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mistyronin

Syria General

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I'm aware that there is another thread about Syria, but that one is focused on talking about "what should we do if anything".

So I open this one to talk a bit in general about the conflict and what is happening in the country.

To begin I would like to share this "different" point of the war, in this case from a "supposed" non Islamic French mercenary fighting against Al Assad:

( Vice News ) Hanging Out with Syria's Mysterious French Mercenary

More about that guy activities in the Facebook page of his company.

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i do not think mercenary should even be listened to, fighting for money not for nation/patriotic reasons is crime and i do not think guy who do such things for money should even be listened to , especially when religious extremists fight there to create religious country

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BBC news : While Iraq burns, Isis takes advantage in Syria

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While international attention has been fixated on the disintegration of Iraq and the expansion of the so-called caliphate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Sunni insurgents have moved their offensive back into Syria with a newly acquired haul of US-made weapons and cash.

The utter failure of the USA in Iraq creates a major conflict in the middle East, but no one cares.

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  ProfTournesol said:
BBC news : While Iraq burns, Isis takes advantage in Syria

The utter failure of the USA in Iraq creates a major conflict in the middle East, but no one cares.

Well as long as there is nothing to gain form that conflict, why should someone care.

Its not like wars were ever fought for sake of common people.

And since USA are not that fond of Assad, ISIS might even help them if they succeed in defeating Assad and destabilizing yet another region in the Middle East even more that it is now.

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From what i understand, Syrian conflict is a big, big mess.

No political alternative exists to Assad, as opposition (rebels) is quite fragmented.

Assad and Hezbollah on one side, rebels and jihadists on the other side.

People in the middle, slaughtered (over 130.000 dead) by both sides.

USA, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia as the background: watching the mess or making sure no side will actually prevail.

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Quatar , Saudi Arabia, Turkey and USA is of course to blame for this horrofic war. I'm not saying Assad is an angel , but without the "intervention" of Assad's enemies this war would have ended long time ago.

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( Al Jazeera ) 'Syrian troops beheaded' in Raqqa

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Fighters from the Islamic State group have killed at least 50 Syrian soldiers in an ambush in Syria’s northeast, summarily executing most of them after their capture, according to a monitoring group.

The reported deaths on Friday in Raqqa, a stronghold of the Islamic State group, came a day after the self-declared jihadist group launched an assault on the army's 17th Division.

The fighting has left 69 dead on the regime side, including the 50 soldiers, and killed 28 fighters, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported said.

Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the information because of restrictions on reporting from inside Syria.

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Does anyone have that one propaganda video where people are doing car-on-car drivebys on a highway or something along the lines of that? Was well edited and they seemed organized on a pretty scary level.

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  MistyRonin said:
Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the information because of restrictions on reporting from inside Syria

And that's what we call journalism ?

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  fabrizio_T said:
And that's what we call journalism ?

Yes. It happens most of the time, as long as its notified in the same article is correct.

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  MistyRonin said:
Yes. It happens most of the time, as long as its notified in the same article is correct.

"Correct" sounds misleading to me.

Publishing something you cannot or don't want to verify is not information.

Checking facts and sources is the base of journalism.

I bet there are still real reporters in Syria, mostly freelance that risk their lives to make some real information, which incidentally does not raise any mass interest.

Big broadcasters just pick up second hand rumors or propaganda stuff and publish it, avoiding any responsibility.

This is plain wrong in my opinion and has nothing to do with no journalism.

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Big broadcasters just pick up second hand rumors or propaganda stuff and publish it, avoiding any responsibility.

This is plain wrong in my opinion and has nothing to do with no journalism.

media are not only for inform, but if they belong to government /big corporations , they are creating opinions , creating voters, creating taxpayer "will",

big broadcasters take most drastic news, to put commercial break between them , they use any means to collect as much people as they can by the screen and than ... put commercial break of product

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  vilas said:
media are not only for inform, but if they belong to government /big corporations , they are creating opinions , creating voters, creating taxpayer "will",

big broadcasters take most drastic news, to put commercial break between them , they use any means to collect as much people as they can by the screen and than ... put commercial break of product

Then i'm probably the only one not being fine with this behaviour.

Sad times.

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Sad times.

this time is sad ?

how about 100 years ago, when all newspapers belong to 1 king or 1 owner and there was only 2-3 newspapers printed with OFFICIALLY existing cenzorship

in the past you had official cenzor job,

who would inform you 100 yeas ago that "son of our king, drunk some vodka, killed pedestrian when he was toying with revolver being drunk" ;)

it is not sad time,

now thanx to internet we have different sources,

before 1990s you had only TV and newspapers

if you for example would like to know something about my country - you could read official newspaper news with interviewed Pole chosen by journalist

now you have internet , you can email to 10 Poles, and everyone will tell what he knows and feels

before 1989 under communism in PL we had only 2 official TV programs, maybe 4 official Radio stations - all was owned by government - than it was sad time

so NOW it is not sad time, now you have different sources thanx to internet, look at discussion about Ukraine - people from Ukraine, people from Russia, all say what they know/feel etc.

you have different sources, even if each one is biased in different -you can take mediana

the worst is back to monopoly (1 media corporation own 90% of titles, websites, radio, tv stations) because it no differ from government owned

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  vilas said:
this time is sad ?

how about 100 years ago, when all newspapers belong to 1 king or 1 owner and there was only 2-3 newspapers printed with OFFICIALLY existing cenzorship

in the past you had official cenzor job,

who would inform you 100 yeas ago that "son of our king, drunk some vodka, killed pedestrian when he was toying with revolver being drunk" ;)

it is not sad time,

now thanx to internet we have different sources,

before 1990s you had only TV and newspapers

if you for example would like to know something about my country - you could read official newspaper news with interviewed Pole chosen by journalist

now you have internet , you can email to 10 Poles, and everyone will tell what he knows and feels

before 1989 under communism in PL we had only 2 official TV programs, maybe 4 official Radio stations - all was owned by government - than it was sad time

so NOW it is not sad time, now you have different sources thanx to internet, look at discussion about Ukraine - people from Ukraine, people from Russia, all say what they know/feel etc.

you have different sources, even if each one is biased -you can take mediana

Yes it is indeed sad, despite what happened in the past. Despite it happened maybe hundreds, thousands of times.

Because when people is slaughtered it's sad, wherever they are, whatever happened before, whatever the regime you live in, whatever your opinion.

I'm not speaking about Ukraine here, as it's a whole different story.

Syria had way over 130.000 dead, and most part were civilians, slaughtered by both sides.

They get hunger, thirst, countless refugees, indiscriminate bombings, mass executions.

And silence. That's what leaves me even more horrified than Gaza massacres, which are themselves a tremendous thing to see in XXI century.

In Syria UN even stopped the body count by the end of 2013 (http://world.time.com/2014/01/07/un-to-stop-updating-syria-death-toll/).

So body count stopped, but people still die as war carries on. We're basically negating these being casualties.

Internet is hardly any solution, since it's a just a medium, prone to be easily exploited / manipulated.

At least i've learnt this in my 20 years in IT. It was different just 10 years ago.

These times internet is like an opinion hard-discount, you pick what you prefer, it's just a matter of choosing, plenty of options.

Relativism, superficiality.

Internet is even terribly dangerous, whenever any fake information gets viral and believe me, it happens alot.

Speaking about Syria, did you ever hear of Amina? Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amina_Abdallah_Arraf_al_Omari

That's just an example of how easy information manipulation is in internet times.

Once Joseph Goebbels said "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself".

As long as broadcasters stay careless with facts and truth, internet will only help making him more right.

Yes, these are sad times.

At least, at very least, let's try fighting silence.

Edited by fabrizio_T

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