But you can rely on RT which is owned by the Russian state? Explain that logic.

@PaulJ: Yes sorry, I meant western media.
I think it’s instructive to listen to canadian journalist and activist Eva Bartlett who is one of a few to actually have been on the ground in Aleppo, Homs and elsewhere.
start around 14:00 mins in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebE3GJfGhfA

Do you rely on the BBC which is funded by the U.K. State? What about RTÉ which is funded by the Irish state? Can you believe what you are told on the 9′o’clock news? Most media outlets deliver the news with their own slant, I have to say that I would trust RT more than any of the other networks! Propaganda is not confined only to Russia or non western states, it is literally pumped out 24/7 from every “news” source including the journal.

Jason RTE is owned by the Irish state, BBC the British state, AFP funded by French etc. What’s your point? At least RT are ON THE GROUND unlike the western media who pull stories from their arses and take the word of any unverified crap from Jihadi supporting twitter accounts. Only for RT capturing the images of the tens of thousands celebrating on the streets people would think the Jihadis had the support of the city. The 15k that are being evacuated, including the terrorists, tells a very different story and shows they had miniscule support. I bet we won’t see any reports in western media of the stockpiles of food and medicine that the terrorists kept from the civilians.

The mind boggles that people actually think they’re receiving neutral unbiased news from RT.
Like any conflict there is propaganda emanating from all sides and the truth lies somewhere in between.

@Jason Culligan: Give me RT over RTE any day.

@Avina Laaf: Make Syria great again. Bomb them all !

@Hedge hog: Eva Bartlett was asked how she can quantify Assads support in Syria. She replied that in the 2014 elections he won 88% of the vote. There is not a single country in the world where the leader of the country will ever be that popular. It does not happen. She actually said that with a straight face too. To make that statement worse Assad won the 2007 election with 97% of the vote and he won in 2000 with 99%. I mean COME ON do you actually think this guy is THAT popular and there she sits in that chair with a straight face with the country destroyed; over half of them having fled or in camps and the others dodging bombs and bullets and even then they’re thinking ….Nahhhh actually this guy is doing a great job. Have you seen that woman’s twitter page? I might give her credit if she came across even remotely like an independent objective Journalist but it’s all dressed up like she lives and works out of Assads spare bedroom. Isn’t it AMAZING how in this world of truth and lies and propaganda that everything The West says is a lie and everything Assad and Russia say is the Gods honest truth? Because that’s the kind of “reality” she is peddling.

In fairness Simon, Assad’s support may well have been that high in 2014, mainly because the election was only conducted in areas held by his supporters. Areas held by his opponents were excluded from the election, there being the small matter of a war going on.

This article is absolute contrived bullshit. Have a quick look at this one minute video to see the response of Aleppo residents to the incoming syrian army. It shows a far different reality to the one portrayed in this article.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=688_1481836804

In Russia they jail people who oppose Putin or they send agents to poison them. Dissent is not tolerated. Are we seriously getting so detached from reality around here that we think the Irish state has as much of a corrupting hand in RTÉ as Putin has in RT?

Which is precisely why Ban Ki Moon criticised the Syrian government for holding elections in the middle of a civil war. Mind you, the part where the governmwnt claimed they had a turnout of almost 3/4 is almost certainly a massive fib.

The BBC and RTÉ are funded by a licence fee – they still (mostly) make independent editorial decisions, and will still produce material which is critical of their state or government. RT does not. RT is the result of direct influence from the Kremlin. Remind us of the last time RT published anything which criticised Putin?

@Harry Whitehead:
Precisely – the fact that absolutely nothing which is critical of the Kremlin in any way is ever seen on RT should serve as a bit of a clue, but some people still lap it up unquestioningly anyway.

Vanessa Beeley, journalist: I’ve just returned from three days in East Aleppo, and I would like to 100 percent correct the lies that are being disseminated by the media, think tanks, governments across the West. Particularly your guest who has just uttered complete lies. I’ve spent basically three days in all the various liberated areas of East Aleppo… Many of the testimonies that we received from the civilians that this gentleman has just accused Russia and Syria of bombing, actually told us that they had been incarcerated for the last four years by the various US-backed terrorist militant groups such as Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki whom we know beheaded the 12-year old Palestinian child. We were told stories about civilians who were trying to leave this imprisonment when the Russian and Syrian governments opened the humanitarian corridors. I interviewed one lady, I have her on film, where she tells me that one woman, who had been kept in a condition of starvation and malnutrition by these militant factions – who were stockpiling any humanitarian aid that came in and either selling it at extortionate prices. When this lady went on her knees to beg for food, she was shot in the mouth by the militant factions that have been imprisoning these civilians for the last four and a half years. Your [American] media and propaganda have supported that incarceration, torture, abuse and absolute horror that these civilians had had to go through.

RT: The spokesperson of the US State Department said he hasn’t seen the videos of people celebrating on Aleppo’s streets. He’s in a senior position; he must know what he’s talking about, doesn’t he? Brent Budowsky: We can witness day by day dead babies by dead babies. You can watch the CNN, the BBC, any other television station. The point is – the killing, the bombings of civilians must stop. The dead children and babies is a moral outrage against humanity. Vanessa Beeley: Can I ask one question? Where are these sources being able to transmit this information from? Because in East Aleppo there is no 3G, there is no wi-fi, there is no electricity. So I’d like to know how these sources are able to get this information via Skype connection to organizations – I’ll use that term loosely – like CNN, BBC, Channel 4. I would very much like to know how they achieve it and how there’re able to do that in East Aleppo. Unlike the corporate mainstream media, I have been in East Aleppo for the last three days, therefore, I’m giving you eyewitness testimony unlike your mainstream media that has not been there and relies upon spurious activists – like the White Helmets, who are funded by every single nation that has a vested and declared interest in regime change in Syria. That is your reliable source. Or perhaps the ‘Aleppo Media Center’ – French Foreign Office funded… Daniel McAdams, executive director at Ron Paul Institute: This is a good example of what is wrong with the mainstream media. You have a mainstream media source like this Brent Budowsky who goes on television telling us: “You’ve got to believe the US government.” This is the same media that lie through its teeth about Iraq; that lied through its teeth about Benghazi, about the slaughters that were not happening there. There are no foreign media sources in East Aleppo right now. They are not on the ground. They are all using information that they are getting through rebel sources. That is the truth. So, Budowsky, what you are doing right now is you are putting out fake news. And you know it because there are no sources on the ground. You’re saying, ‘Just believe the US government.’ You’re supposed to be in the media! You’re supposed to be doing independent work… Go back to 2005 in a document from the US Embassy in Damascus was sent back to Washington outlining exactly how to destabilize and overthrow the Syria government, which is exactly the roadmap they took. Who was really responsible for the carnage in Syria? It is the interventionists in the West and their enablers in the mainstream media that push a regime change policy that destroys countries like Iraq, like Syria, like Libya, like Afghanistan, and so on. They are the real perpetrators of this crime.

@Harry Whitehead: Why no Condemnation by the West on the US Regime Change throughout the Middle East ,it is outrageous the US Agenda.Syria,Egypt,Libya Iraq not forgetting Ukraine .This Displacement of Country by Country to Europe will eventually Destroy Sovereign Countries .Time this Monster European “Onion” Disbanded FAST.

@Hedge hog:

Forget Tom Clonan he is a full on propagandist hack. He is a multicult and mass-immigration advocate, thus he pushes the refugee narrative and that refugees are legitimate because they are fleeing the “evil tyrant” Assad, even when they come from Africa or Southwest Asia, apparently its all Syria.

Listen to a real Journalist Eva Bartlett she was there several times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1VNQGsiP8M

@Avina Laaf: I tend to believe the side that wasn’t party to the lie of the WMD’s in Iraq. Whilst all news is taking one side or the other, the rhetoric from Russia and Syria has not changed at all, whereas the US rhetoric is a never ending change of narrative, it goes from one issue to the next and is constantly ambiguous and endlessly contradicts itself. That’s what happens when you tell lies, you need a good memory to be a good liar and they have all sorts of media spewing different lie that they can’t keep up with it themselves.
Russia line is clear, Syria as a state and its ELECTED government cannot be pushed aside, change needs to happen internally and democratically, Putin himself has said this, he is not a supporter of the Assad Regime as a whole and said the regime should have made changes already but any changes that need to be made can be done democratically and with the use of the UN mediators, not this through externally fund terrorism and certainly not Libya Style.

@Glenn McKeon:
I agree, change needs to happen internally and democratically, without outside interference from Russia, Iran, the US, Saudi or anyone else. The problem is that democracy has been denied to the Syrian people since the 1970′s. Multi-party elections have been banned since the early 1970′s, ie. the only choice the Syrian people were offered in elections was “which Ba’ath Party candidate do you want?” Needless to say this left millions of voters completely disenfranchised and cannot be called democracy, particularly when any dissent is violently suppressed.

The Syrian/Russian narrative has certainly shown many inconsistencies – most recently that the people of Eastern Aleppo were being held hostage by foreign mercenaries and were liberated by Assad/Russia. How does this square with the fact that many of the newly ‘liberated’ Syrian families were then being transported to rebel-held territory in Idlib?? You liberate them only to then deliver them straight back to their ‘kidnappers’??

Really? Is that how they were able to retake Palmyra? “Tactics, comrade, tactics!” repeated Squealer.

@Eamon Mac Gowan:

Clonan thinks he is something special for being in the Army. Big deal, civilians deal with more sh%T and without backup or support or a gun everyday, you don’t see them wearing medals advertising the trials and tribulations they went through.

So yes Clonan suffers from power-trip, his little army ego wants to ride on the coattrails of those he sees as the big boys, the most powerful, the U.S. So he apes their take on matters. What a small little man.

Yeah whatever Mark – Kremlin state media never lies…
*facepalm*

@Avina Laaf: The BBC lies and the U.S. Media gets paid by the U.S. government to be pro U.S. in their stories and to print, portray and act in a way that is pro U.S. in order to get their grants from the Federal government.
http://www.wallis.rochester.edu/wallisseminarseries/GehlbachSoninRochester2.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/24/the-new-propaganda-how-the-american-government-is-trying-to-control-what-you-think/?utm_term=.5020c67c8a9c

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission
Then CNN were leaking questions to Hillary and most of the US media was bias towards her, promoting her as the US media has never seen before. That only proves how bias US media, it is McCartyism all over again?

@Simon:
Interesting that she’s associated with the so-called “US Peace Council” which itself is closely tied to the communist party in the US and to Russia itself.

@Avina Laaf: Hay, even the U.N. has said that all the rebels in Syria are Terrorists and no one in the media will say that?
Another WMD scare they did with Iraq, this time with Syria?

@Alois Irlmaier:
“Even the U.N. has said that all the rebels in Syria are Terrorists”
I’m pretty sure that comes under the category of Fake News. Of course you could always prove me wrong by linking to where the UN said it. I’ll wait.

@Avina Laaf: Nope… It was RT who stated this but there are many others who have shown this to be a point as well.
https://southfront.org/moderate-syrian-opposition-terrorists-world/

@Alois Irlmaier:
OK, so the claim that the UN said that “all the rebels in Syria are Terrorists” is completely fake – glad we cleared that one up.

@Avina Laaf: You just wrote that because you want it to be true.

@Alois Irlmaier:
Errrr…..
You claimed the UN said it, and when I asked for proof you said it was actually RT that said it, not the UN. I’ll still take any proof that the UN said that if you can provide some….

@Avina Laaf: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-terrorist-idUSKCN0VQ25E
“Major powers trying to forge a Syrian peace plan have made almost no progress on overcoming one of the main obstacles to ending the war: deciding who is a terrorist – and therefore a legitimate target – and who is not.

Everyone involved in the diplomatic process agrees with the United Nations’ designation that Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, a group linked to al-Qaeda, are terrorists and therefore barred from the negotiating table. “

@Avina Laaf: Will that do for now?

@ Alois
Nobody is disputing that al Nusra and IS are terrorists, but they are just two (albeit powerful ones) of literally dozens of factions, many of whom are fighting each other. The attempt to paint them all as the same entity (despite the fact that they’ve often been killing each other) is just Syrian and Russian propaganda.
There are no ‘good guys’ in this conflict and there is brutality on all sides, but some factions (eg. al Nusra & IS) are most definitely worse than others.

@Avina Laaf: Some of the sub groups seem to exist to provide weapons and training given to them by the U.S. to pass it on to Isis? Makes you wonder what the West wants to do to Syria for the Saudis or Israel?
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/eu-offers-cash-to-assad-regime-for-syria-peace-deal-w8shn8rjx

Paul these are the words of some lad in Ireland who has no clue what is going on in Syria. That he actually used a 100k figure for this left in a 3km2 area when the real figure is 15k shows anything he writes should be taken with a pinch of salt. In fact the discredited immediately by using such fantasy figures, I wonder who he is getting his info from to make all his claims it this piece, probably from some “activists” twitter account, who are known for their lies and outlandish claims with no proof whatsoever!

So a nation which employs precision strikes as a rule is worse than a nation which flattens entire districts with improvised explosives? Explain that logic to us.

Great precision when hitting saa in deir el zoir alright, but no precision at all available to hit Isis going to palmayra …!!!! Have a coffee Jason, might wake you up

Explain that Jason, no strikes on IS in Palmyra but they somehow managed to kill dozens of SAA soldiers with their precision strikes?

@John B mc G: Yeah, I wonder how the US satellites and drones all missed a huge column of ISIS trucks carrying 4000 terrorists plus heavy weapons driving across open desert heading for Palmyra.

John B, you need the coffee son. Jason was talking about the Israeli airforce.

UK, US are the biggest weapons suppliers to Saudi Arabia who apparently took down the twin towers, who apparently are arming ISIS, Who are now arming all nurse, al qaeda terrorist in order for Regime change the same terrorists that are apparently responsible for 911 The truth is coming out now Jason you look very silly

@ Hedge hog, the massive dust cloud from up to 4000 isis vehicles was also missed, not once but Twice, Maybe it’s Third time lucky JASON CULLIGAN

@Paulo mclawlor: And yet the head hackers use Russian made weapons….

@TheWalkingBread: the NYT says US, china and russian weapons
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/world/isis-ammunition-is-shown-to-have-origins-in-us-and-china.html?_r=0

The real question to ask is WHO PAID FOR THEM

@Paul Cunningham: So who is creating these stories as there are NO journalists in the middle or edges of this conflict as they are too scared of being captured by Isis and being beheaded?

@Simon: Open your eyes and see the facts and stop making it based on your pro U.S. belief in the U.S. Obama is nearly as bad as Assad with his drone attacks in several countries now with them…