Marie Colvin, Homs and Media Falsehoods about Syria
Rick Sterling
Introduction
In April 2014 I was part of an international delegation which visited Syria for five days. The delegates came from many different countries. Among the notables were the Irish Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, a Syrian-British heart surgeon and Julian Assange’s father. We spent time in Damascus, then traveled by bus to Latakia and then Homs. In each city we had meetings with political, religious and social leaders but also had time to wander about and talk with people on the streets.
In Latakia, I met Lilly Martin, an American woman who married a Syrian and has lived there, raising a family for the past twenty-five years. She told me how wrong the western media coverage was. Contrary to media claims, she said protests in Latakia were violent from the start. After the first outbreak of violence, Syrian police and military were ordered to not carry weapons. Protesters continued to burn and destroy government offices with incidents of knifing and shooting unarmed police.
Homs, 2014 (Rick Sterling)
When we visited Homs I was struck by how normal it looked. The streets were full of people and the city looked fine. It was dramatically different than the images portrayed in western media. It was only when we were driving out of Homs that we passed an area where there was widespread destruction and battle damage. There was a sharp contrast between most of the city and the few neighborhoods where battle had raged.
The American journalist Marie Colvin died in February 2012 in one of those neighborhoods. It was called Baba Amr. Ten days after her death, the militants and remaining civilians had all departed Baba Amr. It’s unfortunate that Marie Colvin did not talk with Lilly Martin or visit the majority of Homs where the war was not raging. It could have provided much needed balance to her perspective.
Marie Colvin and Homs
According to many of her colleagues, Marie Colvin was charming and courageous, ambitious and fun to be with. She had a knack for including personal details, descriptions and emotions that engaged the reader. Unfortunately, Colvin’s reports and interviews from Syria were inaccurate and a huge distortion of the situation.
It is useful to examine Colvin’s reporting now, seven years later, because there is a wave of new articles, books and movies about her and how she died in Syria.
Colvin and photographer Paul Conroy were smuggled into Syria from Lebanon in February 2012. They spent some days in the town of Al Buwaydah and then were taken into the city of Homs using a drainage culvert to avoid Syrian Army checkpoints. Their guides and minders for the trip were from the Farouq Battalion associated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Beginning in the Fall 2011, militants from the Farouq Battalion set up checkpoints, killed security and soldiers and gradually took control of the Homs neighborhood called Baba Amr. They called it a “liberated zone”. By the time Marie Colvin and other journalists arrived, most of the civilians had fled the fighting to stay with friends and family in other parts of the city.
Colvin and Conroy spent a few days in Baba Amr but then left through the tunnel when it was rumored that Syrian forces were going to attack. After learning that the attack did not take place, the journalists made the difficult journey back into Baba Amr. The second morning after returning, Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Olchik died as the Syrian forces launched mortar and missile attacks.
Biased and Inaccurate Reporting from Syria
Marie Colvin’s reports and interviews from Syria were broadcast widely in the UK and USA. She wrote an article titled “A vet is only hope for Syrian wounded”. The article begins “Wounded civilians arriving at a makeshift clinic in the Syrian city of Homs are relying on a vet to save their lives because there is no doctor to treat them.” As documented in Conroy’s book, they were not in Homs; they were in the town Buwaydah when they observed a vet working as a medic. Actually, there were hundreds of doctors performing medical duties and treating civilians and soldiers injured in the conflict in Homs.
Colvin’s major story for the Sunday Times was titled “Final dispatch from Homs, the battered city”. It begins by describing a “widows basement” with 300 “frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs”. The report of 300 women and children is an exaggeration. Another journalist estimated half that number which is likely an exaggeration itself, since the photos and video show fewer than 50 women and children.
Colvin continued her report saying, “The widows’ basement reflects the ordeal of 28,000 men, women and children clinging to existence in Baba Amr.” This is a huge falsehood; there was a tiny fraction of that number of civilians remaining in the neighborhood. Paul Conroy wrote as follows:
It became increasingly unbelievable that there were an estimated 28,000 people still living in Baba Amr. I hadn’t seen a single one.”
Under the Wire (p. 188)
The night before her death, Marie Colvin did live interviews on BBC, Channel 4 and CNN. The CNN interview began by showing video of a baby dying from a shrapnel wound (above). CNN believed Marie Colvin was an eye-witness to the baby’s death. Anderson Cooper asked Colvin what it was like to be in the room. Marie Colvin replied that the room was chaotic and the baby’s death heartbreaking. She dramatized the situation by speaking about the baby’s grandmother being a volunteer in the room when the baby arrived. However, Colvin was not in the room at all. Marie Colvin and the media activists were shown the video on a laptop computer by their FSA guide. (Under the Wire p.155).
In her CNN interview Colvin described Baba Amr as:
28,000 civilians, men, women and children, hiding, being shelled, defenseless…. There are no military targets here…. So it’s a complete and utter lie that they (Syrian military) are only going after terrorists…. The Syrian Army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.”
In reality, Baba Amr was the primary base for militants of the Farouq Battalion. If there was an “utter lie”, it was pretending that this was primarily a civilian neighborhood.
The Syrian Reality Which Colvin Did Not Report
Like most western coverage of Syria, Colvin’s reporting did not provide important context such as the following:
- How the conflict began in Homs. An eyewitness reported “From the start, the protest movements were not purely peaceful. From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels.”
- How Baba Amr was taken over. In October 2011 militants from the Farouq Battalion set up checkpoints within Baba Amr, attacked and killed Syrian Army soldiers and other security forces, and killed or expelled government supporters. The process was similar to what was documented by a civilian in Aleppo: “Nine days from my window in Aleppo”.
- Attacks on infrastructure. In December 2011, militants blew up the pipeline to Homs’ oil refinery, a major source of oil for the country.
In mid January, an Arab League report documented the results of their investigation. They said:
The Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of these acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed.”
Militants in Baba Amr destroyed government tanks and used their own tank to attack government forces.
On 2 February 2012, FSA militants attacked a government checkpoint, killing ten soldiers and taking another 19 as prisoners. That was evidently the last straw for the government. The next day, February 3, the intense bombardment of Baba Amr began.
Promoting External Intervention
Marie Colvin’s reports from Baba Amr had a political goal of spurring Western intervention. This is made clear in emails to her Sunday Times editor.
It is sickening that the Syrian regime is allowed to keep doing this…I think again to focus on Baba Amr, 28,000 defenceless under shelling…”
Under the Wire (pp 196-197)
Her reports were missing crucial facts, sensationalized the suffering on one side, ignored the suffering on the other side and demonized the government which was the target for overthrow.
In her interview with CNN, Colvin used the video of the dying little baby to urge western intervention. “That baby probably will move more people to think, ‘What is going on, and why is no one stopping this murder in Homs that is happening every day?”
In her final article for the Sunday Times Colvin says, “In Baba Amr, the Free Syrian Army (FSA)…. have virtually unanimous support from civilians who see them as their defenders.” This claims is highly dubious. The vast majority of civilians had left Baba Amr. All that were left were family members of FSA militants and others who had nowhere to go.
The bias in Marie Colvin’s reports and interviews was not unique. On the contrary, nearly all NATO and Gulf state reporting on Syria has been biased. Stephen Kinzer would later write “The media are misleading the public on Syria.” Patrick Cockburn would later write that “Nearly everything you have read about Syria and Iraq could be wrong”.
How Marie Colvin Died
Memorial for killed journalists, Syria (Rick Sterling)
It is claimed that Marie Colvin was intentionally targeted by the Syrian government. This is unlikely. Her death brought opprobrium on Damascus and helped the militant opposition. A few months after Marie Colvin’s death, a prominent British journalist reported that the same Syrian rebels tried to get him and his team killed.
“I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian Army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.”
It is also claimed that Syrian intelligence determined the location of Marie Colvin by identifying a satellite phone signal used in her interviews. This is false. Colvin told to her editor at the Sunday Times that the Thuraya satellite phones did not work. For her skype interviews she used the same antenna uplink used night and day by media activists in Baba Amr.
Marie and Remi were working in a battle zone, guided and effectively embedded with armed insurgents. Their deaths were another tragic consequence of the war.
Ten days after Colvin’s death, the militants and remaining civilians withdrew from Baba Amr. There was no massacre, just a street parade and celebration in other parts of Homs.
The deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Olchik sparked many tributes and widespread publicity. Largely unknown in the West, hundreds of Syrian journalists have also died in the conflict. In a sense, they are all victims of the proxy war on Syria. In another sense, the equivalence is not fair. The war has been encouraged by some and imposed on others.
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at [email protected]
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
boo hoo, herself and Remi both got what they deserved. Propagandists of the West and their terrorist proxies in Syria. Loathesome scum. If an American journalist had embedded themselves with Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah in in 2004 and got killed by a US missile, they most certainly would not have made a fawning film about them on Netflix and got awarded $100m in damages in a US Court!!
So let me get this clear: the same regime change warmongering propagandist who claimed that there were only civilians in Baba Amr also claimed that those civilians unanimously supported the “rebels” and saw them as their “defenders”? Do these liars even read their own lies to keep their fables straight?
She was traveling crossing borders hanging with the al-Farouk Brigade of the defector Abdulrazak Tlas in Baba Am’r, the same brigade to which belongs Abu Saqar a.k.a the “cannibal of Homs” who ate the heart of a young fallen Syrian conscript.
What would you expect when you hang out with such people eating turkish and israeli rations,toilet with these donmeh dogs.
sleep in their hideouts doing their propaganda.
colvin an upmarket syrian danny tis all
a rabbi rupert murdoch puppet
a dog in the race well genie oil in syria golan has unkle murdoch on the board funny that
So Marie sneaked into a sovereign country by being smuggled through the border with Turkey by what at the time was called the FSA but what we now know without a doubt they are paid mercanary killers for hire. So she sneaked into Syria Illegally and was shacking up with illegal armed militants in open rebellion against a sovereign government and she gets killed by some sort of artillery that u cant say who it came from cause there are 100 jihadi gangs already by 2012 fighting the SAA and this girls family think they can sue the Syrian government for 300 million??? Im not saying they did but EVEN IF the SAA did kill her when they were trying to kill the armed bandits its 100% HER FAULT.God rest her soul but when u enter ANY SOVEREIGN COUNTRY ILLEGALLY on this planet and u hang out/aid and sleep with armed bandits, w.e happens to you is YOUR FAULT and u are under rhe protection of NOTHING as u are not even suppose to be there in the first place. Even the “FSA” buddies that say they would protect u will at any moment sell u to any jihadi gang so u can be kidnapped and held for ransom has they have done over 100 times! . Do you know how many journalists are still missing in Syria cause they were ” abducted” aka sold by there handler buddy to a jihadi gang…ALOT…so the moral to this story is “you play with 🔥, your gonna get burned at some point” . She got lucky in Libya and previous “war zones” . But Syria like Libya was an invasion disguised as a rebellion and if she would of known better she would of went right back through the ratline pipe she came through and tried her best to get out of Turkey. Turkey is where alot of journalists get set up and abducted too look it up its sad but true.
i met her a few times she seemed more of an actor than truth teller plotting and scheming as agents do.
orla guerun,frank gardener these along with colvin all deep state assets.
a freedom circus moving from country to country for next spring chatham house rape and murder.
her family have just won hundreds of millions no doubt soon handed over from syrian government stolen assets
nigel ferage on the radio stating loud and proud the usa and uk have beaten isis in syria and iraq what a scoop
gosh and blimey a win a victory just by making a statement writing a lie.
she may have been a boy or a girl
maybe dead maybe not
she maybe in birds little amerika
who knows a weird one this
zion
with her moshe dyan patch theatrics
words funded by royal united services institute where always suspect.
whatever she did it was always for the city of london
and oded yinon
GreatBritain’s very own Vanessa Beeley wieldswthe Truth aginst Hollywoodthe Dream Factory.
“recommends we take a look at Kevork Almassian’s report on the suit filed on by Marie Colvin’s family alleging that the Syrian government deliberately targeted Colvin. The whole video is worth watching, but the last 4-5 minutes are particularly telling”
https://youtu.be/tO55XdJPMRg?t=765%5D
vexarb, you make the mistake of accepting the media narrative at some level. The same applies to 9/11. So many truthers accept none of the 9/11 story except for death and injury. But the question arises: if so much effort has been put into establishing that the rest of the story is false why has so very little effort been put into establishing the truth or otherwise of death and injury? Why is that? If the rest of the story is false couldn’t the part about death and injury also be false – in fact, isn’t that the more likely reality when we can see the very obvious disincentive in that real death and injury would incur the wrath of all the loved ones and the injured themselves who would quickly be marching on the warpath to seek vengeance for murder by the state (or if they believe the fairytale at least the inexplicable failure of the state to protect its citizens)? Obviously, it’s a key point, isn’t it? It makes the story a very, very different one if death and injury were staged rather than real. But where’s the effort made in establishing that it was real rather than staged? Nowhere (apart from Simon Shack and a few others).
It’s because of the propaganda campaign targeted at the truthers. The truthers have been directed like sheep to focus on controlled demolition, not at all encouraged to look at the truth about the planes – except perhaps to argue about the nature of the aeronautical machines that melted into the buildings (because no deaths on planes is rather exposing) and had propaganda pushed at them composed of the mixing of the truth of controlled demolition with the lie of death and injury (oh yes, controlled demolition/I’m suspicious of government AND my son/my husband/my colleagues died or were rescued).
You know far more than I do about world affairs but I’ve learnt a bit at least in the last few years and one thing I’ve learnt a little about (but I know there is so very much more to learn) is how propaganda works. It can be very, very counterintuitive and the truth can be so very different from what we expect.
The entry and editing history of Marie Colvin in Wikipedia prove she is some kind of figment and exists pretty much merely as a woman in unconvincing images and a voice only (and who knows if they’re even a match). There is zero evidence of “Marie Colvin” being in Syria. Zero. All the photos of her look photoshopped or staged.
A complete giveaway are the words of Marie Colvin’s mother which do not resemble in any shape or form the words you might expect from a grieving parent. Incongruous words and smiling from grieving parents are a typical hallmark of staged events.
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2012/02/syrian-burial-for-marie-colvin-like.html
The story, like that of 9/11, is layer upon layer of improbability. Don’t believe a word of it.
And just to add – it takes less than two minutes to work out that the alleged bombing in Kashmir is staged. It’s just so laughable how little effort they make. Truly. A splash of blood on the ground and the giveaway multiple of eleven dead – 33 – now risen to 41. Indian election coming up just as the UK election came up after Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge. Could they make it more formulaic? It does my head in how no matter where in the world they always follow the same pattern.
Why doesn’t Assad call out “Marie Colvin” as the bullshit it is just as Russia doesn’t call out the Skripals (even if if the ambassador utters ironic words?). It’s completely bizarre.
And to add again. If the government uses these events for the election (I’m really not sure how they work in their favour but seemingly they do) why doesn’t the opposition party call them out? I emailed Jeremy Corbyn about Manchester. It’s way too obvious that it was staged so what does it mean? I cannot believe he doesn’t realise so why wouldn’t he call them out? None of it makes any sense to me.
Because all of the World’s Governments are involved in the Kabuki Theater of Warmongering until they reveal the Aliens/Fallen Angels they are in bed with, just like Wernher von Braun stated:
“The last card that was being held was the Extraterrestrial Enemy Card”
“After the Threat of the Russians, After the Threat of Terrorism”.!!!
The War of Terror has been going on for 18 Years since the ‘Skull N Bones’ Bush’s ‘New Pearl Harbor’ Staged 911 Event.
If you have your sights set on becoming a multi-millionare in America, then suing a country that engages in “an extra judicial killing” seems the way to go (though I’m guessing if the country you decide to sue is a member of NATO and/or isn’t targeted for US style regime change then you may have a harder time getting the verdict of your choice rubber stamped.)
What makes this brand new, US created law even easier to rule in your favour is the fact that no actual evidence is required, or to put it another way, it’s the quantity of so-called ‘evidence’ and not the quality.
At least thats the case according to the presiding judge, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia who ruled that because the defence had gathered nearly a thousand pages of attached exhibits, declarations and ‘expert reports’, then an actual evidentiary hearing was unnecessary! That’s right, the sheer volume of so called ‘evidence’ literally outweighed any of its veracity, validity and objectivity.
To make matters worse (if that is at all possible in a realm beyond satire and farce) it seems the bulk of this ‘evidence’ wasn’t gathered and presented by any state and/or UN agency but by a dubious quasi-legal NGO with the grand sounding (is there any other kind?) title of the ‘Commission for International Justice and Accountability’.
I should add, that in addition to the CIJA, the court relied on a Syrian defector, codenamed ‘Ulysses’ (it seems the entire official narrative is a made for Hollywood script and it seems no coincidence that this 300 million plus dollar court ruling is announced along with a supporting documentary and big screen Hollywood movie) who tells us that ‘senior regime officials’ celebrated after confirmation of her death, with one officer declaring (no doubt in a low growl):
“Marie Colvin was a dog and now she’s dead.
Let the Americans help her now’.”
Oh and he helpfully tells us the Syrian intelligence officer responsible for targeting Marie ‘Matrix’ Colvin through the non-existant satellite phone and non-existant informer on the ground was rewarded with a brand new Hyundai car (no doubt painted sinister black or deep blood red).
Finally, how Judge Jackson, who tells us Marie Colvin “was specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country.” came up with the figure of three hundred million plus dollars to be stolen from any Syrian state assets or accounts that happen to be in unfriendly foreign hands and given to her surviving family is a total mystery.
Surely it cannot be for her projected earnings as a Sunday Times hack? (and let’s face it, judging from her Homs reportage which is part ‘colour revolution lite’ and part Mills & Boon, she was hardly going to go on and win any literary Pulitzer prizes).
In the latest piece of US lawfare, a US court has just ordered Syria to pay $300 million compensation for her death.
Maybe the same court should order the United Scumbags to pay compensation for the tens of millions they have butchered, maimed and starved over the past few decades. Or for the genocidal Zionist Regime to pay compensation for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
I just saw the $300 million compensation thing myself in our illustrious, always-independent, truth-telling, SMH. What a huge joke when “Marie Colvin” doesn’t look as if she’s ever stepped a foot inside Syria. Hilarious! That’s the power elite for you. Rubbing their crimes in our faces and having a massive chortle over it. If anyone can point to imagery that doesn’t look staged or photoshopped and clearly shows “Marie Colvin” inside Syria please do.
What I don’t understand is why Assad doesn’t call this out as a false-flag hoax. Why don’t any of them call each other out? They can’t because they all do it, I guess, but, at the same time, it’s as historian, Antony C. Sutton, described it, an Hegelian dialectic, http://www.mariohooijmans.com/conspiracy/hegelian-dialectic-and-the-new-world-order/.
Just check out the history of this adventurous, highly-awarded, hard-drinking, thrice-married (or whatever) in Wikipedia which (as pointed out in http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2012/02/marie-colvin-is-false-narrative-being.html) starts precisely on 22 February, 2012. Prior to that, despite having won significant awards before this date no one had ever heard of her, except perhaps Judith Miller, Christiane Amanpour and a select few others. LOL. Don’t you love the eyepatch? I wonder who thought of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marie_Colvin&offset=20120222112510&action=history&tagfilter=
2000 – Journalist of the Year, Foreign Press Association
2000 – Courage in Journalism, International Women’s Media Foundation
2001 – Foreign Reporter of the Year, British Press Awards
2009 – Foreign Reporter of the Year, British Press Awards
2012 – Anna Politkovskaya Award, Reach All Women in War (RAW in WAR)
2012 – Foreign Reporter of the Year, British Press Awards
And just to add an amusing comment in response to Penny’s wondering how she’d never come across Marie Colvin prior to 2012 when she was a keen follower of the situation in Syria:
Interestinger and interestinger. As for never having noticed her, that’s not so surprising really. As if you’d remember that eye-patch-wearing, all-in-black, female Phillip Marlowe lookalike? Stick her next to Johnny Depp in the full Jack Sparrow rig and you’d never notice her.
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2012/02/marie-colvin-is-false-narrative-being.html?showComment=1329949915217#c201093604117475618
Just like Maria Butina (https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/13/maria-butina-endgame/#comment-141136) and Marzieh Hashimi (https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/16/disbelief-magic-realism-and-doublethink-alive-and-well-in-2018/#comment-143776) Marie Colvin is a fabrication. Is there anything that identifies her as really being in Syria? All the photos of her look staged and the eye-patch is surely a big fat joke although I mean no disrespect to anyone who’s lost their sight. The facts of her last interview being with at-every-false-flag-hoax CIA agent, Anderson Cooper, and her journalism award send out screaming alarm bells. For sure, this ghost of a woman has to be an agent. I googled and found this blog post which is extremely illuminating. Always check people in Wikipedia – the history and other aspects of the article on them can be incredibly revealing.
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2012/02/marie-colvin-is-false-narrative-being.html
In the following blogpost the blogger expresses incredulity at the words of Marie’s mother about her death, saying they make no sense to her. Of course, they make no sense because nonsensical words and behaviour from grieving parents are one of the great hallmarks of staged events – classic cases are Manchester bombing and Sandy Hook shooting. They love rubbing their nonsense in our faces and having a great old chortle about it.
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2012/02/syrian-burial-for-marie-colvin-like.html
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Rev.Nasr’Allah reviews the fruits of Natan Yahoo’s brilliant Wiley Coyote strategy against Syria, Hezb’Allah and Iran:
https://southfront.org/nasrallah-to-israeli-pm-any-more-syria-strikes-could-trigger-major-war-eng-subs/
And Trump, not to be outdone by his ZioNazi son-in-law in the Yahoo regime at Jerusalem, has unveiled his own Wiley Coyote moment after tearing up the Iran peace deal:
Iran transfers 30 tons of yellow cake to Uranium Conversion Facility in Isfahan
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/01/30/587232/Iran-uranium-enrichment-yellow-cake-nuclear-power
“Daniel Rich BTL SyrPer #286070
2 days ago, Syria’s First Lady, Asma Assad, underwent surgery. Let’s pause a moment and wish Syria’s ‘Desert Rose’, her husband, H.E. Dr, Assad and their children, all the strength they need, to find safe passage through the treacherous cliffs of cancer.”
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” (B.Lee)
The lying scumbag fake news MSM Lugenpresse like the lying scumbag Guardian were putting it out that this charming and dignified lady was some kind of shopaholic bimbo who had fled Syria, signifying that the country was about to fall to the west’s cannibal headchopping throatslitting proxies, according to plan. Let us all hope and pray she makes a full recovery.
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/29/c_137784771.htm
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/29/CcrbeeE005020_20190129_CRMFN0A001_11n.jpg
“Assad remark during his meeting with Eshaq Jahangiri, vice president of Iran, who arrived in Damascus and signed economic cooperation deals with Syria.
The Syrian president said _the signed agreements hold a strategic dimension and constitute a solid economic base for Syria and Iran to face the economic war launched by the ‘Western’ countries_” [such as Australia].
Sad this fool woman had to die, but the bald fact is is, SHE WAS A LYING CUNT.
She was just a Terrorist Groupie with a great deal of blood on her hands. Good riddance to the bitch. Like the Terrorist Groupie Jo Cox, who spent most of her time slobbering over the White Helmets. Maybe it’s poetic justice that she was killed in a terrorist attack herself.
We all have to believe Marie Colvin was this amazing journalist……….because the rest of the MSM tell us so. It’s all theatre. They create the stage and tell us when to clap and when to boo.
It was obvious she was lying about being at the hospital where the child was supposedly dying. The video was already on youtube and CNN used the same one during her report. In Libya she did the same but then she actually admitted she was watching a video off a phone.
Also the prominent ‘activists’ she was with had survived all these bombings and were still running about well afterwards until they left the country. But Colvin & her colleagues end up getting attacked in no time at all?
We’re supposed to believe that the Syrian govt were desperate to kill them while they weren’t bothered by the ‘activists’ making videos for months and doing interviews with Al-Jazeera & whoever else? Sure, really believable.
Leni Riefenstahl for the new millenium
leni was a great artist one of the greatest ever female image makers.
colvin was an actor or maybe actress like joe cox mp a made up sim with back story.
like all bad acts they move on to the next gig scripted meme for oded yinon
she not dead
weird world innit
Something I have pondered for some time is, how do our politicians avoid knowing about off Guardian? And if they do read the articles herein, then how do they live with their consciences?
I guess the lust for power and wealth is simply too much to resist..
“… how do they live with their consciences?”
Politicians & Conscience sounds like a huge leap of faith today, Maggie , maybe even an oxymoron :- without exception, almost all the world is staged and just a stage, evolving continuously to provide additional privatised corporate resources, including Data with which to control the masses, with mind control which demands programming >>> try programming ‘conscience’ when we have not yet even programmed or formulated concepts for global moral standards that are universally applicable and enshrined in Law : which in turn comes to highlight, almost immediately, just how many politicians think they know best, (rather arrogantly), when in fact, they very quickly came to understand that they were always clueless from the beginning , about who, why, how & what constitutes any form of equitable future governance: which itself, centres presently essentially around controlling the “barbarous multitudes” of hungry masses by having them salivate like Pavlov’s Pit-bull, drooling for a bone to pick & fight over, when , in reality , behind the bean/bone counter, ample reserves of mince & pies remain out of sight in corporatists hands, controlling all resources, including the Data & Network of Communications to Profile everybody, with algorithms ,without exception, Knowledge the keyword.
Very quickly the politician realises that they must become a Rottweiler for Empire and corporate propagated public glory in defending the very people (1%) responsible and legally culpable for the propaganda & agenda of Wars, & shielding them financially from any criticism: which in turn helps ‘Payseur’s Political Pavlov further the elites objectives to maintain financial dominance, by controlling minds >>> example ? Kamala Harris , a prosecutorial tool & simple minded ‘Rotty’, who now wishes to be President, when she has not the intellect, conscience, understanding, character or compassion to lead selflessly into the future and most certainly not the requisite solutions , when confronted with Deep State Goals , like those of Steve Mnuchin, the now US Treasurer of State: Mnuchin, a Republican who one would have expected Harris to eat alive, in January 2017 , due to banking & mortgage scandals.
Any politician or potential political movement that remotely threatens the 2 party system designs, must be censored at every level of MSM , so that awareness relies almost entirely upon word of mouth: example?
Yanis Varoufakis & D.i.E.M 25 >>> naturally the last thing the elites in Europe want is a thoroughbred Democracy, backed by Chomsky & Brian Eno: so , even if one writes to Die Zeit or The Guardian, one will be censored, as was the case by the last G20 meeting in Hamburg , where D.i.E.M. 25 were also protesting peacefully , (like the Gilets Jaunes in S.W. France) , but received no mention in any MSM in any language and the news will then focus on the “Violent Protesters” , just like is happening in France with Macron, presently, and the Gilets Jaunes marauders , he wishes to project . . . a distorted & largely false reality, that no politicians wish to contradict or their career is finished, to hell with conscience!
Multi-National Corporate Deep State Media control dictates the diet of Pavlov’s Pit-bulls , who are brainwashed when they are still puppies , quite literally in the school curriculum, (something very easy to evidence technically ! ); meanwhile in Latin America look at that undemocratic Venezuela, using European electronic equipment that is supposedly fail safe and consider which EU nation is honestly electorally wholly democratic >>> answer , not one . . . I would advise people to study the camera angles of any protesters on the BBC & CNN & Co. because huge demos would be easy to film from a distance, like in France and thus censorship becomes essential.
Fancy a bone ? or Political career, ignore your conscience , coz’ it’s all ‘Just a Ride’ …
An amoral ride , where conscience has no place or space nor demand.
If just one British or US politician had a conscience, they would be calling for Blair & Bush to be immediately arrested, charged & incarcerated , then shot as Traitor to National Security , as evidenced by the Chilcot Report , which in itself was heavily edited and required a decade of wasted time >>> Let us also hope that Baddy Maddy Albright is still alive, when an Iraqi finally gets heard by the ICC and demands compensation from the UK & USA for the Iraq War , that was unequivocally not ‘Worth it’ , unless you are without conscience and a corporate political pit-bull.
Regards Tim
@Tim Jenkins: “If just one British … politician had a conscience, they would be ”
expelled from the Labour Party — forever.
@Vexarb you said”… they would be expelled from the Labour Party — forever.” & I couldn’t help laughing & thinking . . .
Small blessings , Vexarb , small blessings, freeing up time for putting lovely fresh firm balls of ‘Horseshit’ on the Roses, as time capsules for slow deliverance 🙂 & seeing clearly how we can be the change , quite simply , by means of a Stern ‘Geoffrey’ boycott of elections , along the lines of George Carlin , “on a few cultural issues” 🙂 angle, grinding ridicule, & refusing to vote for ANY political party that supports the official 9/11 TonyAndyPandy story, specifically the WTC 7 ‘collapse’. Controlled demolition of all present politicians & MSM assured: subsequent chaos G’Teed in military intelligence !
Lol, actually moreover , really just wanted to thank you for that exquisite slither of memory, research & analysis regarding Tonypandy , elsewhere: highlighting the editing of history occurring as we write. I was most grateful for that golden eagle eyed observation of yours, and wanted to compliment you for being so keenly precise, because it helps raise others awareness of what is actually happening now and how the deep state is furtively trying to re-write history, most clearly ..
Plain & simple.
Having seen & experiencing in Eastern Europe right now, many attempts of same , it is heartening to know others are fighting the good fight to maintain accuracy , context, perspective, objectivity & full comprehension, for the record. That 1966 copy of encyclopaedia is a valuable record, like a licensed untampered infected original copy of microsoft programming on an early Texas computer, (i have, for very similar reasons), as Pre 9/11 evidence of conspiracy to defraud in future *** 😉
Keep it safe , like your good self, & keep sharing that gift of ‘Knowledge’, for free, with clear Conscience, lol
Ubuntu
Tim
*** Coded ‘TonyAndyPandy’ editions 🙂
Fake History interconnecting inextricably Fake News, still ‘Living the Lie’ , & officially digging their hole of apartheid deeper & deeper , when 360º around the world, everybody with a brain is peering in @DeepState & they know what a controlled demolition looks like, let alone ole’ wise wily professional expertise with decades of experience . . .
Ridicule Vexarb , humour our last peaceful tool :- R.i.P. George Carlin.
“Keep on diggin’ you ‘TonyAndyPandy’ Patsies… ? Much ‘Horseshit’ to bury, before it’s coming up smelling of roses . . .” 🙂
Pigeon holing is not just classification, but emotionally charged associations.
If you can find something in another that justifies disregarding anything else they say, then you can act as if you know they are not worth paying attention to.
It isn’t a matter of simply seeing, but of the already invested identity, worldview and career and social status or inclusion. I don’t feel it wise to simply hate people for not seeing as we do regardless how it now seems clear to us. Perhaps we had our own ‘timing’ of experiences that brought a willingness to question things we once automatically reacted from as a ‘given’.
Mind capture or mind control infers an element of external manipulation – but a corresponding pattern or ‘politic’ within our self will USE others as a basis for attack in the name of defence even if they are not intending attack.
I don’t make apologies for poor choices being persisted in. But at the time we did what we did because at the time that was who we were – or believed our self and world to be.
Maggie: Exactly. They are just whores who sell their souls to mammon and those who really rule. They will say anything to get elected as the ‘people’s representative’. As Sav said in the above comment: ‘its all theatre and they (msm) tell us when to clap and boo’.
I used to watch Ch4 news, thinking it was closest to my views, the Libya reporting dented my opinion, it was so obviously biased. The only true factual reports in the whole campaign were a couple of references to sub Saharan Africans being strung up, the video of Gaddafi being sodomised with a bayonet and Hilary Clinton laughing.
Then, along came Syria and “activists” on the ground, given comms equipment by AVAAZ and credence by Ch4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU_K9yiZ1yk Though I didn’t know who was funding them, I knew these earnest young men with fanatical eyes were lying through their teeth and I started to seriously doubt Ch4 and their neocon foreign correspondent Lindsey Hilsum. Then came “the boy in the ambulance” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-40176781 The whole world cried after that one. I was doubtful, something about the way the first responder (white helmet?) casually brushed the dust from his face didn’t quite gel. After that I saw many similar instances of men dragging children from the rubble and casually brushing the dust off them.
I don’t watch Ch4 news any more, but I wish someone would make a documentary on Syria giving the true story and not the pack of lies we’ve been fed.
lundiel
There have been a few decent documentaries on aspects of what is going on. This is one (Carla Ortiz) the best I’ve seen – truthful, emotional and articulate. This was featured on the Jimmy Dore show.
If more of this stuff got out in the mainstream more people would be seriously questioning all these narratives.
Personally, I think all of us should be pulling our resources together more – there are some great ways to present the truth through great research and reporting, emotion and humour is powerful too.
Thanks, I will watch it. I think that people have a problem understanding the sheer duplicity of America and her allies. For instance, I have difficulty getting people to believe that while America and allies are bombing ISIS in one part of Syria, American contractors are ferrying ISIS commanders to and from battlefields in another. It’s not as if this kind of duplicity isn’t commonplace: John McCain saying “Thank God for Saudi Arabia and Prince Bandar” two weeks before Prince Bandar was removed and never seen again. Bandar was up till the moment he was disappeared, the financier of american foreign policy in Syria. People don’t seem to want to believe it and if you don’t parrot msm, you’re a conspiracy theorist.
“I think that people have a problem understanding the sheer duplicity of America and her allies.” That is a big factor mentioned by the late William Blum in his book titled “America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy.” People – who don’t care enough to know better – just can’t believe that their government is evil. (And they don’t even really grasp what ‘government’ means.)
Once we truly see, we cannot ‘unsee’, and so part of what used to connect us to ‘the world’ is undone to reveal an horrific Beast from the Deep – but disguised in shape-shifting masking of deceptions within deceptions and denials within denials.
My take on this is that this is a ‘mind; through which we perceive – or rather a purpose that structures such a mind and runs AS denial – and within which is a fragmented sense of entanglement and struggle.
While the struggle seems winnable, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men go at it – but the ‘king idea’ is of an imposition and defence of order over chaos – as a segregative consciousness held against a chaos that of course not only refuses to ‘die’, but is fed and multiplied by the attempt to kill it.
Chaos – like ‘evil’ is a judgement-reaction OR or awaiting true recognition.
The ability to recognise – or indeed an inherent purpose of recognising self in Experience, is a quality of making Home by the extension of love – not as token substitutes or manipulations – but giving and receiving as one. The quality of a conscious synchronicity IS recognition and manipulative intent can only identify as mis-alignment (chaos).
The sense of Heart and Home LOST, violated, attacked, denied, deprived and betrayed is our ‘separation trauma’ – of which a sense of LACK drives the tyrannous and driven need for prevailing to survive by whatever means can be brought to limit chaos – that is now heavily or intensely associated with intolerable guilts and fear-conflicts. The projection, export or indeed ‘outsourcing’ of guilt and targeted blame and punishment is the ‘escape’ from an intolerable ‘self-experience’ in which the sense of salvation is predicated upon the excommunication, death or denial of an ‘other’ and indeed the world. So we then DO as we believe we have been DONE TO – in the manner of the abused becoming the abuser – even while struggling to NOT be what in fact we believe and fear we are – hence the ‘lid of civilisation’ leaks, or breaks to reveal intolerable or overwhelming fears. As conditioning over time the mind redefines its self, world and Reality as a kill-or-be-killed world beneath veils of masking evasions and justifications that inhibit or lid over the more raw or extreme FORMS of hate by appeal to sympathy and mutually self-reinforcing justifications.
Thus a split mind seeks UNconsciousness as protection against what it is unwilling or unable to face, own or revisit by assertions of a narrative identity – that is inherently a ‘war on Reality’ – but in truth wars only within itself as an engagement in division that rules out awareness of reality now. Because our perception is taken AS true, a short circuit of reactive defence operates as attack being the best form of defence. The predisposition to judge before listening is the assertion and imposition of a ‘narrative reality’ IN PLACE of opening to relational communication with another AS WITH OUR SELF. This conditioned and learned sense of self runs in our name as our self and our world – and in a sense RUNS OUR WORLD.
No model of reality can Be Reality, and no amount or intensity of emotional attempt to MAKE it true, CAN succeed. But a consensual willingness to ACT as if true USES the idea of wished or feared outcome as a framework in which to ‘live and think and respond. In other words a socially reinforcing distortion filter of a necessarily tyrannous rule – because it is blind to a true appreciation while prioritising a false and believing the reverse; that it is representing the true and must defend against a feared and unrecognised ‘threat’ or chaos.
No one can communicate to the dissociated, excepting in first opening a channel of communication. Any attempt to do so from a desire to impose an outcome upon them will be picked up on and used as proof of treacherous intent. Any such offering can also then be engaged with under a strategy of an equally manipulative intent and thus a world of lies.
There is a way to un-see what we believed true, but cannot accept as the whole truth, by challenging our apparent experience and pausing reactive thought – not just reactive feelings and behaviours that follow. Looking at our thought rather than running AS ITS CAPTURE, is the awakening of a truly conscious quality of self-responsibility – from which to see or give and receive or share in a differently predicated from that based exclusively in imaged FORMS of apparently fixed meaning.
The giving of meaning to our Home is all the meaning it has for us.
This is perhaps hard to accept when our treasurehouse is empty and the doors are open to every kind of robbery and deceit. But this is also the ‘bottoming out’ or moment of the shift of a recognisably fruitless purpose, to a conscious acceptance of true. Reality is ours to give – AS we receive it. Or life is ours to have AS we are willing to share (in) extending it. There is no ‘how to’ for life – because Life is Already Itself. But there is the recognition of a gift that is worthy of sharing in place of attempts to make a toxic debt into something valuable by means of complex instruments of (self) deceit.
Syria has held against concerted attempts to undermine and destroy its sovereignty – and as such is a symbol of the idea OF sovereignty of self. The idea that truth is destructive is our own fear-projection, and the emulation of dealing destruction in the intent to be as gods in remaking the world, is making US in the image of a reversal of Life and at cost of the Embrace of all that Life Is and Shares. But a god of terror is implicit to the rituals of sacrifice enacted both in denial and emulation or re-enactment.
Opening the lid on hidden darkness calls as the need for deeper grounding honesty of being – not of merely thinking – because thinking can be undone from removal of its seeming foundation. Or we feed hatred and despair.
I sense that ‘The Truth’ ABOUT anything is putting the realm of judgements over the realm of living relational communication, but the deconstructing of the false is part of revealing a more truly aligned understanding and self-transformation. The truth shall make us (show us we are) free – but true response is a movement that may of course trigger contraction or recoil into ‘habit’.
Yesterday I read a couple of the links at
http://www.whale.to/c/syria.html
As to what is true or not – I can only say that that which is denied expression by hateful means is a messenger of truth even if the message is alloyed. Those who seek only the ‘truth’ as it serves them, have it backwards.
“Everything is BACKWARDS; everything is upside down! Doctors destroy health, Lawyers destroy justice, Universities destroy knowledge, Governments destroy freedom, Major media destroys information, And religions destroy spirituality”. Michael Ellner
Thanks for the ‘Whale’ link Binra. Sadly I didn’t up or down vote your post, because I could not understand most of it..
I understand the words….. but not the sentences they are formed into?
I wish I knew the key, because clearly you are super intelligent.
Maggie If you feel something between the lines, then all you need do is be with that with where you are now without invalidating yourself or me.
The world we are adapted to is also the mind in which we think.
I am nothing in myself but when I don’t let thinking filter of block the mind – it works like a musical instrument or a singer.
The mind’s attempt to assert, possess and defend ‘truth’ (control its experience) is how we are ‘getting in our own way’.
So in a sense I am trying to attract a stirring recognition from a different presumption of being than the current ‘currency’ of exchange – but can only use the same set of symbols, words and phrases to do so.
The only way to have a love is to live or give a love. We cannot ‘think’ love. When you are simply free to be WITH someone because they are not laying demands or trips that need you to be what they need you to be, the channel of communication is simply open presence.
I also call this listening. being with is inherently receptive – but running everything through conceptual filters of defence is like a virus checker that blocks the function is is supposed to protect.
Thanks for the thanks.
Whale has a LOT of information of hidden histories and suppressed or denied humanity that is worthy of re-educational research – largely but not just in the medical realm.
Implicit in many who have met with denial or persecution is a truly willing spirit. Don’t forget to tune to the channel that truly connects or the insanity feeds despair and cynicism.
Identifying the channel we are operating from IS the freedom to retune and NOT a basis for sin, sickness, conflict and pain of loss. Unless of course… you insist!
I think large numbers have given up on the MSM, treating them as perjurers in court until innocence is proven. They have learned in whatever aspects of life they have expertise in that the media are inaccurate and distorting, so they assume it is the same across all subjects.
Finding independents is no guarantee of objectivity, but it is at least a point to start from.
Yes, it is a variation on the theme of the boy who cried ‘wolf’ becoming ‘mapped out’ as a credible witness. The other facet being that when the wolf is at the door, one’s cries are then unheeded and even laughed at.
The call for help is abused at our peril.
The reports of Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett are pretty well essential reading for anyone who wants to cut through the MSM lies and find some truthful reporting. Two very remarkable women and fine journalists. Though I believe Vanessa may currently be in France covering the Gilets Jaunes.
Vanessa Beeley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQL3rX6xWRg
Ava Bartlet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfSrk2HfRN8
and Carla Ortiz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCu8mNC1JyE&t=14s have been working tirelessly to get the truth out there.
Why is my comment awaiting moderation?
Is it because I am directing readers to sites other than off Guardian?
A reader asked why more exposes were not being done, so I directed them to these sites?
From the comment guidelines Maggie ‘Please note though that we do have an automated system that holds back any comment containing more than three hyperlinks. This is intended to help filter out spam. If your comment contains four or more hyperlinks it will be held back until we clear it, but it will be published eventually.’
The slick Foreign Office bankrolled PR department of the “White Helmets” has 150 staff, courtesy of the British taxpayer. More than many of the world’s biggest corporations, Overthrowing sovereign states with your pet terrorist proxies doesn’t come cheap.
Lundiel: AVAAZ and similar ‘activist organisations’ are gatekeepers for Imperialism, disguised at “humanitarian intervention”. A site called Wrong Kind Of Green fully exposes AVAAZ and others for what they really are, and who runs them.
A few years ago I put up a parody petition on Avaaz begging the world to save the poor heart eating cannibals unfairly targeted by the Assad “regime”. Last I saw Avaaz was yet to take it down.
Vanessa Beeley and her truth about White Helmets as she was in Syria. Also Peter Ford, UK former US Embassador
Maybe I’m giving too much of the benefit of the doubt here but I feel it is difficult to really be sure of the motivations of this journalist, despite the emails to her HQ.
This was right back in 2012. There would have been alot of confusion back then as things were playing out. I think it took some time for many to realise this was a proxy war imposed on Syria rather than a complex civil war scenario.
And if she was confined to a rebel area where there would inevitably have been casualities also, she may well have been innocently taken in by the propaganda and the emails were an emotional reaction.
Journalists hardly ever venture into such areas nowadays and largely operate outside of Syria. But 7 years on, there is no excuse for any journalist not to know the main facts.
No journalist should any longer be denying that the White Helmets are terrorists, no journalist should be denying that Al Qaeda were and are Saudi, Turk and western funded and no journalist should be denying the main war crimes in Syria have been committed by these armed gangs and western governments. Any journalist who denies these facts are liars or their continued ignorance disqualifies them from the profession of journalism.
I do sense that Colvin’s friends and supporters in MSM may have done her memory a disservice by aligning her to the ‘rebel’ cause, which as we all know now is evil, sectarian and racist.
Thanks for sharing this. When the movie on Colvin came out and I saw the trailer I got that uneasy gut feeling that this was going to be yet another Hollywood propaganda moment used to further entrench the usual CIA regime change narratives. After a years of this stuff you can almost smell the propaganda even though there is only so much that can be shared in a brief trailer. I very much appreciate the backstory provided here as not being a “consumer” of MSM I don’t really remember Colvin’s specific reporting on Syria, though it appears clear it was simply part and parcel of the whole ugly Western psyop. Lies in service to the Western war machine.
Strange how there were a half a million dead Iraqi children before Bush the Dumber even launched his invasion, yet I don’t know a single name, nor have I seen a single face of even ONE of those children. All killed by U.S. supported sanctions and bombs. One American journalist pumping out war propaganda that no doubt helped facilitate thousands of senseless deaths in Syria is killed and she has her own Hollywood movie and star treatment. Such a very strange quite surreal moral universe we in the West have created. The innocent dead are invisible, while the war propagandists are valorized. Perhaps if the Colvin movie wins a prestigious award from Hollywood several of the oh so valiant White Helmets could fly in from their new homes in Canada to accept the award on her and the movie producer’s behalf, nicely completing a perfect circle of Western hypocrisy, mayhem and propaganda.
During a television interview ex-US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was asked if she thought the deaths of 500 thousand Iraqi children under the age of 5 due to US imposed sanctions was ‘worth it’ – to which she replied ,’Yes, it was worth it.’ Mass murder of children was worth extending the hegemonic ambitions of the Anglo-Zionist empire! And yet no-one batted an eyelid. Moreover it is not commonly known. It is the neocons dirty little secret. Imagine the outrage if that had been Israeli children. Are these people human? I begin to doubt it. In fact I am beginning to give rational consideration to what I once believed was David Icke’s view that these people are really not human at all but a species of alien lizards who have taken on human form.
Reptiles: or R-complex psycopathy confined to the reptilian brain, perhaps? Or more scarily, perhaps there is no major neurological difference?
If there is a post-capitalist future, humanity would do well to study the effects of pooling group autonomy and self-sovereignty In competitive hierarchical systems …which effectively promote the worst of our traits …extremising them up to the apex 0.7% (the new “1%”). This is a de facto ponerological elitism. Supported by the consent of the base.
One day humanity will be wise enough to tranversalise autonomy through an inter-relational society of societies of the base: as community of equals. Maybe. If and when we refuse to internalise non-autonomous voluntary servitude to ponerological elitism. Then there may be a revolution at the base of consciousness? Or we could continue to invest autonomy, self-sovereignty and consent to legitimate our own oppression?
If anyone can’t see the way it is going: we are co-evolving fascism with our consent.
Evolution is a very slow process, with the history of civilization a tiny blip on its map. I take you to mean evolve in its more casual usage, meaning influenced change. I think you make an important point – that the various options are amenable to study and prospective studies are much more persuasive, tending to limit the confounders. So ask those questions now. But with ‘active transport’ being constantly required to tame self-interest and tribalism. Elitism has been at the heart and soul of the major advances in public health and medicine which have done the most to alleviate the human condition.
Altering longevity in a major way seems distant in even the developed world. Now what looms on the horizon is decidedly more fraught than just eliminating disease. Gene editing in a world without firm sound moral values opens up all kinds species-threatening possibilities. Those who can do what goes on in the dark corners of the world will always be with us. “Evil” seems a very dated concept to describe these, except it sends a convenient value signal.
But you should be comfortable with the certainty that humans are not very largely different than they were a few thousand years ago, maybe not at all.. It’s simply too short a time and the same old factors will rule. There will be no difference between the reptiles and the rest except that induced by genetic drift and natural selection, as in e.g. novelty-seekers and second born preferentially went to America. But we understand even that very poorly. What happens today could have happened thousands of years ago, limited only by technology.
If you look at the evolution or development of human consciousness (I didn’t call it progress) for the current Epoch – ie to the prehistory of the ‘Mythic age’ to the birth of history as the worldview – and do not presume that you are now in the ‘real world’ you will I believe see that those core ‘mythological archetypes’ are the same patterns being enacted in more complex forms or more complex masking in forms assigned ‘reality’.
Every one has always lived their own experience or perspective within the acquired and evolving identity, and the idea of progress is not inherent to human thought which was founded on a sense of ‘gods’ as Ages and epochs – but also as what we now call planets and have absolutely no real sense of WHY they dominated the consciousness of pre-history such as to make sky-watching the very basis or background to their cultures – worldwide.
Evolution is itself an idea be-lived and not without merit and yet not without its blindside.
The idea of the perfectible human is rooted in the idea of the imperfection. When beauty was coined, ugliness was born. The last thing we understand is the consciousness that defines or generates the model we (mostly) live in AS IF it is Reality – not least because the very nature of our adaptations and strategies of maintaining our sense of self within it, are set as our survival drive.
In the old flat earth maps – which were simply the known world and not necessarily ‘flat’ the edges were the realm of dragons or serpents and monsters of the deep. We have mapped out the globe and a 360 degree cosmos – up to a point and laugh at the fears of our forebears – until and unless we are undone of our ‘handle’ on what we thought or reacted to as real and find ourself at the edge or our ‘reality’ – which is where the mind of many is predicated to NOT go, not invoke and not attract or let in. And so defences works automatically without hardly any surface awareness.
But the nature of unhealed or unresolved conflict is its transmission down the generations, such that we are a species in shock who don’t even know it. But we do have a model to notice, because even within our own ‘normalised’ alienation from our Life we have extreme examples of traits that we identify as dissociated, un-relational, unfeeling, or unseeing or simply not acting out of values that society is ‘normal’ but insane – and so they show up as the dissonant ones.
When we talk about power or society it is always through the filtering of our mind. And the mind can be many and conflicting things – even from one moment to the next.
If I were to posit any ‘certainty’ about us, it is that we are not at all what we think we are and seek to reinforce or be certain of, and nor is our world. This is not a put-down, but a door to freedom. Because the real ignorance is not , not knowing, so much as believing we know by acting or reacting from that as true – without question – excepting to seek reinforcement of what we ‘already know’ by proving the other wrong or seeing what is ‘wrong’ with them.
Using the others as a way to ‘get’ from in this way is delusional – but normal.
So on one level I am suggesting this is more like a madhouse or an asylum than an unfolding into Utopia – excepting that those who wake to recognise this are no longer wholly insane and have a basis for growing from a different predicate than power struggles – that operate no less under truce or frenemy alliances/assets.
The caterpillar stage never does ‘evolve’ to a better caterpillar, nor communication between them. But nor is there a change in the DNA. Fear of change is of course fear of transformation – that we have culturally come to associate with death and project fear onto – and react as if the fears are true. Fear of the unknown is where we project terrors of a past that may be denied, preverbal and nameless, yet most everyone chooses ‘the devil they know’. The lesser of the evils of a bad choice with no truly good outcomes.
And so whether with some grace or kicking and screaming or wailing and gnashing of teeth, we are brought to our limits or edges, each in our own ways – but periodically as collective shifts of perspective.
No matter how much history we carry, the presence of unadulterated life remains beneath its conditioning. To look on what we always used to automatically look away from is when the horse that has been led to water – acts from thirst for living waters instead of recoil in fear of drowning.
https://vdocuments.mx/the-ancient-concept-of-progress-e-r-dodds.html
The idea of progress undermines itself by denigrating or dishonouring the steps that brought it to where it currently is. This is a version of the killing of the father by the son, perhaps first embodied in Jupiter-Zeus battling with Saturn-Chronos to then displace and usurp. Juno (the younger). The Saturnian era is look back upon as the Golden Age. But the attempt to get back what we believe we have lost or been denied is to persist in and reinforce the belief and judgement that then locks into a sense of irrevocable isolation and vulnerability. Armour up and push it all down and seek out or call for any way to keep it down. Those who have thicker insulation can dream in private and engage in irritation or annoyance, while others are skinless and struggle to get through every day.
The idea of evolving as opposed to devolving or regressing, is of an integrative expansion or of dis-integrative fragmentation. There is no getting through to an addict until they have bottommed out – because they still think they can play and win. The nature of addiction is using a diversion or displacement from a feared or intolerable sense of self. Technological addiction is the outsourcing of dependency to a managed existence. It isn’t the substance or the tool or the activity that is the real issue – but the context or purpose that is active as the default ‘reality’.
Corporate greed is matched by the consumption of a managed ignorance. More is never enough for those driven by lack, while those who are identified in trying to protect the little they have fear any change that could lose even that.
So for example, almost no one questions or challenges the Farming of humans, but only jostles for better prison conditions or privileges. Perhaps… ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’:
Dissociation from that which dissociates opens a re-association with what was dissociated from.
I see this a consciously challenging to who we thought to be rather than unconscious driven by it.
Does our perception and experience of our self and world evolve through our lifetime?
George
I’m glad you mention genetic drift: if just that random mutations in small populations shows that evolution can take happen over shorter time-frames than the geological. It also liberates us partially from competitive fitness and f#cking imposed regimens of belief. And the aggressive competitive ‘alpha’ individualist conceptual diktats of ‘natural’ hierarchies.
The strict assertion of genetic determinism as a limitation of human nature is losing its grip. Environmental and epigenetic social factors play as much, if not more of a part in determining who we are. But you are right, I am not talking about biological microevolution per se, but about the evolution of consciousness. Without altering our biology, I believe we could consciously evolve quickly, very quickly – unlimited by deep evolutionary time. Although biological neuroplasticity will be a key factor.
In fact, consciousness is not limited by time at all. What it is limited by is conceptual and cultural structures of belief that we have concretised over time (in time, as time) – closed loop strictures; based on fixed, universalised, ‘natural’ laws; and linearised, mechanical (via the application of force) causation. However successful this Cartesian/Newtonian/Darwinian synthesis has been in describing the macro world – it has been an epic fail in describing consciousness. In fact, it had a priori ruled consciousness out of its field of inquiry. In short, we scientifically and mathematically verified a materialistic reality …devoid of any conscious humanity.
These closed loops of meaning(lessness) are (at all levels) biased and self-reinforcing: tending toward the atomisation of knowing. But rather than require the application of external force to change or impose: equally (dialectically) they require internal force to maintain. We, the larger we, invest a great deal of time and energy in maintaining our individuated point of view in order to conform. When the beliefs do not match reality: proportionally more energy must be invested – internally and externally – to sustain the status quo. Which can be psychologically and socially draining and destructive.
The current evolutionarily redundant regime of truth has few points of contact with reality …but largely it is a hallucinated simulacra. Yet what keeps it in place is a moment by moment process of cognition and conformational apperception. Which more and more are finding increasingly difficult to do. This is largely due to the fact that the received encultured reality is perceived as external to us – beyond our control. Can we transform to a cognitive (nondual) alternative before we have a global psychological breakdown? Will we be enforced to believe in a hegemonic truth that is no longer believable? ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’ ‘And if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?’
I’d love to affirm that we will evolve consciously, but I can affirm that we can. There is a growing body of meditative research that shows we can alter the brain structurally in weeks – which is geologically instantaneous! These changes persist as new inputs into the system. Communications theory shows how quickly information can go viral: or how little of a networked population is needed before information becomes mainstream, etc. Why do you think the mainstream ideologues want us to assert a contrived version of the truth that things are scientifically and genetically determined to be as they are …and any change in human nature can only occur on epochal and epic time-scales? In fact, the system could bifurcate to a new way of knowing in no time at all. Literally.
‘I am my own best friend / I am my own worst enemy’.
We like to think the former and yet sooner or later uncover the latter.
In using terms like ‘I’ are presumptions of associated belief – emotionally and physically reinforced.
I see the ‘evolution’ of a defence reflex as a personal/social adaptation.
How much room has anyone to fundamentally change from their acculturation or acquired personality of self-strategy?
What is involved in accepting, opening and aligning in radical change – that is – a realignment from a deeper root than acquired strategies that served purpose but now limit, distort and obstruct?
Is it not a kind of ‘death’ in terms of what we thought we were?
Indeed a transforming passage through the fear of death. loss of self, power, or love in terms of who and what we think we are or habitually presume to be?
So the meeting with the obstacles, adversities, limits or denials, deprivations and betrayals ARE the active opportunity for Re Vision – in disinvesting habit-reaction to seek grounded perspective – despite and because of fear?
‘Because of fear’, because the honest appraisal of uncovered or felt fear is of self-conflicting states calling for unified purpose that involves acceptance or choice of a decision to let conflicting purpose go. Calling on resources we do not feel or even believe we have, regardless our professed ‘beliefs’ under ‘normal’ or un-challenging conditions, and so abiding in the felt ‘chaos’ of otherwise intolerable experience as simply the willingness for truth – which is the other side of an unwillingness to persist in untruth – once recognized as such.
The ‘reason’ we do not ‘evolve’ beyond our fear is because fear says ‘STOP!’ and has all the contents of our mind to create the experiences that set or frame our range of awareness, perceptions and responses. It usually does so with little consciousness of its working and when ‘working well’ little consciousness of fear.
The limiting of consciousness of fear is not the escape or deliverance it seems, but a buy now pay later scheme in which conscious responsibility is ‘outsourced’ or surrendered to a deep state of defences operating in your name to ‘protect you from yourself – as you have defined and accepted yourself to be – in experience of conflict, fear, trauma, guilt or any other self-invalidating or denying deprivation.
Thus behind the mask of seeming reasonableness is a highly alert agenda of self-preservation under persistent and pervasive threat. The layers of masking are the realms of self and other deceits or delusion – for we are deceived in ourselves as the basis of relationships that are never wholly embraced or engaged starting of course with ourself – but reflected in our world.
When we come up against a seemingly immovable or impassable block, is when there is a toxic backing up, and loss of inspiration and connection – that projects onto the block as reinforcement in both despair and in superficial attempts to counter negative belief.
I am reminded of Heracles clearing the Augean Stables in that the going INTO the shit, was not to try and deal with it in personal terms, so much as opening a channel of flow that of itself flushed out the shit. In terms of our life, this is the active willingness for reconnection with the truth or depth of our being – that is recognised as both a synchronicity and a flow – not merely of undoing or addressing problems – but of felt and shared presence and a quality of aligning what is needed, even through apparently chaotic or ‘normally obstructive’ conditions.
Unified purpose cant be for a ‘bit on the side’ or to keep a little bit back, or to hold onto just a little secret hate, and yet nor can it be contrived or set in motion by a personal sense of achievement – but rather, is the gift of life renewed as a result of the releasing of the conflicting or obstructive ‘self-protections’ that in truth run a protection racket, of joyless and loveless exchange for the life that would of itself Move us and move through us if allowed freedom of expression.
The log-jam or denial of our expression is not least because either there a monster or a rage down there who must never be let out, or that the love that we are has met denial in the world and must be protected from a blind hatred.
Hercules – (associated with Mars) is also associated with fearless and prodigious feats of strength as a terrifying and overwhelming rage. The will to live, pushed down, cornered and denied, generates rage – that – shut down – generates depression or anxiety and disease.
Revisiting what lies beneath, in a willingness or movement for truth or healing, is the context in which an intensity of emotional charge can transform and open a greater honesty within a relational field, instead of self-assertion that destroys it own home or belonging in the attempt to BE through the language of denial.
No one will relate to this excepting they are in the ‘territory’ of holding awareness and relational willingness amidst the exposures to hidden hates, fears and guilt.
A compartmentalised ‘self’ is a dis-integrity – or rather multiple shifting dictates or allegiances under a cover story or narrative control. A compartmentalised and fragmented society necessitates systems management Inc Ltd. Because the cover story demands sacrifice of truth to ‘keep the order’ predicated on the inhibition or suppression both love and fear given direct expression as equal threat and therefore alloyed as association of love with the hated and feared.
While there is a place for psychological map and model – the actuality is psychic-emotional involvement – and we are this – however we frame it and indeed frame to exclude it and presume power OVER relationship by an intent to use them to get for ourself or our group identity alone – or at expense of others and the whole.
Selfishness has to be recognised as our only starting place for expansion or transcendence. The demonisation of the self or world as something to be killed and remade is a usurping of the natural process of renewal. In all respects the ego – of the sense of isolated independence set in fragility and vulnerability – is an attempt to usurp natural functions to its own command and control. Life is not intended or designed to be manually micromanaged.
We get in our own way until we learn not to.
Francis, re Lizard People: In the Lowest Bolgia of Dante’s Inferno where the deepest villains live (the Avaricious, the Hypocrites, the Fraudulent, the Treacherous) there is a circle of Lizard Men: men who change into flesh-eating lizards who change into men who change into lizards in a perpetual frenzy of victims becoming killers becoming victims. I think of that as a symbol of what can happen if we cannot control the latent evil within ourselves. History has many examples of Victim People becoming Lizard People: for instance defeated WW1 Germany turning into Nazi Germany; and Jewish survivors of Nazism turning into ZioNazis.
The quality that people call ‘Humanity’ (Ubuntu, from bantu or people) is only the ideal part of being human, but it is the best part. We must hold the Lizard People up to this ideal standard and reform them, or else they will destabilize the world and destroy the rest of humanity with their avarice, hypocrisy, fraud and political destabilization.
The model can be used to look at the deepest recesses of our mind and note: the reptilian brain is the fight and flight amygdala: brainmadesimple.com/amygdala.html ie: “When you think of the amygdala, you should think of one word. Fear. The amygdala is the reason we are afraid of things outside our control”. or from dictionary.com: “a ganglion of the limbic system adjoining the temporal lobe of the brain and involved in emotions of fear and aggression”.
Emotionally driven mind is framed in archetypes of separation trauma as part of the core personality.
Writing about it is nothing in common with experiencing it.
But meeting the effects is to encounter the energetic – and the hateful generates a like resonse.
Many commenters spew hate – but don’t feel so because they feel completely justified and righteous.
The ‘gift shares on’, but first one has to be willing to receive it by acting from it as true of you.
Love is the capacity to be with what is as the recognition of what is true.
Fear calls on the capacity to deny and dissociate as the assertion of the replacement of truth from the conviction it already knows.
The Anglo American and European “free press” in general are doing what they have always done: promote psyops disguised as journalism to demonize any “enemy” nation that the Anglo American Empire seeks to subjugate … behind the mask of freedom and democracy.
This was true during the Cold War.
And it is true after the Cold War.
Indeed, freedom itself is one of the great political deceptions upon which the American, British and their war criminal allies are founded upon as nations and as a people.
The Anglo Americans self-righteously pontificate about “freedom and democracy”–all the while blood is dripping from their lips.
And they try to reassure themselves that people outside the vaunted “Free World” don’t notice.
Like her countrymen/women, Marie Colvin was just another Anglo American crusader with delusions of her own moral righteousness.
And she found out the hard way that crusaders can be killed.
I would not be surprised if Colvin was killed on the orders of Special Forces or CIA operatives in order to vilify the Syrian Government.
Why not? The US deliberately bombed and targeted Al Jazeera, killing many of their staff. They bombed Serbian television, killing many. Many journalists have been deliberately murdered by Israeli snipers in Gaza. The Kiev Regime has killed and disappeared many journalist But don’t expect to see many Hollywood epics about any of them.
why kill a valuable ashkanazi asset
her character died the goyim think animal assad killed her
scam new york court cases paid awarded out 300 million dollars of syriana sovreign wealth funds.
she or he gets a new shining actorly gig
simple
In short, most Western mass MSM can now be regarded as biased / unreliable / spin outlets. Internet exposed them and their paymasters. They used to be held up as the shining examples of “Truth” to the East and South: not anymore. The “Pravda” and “the People’s” Daily have a lot of company these days. Still useful if you have a big paint job or fish to carry….