kind of society in which we live, that it is structured to serve the interests of the rich over those of the many, that exploitation and oppression and dispossession, obtained by means of various fleecing operations, not the least of which is the terror unleashed by military intervention, are the actual tools for amassing and preserving the immeasurable wealth of those who rule over us, then one isn’t so easily taken in by the roll-outs. “And if we refuse to volunteer that act of faith, what do we do?” The only thing that we can do, given the current paucity of organized resistance: educate others as best we can in… Read more »
Why would anybody go through the trouble of producing fake videos about civilian casualties in East Aleppo, especially in Egypt when there is so much real evidence of devastation unless you think the rubble displayed in this video is fake.
So what are you saying, Louis? That the fake production is Egypt is a fake fake, because with all the real rubble in East Aleppo from real bombs, why not just film your fake video there? I dunno. Maybe because you are on somebody’s payroll and, moreover, the chances of you and your fake video surviving to do its work as the crappy propaganda that it is are better in Egypt than in East Aleppo. I mean, as you yourself observe: the bombs and bullets in East Aleppo are real. Yeah, and I like your video, with it’s attempt to restore a bit of credibility to that “British based monitoring group (sic),” the SOHR, the monitoring group comprised of one man, which finally admits that the rebels might have . . . perhaps . . . maybe committed at least one outrage of their own. What is wrong with you,… Read more »
Louis Proyect is a paid Zionist hasbara merchant. He’s not doing very well either since he is now reduced to trolling blogs.
Do you really believe that Syrians would be better off under a Caliphate-like power structure in bed with the Western oligarchy than under Assad’s more secular rule?
I suppose you are referring to ISIS. Assad has killed 7 times [citation needed – OffG Admin] as many Syrians as them and was also involved with a virtual non-aggression pact with them until recently[citation needed – OffG Admin]. My hope for Syria going forward is that Assad end up hanging by his ankles from the limb of a tree and beaten by his victims until green snot pours out of the nose of his dead body.
NOTE FROM OFFG ADMIN – Louisproyect, you repeatedly fail to substantiate your allegations or to answer direct questions. This is trolling. Answer and substantiate or your comments will be regarded a spam.
How have you established the “7 times as many” figure, Louis?
Why don’t you ever answer points. Where did you get this 7 times figure, Louis?
So what was Danny Abdul Dayem doing with his fake reporting, Louis? Why was he making up stories about airstrikes while directing explosions for his CNN interview in the background?
Louis, if you want any credibility and respect among us here at Off-Guardian.org and all the other blogs you visit, you had better be able to substantiate your statements about the Syrian government collaborating with ISIS or the Syrian government having killed 7 times as many people as ISIS have, and you also need to respect the rule of law whether you like particular politicians or not.
The more you rave on about Syria and Bashar al Assad, the more it is becoming apparent that you support ISIS, Jabhat al Nusra and any other group or agency that would fulfill US aims of destroying that country and turning it into another Iraq or Libya.
If you cannot provide the evidence to back up your claims, we have no reason other than to agree with World Socialist Web Site that you’re a trouble-maker and a liar.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/08/proy-j08.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/11/proy-j11.html
The WSWS website has been running articles claiming that Leon Trotsky’s bodyguard was an FBI agent. Most of you have little knowledge of this bizarre cult-sect’s past but the main leader was drummed out of the movement for being a sexual predator of younger female members. After his expulsion, it shattered into dozens of tiny shards. I regard being condemned by them as a badge of honor.
Please take note of our annotations to your comment.
If you people read outside your comfort zone, you’d know that my statement is not controversial.
http://www.vocativ.com/224151/syria-government-assad-kills-more-civilians-than-isis/
From the Vocativ link: ‘… The regime led by President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the more than three-quarters of the 10,354 civilians killed this year [presumably 2015], according to data by the Syrian Network For Human Rights. By comparison, Islamic State militants killed 1,100 innocent people, or just over 10 percent. Kurdish forces, armed oppositions groups and the U.S.-backed coalition killed the rest …’ The methodology used by the UK-based Syrian Network for Human Rights for collecting statistics of casualties can be viewed at this link: http://sn4hr.org/public_html/wp-content/pdf/english/SNHR%20Methodology.pdf The PDF document itself is suspicious – it provides no footnotes to help demonstrate that the claims it makes can be followed up and credited. Poor English is used in the document (for an organisation based in Britain). One strongly suspects that the SNHR collects its information from jihadi-affiliated sources: there is no information given as to which governorates or areas within… Read more »
An article by Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, that quotes exactly “one” source, eh, Louis, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, apparently another UK-based non-governmental organization. At the SNHR website you can look under the tab titled, “About SNHR” (top right), and click on the “International Agencies” link to download a .pdf document titled: “International Agencies which rely on documentation of the Syrian Network for Human Rights.” In that document, you learn that among others, the “United States Department of States * Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor” and “The United States statement in the Human Rights Council on Syria” and “The United States Embassy in Damascus” – all are “institutional clients” of SNHR. So now we know for whom and to what purpose SNHR does its research. It’s not as if, of course, that the United States Department of States has an agenda slightly slanted against the Assad “regime,’ nor,… Read more »
Proyect: Vocativ.com
Founded by Mati Kochavi with offices in New York City and Tel Aviv, Vocativ employs editors, writers, producers, data analysts, software engineers, designers, and developers.
NYC and Tel Aviv? You have got to be kidding. Why is it so many of the links you give lead back to the US and Israeli Capitals, no less? No chance they could be a tad “coloured” in their representation of facts then.
“Not controversial”? It’s EXTREMELY controversial. Perhaps you mean that to Western media and the foreign offices of Western states it’s not controversial. Actually, let’s drop the pretense and say it clearly: there’s s no “maybe” about it, because that is EXACTLY what you mean. For you to so airily and casually wave away any possibility that your “7 times” claim is open to dispute when you know full well that claims like it emanate from highly partisan sources firmly embedded within the “responsibility to protect” paradigm, and that they form the backbone for a push for further regime change in the region, is both venal and lazy. It’s a classic Proyection of social chauvinism against the Third World. At this point, I’m thinking that you shouldn’t keep wearing your past revolutionary credentials on your sleeve as though they somehow attest to your current supposed revolutionary zeal or that the positions… Read more »
Louis. When you can actually cite unbiased and non propagandist figures collated from Syrian based sources, do let us all know. Until then, your trolling of this site is just playing the terrorists of ISIS/al Qaeda’s tune and you should be ashamed, but as a cleverer person than I once said, there is no shaming the shameless.
I am trolling? Do you fact-check everybody’s comments or just those you regard as an opponent of your conspiracist and Assadist propaganda?
Still waiting for you to back up your 7 times claim.
“My hope for Syria going forward is that Assad end up hanging by his ankles from the limb of a tree and beaten by his victims until green snot pours out of the nose of his dead body.”
Yep, and beyond that, you don’t give a shit, just like you don’t in Libya. Wow, talk about being a shameless garbage monster for imperialism! Louis just doesn’t seem to understand that what he “hopes for” is irrelevant to what the majority of Syrians want. Louis would clearly view a neoliberal or atavistic comprador regime, including one that imposes sectarian terror on supporters of the secular Syrian state (i.e. the majority of Syrians) as “progress”, just so long as he can “get back at” Assad for escaping imperialism’s clutches for so long, something that causes him to sulk like a petulant child.
I have already fact checked the veracity of the claims, since those claims have been in evidence for a very long time. Were you inclined towards an open minded and unbiased analysis of the facts in evidence in many articles over the past year across an extremely wide spectrum of truth seekers, you would not now be asking me a rather stupid question. Your ignorance on these issues is not my problem but it does concern all those who want to fend off the propaganda offensive mounted by the MSM “real” news blackout.
Why did you give a link to an article written by a known anti – Assad activist in the employ of the US?
When are you going to back up your “7 times” claim as Sav has requested?
Come of it Mr Proyet. The same reason as Syrian Danny was waiting for a connection and telling colleagues when to start audio of automatic gunfire and the sound of bombs. I’m not sure if you comment on these forums just to raise the profile of your website or you really are so stupid. Some of the children are multiple ‘victims’, their ‘saviours’ exposed as ISIS affiliates. The White Helmets disappeared when their usefulness in the propaganda war was complete. Aside from negotiating on behalf of the terrorists depriving Damascus of water, they have been silent. Your favourite terrorist media department will be back, no need to worry. That’s the good thing about these made to order frauds, when the terrorists start to look vulnerable, they can be pulled out of the magicians hat again. I can’t see where your footage of drone video fits into the context of this… Read more »
“Even the most cynical amongst us wouldn’t dispute the catastrophic damage that Syria has endured.” It is not “Syria” that has been suffering, only the poor who had the gumption to rise up against him. The neoliberal mafia gangsters that are part of Assad’s inner circle are doing quite well. In fact, outside of the Assadist cocoon of Off-Guardian, Moon of Alabama and other such outlets, most people in touch with reality understand that the revolt was fueled by the greed and violence of the Assadist kletpocracy. Even Patrick Cockburn understands this: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176158/tomgram%3A_patrick_cockburn,_an_endless_cycle_of_indecisive_wars/ Between 1950 and 1975, nationalist leaders came to power in much of the previously colonized world. They promised to achieve national self-determination by creating powerful independent states through the concentration of whatever political, military, and economic resources were at hand. Instead, over the decades, many of these regimes transmuted into police states controlled by small numbers of… Read more »
You are way way way behind the curve.
You don’t mention the Saudi mafia once and their support for takfiri salafist wahhabist terrorists in Syria.
They and various other gangster regimes within NATO are responsible for all the deaths and destruction in Syria.
They have waged an undeclared war against what they regard as Shiite forces in the Fertile Crescent.
You can also throw in Jordan, Qatar, Israel and Turkey (previously) as active participants in the conflict.
When will you wake up out of your Yinon Plan-induced coma?
Or are your paymasters in Tel Aviv perfectly happy with your obduracy and venality?
I’m only just reading Patrick’s article, but right off I’ve come across this bit which seems to fly in the face of your assertion about what Cockburn recognizes to be the case about the Assadist kletpocracy: It is as if the minds of these diplomats were still in the Cold War era, as if they were still fighting the Soviet Union and its allies. Against all the evidence of the last five years, there is an assumption that a barely extant moderate Syrian opposition would benefit from the fall of Assad, and a lack of understanding that the armed opposition in Syria is entirely dominated by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda clones. Though the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is now widely admitted to have been a mistake (even by those who supported it at the time), no real lessons have been learned about why direct or indirect military interventions… Read more »
Ah, and then this just after your cherry picked quote, Louis: The question for our moment: Why is a “mass extinction” of independent states taking place in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond? Western politicians and media often refer to such countries as “failed states.” The implication embedded in that term is that the process is a self-destructive one. But several of the states now labeled “failed” like Libya only became so after Western-backed opposition movements seized power with the support and military intervention of Washington and NATO, and proved too weak to impose their own central governments and so a monopoly of violence within the national territory. So Cockburn seems to be of the view that Western intervention in the Middle East is a primary cause for all of the ongoing violence and destruction. Of course, Cockburn’s view is far more nuanced than this suggests, as he seeks… Read more »
Apparently, you haven’t noticed that there is a huge financial and opportunities gap between every government and the rest of society, the Assad government isn’t unique in that respect at all. You say it was an uprising among the poor but if it was genuine, why did foreign terrorists have to flood in to give it any traction? Why does it need far fetched scenario’s and clearly set up videos from Syrian Danny, the White Helmets and Bana, given that you claim they have widespread and popular support? If it was a legitimate uprising, Assad would be long gone and Syria would be the failed state that Israel wants it to be. The popularity of the government is the only thing that has kept the extremists at bay…and long may it continue.
Sure there was disgruntled people and 4 years of drought don’t help either, but your claims are not correct. In fact if there is one thing the Baath party movement is known for it’s nationalism and building the nation for it’s people.
This is diametrically opposed to the policies by US backed right wing regimes prevalent in Latin-America.
US would never overthrow those, while Saddam, Assad and Gaddaffi have always been a thorn in their side and resisted the international bankers, petrodollar and neoliberalism.
“A review of press reports in the weeks immediately preceding and following the mid-March 2011 outbreak of riots in Daraa—usually recognized as the beginning of the uprising—offers no indication that Syria was in the grips of a revolutionary distemper, whether anti-neo-liberal or otherwise.”
https://off-guardian.org/2016/10/23/31166/
Proyect. You have just demonstrated to a remarkable degree how to appropriate facts, distort them beyond recognition and attribute blame to the victims of a very powerful, greedy, invasive and parasitic Imperialist driven corporate empire.
All we have to do now, is invert the whole rant and apply the facts to it instead of fictional overwriting.
Furthermore, to take your logic to it’s ultimate conclusion. If 76% of England’s electorate who did not vote for the Tory Government whose boot they live under, decide to revolt, it is perfectly acceptable for other nation states esp. the US, with the help of NATO to negotiate with known terrorists, as Carter has done on several occasions with Muslim Brotherhood and instigate a rebellion in favour of the vested corporate interests and overthrow the Tory government with one that will toe the line with US and other Imperialist global interests? Not as far fetched as it seems, if a socialist Labour Party looks likely to succeed in the next General Election. Dishonesty and corruption are running rampant in every walk of life in England but especially within government, various county/city authourities, the police and the MSM, so much so that it is very similar to the Syrian rendition of… Read more »
“In fact if there is one thing the Baath party movement is known for it’s nationalism and building the nation for it’s people. “This is diametrically opposed to the policies by US backed right wing regimes prevalent in Latin-America.” What a joke. As opposed to all you people who have done nothing in your entire life except write anonymous comments on the net, I have a track record providing material aid to the Sandinista government in the 1980s as president of the board of Tecnica. The organization also provided volunteers to SWAPO, the ANC and the government of Zimbabwe. Our work was considered such a threat to the national security state that the FBI mounted a major offensive against us. (http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-17/local/me-738_1_fbi-agent) The truth is that Assad runs Syria in the same way that Somoza ran Nicaragua. It is a crony capitalist state that made life unbearable for the rural poor.… Read more »
“… I have a track record providing material aid to the Sandinista government in the 1980s as president of the board of Tecnica. The organization also provided volunteers to SWAPO, the ANC and the government of Zimbabwe. Our work was considered such a threat to the national security state that the FBI mounted a major offensive against us.” That work was commendable, but why are you now taking your talking points and marching orders from the likes of Samantha Powers and other “humanitarian” imperialists? Is it that you think that a commitment to anti-imperialism is now “outdated” and “doctrinaire”? You mentioned Nicaragua. Why are you throwing your weight (as unsubstantial as it is) behind forces in Syria that can fairly be compared to the Contras, and who are backed by the same people, and are romanticized in the same way, and who are fulfilling the same function? To add further… Read more »
“the long program of undermining the Assad government derived from it not being sufficiently on board with the Washington Consensus” ==== Syria under Bashar al-Assad’s rule tried very hard to join the World Trade Organization. When the U.S. lifted its opposition, the World Trade Organization’s 153 members granted the Syrian government an observer status. Although the state was still the main economic generator, privatization was encouraged; foreign entities such as private banks, joint Saudi-French bank of Bimo, Fransabank, Bank of Jordan-Syria, and the Saudi Islamic bank, joined the Syrian market. The road also began opening for other credible international banks such as Citibank and HSBC to come to Syria and lend money at higher interest rates. The Syrian government attempted to satisfy the demands of the international banks, which urged Syria to raise the cap and limit on non-Syrian ownership of local banks from 49 percent to 60 percent. In… Read more »
What irks Washington is that Assad has stood in the way of GOING FURTHER than they would like. In other words, he has retained important elements of the socialism and nationalism espoused by his father – certainly not enough to qualify him as a genuine socialist or even a consistent nationalist, but more than enough to qualify him as one in the eyes of the imperialists to whom you’re providing succor (by directing your invective against their target) and that you’re somehow trusting in yet another regime change push despite the odious record. Your refusal to condemn this assault is weird given that the forces vying to take power away from the secular state are imbued with even fewer elements of socialism and nationalism (and none whatsoever of religious pluralism) than the current government does, and would only INTENSIFY these dynamics of inequality. Your spiel seems to be, “To further… Read more »
Hadn’t you better to tell the rural poor that which you claim, since they have a different view of your baseless, evidence and fact free version? You seem to think that Syrian live in mud huts with no electric and the sewer system is a hole in the ground like something out of the dark ages. In fact the opposite is true, Assad spent much of that supposed cronyism trousered wealth investing it in the infrastructure and many of the “peasants” have flat screen TV’s with the latest and greatest all singing, all dancing iPods. mobiles and with good satellite and wiFi internet. It’s so much easier portraying them as voiceless victims of drudgery if you can place their standard of living in the 18th century and their education somewhat short of literate, unfortunately for you it is often they who managed to hide their appliances from the thieving ISIS… Read more »
Proyect: The link you offered is to a well known Fullbright scholarship US embedded ant Assad agitator. His name is Majid Rafizadeh and he is better known as a spoiler for the Neocon US agenda and spin doctor. He is so embedded with Washington that he might as well be their script writer and despite his extensive esteemed qualifications, all paid for by the US, he is denounced by quite a few, equally well qualified minds who tend to view politics and economics with an unbiased approach. Majid’s father was believed by many Syrians, to be a fanatical troublemaker. Whatever honest and unbiased criticisms he might have offered are off set by his hounding of those enemies of the US state, namely Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. He is a favourite source for CNN, Fox and the BBC which pretty much tells you which side of the fence he sits.… Read more »
Why should we believe you, Louis, when you’re on record as a fabricator and a trouble-maker? David North “A reply to Louis Proyect’s attack on the WSWS”, World Socialist Web Site (8 JUne 2015) http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/08/proy-j08.html On Friday, Louis Proyect, the publisher of the “Unrepentant Marxist” blog, posted a slanderous and foul-mouthed denunciation of a WSWS article, written by Niles Williamson, entitled, “US officials consider nuclear strikes against Russia.” Proyect claims that the WSWS used a quotation fabricated by a well-known Associated Press correspondent, Robert Burns, that misrepresents the nuclear policies of the Obama administration. In the AP article cited by the WSWS, Burns reported that Assistant Defense Secretary Robert Scher testified this past April 15 before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces that “counterforce” measures developed by the United States would mean “we could go about and actually attack that missile where it is in Russia.” Reacting to… Read more »
That’s exactly the vibe I get from Proyect, too!
Louis got completed “owned” in that piece, and it laid bare the man’s predilection for vulgarian blather and posturing. It was glorious.
Louis, I was praying you would comment.
Since I inquired at your blog about the “activists” school for girls and how to donate to them I have found the Al Nusra girls education site. It seems sewing is a popular course. Vests are in great demand! Praise Allah.
Interesting footage. Not a single con-trail from any jets anywhere in the sky. Not one!
Of course, you don’t understand that the so-called and self-styled “white” helmets are fakes.
Even their choice of name is straight out of Hollywood, where the “villain” always wears black headgear.
You could not make this sort of childish propaganda up – unless you were not in Aleppo in the first place!
They – and the rest of the terrorists – are all being funded by the Sauds, UK, US and other terrorist supporters.
When will you wake up from your self-imposed Yinon Plan fantasy?
The problem with these fakes are that people believe that only Syrian and Russian “bombings” are the main culprits for the devastation rather than the constant mortar shelling and barrel bombs dropped by the ISIS tyrants. Every day Syrians, would, whenever possible, send messages about the terrorist destruction happening throughout the day and night, but not one western msm journalist would pick the ball up and run with it. Truth is the first casualty of war, the why, where, what and whens don’t matter if they contradict a desired version of events and that is how “why” this war was started, the resources much envied by the west is the “where”, the decision by Assad not to put his country in hock to the west is the “what” and the choice to trade with Russia which would benefit both his country/people and other countries, but deny the west their sphere… Read more »
We always knew it; now others will finally start learning the truth.
The same can be said for Israel Embassy staff actions in London too.
I don’t think there is any real need for commentary.
The facts speak simply and plainly for themselves.
We all know that most of the output from Aleppo was faked.
This has now been verified by the Egyptian authorities.
What more needs to be said?
An excellent article which clearly captures the difficulties of knowing what to believe under the current conditions, where media have become largely tools of propaganda. I think one just has to maintain a healthy scepticism until one has researched something thoroughly enough to be reasonably sure what’s going on. Setting one’s ‘crap detector’ to full alert is essential. And there are some other very useful websites in addition to Off-Guardian – Craig Murray’s blog, for example, and MediaLens.
Good piece, BlackCatte. Media – corporate, social, alternative – are at the epicentre of struggle.
And of course, that fake blood takes real lives. It’s the means by which Islamist terror can appeal for “western help” – and hasn’t the middle east had enough “western help” to last a hundred lifetimes?
If by “western help” you mean their fake “terrorist” mercenaries, then yes we have had enough. However we know the manipulated West will not consider the job done until it destroys all of Israel’s “enemies”.