All professional athletes use drugs, ranging from outright (advanced and hardly detectable) steroids to relatively harmless painkillers and “vitamins”. For instance, pretty much all Norwegian skiers get themselves diagnosed with asthma to take performance enhancing anti-asthma meds. There are multiple substances that can be detected in athletes’ blood. The decision on what goes on the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) ban list is made on purely political grounds.
Thus, Meldonium (the stuff that got Sharapova disqualified earlier this year), an anti-ischemia medication that, in theory, supposed to decrease the risk of heart attacks (although the Soviet tests that were conducted during the 1970s only showed significant results on animals; human research has been inconclusive and it’s been prescribed since mostly for the Placebo effect) was banned only because it has been used by the Eastern European athletes. Moreover, the improved screening technologies can detect very marginal trace amounts in the blood stream these days, and Meldonium leaves metabolites that don’t leave the body for, like, 4-5 months. So, given that the updated WADA ban-list is released at the end of the year (either in October or November), there was no way the athletes could clean themselves up before January 2016.
It seems like WADA and various organisations within the IMO/IAAF are being utilised for the Cold War 2.0. They removed wrestling from the Olympic program (athletes from the Caucasus region have always been dominating this kind of sport, brining Russian Federation gold and silver medals), and now we have the Meldonium travesty, as well as the “doping scandal” with Russian track & field athletes being banned from Rio 2016 (Russian women are traditionally dominant in this, with no real competition from other white female athletes).
It’s also funny how Rodchenkov, the “whistleblower”, who supposedly used to curate the “doping program” in Russia now holds a key role in WADA.
I’ve always been wondering what kind medications and “vitamins” do athletes from the US Swimming Team take…
Interesting fact in regards to Pokemon Go: the company that developed it, Niantic Inc, started off as a side project inside Google. Its founder, John Hanke, used to be the Vice President of Product Management for Google’s “Geo” branch (the branch that deals with Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Street View and similar products).
It’s the same Google that hooked up with Hillary Clinton’s team and Al Jazeera network a few years ago to spread and amplify information about the unrest in Syria (renaming streets in Damascus for ideological purposes in real time, as the events were unfolding, along the way) to “encourage more dissent” in the effort to overthrow the lawful president Assad. As of today, that venture has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands and the displacement of millions more.
Prior to his Google years, John Hanke used to work for the US State Department, dealing with foreign policy matters…
***
Remember how social media was utilised to facilitate the, so called, Arab Spring in the early 2010s and the Euromaidan riots in 2013-2014 (all the elites needed was to get a bunch of impressionable idiots into the main city square, and then they began initiating the algorithms initially developed by a historian/sociologist Gene Sharp, progressively turning the peaceful protest into mass riots that got over 100 people killed, overthrowing the government and dragging the country into a bloodbath civil war)? Social media manipulation is no joke. And the governments/intelligence agencies understand that well.
Pokemon Go, in theory, can serve as a very convenient tool for crowd manipulation, and former Google and the US State Department employees being behind the product adds certain funk to it.
In the meantime, try to google what sort of companies provide satellite data to Google, and then check the background of the people who founded those companies. Lots of food for thought you will find.
I love BBC. I really do. They are amazing when it comes to wildlife documentaries (used to be absolutely fascinated by those when I was a kid). The Essential Mix program on BBC Radio 1 often offers a fantastic variety of high quality electronic music (ahh! those legendary 1990s trance mixes by Paul Oakenfold!). Their TV show production, both old and new, is superb (A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Doctor Who, Sherlock, just to name a few). Can’t say the same about their news service, though. In fact, it is beyond revolting.
These days, I have the same problem with the British Broadcast Corporation as I have with the CNN: whenever I watch or read their news coverage, I get this feeling like somebody just opened up my skull and took a huge dump right inside my head. As I’ve been saying it before – I don’t like it when (pseudo-)journalists do that to me. I have my own sh*t there already.
Indeed, your BSmetre can go off charts when you consume content produced and delivered by mainstream media outlets.
I was thinking of doing something fun today. Let’s take one of the recent articles posted to the BBC web-site and see how they manipulate their audience by distorting information, omitting facts and just generally misinforming and talking BS.
While some of the points the article makes are sound and well-argued, the implications that the author draws, the omission of facts and general distortions make it such cheap propaganda BS.
Let’s take it apart, piece by piece.
Ennius begins with:
“The day after the downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber in the vicinity of the Syrian-Turkish border on 24 November, pro-Kremlin TV channels showed an interview with a man they said was the plane’s navigator, Captain Konstantin Murakhtin.”
And right here, in the very first sentence, we get the first minor manipulation attempt. Since when did “in the vicinity of the Syrian-Turkish border” become synonymous with “in the Syrian airspace”? Though not technically misinformation, such wording deliberately blurs the information and draws reader’s attention away from the fact that the Turkish F-16 jet itself violated the Syrian airspace while downing the Russian plane. BBC tries to whitewash Turkey in such way to make Russia look worse?
But, okay, it’s a minor detail, let’s move on.
“Filmed from behind at the Humaymim airbase in Syria, the man categorically denied that the Russian bomber had at any time entered Turkish airspace or that it had received a warning from the Turkish air force, thus apparently adding extra weight to Moscow’s rebuttal of Ankara’s claims to the contrary.”
What Ankara’s claims to the contrary? Like that letter to the UN Security Council, in which they stated that the jet violated airspace for 17 seconds, from which, with the distance it flew provided, you can easily calculate that the plane flew at a speed of 391 km/h (waaay to slow to be true; ordinary passenger jets normally fly at 800-900 km/h, the military jets’ speeds normally exceeds 1000 km/h; so, the letter suggests that those on the Turkish side who were making this up are rather incompetent when it comes to the military aviation, like, really basic level incompetent)?
Either Turkey's statement to UN is bogus or Russian Su-24 jet made extraordinarily slow penetration of airspace https://t.co/1lvb8dLtGq
The fact that he was filmed from behind is easily explained by security measures. Like there have been incidents when certain groups were encouraging people to post personal information about Russian military personnel stationed in Syria and their families online, so that the religious extremists inside Russia could “take revenge on them under Sharia law”: https://www.rt.com/news/317849-ukrainian-russia-isis-revenge/
Plus, there is just a general set of rules regarding revealing the identity of those who participate in anti-terrorist operations (although, to be fair, I’m not sure whether it’s going to help in this particular case – the names and the photos of the two pilots have been all over the social media since the 24th of November; but still, the rules are the rules, I guess).
The article continues:
“Leading Western media generally took the interview at face value [too good we have BBC, an alternative media outlet that questions everything, eh? lol], with many quoting statements attributed to Murakhtin in their headlines. But there are credible grounds for questioning whether the scene shown on Russian TV was at all authentic and the man talking to journalists was indeed Captain Murakhtin. According to Russian media reports, Murakhtin was rescued in a night operation by Russian and Syrian special forces after ejecting from his Su-24 in northern Syria.”
I’m not sure which Russian media reports he refers to exactly, but the pilot got rescued by the SAA (Syrian Arab Army) forces. This information was first reported by the Al Mayadeen (a Lebanese news network) sources. Shortly after, it was confirmed by a Russian ambassador to France, Alexander Orlov, in his interview to Europe 1 radio:
Who reported that the Syrian AND Russian special forces rescued the second pilot? Which Russian media outlets reported it? Please post links to the comments if you find some. Judging by the vibe on the Russian social media and in the blogosphere, Russian mainstream media reported everything correctly and the Russian general public knew well who rescued Murakhtin. Or did Ennius mean the initial Russian rescue team that got ambushed, because the militants on the ground were waiting for them? It’s unclear what this BBC journalist says.
“His pilot, Oleg Peshkov, was killed, possibly as a result of ground fire from Syrian rebels.”
Okay, here where it gets really messy with this “reporting”. It’s been known from day one that the pilot was murdered, in violation of Geneva convention, by Turkmen militants who shot at him while he was still in the air. There was a video of them celebrating the murder over the pilot’s dead body:
All this information has been verified and available to public for over a week, yet, on 03.12.2015, this, so called “journalist” writes a piece for BBC in which he says “Oleg Peshkov was killed, possibly as a result of ground fire from Syrian rebels”. Whitewashing Turkey (and, by extension, NATO) again? Also, notice how these mainstream media journos always refer to these scum as “Syrian rebels” (even though these particular terrorists are Turkmen, with a Turkish citizen being their leader, guarding the buffer zone through which various extremist groups, including ISIS and al-Nusra/al-Qaeda, get their supplies and reinforcements). Low.
“There are aspects of the interview with the man said to be Murakhtin that suggest it was staged or even in some respects doctored. A number of these were identified by TV director and producer Vera Krichevskaya in a report on liberal TV channel Dozhd on 30 November.”
Referencing a “liberal” TV channel Dozhd’, a media outlet that is financed by Western NGOs for the sole purpose of spewing pro-American, russophobic propaganda? K.
See, the issue with the media outlets like Dozhd’ is that they follow the US State Department line, as they are largely influenced by the BBG (Broadcasting Board of Governors), an organisation which was established to spread pro-American propaganda overseas. In their official reports, they admit that they’ve been having an “affiliate-type” relationship with Dozhd’ (page 12):
Moreover, in their congressional budget request for 2014, they explicitly state that their project, Voice of America (originally funded during the Cold War to spread Western propaganda to the socialist states), fed news content to Dozhd since as early as 2012 (page 69):
(note that this is only the information that is currently unclassified and, thus, available to the public, we never know to what extent things are actually done in reality)
In addition, it’s not entirely clear where Dozhd’ gets its financing from: http://tass.ru/en/archive/669993
So, basically, the Western agencies invests into media outlets in foreign countries, feed them news content and then get their own mainstream media to reference and cite them as “independent and liberal media”? Nice. But nothing new, really. This propaganda method has been practiced for decades.
Needless to say that Dozhd’ frequently gets caught producing Orwellian-style fakes (not surprising, considering who feeds them the content).
But, anyway, let’s move on.
“First, the audio of the interview showed signs of heavy editing. “I can hear every join,” Krichevskaya said. The background noise fades in and out depending on who is speaking. The man said to be Murakhtin sounds as if he were in a studio rather than on an airfield.”
There is some merit to this.
“Second, he moves his head up and down as if he were consulting notes. What is more, some of the phrases he uses do not sound like spoken Russian. Krichevskaya singled out the phrase “our military medics work miracles”, which he uses in response to an inquiry about how he is feeling at the beginning of the interview. Finally, the behaviour of the journalists looks pre-arranged or rehearsed. As Krichevskaya points out, although there are around a dozen of them, they do not interrupt each other at all. Instead, they all put their question in order as if on cue.”
Again, that’s a common practice when dealing with sensitive matters, such as details of the anti-terorrist operations, information on the military personnel stationed overseas, and so on. Whenever officials speak to the press, they use speeches that were written in advance too (or, at least, they follow their dot points). No need to make a conspiracy theory out of this (as if BBC wouldn’t know of such practices).
“The physical condition of the man said to be Murakhtin does not tend to suggest someone who has recently survived an ejection and spent a considerable time out in the open… [blah, blah, blah] … He has a noticeable limp, but otherwise appears to move fairly freely. He does not show obvious signs of pain or discomfort… [blah, blah, blah] … As Keir Giles, an associate fellow of Chatham House, told BBC Monitoring, the man in the video looks “remarkably well for someone who has just ejected”.”
So, the man “has a noticeable limp, but otherwise doesn’t show obvious signs of pain or discomfort”? Well, it would be remarkably strange if a trained and experience military pilot, who, in addition, received instructions prior the interview, would behave like a crying girl (or a soccer player) in front of cameras.
“On 30 November, state news agency RIA Novosti reported that Murakhtin would be spending a month in a Moscow hospital, where he had been visited by his wife. It quoted a former officer as saying this is standard practice in ejection cases. But, according to data from media monitoring organization Medialogiya, the main Russian state TV channels did not report this news. It seems odd that they would not want to keep viewers informed about the progress of a man who is officially a decorated war hero.”
So, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported it, but the “main Russian state TV channels” did not? I don’t really see BBC having an argument here. What does it imply? By the way, Ennis doesn’t report when he accessed the Medialogiya data. Was it on the 30th as well, two hours after RIA released this news? Besides, even if it’s true that the major TV channels didn’t report on this, what’s strange about it? Does Ennis of BBC imply that they all should have made an extensive reportage, showing the hospital, stating its address and the exact hospital wing where the pilot (who just returned from an anti-terrorist mission) will be kept, so anyone could come and visit him?
“The operation that apparently led to Murakhtin being rescued has been given fairly cursory treatment on state TV. Channel One’s flagship weekly news programme Voskresnoye Vremya described the operation in a report captioned “All for One”. But the actual rescue of Murakhtin occupied a fairly minor part of the report and was overshadowed by a much more dramatic sequence about Russian journalists coming under fire in Syria. The equivalent programme on official channel Rossiya 1, Vesti Nedeli, gave the rescue even shorter shrift.”
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the details of such operations are not immediately disclosed to the public and, therefore, are not accessible to the press? BBC is more than welcome to provide full and insightful report into the details of the rescue operation that was conducted by the SAA forces in Syria, if they know something the Russian media doesn’t.
“There are sound operational reasons why the Russians would not want to divulge details of the rescue mission [finally some indications that the author has a bran!]. It is nevertheless strange that they have not made more of a propaganda splash about it.”
*facepalm*
A BBC “journalist” feels confused and surprised that they didn’t make more of a propaganda splash out of sensitive information. It’s rather ironic, if you ask me.
“It is equally odd, perhaps, that the journalists in the “Murakhtin” interview show no curiosity about his experiences: how did he feel, for example, when he knew he was parachuting into enemy territory?”
It is equally odd, perhaps, that the BBC “journalist” doesn’t go further in telling what else he feels confused about and doesn’t state that he finds it odd that they didn’t ask the pilot his wife’s name and what schools do his kids go to.
“This tends to reinforce the impression that the interview was staged simply to achieve the propaganda purpose of providing apparently firsthand corroboration of Moscow’s claims that the Su-24 had not violated Turkish airspace and that its crew had received no warnings.”
Reading this BS article tends to reinforce the impression that it was written purely to whitewash a NATO member Turkey and to further slander Moscow.
“Leading western media generally took the “Murakhtin” interview at face value[unlike you, Ennis, a BBC’s critical freethinker]. But pro-Kremlin media have a proven track record of dubious reporting and even outright fakery, including inventing identities and using bogus witnesses. In April 2014, two of Russia’s leading TV channels ran reports featuring the same man in a hospital bed in Ukraine. But in one report he was a pro-Russian victim of Ukrainian nationalists and in the other he was a German citizen who was funding Ukrainian nationalists. A few months later, state news agency TASS and other Russian media were found to have been quoting a phoney German professor.”
I’ll be honest with you, I’m not familiar with the reports he refers to. Yes, it is true that some Russian media outlets occasionally produce fakes, but it’s rather amusing to hear this kind of accusation coming from the likes of BBC. BBC is gross and horrendous in this regard, perhaps even much more so in comparison to the Russian state media.
Staging chemical attack reports in Syria, digitally altering sound in eyewitness testimonies, deliberately using old footage in their reports and documentaries, with paid actors playing victims, and so on:
Note that these are only the instances I was able to think of straight away. I’m pretty sure that if you spend a couple of hours digging deeper and researching it all properly, you’ll be able to find dozens more of such fakes and misreportings. And that’s only BBC. There are also CNN, Fox News, Sky News, ABC, and so on, all faking and brainwashing their audience in a similar manner. So, BBC complaining about Russian state media is rather bizarre. “Who are you to f#cking lecture me?” – as Lavrov would say.
We continue:
“Then there is Carlos, the Spanish air-traffic controller and Twitter user, who according to several pro-Kremlin media was supposed to have had evidence that the Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian warplanes. The only problem is that Carlos does not actually seem to have existed.”
So, who said that this “Carlos” was supposed to have had evidence about MH17? His Twitter or the Russian media? To what extent do you have to disrespect your audience to manipulate in such way? The information was coming from that Twitter account, not from Russian media (Russian media merely cited it, and so did numerous alternative media outlets in the West): http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/carlos-spanish-kiev-air-traffic.html
By the way, in regards to MH17 (mis)reporting, how about that phantom “Russian supplied BUK” that does not actually seem to have ever existed? All Western mainstream media outlets (including BBC) were going crazy with this conspiracy theory from the very beginning, despite the fact that nobody actually saw the said BUK, and all the “evidence” that exists in support of it is just a few unverifiable, poorly dated videos and a couple of photos (some of which are proven fakes). BBC never asked why the US State Department, instead of providing solid forensics data on MH17, like the satellite images, which they have, keeps peddling this cheap conspiracy theory, citing dodgy “social media reports” (the majority of which are either provided directly by the Ukrainian Security Service, SBU, and are proven fakes, or are badly photoshopped images from “anonymous users”): http://7mei.nl/2015/05/18/mh17-buk-launch-photos-are-cheats/ http://kremlintroll.nl/?p=543
“The “Murakhtin” interview may not be fakery on this level, but there are grounds for thinking that it should be treated with a good deal of caution.”
Great point, Ennis! Thanks for the advice!
***
Seriously, what’s up with all this cheap propaganda? BBC hasn’t always been that bad. Even their 2008 reports on Russia-Georgian conflict were well balanced in comparison to the majority of Western mainstream media outlets. Nowadays, however, it’s impossible to read them without fear of giving yourself a concussion with facepalms.
There is a saying: “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger that to produce it”. It seems as if people in the Western mainstream media have been taking advantage of this law. If they state a single lie, you would have to write a paragraph explaining and elaborating on why the statement is false. If they write a paragraph worth of BS, you would have to write an article to refute it all properly. If they write, say, a BBC article, you would have to write a long post to address all the things that they either distorted or lied about (this post, for instance, is way over 3000 words long, and I had to use links with further elaborations on the points I was making, because it’s impossible to fit everything in here). Now, what if it’s a massive 10-pages long pseudo-research piece in the Washingtonpost, NYT or The Economist? Not many people would find time and strength to read a complete and elaborative debunking of such work (and I’m not even talking about the amount of time it would take to disassemble something like that properly, piece by piece).
And there isn’t really any other way to deal with such BS. What else should others do? Lie in response? Not the best strategy (especially considering that the Western mainstream media has perfected such propaganda techniques over the past 100 years and has more resources to propagate its BS).
But, seriously, this systematic, institutionalised russophobia is rather irritating. The sad thing is that many people who don’t consult alternative sources still believe it.
This entry is a back-up copy of my Facebook post that I originally made on 17.09.2015. For better user experience, please read, like and/or comment the original post on FB.
You have to be extremely wary of political YouTube comments and Twitter replies these days, as these things have been militarised to create an illusion of public consensus on certain issues, by using fake accounts and outright automated bots. They haven’t figured out how to do it automatically on FB yet (although there are troll armies made up of real people, either paid or honestly obsessed, who are well coordinated; too good FB provides decent moderation tools to fight this plague).
RT (Russian Today) had its YouTube comment section flooded with russophobic trolls at the beginning of last year (you could tell that it was unnatural because the campaign began suddenly, as a wave, following statements in regards to counteracting “Russian propaganda” made by the US State Department spokespeople). Nowadays, you can also see these hordes on Twitter, flooding topics such as the Ukrainian Crisis and the MH17 tragedy (I’m sure similar methods are used for other issues, such as the Syrian Civil War, although I haven’t been engaged in those discussions anywhere other than FB to notice anything strange).
Just a few of articles on the topic:
How the military uses Twitter sock puppets to control debate (by J. M. Porup) “The researchers studied Twitter manipulation during the August 2013 Australian federal election, and identified mass participation of sock puppets (fake accounts), meat puppets (“guns for hire”), bots (automated accounts), and cyborgs (bot-assisted humans or human-assisted bots). Automated accounts, in particular, they discovered, are being used for retweeting messages to spread misinformation and disperse propaganda. These accounts “can be used to trend desired hashtags, and thus bump up a piece of misinformation to a wider consciousness.” The frightening thing about Twitter sock puppetry, they conclude, “is not that it is just a nuisance, but that it is capable of swaying elections by appearing to be genuine groundswells of support.” This phenomenon they label “slacktivism” — when Twitter followers mistake astroturfed Twitter content for “genuine voices of political conviction.” Worse, these fake accounts can be used not just to distort debate but to actively suppress dissent” https://www.contributoria.com/issue/2014-03/52ceefe277e4f13f4300001d
The Real War on Reality (by Professor Peter Ludlow) “The hack also revealed evidence that Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system — a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support. The contract was eventually awarded to another private intelligence firm. This may sound like nothing so much as a “Matrix”-like fantasy, but it is distinctly real, and resembles in some ways the employment of “Psyops” (psychological operations), which as most students of recent American history know, have been part of the nation’s military strategy for decades. The military’s “Unconventional Warfare Training Manual” defines Psyops as “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.” In other words, it is sometimes more effective to deceive a population into a false reality than it is to impose its will with force or conventional weapons. Of course this could also apply to one’s own population if you chose to view it as an “enemy” whose “motives, reasoning, and behavior” needed to be controlled.”
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media (by Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain; published way back in 2011) “The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as “sock puppets” – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same. The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries”.
[…] Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.” http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
***
From my personal experience, I would say that the best way to go about professional sock-puppets is to simply ignore their comments and avoid engaging them. It’s more about psychological warfare. You waste your time and stamina arguing with these trolls, while you could be doing something else (e. g. doing research or talking to other people). That’s what they seem to be aiming for.
Besides, when you talk to them, you, by default, give them feedback, so they can learn about new arguments and design strategies to dodge them in the future discussions with other people. So, just ignoring them is the most optimal way to go.
Besides mentally exhausting their opponents, they also aim at creating the illusion of public consensus on the issue. That’s a really powerful thing. See, when people are not 100% sure about what to think, they look for others’ opinion (that’s what we have naturally evolved to do, as social beings), therefore, in cases of even a slightest ambiguity, others’ strong opinions can radically change your own perception of reality. It’s been all thoroughly researched by psychologists since the 1950s (see Asch’s Experiments, for instance):
So, yeah, people, be very wary of the political comments on YouTube and replies on Twitter. Nowadays, they can be hijacked by the government intelligence agencies to brainwash you.
(and it’s actually sad, because it minimises the opportunity to have a proper discussion on issues in public cyber-space, and it also, kind of, stigmatises the official US/Western viewpoint, in many cases, because there is no trust in it anymore… *sigh*)
This entry is a back-up copy of my Facebook post that I originally made on 10.09.2015. For better user experience, please read, like and/or comment the original post on FB.
This post is probably going to make many of you pissed and angry, but, to hell with it. Someone should say these things anyway, sooner or later.
This refuge crisis… We’ve all seen these terrible images of people drowning, dead kids being washed ashore, poor Syrians fleeing the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the civil war and the rise of ISIS in the region, all these debates about how we have to hold to the higher moral standards, showing compassion towards these poor refugees, being humanistic, and stuff. Well, how about discussing the root causes of this crisis and thinking of the ways to avoid fucking it up even worse?
Syria used to be a nice, secular and stable place four years ago until the United States government began supporting the Al Qaeda-affiliated radicals in their effort to overthrow president Assad. Libya used to be one of the most prosperous countries on the continent, with its leader, Gaddafi, having a vision of the economically united Africa. Until the US and NATO bombed it back to the Stone Age, allowing the president to be beaten up to death in public by barbarians. And I’m not even mentioning the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (it was based on a pretext that Saddam Husain was possessing the weapons of mass destructions; turned out to be a lie), which destroyed the country with all of its security services, making it a perfect breeding ground for various extremist organisations. The responsibility on the current refuge crisis lies on the US foreign policy makers and those who supported it almost entirely. The mainstream media, of course, doesn’t talk about that.
Some still argue that those were the totalitarian dictators that were killing their own people, that they should have been ousted, etc, etc (although I’m pretty certain that most of the accusations made against them is nothing more than made up propaganda BS, same as with the Saddam’s WMD). Well, brining them down didn’t fucking help the situation, did it?
Back in 2011, when American and NATO chiefs were planning airstrikes against the Libyan government and doing their strategic risk assessments, didn’t they predict that the refugees would begin flooding Europe in the aftermath? I find it hard to believe. If they knew that this is likely to happen, why the fuck did they proceed with their aggressive military campaign anyway? Well, I can understand the US doing it, their neocons seek to maintain the US world hegemony, and, therefore, they always try to undermine all the other perspective geopolitical competitors, be it China or EU, but what about the European NATO analysts who were sanctioning this shit? What kind of irresponsible, moronic psychopath do you have to be to allow such stuff to happen?
As for the refugees themselves, to me it appears beyond idiotic to thoughtlessly accept anyone who comes as a refugee. Yes, there are people who are fleeing the war zones, yes, there are people who truly need help and support, but you simply can’t ignore the fact that there is also a very significant number of people who are simply pretending to be Syrian to get the benefits of the welfare state. There are thousands of people coming from all the other, relatively stable regions (some even from the sub-Saharan Africa) who seek to exploit the crisis to get free money from the states that accept the refugees. By blending in, those people make it harder for actual Syrians who flee from the war zones to get in. Plus, most of these opportunists are young, healthy men, who would benefit their own economies if they had stayed in their home countries and worked there.
Those who are running for their lives should be helped now, for sure (since the West has fucked up the situating in their home countries to such degree), but it’s also necessary to be more selective and try to do the background check on the people who are coming in, to make sure that they are not imposters (with such large numbers coming in, I struggle to think of the ways to do it properly).
You can hear the argument that these refuges will provide the workforce and improve the economies of the host countries. Well, I can’t really see it working that way, considering the current unemployment rates in Germany and other EU countries. And, once again, many of those people who sneak into Europe now aren’t even true refugees fleeing the war zones. Many of them simply pretend to be Syrian or Libyan with an intent to live lazy parasitic lifestyle off welfare payments in the host countries, thus, depleting the state budget and worsening the economic recession.
As a result, the situation will escalate, the refugees will be blamed, racial/ethnic tensions will grow, radical movements will gain momentum in Europe (we’ve seen shit like this happening in Germany after the WWI), ethnic minorities will consolidate in response, forming hostile communities (you wouldn’t be able to socially integrate all the newcomers at such rates). It’s going to be a mess.
But, apparently, raising these concerns somehow makes you inhumane and/or racists.
Maybe it’s time to pull your head out of your ass and start thinking on how to solve all these issues constructively and holistically, without relying on emotional propaganda?
Oh, by the way, since you’re all compassionate, humanistic, caring and so easily moved by the media pictures of dead children, I think I would not do wrong if I’ll show you this:
Here is more images of dead children for you:
Those are the images from Eastern Ukraine/Novorossia. The deaths are the results of the indiscriminate shelling and bombing of the civilian areas done by the Kiev forces against their (former) provinces.
A case of Gorlovka, for instance: http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-crimes-in-gorlovka-east-ukraine-the-anna-tuv-story/5473925
Here is the list of kids who died because of the shelling in that one town alone (use Google translate if you can’t read Russian):
Civilians and kids have been dying there for the last 18 months, but, since the assault of the region is being done by the regime that acts within the interests of the United States, nobody gives a fuck.
Seriously, people, once again, the general discourse about the current refuge crisis demonstrates that society thinks what they are being told to think through the mainstream media.
That’s just pathetic and deeply, deeply sad.
Friday begins on Monday 