Comment set Free: “The epic failure of our age, how the west let down Syria"
Technically speaking this latest of our ‘comment set free’ pieces was open for comment on the Guardian. But since it was only open for two hours and since the comments were pruned after they were closed (204 comments at closing, down to 189 comments now), we think this qualifies. So please feel free to have your say here on:
The epic failure of our age: how the west let down Syria
Thanks to Vanessa Beeley for calling our attention to it. If any reader see articles on the Guardian or elswhere they think should have comments set free let us know
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Tisdall’s Goebbels-ish rant comes from the country whose MI6 terror-enablers’ base, shared with the CIA, is still open at Incirlik, Turkey, from where terrorists have been infiltrated into Syria, weapons smuggled in and roaming death squads directed by satellite phone since 2011 (I can just picture the Pommy on the phone, his pinkie extended, whose English-accented Arabic is well-known to Syrian Intelligence monitors)
Any romantic crap about ‘creating a new government’ as ‘Guano’ waffles, is a long long way from the intent of these Limey demons. Their single-minded aim, following the Zionist plan written in the Brookings Institution Washington in 2007 by arch-Zionist Martin Indyk, titled, ‘Which Paths To Persia?’, is to UTTERLY DESTROY Syria and hand it over to child-beheading, crucifying savages, then ditto for Iran. How very British.
Ghouta will be liberated within a day or so. Gen. Hassan’s Tiger Force has never been beaten: nor will it now. The sub-animals of Jaish al-Islam will not get on green buses: they will take the down elevator direct to Shaitaan’s Bar de HOT.
The Guardian has the habit of putting up on its website, on Saturday evening, articles that it is going to put in the Sunday print edition, opening comments and then closing them later that night because there are no moderators left on duty. It is possible that this is what happened with this article.
That said, it is a bizarre article – it appears to say that we are all at fault for what has happened in Syria because we haven’t demanded that western government invade Syria and change the regime. Not only would that be in breach of international law, but it would be recklessly stupid – creating a new regime is a complicated task that carries tremendous risks, especially if there are jihadis around as spoilers.
I’ve just read Simon Tisdall’s article and also the first two pages of the Comments. Half a dozen or so have been removed, but the overwhelming majority (indeed, almost all) of the remaining ones disagree with Simple Simon’s analysis and many readers seem to know a lot more than he does about Syria (not difficult, to tell the truth). Despite all the effort, even what’s left of Graun readers are just not buying it. I particularly liked this comment (signed Sniper2020):
‘Another Sunday morning ruined by war propaganda.’
Greetings and many thanks to Vanessa and Eva for their work.
[edited by Admin for typo]
The UK is controlled by Zionists. What Israel wants, Israel gets. The news is just wrapping for the fish and chips.
I think that is a simplistic way to view UK (and western) relationship with Israel.
It appears to me Israel is a geo- strategic and propaganda asset for western (elite Rentier class) Imperialism. UK takes no substantive action against Israels illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian and Syrian territories it just issues verbal displeasure and de facto meaningless votes at UN (US always protects at the UN for the western Rentier empire) as Israel is allowed to ignore, without sanction, every UN resolution against it.
The Israel (Zionist) lobby in UK is powerful but it serves the British establishment imperialist agenda by quashing and sidelining domestic dissent, distracting from meaningful and open political foreign policy discussion and ensuring division and distraction in political and public discourse. So for me the Israel lobby in UK is actually a British ‘establishment’ asset.
I would concur. Israel is an asset of the elites, a primary and frontline asset, uniquely useful because it can act under protection of the antisemtism allegation directed at anyone who opposes it. But ultimately Israel is disposable. The Zionists aren’t interested in protecting Israeli people, or any people except themselves. Israel is their no.1 stalking horse. That’s all.
Better and more succinctly put than I did.
Zionism created and invented by the Anglo-Saxon criminal elite. (ANGLO-ZIONISM) That is why it is refered to as anglo-zionism or anglo-zionist pre dates Thedore Herzl and the ashkanazi Zionist.
I don’t agree. Israel does pretty much nothing for the West – US, UK, France mainly. The Israel lobby is very good at playing “palace politics” – whispering in the ears of rulers. They’ve been doing it for centuries, and got particularly good at whispering in the ears of Ottoman Sultans in Istanbul. It’s all just reproduced the same here in Britain, and in Washington. Ne need to bother with UK or US official interests. Of course, it wasn’t only them doing it in the past, it was also the only way women could succeed at court. But the Israel lobby have taken the practice to new heights (or perhaps depths).
Americans have failed miserably in preventing domestic and foreign enemies from hijacking the brilliant Constitution the Founding Fathers left for them out of bloodshed circa 1776.
In defence of ordinary every day Americans, they are deliberately distracted with manufactured Feminism/SJW/Cuckery nonsense, junk food, big pharma drugs, chemtrails, suspect water (fluoride), Hollyweird, and crony drug wars.
This was by design, and it will only change perhaps by civil war or a revolution which will ultimately result in a secession of Red States from the City of London’s United States Corporation.
With the arrival of Russia, China, and Iran on assuming a greater role on the international stage, 2018 is going to be a defining moment for the US and its Western compliant vassals due to some monumental trade developments that will reduce the Dollar’s war-mongering power: One Road One Belt, alternative to SWIFT banking network goes online in March.
And if/when the gold backed Yuan/Rouble goes live, it will be game over.
Just my 2 cents.
By chance came across a Telegraph article of July 2014 which reported on large numbers (200 plus) of BBC journalists being sent on special courses and seminars to teach them not to be so enthusiastic about sticking to the Beeb’s professed commitment to impartiality.
The Telegraph headline read: “BBC Trust says 200 senior managers trained not to insert ‘false balance’ into stories when issues were non-contentious”. The Trust has produced a report in which it said there was still “an over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality” which sought to give “the other side” of the argument.
The report specifically referred to “man-made climate change” as one area where too much weight had been given to “unqualified critics”. The BBC had apparently been criticised earlier that year of creating “false balance” by allowing “unqualified sceptics” to have too much air time.
It’s clear there is now no pretence of impartiality or accuracy. The Beeb probably doesn’t need to send anyone on a course nowadays. The propensity to mendacity has become completely internalised. Do they actually believe what they are saying, or do they just bite their tongue and go along with the lies and propaganda to save their careers and fat salaries?
The problem is that no-one can carry out interviews on BBC journalists to demolish their positions and show them up to be lying mendacious charlatans.
It is not just climate chsnce, their Brexit position is completely EU loyal. Anyone would think the majority of their funding came from Belgians and Germans.
Thrir position on foreign policy is just to be mouthpieces for Washington and Tel Aviv.
My cynical view is that Washington is driving this to make selling the BBC to Americans less of a national outrage. Washington cannot after all allow journalism independent from HQ in vassal States. So make the BBC a laughing stock then buy it up. A bit like running down the NHS to privatise it lock, stock and barrel….
Dear Guardian. Here is some advice. Either DON’T open comments or keep them open when you do. When you open them for two hours then slam them shut it’s too obvious that you are simply panicking in the face of mass revolt by your readership over the line you are taking.
Particularly when the comments look like this, even after you have moderated them:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/10/epic-failure-of-our-age-how-west-failed-syria#comments
The Guardian should be grateful it still has a readership! Doubtless they too will whither away. Left behind will be those who haven’t noticed that the Guardian has become a gatekeeper to power.
Nancy Grayson. Many thanks for the link to the comments section, I used one excellent comment in particular on the Guardians own share buttons. A lot of good rebuttals.
Indeed! It’s heartening when the Graun’s BTL deliver a well deserved kicking to execrable ATL pieces like Tisdall’s.
Well, I read the first page of comments below the line on Tisdall’s article and I don’t feel there is much more to add. A couple of days ago I was moderated on the Guardian for mentioning (in a personal finance article!) the offGuardian web site as a convenient place to comment.
P.S. Who is Kuuuubba trolling for?
Whoever he is he’s being very busy, almost feel sorry for the guy holding the fort all alone
It may be multiple professional trolls using a single ID.
Has the Guardian ever been forced to issue an apology and correction for writing such flagrantly inaccurate claims about a sovereign state?
The U.S. should not have involved itself in Syria. The money pumped caused things to become worse than anyone had imagined.
Side note, ’cause I can’t find a relevant thread to post this, and am curious about other people’s thoughts:
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/human-rights-defenders-western-diplomats-attacked-by-russian-tv/
If not fascism, then what is this?
That is THE single most fascist thing I have ever seen. Some guys who have been filmed acting like foreign agents in Russia being accused on air in Russia of being foreign agents.
Thank God our TV only tells total lies in order to promote and justify mass murder, war crimes, torture, sedition, racism and censorship., like any good non-fascist country should.
:-O
We try to keep the “Comment Set Free” threads closely confined to the topic of the Guardian article they are linked to, so could you possibly continue this discussion on one of the numerous Russia/Putin threads that are still open?
Sure, I just wasn’t sure which one. I’ll go over to the article titled “Vladimir Putin & other presidential candidates release income details 2011-2016”
I read the (pretty laughable) article Matt gave the link to. I agree this isn’t the right place , but the euvsdisinfo site might be worth investigating, even if it doesn’t seem to have many viewers.
I wonder if EUvsdisonfo could do a follow up on the dosinfo campaign unleashed on Jeremy Corbyn when he was elected Labour Leader. Perhaps they could borrow Off Guardians excellent coverage of the press campaign against Corbyn.
While they are at it a story on the malignant political influence of Murdoch whose empire spreads as far as US military bases would be great.
I particularly liked the “temnik” article. This is probably true but the western media don’t look like they are doing anything different.
The West let down Syria by not ploughing it with bombs (as they did in Iraq killing 1m)? Yeah, right.
Humanitarianism is a pretext for the Wests replacement of Assad with another Sunni puppet thereby isolating Iran and its growing influence in the (formerly US-dominated) oil rich region. Yet, as with Nato’s buildup on Russia’s borders, nuclear ww3 with Russia is a risk th elites are prepared to take as their global capitalist empire enters disarray since the 2008 crash.
It’s their imperial crisis that’s animating these insane policies, not the madness of individual leaders (Obama started all this, not Bush). This is why having an actual madman in the White House (Dr Trumplove) only compounds the dangers. The world needs to revolt, for its own sake.
“If the moral leadership at the top of the organisation is not there, we cannot have you as a partner” – Penny. Mordaunt, International Development Secretary
[Not to condone aid workers using prostitutes] but does the hypocrisy of the UKGov know no bounds? Other aid partners that may also have their moral leadership brought into question include child beheaders Nour al-Din al-Zenki, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (al-Nusra), Free Syrian Police …and of course the jewel in the crown of UKAID and the FCO – the White Helmets?
Is that why David Cameron and George Osborne are gone? Shagging Rebekah Brooks?! Great morality of married men that. And Brooks was shagging them both to further the interests of her pimp, KRM.
Did anyone see the story about pupils of Eton college going to Russia to meet big bad Vladi just as he was being compared to Adolf Hitler? No story about traitors needing 24/7 surveillance for consorting with the enemy. Odd that….and blew the lie so far into the next galaxy that Putin is the greatest mortal threat. If he were, 16/17 year old youth would not be his esteemed guests….
Since you’re here …
… we have a small favour to ask. More people are leaving the Guardian than ever and advertising revenues across the Drainstream media are falling fast. For the price of 50 mcg/mL of Fentanyl we can continue to pretend that The Scott Trust and HSBC are completely unbiased and only want to save you and whatever Middle Eastern populations are currently in the firing line.
Thank you, seriously…thank you.
Ketamine does it for me; a horse tranquilliser. The Off Switch is a much safer option.
Please keep doing this! There will be many more such articles in future, all closed for comments. We desperately need alternative forums for free speech since Facebook and Twitter are slowly succumbing to censorship also.
You should look at search engines too. They have gone so rapidly downhill it is frightening. You do not get any useful factual information from MSM news articles, so why are 95% of results links to them? 10-15 years ago you got really useful results, now it is just 5th rate Yellow Pages rubbish.
The internet has been strangled by corporates. It needs completely reinventing to be proper digital libraries….keeping the corporates in their cages.
Yandex.
(OMG, another plug for the Evil Rooskiy axis of utter naughtiness.)
Reblogged this on An Outsider's Sojourn II (The Journey Continues).
The author of the Guardian ‘forgot’ to mention the following info
Whose sarin?
Seymour M. Hersh
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin
Oops, that was a silly mistake wasn’t it. Just like Olivia Solon forgot to talk to any of the numerous serious and well-respected journalists who have gone on record saying the White Helmets are a fake organisation funded by NATO member states to promote intervention in Syria.
Ah but you do not get paid well to do journalism. You get paid well to serve your masters.Do keep up: MSM mouthpieces have clauses in their unwritten contracts forbidding presentation of evidence which may be used in court against the CIA…..
Dear folks,
In a not-very-amusing non-coincidence, Friday’s BBCR4 ‘Today’ featured an equally disgusting ‘We have to do something!’ item involving Yawn Humphrys and someone from the goddam RUSI.
I transcribed it here —
https://markdoran.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/syriana/
— and am gradually adding commentary on the 30 or so disgusting moments that it contained.
Readers are adding splendid observations of their own (scroll down): would people hereabouts like to add more…?
Thanks.
MD
Loved that transcription. It reads like a Key Stage 1 ‘news presenting’ classroom activity; bring your own crayons.
Utterly disgraceful for a ‘flagship’ current events program on R4. Alas, all too typical.
Reblogged this on Professor Dr Piers Robinson.
Thanks for doing this OffG, saw it linked on Vanessa Beeley’s Twitter. I was going to comment on the article on the Fraudian but they closed before I had the chance.
I was going to ask Tisdall if he ever looked at any sources that present a different view, or if he got all his information from the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office. I was going to ask him if this was the new interpretation of “balance” at the Fraud.
I had an almost identical experience. The comments closed almost immediately, obviously due to the overwhelming response below the line. Has anyone also noticed articles closing inside a few minutes with the announcement “opened for comments in error”? I think this is a sign of great weakness and fear in the mainstream at the moment.
The same happened at DT and Spectator, now you must subscribe online to comment. It helps keep informed opinion off the BTL.
These parallel-universe articles about the West’s completely fictitious ‘failure to act’ are always rolled out when ‘our side’ is meeting reverses and a spurious humanitarian face is needed for ramped up intervention.
Thing is, change will not come being polite to these charlatans. They hunker on down for a few days then rehash the same rubbish. But if you suggest to them they only respond to violence or a change of US President (who woll be more of the same), they get very hoity toity.
They have as much commitment to true journalism as Bill Clinton had to marital monogamy….
Everyone outside the tiny bubble of the western states and state-sponsored media knows the US and NATO are backing ISIS and al-Nusra in Syria, just as they know the White Helmets are a branch of the mercenary and jihadist enterprise. In fact even the state actors mostly know this and the only people who genuinely don’t believe it at all are the media stenographers such as Tisdall, picked for their gullibility and susceptibility to bribery and flattery, and who are living in a parallel reality, completely isolated from any real world interactions, meeting and talking only with other media people or their managers in the state departments who make sure the delusional thinking is perpetuated.
Tisdall’s version of events does not exist anywhere but inside this tiny bubble of groupthink that controls our mainstream media. Even most of its readers don’t believe what they read any more. But the bubble continues, becoming more and more estranged from reality,becoming ever more cultist and inured to reason. In five or ten years they will simply not matter any more.
Parachuting Tisdall into Syria would be highly educational for him…..
I was going to ask “Assad zone, Kurdish zone or Takfiri zone?”, but then I realised that the answer wouldn’t really affect his education…
It’s a pitty that the Guardian despite other sources simply publishes US war propaganda even Robert F Kennedy jr explained how and why Syria is an US pipeline war with no other than commercial gains a goal. Since World War 2 the only country fometting wars and coups all over the world for more than 70 years now. Not Syria, not Iraq, not Yemen, not Iran, not North Korea
Ooh, you naughty boy. Were you thinking for yourself, or has that stooge John Pilger sold you his alt view recently? You will be telling me next that American sports folk do not do drugs, the US embassy pays its London Congestion Charge bills and that a former black slave is being lined up as the next owner of the Dallas Cowboys.
Theres also Tulsi Gabbard and the Virginia state senator (i forget his name) who know what’s up in Syria.
I know its not really the point of the post but perhaps it is still worth pointing out that the Guardian is given a brutal pasting below the line.
I just wish someone would hand Tidsall a dot-to-dot book explaining the link between US policies in places like Syria and the tens of thousands of MENA families wandering round Europe trying to find a place where they are not being bombed or plagued by Jihadi extremists?
Giving him that book would be issung him with a P45. Fraternising with the enemy. Nearly as bad as saying West African Christians are bigoted poof bashing hypocrites……
Is there any information on what comments were taken down after the thread was closed? That would be in addition to the comments censored during the two hours the thread was open I take it?
It would be most interesting. It has been said that if you want to know someone’s core issues, or the things that matter the most to them, find out what they lie about. In the case of the Guardian, the comments they delete are at the core of their deception priorities, in my opinion.
The community standards fraud has nothing to do with the readership community, but rather the community of board members.
It is so outrageous, I believe the Board and Scott Trust do not care about the Fraudians survival, just so long as they can no longer enable the embarrassment which might be caused by another Snowden. There must have been a malignant coup at both levels.
There was a takeover by US neocons….the Guardian is owned by worshippers at the altar of Paul Wolfowitz…..
Sure seems that way. But the hypocrisy runs deep and is more general than neocon – fidence. Particularly illustrative and easily verified is the way in which they reported on the Polanski matter over the years. Unable to mention him without chanting their obligatory litany of great director, citing his hits, retelling his completely unverified Holcaust story, his grief over Sharon Tate, the fact that his victim had forgiven him, they would only concede he had had “unlawful sex”. Is there lawful sex between an aging perv and a child?
No mention of the Quaaludes and alcohol, never a mention of the sodomy, no mention of the obvious parallels in his personal life with young adolescents, the other accusers, and the amazing claims on the part of the odious weasel that all judges wanted to fxxk young girls, and how responsive his child victim was, until just very recently. When pointed out to them, btl, they would immediately delete, and then claimed to me this was because of legal issues. As if Polanski would dispute in court the statements of the now grown up 13 year old who had told a consistent story from the beginning that he had raped and sodomised her. Hundreds of other news outlets took that risk with impunity but not the Guardian. Even the plea bargain on which he reneged, smacked of special intervention but never highlighted in the Fraudian. Maybe Meryl Streep’s standing ovation for Polanski swayed them?
This is the same paper that routinely prints the utterings of baying mobs of wannabe lynchers of unconvicted men possibly guilty of unwanted looks and other lesser offenses. So what was different about Polanski?
The fact that Tinsdale writes:
” Ten days earlier, Assad had launched just such an attack, in eastern Ghouta, near Damascus. Sarin nerve gas dropped from the air killed more than 1,000 people, hundreds of them children.”
shows it is complete propaganda. That Assad used sarin gas has been totally and comprehensively debunked a long time ago.
Does the Guardian think its readers are goldfish that forget lies? Or is the Guardian merely adopting the Goebbels mantra that of you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
Actually, Goebbels also wrote “The truth is always stronger than the lie.” Btw, I fear The Guardian doesn’t really know how much they lie because they’ve repeated so many lies so often, by now they believe what they write, poor deluded things.
What The Guardian believes is that if it doesn’t gift wrap the propaganda packages it receives from its handlers in the government-and append proper bylines to the resulting ‘stories’ (and they don’t call them stories for nothing)- the cheques will stop coming.
Credibility is not the problem: the purpose of this propaganda is not to demonstrate that black is white but to create the sens that it would be unwise to dismiss the idea summarily.
” Although some supporters of Assad have called the links between the White Helmets and al qaeda into question both the Foreign Office and The Guardian have shown that such charges are unfounded…”BBC (coming soon)
First principle of journalism is check your sources. If your source is the Washington State Department or US MSM fellow travellers, you cannot check it out without trouble. So probably the Guardian does not check them out…..much cheaper just to accept the words on the wires….
The test of the Uk MSM was 9/11, a test they comprehensively failed. They resat over Iraq and failed again. Then they entered propaganda exams and passed with flying colours….
it was never claimed that the alleged sarin was air dropped either.
It’s extraordinary that ‘journalists’ like Simon Tisdall apparently suffer from the delusion that anybody still believes this blatant war propaganda, which is about on a par with that produced in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. One can only speculate about his motives . . . The heartening thing, though, is that the vast majority of commenters btl were utterly scathing about what he wrote . . .
Aren’t you running a bit rough shot over history?
The ‘war propaganda’ in the ’30s was spread predominantly by the Americans and the British and directed against the Germans who didn’t want war at all.
And yes, it is as vile today as then and as blatant.
@Karin. Do you have links for that? Newspaper articles from the 20s & 30s online. I was born 5 years before the War, and only started to take an interest in the A-Z-C around the end of the century when — to my utter bewilderment — I saw my country helping the USA to drop more bombs on Serbia than Nazi Germany had done, then going on to rape Iraq on a pack of blatant and shameless lies. So my reconstruction of FUKUSA policy toward Germany in the inter-War years is pretty much coloured by books such as A Century of War, and The Hitler-Chamberlain Conspiracy. In brief, I now believe that FUKUSA regimes were sympathetic to Fascism in Europe generally, Hit and Muss were “Our Bulwark against Communism”. FUKUSA gave Hitler military-industrial, financial and diplomatic support for Germany’s re-armament, and had the RAF fly Franco in to help the Luftwaffe complete the Fascist takeover of Spain. My take, based only on a few post-War sources, is that Hitler was our friend in those days; only when the treacherous swine bit the hand that fed him, and attacked FUKUSA instead of attacking Communist Russia, did our MSM regard Hitler and the Nazis as the rabid dogs they truly were. I would be grateful for online MSM sources from the inter-War years to correct my above misconceptions.
WW II was highly convenient for America as it bankrupted Europe and finished UK as a global player.
The real question is whether US framed Versailles Treaty tow the seeds for imperial reasons.
If so, Americas true nature is writ large. No genocide would be too big etc etc…..
Big if…..but worth being historically skeptical……
Despite that the average personal wealth of the European passed that of the American several years ago. So imagine the lot of the American, given that anything they get is what remains after top slicing for ‘defense’ , propaganda, and wars (invasions, really).
@vexarb
Re ‘correct my above misconceptions’.
Have you seen ‘Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick’ on YouTube? More than 5 million views but mysteriously ‘disappeared’ from its original site (beware trailers etc there).
Fortunately, original still available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyFNsNZhSeg
An absolutely stunning documentary.
@KwelaDave. Many thanks for saving that informative film. It confirms what post War books affirm: that Western Leaders were in League with the Nazis until 1939 — and some even afterwards. I should like to know whether the MSM of the day played Follow the Leaders in Lockstep as they do today, or whether there were some powerful anti-Fascisti Western MSM between the Wars.
Interesting, the film’s opening with Yale’s influential secret society of New World Orderers like Bush & Bush. Have you seen OffGuardian’s expose’e of fresh NWO Lies from Yale’s dept of History?
“But what will History say of these events?”
“History, Sir, will Lie as Yale does” — with apologies to GBS
It is only so long that a newspaper can feed bullshit to its readership. They do so at the risk of devaluing even their occasional truths. The Fraudian has lied and manipulated so often and for so long , that reading what they write and trying to decipher the truth from the broad clues they inadvertently leave has become a parlour game.