Western media

So, have you heard about the 40+ children killed in a school bombing in Homs, Syria yesterday? No? Well, I don't blame you, because almost none of the "Western" media have reported on it! Neither right nor left American news companies, the BBC, The Telegraph and The Independent, El Mundo or El Pais, Suddeutsche Zeitung or Die Welt, Le Monde... The few that did are often stuck on the first estimate that said 10 victims and the article getting buried with no updates.

What gives? Are we so biased that our noble and righteous civilization doesn't care about 40+ dead children, because they happened to be Allawites, therefore filthy pro-Assad scum? I could understand certain hesitance to copy whatever SANA, the official Syrian news agency, puts out, but it has been picked up by Al Jazeera and it's covered by AFP too, so it did happen. The cynical and I'm afraid most likely explanation would be that this was perpetrated by the revered Moderate Rebels of Freedom & Democracy, as no one claimed responsibility (as the extremists like to do) and Homs is nowhere near ISIL-controlled territories, which goes heavily against the image of the Syrian civil war as interpreted by America & friends.

I'm not saying the news won't get picked up by mainstream eventually, but it's obvious feet are being dragged and eyes averted.

Greek media may be shit and sellouts when it comes to local politics (and recently, when it comes to perform "public relations management" with regards to the crisis), but we always had a very good coverage of world politics, to the point that I recently surprised an American colleague with my knowledge of America's politics -we were talking about how Fox News tried to pass off John Kerry as French, years ago, something I saw in regular news broadcasts.

And yes, this particular event you mentioned was covered. There's always an increased sensibility in our media when the interference of the USA -even when it's not direct- causes the deaths of innocents.

By comparison, Italian news broadcasts focus only on trite shit/the high life of the jet set and the such, as if everything was just peaches and cream.

My local news source covers it fairly closely, but when I searched elsewhere, I grew increasingly surprised at the amount of stonewalling.

It is mentioned, somewhat incidentally, on the the BBC, but there's that descrepancy in the numbers that you mention. Also an interesting contrast between Aljazeera and the BBC in the implication of responsibility:

Aljazeera said:

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday's attack, but Syrian rebels fighting to oust Assad have carried out such bombings during the country's civil war.

BBC said:

No group said it had carried out the attack but the area is dominated by President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect.

Hmmm...

The Western world has an incredibly myopic view when it comes to international news, especially when it comes to conflict. I used to blame the news for this - I thought they were lazy, biased, pushing an agenda, etc., but I gradually came to realize it's not the news, it's that the people just don't wanna hear that crap, and the news is simply catering to the people's wishes. Anything that might complicate a strict black-and-white good vs. bad viewpoint of the world, anything that shows people on both sides of a conflict as being, well, people, is hated and reviled because it confuses and upsets us. Why isn't real life more like the movies? Why all these complications? It isn't fair! So we block it out.

They only cover stories in detail that make the regime they want to topple look bad so that the "heroic freedom fighters who used to be teachers and doctors like you an me" look good. It's frustrating as hell, and makes communicating to people who use mainstream news as their primary source impossible to talk to about politics, and on a less selfish level it allows the West to keep destroying the Middle East and Ukraine.

Ukraine is a different beast altogether. Czech media see a lot of discourse with wildly different stances on the conflict and even the official government position isn't clearly siding with "free" Ukraine, so I will call you wrong on that issue. Furthermore, believing anything put out by Russian or Ukrainian media/officials would be naive, because the disinformation war raging between the two countries is almost hilariously absurd. You can't even aggregate between the two, because they release directly opposing versions of any event, resulting in total annihilation of information. Western media seem fairly reserved and objective, tbh. At least relatively.

Speaking of that, noticed how everybody stopped talking about the shot-down Malaysian plane, once it was discovered that it was riddled with holes from 30 mm bullets which could have only come from a fighter aircraft flying at its own altitude? Ooops....

The story appeared in the print and online edition of the Detroit Free Press. I doubt this kind of story would appear on western cable news stations except for maybe in the headline crawl on the bottom of the screen.

Maes said:

Speaking of that, noticed how everybody stopped talking about the shot-down Malaysian plane, once it was discovered that it was riddled with holes from 30 mm bullets which could have only come from a fighter aircraft flying at its own altitude? Ooops....

These holes are shrapnel from a buk's missile, sorry to burst your little conspiracy theory.

Russian propaganda stations have floated the theory that there were Ukrainian Su-25 tailing the plane. Now that's interesting because even if it were true, the Su-25 is a ground attack fighter with a service ceiling of 7000 metres on a clean (read: weaponless) configuration. MH17 was flying at a height of 10000 metres, 3000 metres above the maximum altitude of a Frogfoot.

The general public doesn't know anything about military hardware and therefore can perfectly gobble up that a ground attack plane like the Rook, being a plane, can fly up to reach an airliner; whereas a truck, being on the ground, is incapable of reaching a plane. Duh. A truck doesn't fly, so how is it going to shoot a missile at a plane? Checkmate, Westerners.

Even more interesting: the official report shows evidence that the plane was hit by shrapnel that penetrated the plane from above. A Frogfoot flying below and shooting at an absurd distance of 3000+ meters wouldn't have been able to do that. But the Buk missile system, how does it work? First, the missile soars above the plane, then it dives on it, and upon approach explodes to pepper it with shrapnel. It's kind of like exactly what happened to the MH17! Gee wheeze, what could it mean? Could it mean that the so-called separatists, who had boasted about downing a second Ukrainian transport plane within minutes of the MH17 disappearing from the radar, even though there were no Ukrainian transport planes in the area and that hypothetical transport's wreckage site having never been found, and who have later deleted all their tweets and messages about the kill, have actually shot down an airliner? But... it would mean that Putin lied! And not the West! Can you imagine a world where the West isn't wrong on every single thing? Can you imagine a world where Saint Putin, our savior who saves us from the horrible gays and Muslims, would lie to us?

Fortunately, there is another theory that explains everything a lot more rationally. See, it's mercenaries from Blackwater who stole a Russian Buk, drove it to separatist-controlled territory, and shot down an airliner just to make Russia look bad. Well played, CIA. Well played.

It's no secret that the media has a certain bias. It also has to sell. That all plays a role. If there's a suicide bomb every day in Iraq for years in a row, later on it just won't be news anymore. It's nothing new. Yes, people should still fucking do something about it, but the average reader/viewer is just going to zone out or skip over that particular piece of news. So we keep it in the "short but somewhat noteworthy snippets" box, if at all.

Also, it's just natural that we care more about things that are closer to home, so a bomb in Boston killing three people is way more interesting than your run-of-the-mill school suicide bomb killing 40+ children. It sounds horrid, but that's just the way we evolved and were conditioned to think - that's why we need to reflect on why and how/if we need to change how we react to events like these.

Gez said:

These holes are shrapnel from a buk's missile, sorry to burst your little conspiracy theory.

Actually, most photos show both irregular holes that could be created by shrapnel, as well as nice, rounded holes directed from the outside of the plane to the inside. Maybe it was fired upon on the way down, while already destroyed by a Buk missile, just to fuck with the investigators' mind?

Gez said:

Russian propaganda stations have floated the theory that there were Ukrainian Su-25 tailing the plane. Now that's interesting because even if it were true, the Su-25 is a ground attack fighter with a service ceiling of 7000 metres on a clean (read: weaponless) configuration. MH17 was flying at a height of 10000 metres, 3000 metres above the maximum altitude of a Frogfoot

"Service ceiling" doesn't mean that the envelope can't be pushed, plus those 30 mm rounds don't exactly fall down like rocks after 100 meters (actually, they have an effective range of 2-3 km from the shooter). Since this wasn't a dogfight, even an attack aircraft could pull this off. Hell, even a WW-2 era fighter plane, if pushed, could have got close enough to unleash a devastating attack.

In any case, the flight path of an aircraft on such a controlled border is much less easily concealable than the firing of a missile which ceases to exist after a while. How likely is it that the Ukrainian side was able to "capture the firing flash" (as they claimed to have done, with the West totally buying it), while the West rejects the hard Russian evidence of the Su-25s' flights?

In any case, no matter whose story you believe, there's a suspicious "media silence" on the matter for nearly a month now, as if the truth would be inconvenient for one of the sides. Almost all stories you can read about are from July and August, while no worthwhile updates have been published ever since, just rehashes. As the Russian side was "morally compromised" from the beginning and they have nothing to gain by holding back information, at this point, then the problem must be with the other side, says I. Hmm...

Maes said:

Actually, most photos show both irregular holes that could be created by shrapnel, as well as nice, rounded holes directed from the outside of the plane to the inside. Maybe it was fired upon on the way down, while already destroyed by a Buk missile, just to fuck with the investigators' mind?

Yes a joint Ukraine/Russia operation to troll the entire world. Seems extremely credible!

Going from the outside to the inside is exactly what a successful kill with a fragmentation warhead does! Nice regular rounded holes? Could it be caused by the shrapnel charge of the missile?

Maes said:

"Service ceiling" doesn't mean that the envelope can't be pushed

To the point of being doubled?

Maes said:

plus those 30 mm rounds don't exactly fall down like rocks after 100 meters (actually, they have an effective range of 2-3 km from the shooter).

Vertically upwards?

Maes said:

Since this wasn't a dogfight, even an attack aircraft could pull this off. Hell, even a WW-2 era fighter plane, if pushed, could have got close enough to unleash a devastating attack.

Even then, would gunning an airliner be sufficient to shut it down instantly and break it in half? You'd need to have some sort of automatic nightmare shotgun so as to cause that much damage, over that large a spread, instantly. Well, either that or a Buk missile.

Maes said:

In any case, the flight path of an aircraft on such a controlled border is much less easily concealable than the firing of a missile which ceases to exist after a while. How likely is it that the Ukrainian side was able to "capture the firing flash" (as they claimed to have done, with the West totally buying it), while the West rejects the hard Russian evidence of the Su-25s' flights?

In any case, no matter whose story you believe, there's a suspicious "media silence" on the matter for nearly a month now, as if the truth would be inconvenient for one of the sides. Almost all stories you can read about are from July and August, while no worthwhile updates have been published ever since, just rehashes. As the Russian side was "morally compromised" from the beginning and they have nothing to gain by holding back information, at this point, then the problem must be with the other side, says I. Hmm...

Why did the DNR/LNR folk boast about having a Buk, then hurried to claim they had none?

Why did the DNR/LNR folk claim to have downed a Tupolev, then hurried to delete their tweets?

Why did people in the occupied territory took pictures and films of a Buk going hurriedly back to Russia? People made thorough analysis of these pics.

Basically, you have two hypotheses. One is that a SAM team, acting with little supervision, shot down an airliner by accident when they thought it was a Tupolev of the Ukrainian Army. The other is that Ukraine decided to shoot down an airliner as a false flag operation to make Russia look bad. Conspirationists will naturally jump on the latter because it's their fetish. But the former is the one that makes the most sense.

But then, in that case, you'll have to admit that Iran Air 655 was shot down by an Iranian F-14 in a false flag operation to make the USA look bad. Because if it works one way, it works both ways.

Maes, stop spreading ridiculous nonsense that has been ruled out as bullshit. The Dutch report clearly states, without blaming Russia, mind you, what has been estimated from the beginning as the cause of the shotdown - a Buk missile has exploded near the plane and extremely hot shrapnel pierced the plane. That is how Buk operates, it doesn't hit a target, it explodes in its proximity. Your claim the holes could only originate from Su-25 cannons is utter drivel only the most extreme of the rebels perpetuated for like two weeks, not even Moscow pushes that angle anymore, that's how ridiculous and stupid and unbelievable it is.

The Su-25 theory... are you being contrarian just to have a fight with us? Are you seriously suggesting a ground fighter started shooting at an unidentified plane several klicks upwards... and hit multiple times in a very tight pattern? As for your "hard Russian evidence", are you per chance talking about the radarsatellite pictures that were obviously postdated by about a fortnight, because Kremlin "experts" forgot to photoshop out a forest that has been cleared out in the meantime? As for media silence - no one cares, so media stopped flogging a dead horse. The Dutch report confirmed what everyone already expected and didn't directly blame Moscow, so no fuel for drama was given and the report fell through and you didn't notice it.

edit: small clarifications

According to my local news, the death toll is already 53, and unfortunately that number is expected to rise, given that many are seriusly injured. Also, it seems it was a double attack.

Here in Canada I read about every little occurrence that happens in the Middle East in the papers. It's actually to a point where it's fatiguing seeing, once again, a secular, somewhat prosperous nation being turned into Afghanistan by, again, Arab-American geopolitics. I'm just waiting until we find a reason to go after Iran for simply being a sovereign nation.

But honestly, I can see why people are tired of hearing about Muslim troubles and don't have the gull to want to interfere. We're too jaded from the Afghan/Iraq wars to delude ourselves that sending in troops to kill extremists is going to have any lasting effect. The goons the Americans were fighting during their occupation *of Iraq* have arisen just as they stepped out. The Taliban simply jumped ship and hid in Pakistan and now they're traveling back to wreck havoc in Afghanistan, and of course staying in Pakistan to continue to ruin it's northern provinces. We've been in the middle east since Russian stepped foot onto Afghan land and hearing about crazy Islamists is so common we just accept it.

Looking through my local news, 1.10.2014 21:38 local time, reported that there was man who planted one bomb in other place and then detonated himself in another place, 30-40 children were dead, and the casualty rate may grow since there are children missing. It was short, and nothing else has been reported.

But thinking it bit, I think newspapers try to keep all kinds of news in front. Now there's news about riots in Hong Kong, and latest one shows an aid worker from Switzerland been killed in Donetsk. Not that they're unimportant, but guess papers don't sell if they keep repeating bombings in Syria, Israel or Iraq? Blame ethics in newsletters if ya will.

As far as the western news (or European), remember when that antisemitism and extreme right wing movement was on rise when the European parliament elections was knocking on the door? TOTALLY NOT BIASED.

Technician said:

Here in Canada I read about every little occurrence that happens in the Middle East in the papers. It's actually to a point where it's fatiguing seeing, once again, a secular, somewhat prosperous nation being turned into Afghanistan by, again, Arab-American geopolitics. I'm just waiting until we find a reason to go after Iran for simply being a sovereign nation.

But honestly, I can see why people are tired of hearing about Muslim troubles and don't have the gull to want to interfere. We're too jaded from the Afghan/Iraq wars to delude ourselves that sending in troops to kill extremists is going to have any lasting effect. The goons the Americans were fighting during their occupation have arisen just as they stepped out. The Taliban simply jumped ship and hid in Pakistan and now they're traveling back to wreck havoc in Afghanistan, and of course staying in Pakistan to continue to ruin it's northern provinces. We've been in the middle east since Russian stepped foot onto Afghan land and hearing about crazy Islamists is so common we just accept it.

Huh, the Taliban escaped during Little Dubya's little war? Iraq was not run by the Taliban. People seem to forget, that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden hated each other. Saddam was a secular dictator, he didnt care at all about religious extremism. Like him or hate him, he held everything together in the region, until Dubya wanted a war to impress his daddy, and by removing him, he destabilized all the region. Another aspect people seem to forget, since you mention Russia's cold war era invasion of Afganisthan, is that the George H. Bush-led CIA trained this Afghan insurgents who would be later be known as Al-Qaeda, to fight the commies. Reap what you saw i guess.

Technician just jumped to the Afghan war between sentences... and I think you guys aren't disagreeing with each other. Just the West doing a terrible job bullying developing nations into western values and gratitude.

dew said:

Just the West doing a terrible job bullying developing nations into western values and gratitude.

This is a crucial point I'd like to talk about. I truly believe the Bush admin thought they were doing good. I do think they thought installing a western style system would make the Middle East a better place. Countries like Japan and South Korea flourished after the Americans stepped in and left a democratic presence. America just didn't understand the Muslim mentality or the ancient tribal conflicts that has remained throughout occupation and empires of the region.

See, that's the problem with propaganda: it's easier to "counter" it with other pre-made propaganda which is itself not free from the outright fabrications and exaggerations that the "enemy" side is accused of, so posting "facts" and "counter-facts" can go on endlessly.

So buying one or the other version of a story pretty much defines ones allegiances (and I've never hidden mine). So, why haven't you pledged some money to your hero yet? He's fighting the "bad guys" after all...he's on your (?) side.

doomgargoyle said:

Huh, the Taliban escaped during Little Dubya's little war?

Yes.

Iraq was not run by the Taliban.

No, I never alluded to it.

People seem to forget, that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden hated each other.

Sure, probably.

Saddam was a secular dictator, he didnt care at all about religious extremism.

Yes and no. Assad is a much better example of a secular dictator. He ran a country, probably the most ethnically diverse of the Arab territories, and he himself was a minority of his own nation. Saddam catered to his Sunny brethren who are the second largest majority of a once Shia nation.

Like him or hate him, he held everything together in the region, until Dubya wanted a war to impress his daddy, and by removing him, he destabilized all the region.

I agree wholeheartedly. I've said it before, the Middle East needs to be controlled by an Iron fist.

Technician said:

I agree wholeheartedly. I've said it before, the Middle East needs to be controlled by an Iron fist.

It's pretty sad that the most any Middle Eastern (but more in general, Islamic) country can aspire to become, is a "democradura" a-la Turca.

Maes said:

It's pretty sad that the most any Middle Eastern (but more in general, Islamic) country can aspire to become, is a "democradura" a-la Turca.

Sad that the usa supports some of these Middle Eastern Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, because they need their oil.

doomgargoyle said:

Sad that the usa supports some of these Middle Eastern Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, because they need their oil.

America doesn't need their oil, they need them to exchange their oil with the world using the USD. If America could find a way other than the oil exchange to keep it's dollar strong the Middle East will be dead to them.

Technician said:

America doesn't need their oil, they need them to exchange their oil with the world using the USD. If America could find a way other than the oil exchange to keep it's dollar strong the Middle East will be dead to them.

I dont know about that, the usa is an oil-thirsty nation. The dollar is pretty weak nowadays isnt it anyways?

And in the meantime, China and Russia are working towards decreasing their US dollar dependency.

Maes said:

And in the meantime, China and Russia are working towards decreasing their US dollar dependency.

Great for them. China is also making their own windows-replacement. They dont want their tech to depend on NSA-backdoor friendly Microsoft Windows.

Maes said:

See, that's the problem with propaganda: it's easier to "counter" it with other pre-made propaganda which is itself not free from the outright fabrications and exaggerations that the "enemy" side is accused of, so posting "facts" and "counter-facts" can go on endlessly.

So buying one or the other version of a story pretty much defines ones allegiances (and I've never hidden mine). So, why haven't you pledged some money to your hero yet? He's fighting the "bad guys" after all...he's on your (?) side.

Why are you referencing your own past posts like that? They're not a wiki-style source of objective information just because they're old.

Also trying to paint me as a Bandera-celebrating, Jew-hating neofascist is quite a bit insulting, are you trying to insult me? See, I believe one doesn't have to subscribe to herd mentality. I try to weigh information and assemble my own world view. I most certainly don't believe all the crap Avakov or Semenchenko trumpet into the world and neofascists like Yarosh are imo as bad as Zhirinovski or Rogozin. You should try it too and start with ignoring everything Lavrov has to say about Ukraine. He lied about the downed plane and he lied about the "mass grave with 400 bodies".

Technician said:

Yes and no. Assad is a much better example of a secular dictator. He ran a country, probably the most ethnically diverse of the Arab territories, and he himself was a minority of his own nation. Saddam catered to his Sunny brethren who are the second largest majority of a once Shia nation.

Assad caters to his Alawite brethren. Saddam had people in position of power who weren't from his clan; e.g. Tarek Aziz. Of course it was a calculated move (let's get a Christian guy to be the Foreign Minister, it'll score well with Western powers) but that's still something Assad wouldn't do.

There's no such thing as "second largest majority", a majority is over 50%. You may mean plurality; but Iraq is still majoritarily Shia.


That said, both Saddam and Assad have in common that they represented the Baath party. Now the real crime of the Baath party is that historically their ideology was socialist. That made them allies of the Soviet Union. Assad still allows the Russian to use a Syrian port as a Russian Navy base in the Mediterranean. One big difference between the Iraqi Baathist Party and the Syrian one is that in Iraq, Baath was pro-Sunni, while in Syria Baath is rather pro-Shia. That makes Syria an ally of Iran.

Israel and the USA hate Iran and wish to see it destroyed. There's a fear that if Iraq remains united and under Shia control, and Assad stays in power, then Iran will have its sphere of influence reach the Mediterranean. It could lead to "bad" things such as an Iranian-sponsored construction of a railroad from a Mediterranean port in Syria to Iraq, and then a port in Iran, allowing to bypass the Suez canal. Egypt wouldn't want that. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and all the other Sunni monarchies in the area wouldn't want that. Which is why it's important to have the Iraqi Kurdistan be as independent as possible; Kurds are Sunnite and would supposedly oppose Iranian influence.

Then there's Turkey. Turkey's relationship with Kurds are complicated. They're mostly positive with Iraqi Kurds because they're not their problem, but they're still quite bad with Turkish Kurds. Turkey aspires to get the influence over the area that the Ottoman Empire once had, so they're doing what they can to counter the influences of the other powers in the area. Who are these other powers? Well, there's Iraq, which is already thoroughly destroyed. There's Israel, which is protected by the USA and therefore untouchable. There's Egypt, which is also protected by the USA, though less than Israel. And there's Iran.

So basically, the one thing everybody agrees on -- KSA, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, and the USA -- is that Iranian influence in Iraq should be curbed. And they have different ideas on how to do that. Turkey has been accused of helping Daesh, at least passively by letting their borders be very porous, because the so-called Islamic State is busy killing all the Shia they find.

Then there's the rebel groups in Syria. There are many of them. They form coalitions, but it's all very fluid, a same group can be in one coalition one day and a different on the next. The Free Syrian Army is not one single cohesive group. Neither is JaN. And neither is Daesh. Groups affiliated with the FSA may end up joining Daesh later. It has already happened.

Because of Russian pressure, it's not possible for the USA to attack Assad directly. The rebel groups, however, want strikes against Assad more than they want strikes against Daesh. The US believe that if they coordinated their strikes against Daesh with the FSA, the FSA would take advantage of them to lead the USA to make strikes against the regime, which would complicate negotiations with Moscow on many sensitive things Washington cares about (no, Ukraine isn't one of them) so, they do not. As a result, they prefer risking bombing the FSA accidentally. They've also decided to attack the Al-Qaeda-affiliated JaN as a target of opportunity, despite JaN having local alliances with the FSA. As a result: JaN, which fought against Daesh, is now uniting with them instead; and in the FSA, many are disillusioned with the USA and defect to join Daesh instead, because they're winning and they're rich.

It's impressive that the USA are managing to do this in the most botched way possible, because the want to oppose Iran and cannot really oppose Russia, leaving them only the worst approach to the situation.