Turkey begins US-backed airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. Epipen raises prices. Protests against ND Pipeline. More investigations into Clinton Foundation. Trump campaign manager claims Trump victory because of undercover Trump voters.
Hate the fucking sound board. Love the new show with Jimmy and Jordan aggressive progressives. Does anyone ever look at these comments?
Also, I emailed the tech support last week – crickets…you gotta do better than that.
On the pipeline, it’s not about what’s legal, Cenk, it’s about what’s right. They don’t want the waters in their nation to be polluted. It doesn’t matter if the bought and sold corporate toady USA said it was ok for them to do whatever they want. Sometimes things are legal and morally wrong, like your hero MLK said constantly. Our right to exist in a world not polluted by capitalist waste products overrules any legal right they might have to the land. The switch to renewable energy on behalf of our bought and sold government is not going to happen in time. Native people around the world are the ones putting their bodies on the line to stop climate change, not just here, but everywhere, and that is what is working to keep the oil in the ground. These totally pointless climate summits that invite oil companies to attend are doing nothing but agreeing to meet again in a few years. To stop climate change, if we even can at this point. we need people who actually care about the Earth over profit to be throwing themselves in the gears of the machine that does not care about the Earth, humanity or our future. they only care about profit in the next quarter. nothing else exists. We should be falling over ourselves thanking them, or joining them, not asking “well, is it legal?”
My hometown narrowly missed being burned up by a pipeline ruptured by a backhoe operated in a small creek where I used to swim as a kid. Fuel from the rupture went down the creek and built up in a back-eddy. When the fire dept responded to a complaint about a sickly dog, they encountered gas fumes so thick in the air the firetruck engine dieseled so much it couldn’t be shutoff. It turned out that a couple kids playing around with a barbecue starter ignited a spark that caused an inferno that the town-folk will never forget. It was a miracle that even though auto row was right there, the prevailing wind saved the town from further damage. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the two little boys with the barbecue starter actually survived the explosion; they ran home but felt so guilty and bewildered, their parents couldn’t locate them even though they had burns over most of their bodies, one can only imagine what those parents went through…another boy fishing in the creek also fell victim. Actually, had the fuel not been caught in the back-eddy, the prevailing wind not been so favorable, and the boys not ignited the gas when they did, the incident could have been even more tragic (as it is there were only three fatalities!), this was a case of two little firebugs becoming unwitting heroes.!
You know we all love you there at TYT, but Cenk is clearly losing touch with progressive values. When it comes to the Dakota Pipeline, it’s a no-brainer. Do your research Cenk, you tell him John.
I’ll assume that you watched the interview because if you commented without doing so it would suggest you aren’t even willing to consider evidence that doesn’t fit your conclusion.
Free markets have no place in any part of healthcare. Price gouging pharmaceutical companies and health care providers need to be taken out of the equation and replaced by a fully government-run healthcare system. If we are legally obligated to have health insurance, private companies need to be kept out of providing the service. Tax us in return for affordable health care. It is worth it.
I hate these Pharmaceutical Swine Excrement – hey, these CEO’s sign the checks going to the lobbyist fucks that keep this shit going! So don’t tell me it is all legal and that they don’t have any responsibility to do the right thing.
BTW, Joe Manchin has been found eating feces directly out of my ASS!
I like John but his constant interjections / small comments annoy me. It appeared during this hour that Cenk isn’t into them that much as well. Yes they are smart and make sense but we can do without them every 5 min or so
THE LACK OF FACT-CHECKING PROCEDURE still shows as Cenk makes incorrect claims that could be easily avoidable if TYT had someone designated to process hosts’ arguments before the show.
In the story about Turking entering Syria Cenk claims Russia does “carpet bombing”, which is incorrect. Russia only uses about fifty aircraft in the operation, which is only few percentages of the country’s thousands of planes-strong air power.
That many bombers are only enough to fight actual targets as the total length of the front lines in Syria is many hundreds of thousand kilometres long. Russia has used only about 40 000 bombs in Syria by now; for the best example of carpet bombings you can look at history of Vietnam and Combogia on which the USA dropped literally millions of bombs, which is totally different scale of operation.
By the way, Cenk’s comments on the ND pipeline are disappointing:
1) in the beginning he just accepts the claims by the contractor as it it is an independent party that would ever tell anything against their project;
2) discusses seriously “benefits” when the only real winning party would be oil/transit companies, not any theoretical residents other than Native Americans who are not protesting. The number of jobs it would supposedly create is infinitely small.
More scepticism would benefit the coverage; John is more on point on this issue.
The numbers are open to debate, but surely the point is that Russia is involved in the indiscriminate bombing of civilian locations using unguided munitions..?
No, they may not be using hundreds of strategic bombers, each dropping hundreds of bombs – as the US did on Laos (but not Vietnam) – but it still qualifies as an “unsmart” use of military power… What’s your real point..?
Another example of people just believing in whatever “free” media say (the same media that told people that Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11); the reality is:
1) Russia uses guided munitions; at least five types were documented to be used in Syria (laser/infrared/radio/tele/satellite air to ground missiles and bombs, let alone cruise missiles) in cases when pinpoint strikes are necessary;
2) but even for the “unguided” munitions Russia uses SVP-24-like systems so the aiming is thrice more accurate than for regular bombings;
3) as I explained above, the claims of “indiscriminate” bombings is blatantly absurd as the forces are only sufficient to engage with actual targets. If you will be “indiscriminate” then you will miss your targets what ruins whole point of the military operation (by the way, you might want to check the number of bombers and bombs used in Vietnam; it is not just Laos);
4) there are almost no “civilian locations” in the areas of fights left in Syria. By the time Russia has entered the war Syria already had 7 million of internally displaced people and 4 million refugees — roughly half of the country has left; the contested areas are almost empty of civilians. The much advertised terrorist-held suburb of Damascus Daraya has about 4K people versus nearly 2 million in the city itself, and the terrorist-occupied parts of Aleppo have about 40K people versus 1.5 million in the government-controlled parts of Aleppo. Those 4K/40K figures consist of the Wahhabi/Salafist terrorists and their fanatical families that wilfully stick to them, despite everyone else is long gone. Of course, adults can be blamed for sticking in there, but not children; they will be always the collateral damage of any fights against Al-Qaeda and their clones; it is unavoidable;
5) I stated my real point in the very beginning, even in semibold styling. Cenk making factually incorrect statements (on “carpet bombing”) is totally avoidable if TYT would implement fact-checking procedure with a separate person research any and all arguments that hosts are going to make in the show BEFOREHAND. After such checks the person would approach Ana and Cenk separately and say whether their claims/arguments have any evidence/basis or make sense in terms of reality. This way the quality of TYT reports would become much higher, the company’s reputation will get stronger, not weaker.
According to Amnesty International, in late February 2016 Russian warplanes deliberately targeted civilians and rescue workers during their bombing campaign. The human rights group has documented attacks on schools, hospitals and civilian homes. Amnesty International also said that “Russia is guilty of some the most egregious war crimes” it had seen “in decades”. The director of Amnesty’s crisis response program, Tirana Hassan, said that after bombing civilian targets, the Russian warplanes “loop around” for a second attack to target the humanitarian workers and civilians who are trying to help those have been injured in the first sortie.
Human Rights Watch reported extensive use of cluster munitions by Syria and Russia, in violation of United Nations resolution 2139 of February 22, 2014, which demanded that all parties end “indiscriminate employment of weapons in populated areas”. Human Rights Watch said that “Russian or Syrian forces were responsible for the attacks” and that the munitions were “manufactured in the former Soviet Union or Russia” and that some were of a type that had “not been documented as used in Syria” prior to Russia’s involvement in the war, which they claimed, suggested that “either Russian aircraft dropped them or Russian authorities recently provided the Syrian government with more cluster munitions or both”.
Médecins Sans Frontières has said that either Syrian regime or Russian warplanes deliberately attacked a hospital in Maarat al-Numan. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated that it was Russian warplanes that destroyed the hospital.
Opposition activists and local witnesses have reported that Russia has used white phosphorus against targets in Al-Raqqah and Idlib, causing civilian casualties with the weapons.
The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has also reported that since the initiation of the intervention in September 2015, Russian air strikes have killed 1,000 civilians, including 200 children, by the middle of February, 2016. In March Amnesty International reported “compelling evidence” of at least six such attacks.
These reports, including the bombing of two hospitals by Russian Air Force planes, have been denied by Russian officials. In May 2016 the Russian delegation to the UN Security Council vetoed a statement condemning the air strikes on a refugee camp in Idlib on May 5.
In June 2016 Russia Today, while reporting minister Shoigu visit to Hmeymim air base, shown incendiary cluster bombs being loaded onto Russian airplanes, identified as RBK-500 ZAB-2.5SM thanks to clearly visible markings. After this information, inconsistent with official Russian statements, hit the news, the channel has removes these specific cadres from their footage.
So, we’ve got the deliberate targeting of civilians, hospitals and refugee camps, the use of cluster munitions, incendiary and white phosphorous, I suppose this is just another case of those darn humanitarian groups and their hidden agendas… BTW, how’s the weather over there in Moscow..?
Nothing in your answer actually disputes any of the concrete points listed in my earlier post, what makes me wonder about the conditions of weather in Fort Meade or wherever you stationed as this way of “dispute” is exactly what NSA troll army (that Snowden made public) uses as per their instructions. As per that instruction you should just skip the points that you can no argue in essence with; you deflect with lots of unrelated claims that supposedly help you to win the argument, even though it exposes your interest in pushing StateDep narrative rather than in discussion/dispute around concrete arguments that should become long forgotten by this point.
Still, I dissect even those unrelated claims:
1) by “free” media I exactly mean the MSM, hence the quotes around the “free”;
2) Amnesty Internation as well as others collect their information from the claims of Al-Qaeda’s (by that name I mean Jabhat Al-Nusra that now renamed itself, and their clones) twitter accounts that are not verified independently. There is no evidence that Russia “targeted civilians”, let alone “deliberately” (and this would be absurd since it is counter to the point of the military operation; and, as I explained, there are not enough forces to engage anything else other than actual military targets).
2) the “rescue workers” that those organizations cite are the infamous SyriaCivilDef/White Helmets group whose members share membership with Al-Qaeda, collect bodies after executions, brandish weapons, wave Al-Qaeda flags (all of which is on video); this is the “source” for AI and others, but you will not read about from the media that are just as strictly aligned with StateDep policies as during Iraq war times;
3) major powers, including Russia and USA, did not ban cluster bombs, and they do widely use them, though they do not like to talk about it. There are no issues with using them, though, if it is not at/in close proximity to civilian areas. The parts where HRW report claims that the use was supposedly in such areas were not verified. Especially since the organization is headed by the odious StateDep representative that openly justified Syrian terrorists numerous times. And, as I explained above, the term “civilian areas” could be applied rationally to the events years ago, but not in the few years; the disputed areas are deserted almost entirely;
4) the MSM “forget” to mention that Médecins Sans Frontières never actually named the culprit in the Maarat al-Numan hospital bombings (their statement is public; no mention of Russia or Syria). And no wonder since there are many “rebel” factions around that use both missiles and so-called “hell cannons” to deal with each other, let alone with the Syrian government. It is not possible to pinpoint who was responsible for the attack. It possible that it could be either Russia or Syria, though, since the terrorists videodocumented themselves on the roofs of at least one hospital with USA-supplied anti-tank missiles systems; if so, the question is whether such hospital was active in medical sense or not. In that case nothing is clear;
5) UK-based “Observatory” is literally one-man team that collects Twitter claims from Al-Qaeda and their clones. No independent confirmation to his reports; especially since what terrorist report as “civilians” in the death tolls are often times men-only collections of bodies, sometimes even as blatantly as in uniform, that makes it hard to assess if they are actually “civilians”. So those numbers of civilian death toll are not realiably, they come out of the blue and used by the West for pro “regime change” propaganda purposes (and this is why they host and finance this “Observatory”). No “high principle journalist” questions and tries to verify anything; all propaganda is relayed to the public intact;
6) phosphorous is used by the military to temporary light up the area during the night time to pinpoint targets using photo/video from the drones for later strikes, so its use is possible; actually bad thing here if it goes down on a civilian areas with lots of people on the streets at the moment of strike. There is no evidence of such bombs hit civilian areas (and no wonder since; it would be hard to do as civilians are mostly long left);
7) “the air strikes on a refugee camp in Idlib on May 5” was an arson as seen on the photographs. You see no holes from the bombs and the nearby tents are intact, not blown away as it would have happened in case of real bomb strike. Media report all of terrorists’ PR operations as it is used for pro “regime change” propaganda;
8) the use of incendiary bombs is allowed by the Geneva convention (the corresponding appendix) if civilians are not targets, nor they are in the nearby vicinity. The reason why Russia does not officially admit bombing with incendiaries is because it could be used for pro-terrorist propaganda, even though there is no evidence that such bombs were actually used on civilians/nearby civilians. As I mentioned above, the front line is hundreds of kilometres long, and is almost completely depopulated. (Not only Russia is shy about those weapons, though; you will not read about the use of the firebombs in Pentagon briefings either.)
Now that we dealt with this, are you going to switch to something different yet again? I call readers of this discussion to look at the root comment to see if any of my points were actually disputed or we have a deflection to different points that have nothing to with the fact that Russia does not carpet bomb Syria, which is, as we see, can not be disputed in essence.
Sorry, but I just do not agree. I have nothing but the public domain to reference, and until there are credible sources to the contrary I will go with those. You have made assertions, I have provided information that is backed up by citation: I am not intimate with the ground truth, and I assume that neither are you. So, others can judge for themselves. I subscribed to TYT to get away from the negativity of the trolls on YouTube, so I’m not going to waste any more cycles here. Live is too short.
As I explained above, the trolling behaviour is when you attempt to deflect from the points you can not argue, when you pile up unrelated claims instead. Most of things you cited do not indicate evidence that would support those specific claims, and as example with the refugee camp shows, some times there is direct evidence to the contrary.
The position to just believe establishment’s claims and not question them might be strange for a TYT subscriber, though I understand it since this is how 68% of Americans by 2006 believed that Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11, all while there was no real evidence to confirm those claims. It is a sad when people are so willing to continue to live in that media bubble and consciously choose to accept as truthful claims, relayed by the establishment media that promote the maniacal neocon/neolib “regime change” policies in Syria and elsewhere.
I’m sure to regret this, but… I can state that I believe in the reports that Russia is essentially committing war crimes in Syria, and I can also state that I believe that the US (and Allies) were wrong to invade Iraq. You see, I’m a rational, level-headed human being and I can hold both opinions because there is reliable independent data to support both.
One belief does not invalidate the other. I can even go on to say that the US has been wrong on a long list of foreign policy decisions/interventions including, but not limited to Cuba, Vietnam, Laos/Cambodia, Chile, Iran, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and that Russia (and the Soviet Union before that) has been “equally” wrong in terms of Hungry, Czech Republic, Afghanistan, Chechenia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Believing one is/was wrong in any one historical case doesn’t make the other right now.
Syria, in terms of judging the success or otherwise and the rights or wrongs of current US policy is yet to be determined. The case does not look good, but Syria is and always was a mess and this was going to be a no-win situation. Russian, however, have adopted an overtly muscular policy and seem to be applying their Afghanistan-era tactics in an age were independent reporting makes that look very foolish.
So, you see, I am not interested in pushing a particular agenda or acting as the propaganda arm for one actor or the other. I’m comfortable in denouncing bad acts by either side, and applauding either side if the do the right thing, but that’s not been happening too often of late. I’m not paid to push a line, although I suspect you might be.
If/when you have independently verified reports that counter the citations that are documented get back to me, until then I’m not interested in your version of “truth”.
1) a war crime would be use, say, using incendiary bombs target civilians or bomb places in the very vicinity of civilian-populated areas. But there is simply no evidence that Russia (or Syria, or USA) is engaged in that. Saying that you believe in this is not any better than saying that you believe that Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11. No real, verified evidence to confirm either of those claims;
2) there is no “independent data” to confirm the claims. As I cited above, none of the claims are yet independently verified. They are sourced from the Wahhabi/Salafist terrorists directly or from their PR cover up groups such as SyrianCivilDefense/White Helmets;
3) listing all kinds of conflicts the counties participated is not relevant to the point I was making in the root post (it is impossible for Russia to carry out carpet bombings even if it wanted to). The more so since “wrong” is wrong about some countries in the list;
4) Syria was not a mess before the “revolution”. It was an authoritarian, but peaceful state. No one was doing massacres there. You can find any number of photos of secular non-sectarian people living their lives in cities such as Aleppo and Homs from before 2011; they are at the beaches, they are by fountains, they marry, they go to schools and universities, to opera, to ballet. John Kerry had tet-a-tet dinners with Assad, Syrian government shared information on suspected Wahhabi/Salafist with the USA’s intelligence, et cetera, but it was not enough as the leaked Clinton electronic mails show;
5) there is no specific “Aghanistan-era tactics” in what Russia does in Syria. The country pounds the terrorists, and, of course, does not admit the use of cluster or incendiary bombs for PR reasons. There is literally no cases when any warring state has behaved differently;
6) it is good if you are not interested in pushing the StateDep agenda. If so, then you should be able to separate the establishment “reports” on what happens Syria from reality if there is no either independent confirmation, or even rationale for the claimed acts to happen;
7) demanding that I would prove a negative is a not a proper discussion move. Things do not work that way. Establishment/pro-regime change/pro-StateDep organizations make claims that were never verified independently, and you are demanding that I would somehow prove that something what they claim did not happen.
Imagine someone accusing you of being a child rapist, but somehow you would be required to prove that you are not. Even if you would provide witnesses or video surveillance that at some points of time you were not raping children as you engaged in different activities, there is nothing that you can prove about other time periods.
What I mention is google-able in one step. For example, you can check how many planes/helicopters Russia is using in the military operation in Syria, you can check the number of bombs Russia has already dropped, you can look at the military map of Syria and assess the length of the front lines, et cetera. With those figures “carpet bombing” not physically feasible, unless we accept that some sorcery is used to carry them out.
(And, by the way, the comment system does not allow more than one link per comment, so I stopped bothering to put links into comments maybe a year or two years ago already.)
I just mean I never notice you say anything along the lines of, “According to (insert source here).” You write as if matter-of-fact but never state where you find your information. Then often times if somebody challenges you with information they found from a particular source, you discredit their source. Obviously this suggests that there are a multiple answers to any given question put into Google. I’m just wondering which sources you do find reliable.
1) Most of the time there are so many details in what I am writing that comments become already too big. If I would start citing sources for everything they would become even more big, let alone the time it would require. If I was writing an article, not a comment, then it would be a different story; in a proper article you should always cite sources; though even the media do not work that way any more. For a comment the current format is appropriate;
2) I am not just “discrediting sources”. For example, if Amnesty International claims that Russia “deliberately targets civilians” I am interested to see if there is any evidence of Russia “targeting civilians”, let alone “deliberately” (they offer none; it is just a claim they collected from terrorists on the ground and use for pro-“regime change” PR). This organization serving most of the time as a StateDep tool is only secondary factor;
3) and if there is nothing to discredit in essence, then I do not. For example, there is evidence that Syria, though extremely rarely, uses barrel bombs, that Russia uses both cluster and incendiary bombs, it is objective, and it is rational, and even if the only source for that would be Amnesty International or HRW it would not matter, as well as the fact that Syria and Russia may never admit that they use it. (The claims that those things were/are used to “target civilians” is totally different thing; there is no reliable evidence of that so far; nor there is even a motive why they would do it, what exposes those claims for what they are.);
4) as seen from earlier items in this list I do not find any sources reliable by default. I am interested in the essence of what they reporting, if it makes sense, if it is rational as much as in who is behind the sources;
5) things I mention in the root comment are quite simple and do not require such complicated processing and assessment, though. Google does not give answers that are different in any meaningful way. For example, depending on what and when is counted, the number of aircraft Russia is using in Syria could different from “around fifty” estimation I gave. However, at no point it ever went beyond eighty five units. The number of bombs that is counted usually lags behind actual number, so you may find that Russia dropped thirty thousand bombs, but this this data is months old; but the number does not go above forty thousand by now in any way. The length of the front lines also differs depending on who is drawing the military map and how old it is, but the figure you can estimate from it can never become so small that with all other figures it would be even remotely feasible to carry out “carpet bombings”.
Good points. I’m guessing that dDErss just takes whatever the Kremlin pays him/her to take; I’ve given up on someone that is so obviously a propaganda stooge, and i will not engage again.
For instance, do you think Democracy Now is reliable? Amy Goodman interviewed ZAHER SAHLOUL, a doctor who has spent time in Syria providing medical care, and he says that civilians are being targeted.
Doctors works with patients in their clinics. They can know who is targeting whom or not as much as you and me. He personally can speculate anything but it has no weight of evidence.
Megz041
He talks about helicopters dropping barrel bombs – Syria is the only force using helicopters.
>1) a war crime would be use, say, using incendiary bombs target civilians or bomb places in the very vicinity of civilian-populated areas. But there is simply no evidence that Russia (or Syria, or USA) is engaged in that. Saying that you believe in this is not any better than saying that you believe that Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11. No real, verified evidence to confirm either of those claims;
A doctor can speak to the numbers of patients he sees and the severity of their injuries. If, as you say, civilian populated areas aren’t being bombed, why is the doctor seeing so many civilians killed and mutilated? Are you suggesting that a doctor wouldn’t be able to distinguish the type of injury that a bomb would inflict? Also this particular doctor went to medical school with Assad.
1) as I mentioned earlier, Syria does use barrel bombs, though extremely rarely (as they have nearly unlimited supply of industrially-made bombs; there is no point to bother with the barrels), due to logistics issues. That said, they in fact more accurate than usual bombings as they are dropped from helicopters that statically hover above places they want to drop, so whole hysteria about serves just PR purposes, there is nothing into it in terms actual humanitarian concerns.
2) however, the evidence of barrel bombs use are not words of doctors. Their job is in the clinics, they do not actually see what happens outside. Most of the time when it is said that “barrel bombs” were used it means regular bombs, dropped from helicopters. People can not possibly discern the two neither visually nor by effect.
3) there is no meaningful difference between injures that are inflicted by barrel bomb versus regular bomb. And retelling what patient says is a double layer of hearsay. Claiming that particular party done the injuries and, the more so, deliberately, can not be derived from the type of injures, and besides bearing no value in terms of evidence indicates that those doctors might be under pressure from the “rebels” to say “the right thing”. After all, the “opposition” there is so moderate that they can slowly and gleefully cut off 11 year old child’s head with a dull knife ON CAMERA. Doctors that work there are either Wahhabi/Salafist themselves (but, of course, they never says that in interviews) or are literally in a constant danger of being slowly torturously murdered if they says something “wrong”.
The pipeline issue is a no-brainer. Stop it before we have another BP Spill 2.0. Just look up what oil spills have done to people in Ecuador. Outrageous. It has to stop. Keep it up Standing Rock!!
The loser donald section at the end here is a real concern that’s just short of measurable. There is a LOT of precedent where people say one thing to pollsters and vote another way once they are protected behind a polling booth because they are concerned of being judged as racist.
It’s called the Bradley effect, and very googleable/wikiable. Trump is the most racially charged candidate in modern American history, so if the Bradley effect makes a difference at all, it will make the biggest difference in this election.
Whats amazing, is that the Trump campaign hasnt mentioned this at all, even though its a fairly basic political science topic. They wind up making their own nonsense terms with no real reference to history. Trump staff are a lot of things, but competent isn’t one of them.
Re corporations’ fiduciary responsibility to maximizing profits, since the manufacturer of Epipen has no competitor, and has a monopoly why don’t they raise the price to $700 or 800? Why stop at $600?
Comments
Standing Rock pipe bombs are about as big of a threat as brandished chairs at state conventions.
Every time I post a comment, the video stops and takes me back to the beginning? Is this a problem with my system or TYT?
Hate the fucking sound board. Love the new show with Jimmy and Jordan aggressive progressives. Does anyone ever look at these comments?
Also, I emailed the tech support last week – crickets…you gotta do better than that.
I’ve had to refresh this video 7 times this isnt right
On the pipeline, it’s not about what’s legal, Cenk, it’s about what’s right. They don’t want the waters in their nation to be polluted. It doesn’t matter if the bought and sold corporate toady USA said it was ok for them to do whatever they want. Sometimes things are legal and morally wrong, like your hero MLK said constantly. Our right to exist in a world not polluted by capitalist waste products overrules any legal right they might have to the land. The switch to renewable energy on behalf of our bought and sold government is not going to happen in time. Native people around the world are the ones putting their bodies on the line to stop climate change, not just here, but everywhere, and that is what is working to keep the oil in the ground. These totally pointless climate summits that invite oil companies to attend are doing nothing but agreeing to meet again in a few years. To stop climate change, if we even can at this point. we need people who actually care about the Earth over profit to be throwing themselves in the gears of the machine that does not care about the Earth, humanity or our future. they only care about profit in the next quarter. nothing else exists. We should be falling over ourselves thanking them, or joining them, not asking “well, is it legal?”
My hometown narrowly missed being burned up by a pipeline ruptured by a backhoe operated in a small creek where I used to swim as a kid. Fuel from the rupture went down the creek and built up in a back-eddy. When the fire dept responded to a complaint about a sickly dog, they encountered gas fumes so thick in the air the firetruck engine dieseled so much it couldn’t be shutoff. It turned out that a couple kids playing around with a barbecue starter ignited a spark that caused an inferno that the town-folk will never forget. It was a miracle that even though auto row was right there, the prevailing wind saved the town from further damage. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the two little boys with the barbecue starter actually survived the explosion; they ran home but felt so guilty and bewildered, their parents couldn’t locate them even though they had burns over most of their bodies, one can only imagine what those parents went through…another boy fishing in the creek also fell victim. Actually, had the fuel not been caught in the back-eddy, the prevailing wind not been so favorable, and the boys not ignited the gas when they did, the incident could have been even more tragic (as it is there were only three fatalities!), this was a case of two little firebugs becoming unwitting heroes.!
good show today. News was covered beyond the American election’s daily horse race.
OMG Jon did you just say “And they have a plan” at 21:04? AWESOME SAUCE.
You know we all love you there at TYT, but Cenk is clearly losing touch with progressive values. When it comes to the Dakota Pipeline, it’s a no-brainer. Do your research Cenk, you tell him John.
I’ll assume that you watched the interview because if you commented without doing so it would suggest you aren’t even willing to consider evidence that doesn’t fit your conclusion.
Free markets have no place in any part of healthcare. Price gouging pharmaceutical companies and health care providers need to be taken out of the equation and replaced by a fully government-run healthcare system. If we are legally obligated to have health insurance, private companies need to be kept out of providing the service. Tax us in return for affordable health care. It is worth it.
^ this
very well said, please run for office!
Cenk is not as progressive as he believes he is. He is an American lol. Backing up the energy companies and their pipelines? Interesting…
There is also the 60 year old Embridge pipeline running under the Straits of Mackinaw that connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
I hate these Pharmaceutical Swine Excrement – hey, these CEO’s sign the checks going to the lobbyist fucks that keep this shit going! So don’t tell me it is all legal and that they don’t have any responsibility to do the right thing.
BTW, Joe Manchin has been found eating feces directly out of my ASS!
The old saying: “Healthcare is a Right not a Privilege” rings kind of repugnant don’t it?!
I like John but his constant interjections / small comments annoy me. It appeared during this hour that Cenk isn’t into them that much as well. Yes they are smart and make sense but we can do without them every 5 min or so
THE LACK OF FACT-CHECKING PROCEDURE still shows as Cenk makes incorrect claims that could be easily avoidable if TYT had someone designated to process hosts’ arguments before the show.
In the story about Turking entering Syria Cenk claims Russia does “carpet bombing”, which is incorrect. Russia only uses about fifty aircraft in the operation, which is only few percentages of the country’s thousands of planes-strong air power.
That many bombers are only enough to fight actual targets as the total length of the front lines in Syria is many hundreds of thousand kilometres long. Russia has used only about 40 000 bombs in Syria by now; for the best example of carpet bombings you can look at history of Vietnam and Combogia on which the USA dropped literally millions of bombs, which is totally different scale of operation.
*thousand kilometres long
By the way, Cenk’s comments on the ND pipeline are disappointing:
1) in the beginning he just accepts the claims by the contractor as it it is an independent party that would ever tell anything against their project;
2) discusses seriously “benefits” when the only real winning party would be oil/transit companies, not any theoretical residents other than Native Americans who are not protesting. The number of jobs it would supposedly create is infinitely small.
More scepticism would benefit the coverage; John is more on point on this issue.
The numbers are open to debate, but surely the point is that Russia is involved in the indiscriminate bombing of civilian locations using unguided munitions..?
No, they may not be using hundreds of strategic bombers, each dropping hundreds of bombs – as the US did on Laos (but not Vietnam) – but it still qualifies as an “unsmart” use of military power… What’s your real point..?
Another example of people just believing in whatever “free” media say (the same media that told people that Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11); the reality is:
1) Russia uses guided munitions; at least five types were documented to be used in Syria (laser/infrared/radio/tele/satellite air to ground missiles and bombs, let alone cruise missiles) in cases when pinpoint strikes are necessary;
2) but even for the “unguided” munitions Russia uses SVP-24-like systems so the aiming is thrice more accurate than for regular bombings;
3) as I explained above, the claims of “indiscriminate” bombings is blatantly absurd as the forces are only sufficient to engage with actual targets. If you will be “indiscriminate” then you will miss your targets what ruins whole point of the military operation (by the way, you might want to check the number of bombers and bombs used in Vietnam; it is not just Laos);
4) there are almost no “civilian locations” in the areas of fights left in Syria. By the time Russia has entered the war Syria already had 7 million of internally displaced people and 4 million refugees — roughly half of the country has left; the contested areas are almost empty of civilians. The much advertised terrorist-held suburb of Damascus Daraya has about 4K people versus nearly 2 million in the city itself, and the terrorist-occupied parts of Aleppo have about 40K people versus 1.5 million in the government-controlled parts of Aleppo. Those 4K/40K figures consist of the Wahhabi/Salafist terrorists and their fanatical families that wilfully stick to them, despite everyone else is long gone. Of course, adults can be blamed for sticking in there, but not children; they will be always the collateral damage of any fights against Al-Qaeda and their clones; it is unavoidable;
5) I stated my real point in the very beginning, even in semibold styling. Cenk making factually incorrect statements (on “carpet bombing”) is totally avoidable if TYT would implement fact-checking procedure with a separate person research any and all arguments that hosts are going to make in the show BEFOREHAND. After such checks the person would approach Ana and Cenk separately and say whether their claims/arguments have any evidence/basis or make sense in terms of reality. This way the quality of TYT reports would become much higher, the company’s reputation will get stronger, not weaker.
Here you go, explain away this as free media make-believe (by the way, it was not “free media” that pedalled the WDM line about Iraq, it was the Establishment and establishment media): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_intervention_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Reports_of_war_crimes_and_attacks_on_civilians
According to Amnesty International, in late February 2016 Russian warplanes deliberately targeted civilians and rescue workers during their bombing campaign. The human rights group has documented attacks on schools, hospitals and civilian homes. Amnesty International also said that “Russia is guilty of some the most egregious war crimes” it had seen “in decades”. The director of Amnesty’s crisis response program, Tirana Hassan, said that after bombing civilian targets, the Russian warplanes “loop around” for a second attack to target the humanitarian workers and civilians who are trying to help those have been injured in the first sortie.
Human Rights Watch reported extensive use of cluster munitions by Syria and Russia, in violation of United Nations resolution 2139 of February 22, 2014, which demanded that all parties end “indiscriminate employment of weapons in populated areas”. Human Rights Watch said that “Russian or Syrian forces were responsible for the attacks” and that the munitions were “manufactured in the former Soviet Union or Russia” and that some were of a type that had “not been documented as used in Syria” prior to Russia’s involvement in the war, which they claimed, suggested that “either Russian aircraft dropped them or Russian authorities recently provided the Syrian government with more cluster munitions or both”.
Médecins Sans Frontières has said that either Syrian regime or Russian warplanes deliberately attacked a hospital in Maarat al-Numan. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated that it was Russian warplanes that destroyed the hospital.
Opposition activists and local witnesses have reported that Russia has used white phosphorus against targets in Al-Raqqah and Idlib, causing civilian casualties with the weapons.
The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has also reported that since the initiation of the intervention in September 2015, Russian air strikes have killed 1,000 civilians, including 200 children, by the middle of February, 2016. In March Amnesty International reported “compelling evidence” of at least six such attacks.
These reports, including the bombing of two hospitals by Russian Air Force planes, have been denied by Russian officials. In May 2016 the Russian delegation to the UN Security Council vetoed a statement condemning the air strikes on a refugee camp in Idlib on May 5.
In June 2016 Russia Today, while reporting minister Shoigu visit to Hmeymim air base, shown incendiary cluster bombs being loaded onto Russian airplanes, identified as RBK-500 ZAB-2.5SM thanks to clearly visible markings. After this information, inconsistent with official Russian statements, hit the news, the channel has removes these specific cadres from their footage.
So, we’ve got the deliberate targeting of civilians, hospitals and refugee camps, the use of cluster munitions, incendiary and white phosphorous, I suppose this is just another case of those darn humanitarian groups and their hidden agendas… BTW, how’s the weather over there in Moscow..?
Nothing in your answer actually disputes any of the concrete points listed in my earlier post, what makes me wonder about the conditions of weather in Fort Meade or wherever you stationed as this way of “dispute” is exactly what NSA troll army (that Snowden made public) uses as per their instructions. As per that instruction you should just skip the points that you can no argue in essence with; you deflect with lots of unrelated claims that supposedly help you to win the argument, even though it exposes your interest in pushing StateDep narrative rather than in discussion/dispute around concrete arguments that should become long forgotten by this point.
Still, I dissect even those unrelated claims:
1) by “free” media I exactly mean the MSM, hence the quotes around the “free”;
2) Amnesty Internation as well as others collect their information from the claims of Al-Qaeda’s (by that name I mean Jabhat Al-Nusra that now renamed itself, and their clones) twitter accounts that are not verified independently. There is no evidence that Russia “targeted civilians”, let alone “deliberately” (and this would be absurd since it is counter to the point of the military operation; and, as I explained, there are not enough forces to engage anything else other than actual military targets).
2) the “rescue workers” that those organizations cite are the infamous SyriaCivilDef/White Helmets group whose members share membership with Al-Qaeda, collect bodies after executions, brandish weapons, wave Al-Qaeda flags (all of which is on video); this is the “source” for AI and others, but you will not read about from the media that are just as strictly aligned with StateDep policies as during Iraq war times;
3) major powers, including Russia and USA, did not ban cluster bombs, and they do widely use them, though they do not like to talk about it. There are no issues with using them, though, if it is not at/in close proximity to civilian areas. The parts where HRW report claims that the use was supposedly in such areas were not verified. Especially since the organization is headed by the odious StateDep representative that openly justified Syrian terrorists numerous times. And, as I explained above, the term “civilian areas” could be applied rationally to the events years ago, but not in the few years; the disputed areas are deserted almost entirely;
4) the MSM “forget” to mention that Médecins Sans Frontières never actually named the culprit in the Maarat al-Numan hospital bombings (their statement is public; no mention of Russia or Syria). And no wonder since there are many “rebel” factions around that use both missiles and so-called “hell cannons” to deal with each other, let alone with the Syrian government. It is not possible to pinpoint who was responsible for the attack. It possible that it could be either Russia or Syria, though, since the terrorists videodocumented themselves on the roofs of at least one hospital with USA-supplied anti-tank missiles systems; if so, the question is whether such hospital was active in medical sense or not. In that case nothing is clear;
5) UK-based “Observatory” is literally one-man team that collects Twitter claims from Al-Qaeda and their clones. No independent confirmation to his reports; especially since what terrorist report as “civilians” in the death tolls are often times men-only collections of bodies, sometimes even as blatantly as in uniform, that makes it hard to assess if they are actually “civilians”. So those numbers of civilian death toll are not realiably, they come out of the blue and used by the West for pro “regime change” propaganda purposes (and this is why they host and finance this “Observatory”). No “high principle journalist” questions and tries to verify anything; all propaganda is relayed to the public intact;
6) phosphorous is used by the military to temporary light up the area during the night time to pinpoint targets using photo/video from the drones for later strikes, so its use is possible; actually bad thing here if it goes down on a civilian areas with lots of people on the streets at the moment of strike. There is no evidence of such bombs hit civilian areas (and no wonder since; it would be hard to do as civilians are mostly long left);
7) “the air strikes on a refugee camp in Idlib on May 5” was an arson as seen on the photographs. You see no holes from the bombs and the nearby tents are intact, not blown away as it would have happened in case of real bomb strike. Media report all of terrorists’ PR operations as it is used for pro “regime change” propaganda;
8) the use of incendiary bombs is allowed by the Geneva convention (the corresponding appendix) if civilians are not targets, nor they are in the nearby vicinity. The reason why Russia does not officially admit bombing with incendiaries is because it could be used for pro-terrorist propaganda, even though there is no evidence that such bombs were actually used on civilians/nearby civilians. As I mentioned above, the front line is hundreds of kilometres long, and is almost completely depopulated. (Not only Russia is shy about those weapons, though; you will not read about the use of the firebombs in Pentagon briefings either.)
Now that we dealt with this, are you going to switch to something different yet again? I call readers of this discussion to look at the root comment to see if any of my points were actually disputed or we have a deflection to different points that have nothing to with the fact that Russia does not carpet bomb Syria, which is, as we see, can not be disputed in essence.
Sorry, but I just do not agree. I have nothing but the public domain to reference, and until there are credible sources to the contrary I will go with those. You have made assertions, I have provided information that is backed up by citation: I am not intimate with the ground truth, and I assume that neither are you. So, others can judge for themselves. I subscribed to TYT to get away from the negativity of the trolls on YouTube, so I’m not going to waste any more cycles here. Live is too short.
As I explained above, the trolling behaviour is when you attempt to deflect from the points you can not argue, when you pile up unrelated claims instead. Most of things you cited do not indicate evidence that would support those specific claims, and as example with the refugee camp shows, some times there is direct evidence to the contrary.
The position to just believe establishment’s claims and not question them might be strange for a TYT subscriber, though I understand it since this is how 68% of Americans by 2006 believed that Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11, all while there was no real evidence to confirm those claims. It is a sad when people are so willing to continue to live in that media bubble and consciously choose to accept as truthful claims, relayed by the establishment media that promote the maniacal neocon/neolib “regime change” policies in Syria and elsewhere.
I’m sure to regret this, but… I can state that I believe in the reports that Russia is essentially committing war crimes in Syria, and I can also state that I believe that the US (and Allies) were wrong to invade Iraq. You see, I’m a rational, level-headed human being and I can hold both opinions because there is reliable independent data to support both.
One belief does not invalidate the other. I can even go on to say that the US has been wrong on a long list of foreign policy decisions/interventions including, but not limited to Cuba, Vietnam, Laos/Cambodia, Chile, Iran, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and that Russia (and the Soviet Union before that) has been “equally” wrong in terms of Hungry, Czech Republic, Afghanistan, Chechenia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Believing one is/was wrong in any one historical case doesn’t make the other right now.
Syria, in terms of judging the success or otherwise and the rights or wrongs of current US policy is yet to be determined. The case does not look good, but Syria is and always was a mess and this was going to be a no-win situation. Russian, however, have adopted an overtly muscular policy and seem to be applying their Afghanistan-era tactics in an age were independent reporting makes that look very foolish.
So, you see, I am not interested in pushing a particular agenda or acting as the propaganda arm for one actor or the other. I’m comfortable in denouncing bad acts by either side, and applauding either side if the do the right thing, but that’s not been happening too often of late. I’m not paid to push a line, although I suspect you might be.
If/when you have independently verified reports that counter the citations that are documented get back to me, until then I’m not interested in your version of “truth”.
Mic, drop, out.
1) a war crime would be use, say, using incendiary bombs target civilians or bomb places in the very vicinity of civilian-populated areas. But there is simply no evidence that Russia (or Syria, or USA) is engaged in that. Saying that you believe in this is not any better than saying that you believe that Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11. No real, verified evidence to confirm either of those claims;
2) there is no “independent data” to confirm the claims. As I cited above, none of the claims are yet independently verified. They are sourced from the Wahhabi/Salafist terrorists directly or from their PR cover up groups such as SyrianCivilDefense/White Helmets;
3) listing all kinds of conflicts the counties participated is not relevant to the point I was making in the root post (it is impossible for Russia to carry out carpet bombings even if it wanted to). The more so since “wrong” is wrong about some countries in the list;
4) Syria was not a mess before the “revolution”. It was an authoritarian, but peaceful state. No one was doing massacres there. You can find any number of photos of secular non-sectarian people living their lives in cities such as Aleppo and Homs from before 2011; they are at the beaches, they are by fountains, they marry, they go to schools and universities, to opera, to ballet. John Kerry had tet-a-tet dinners with Assad, Syrian government shared information on suspected Wahhabi/Salafist with the USA’s intelligence, et cetera, but it was not enough as the leaked Clinton electronic mails show;
5) there is no specific “Aghanistan-era tactics” in what Russia does in Syria. The country pounds the terrorists, and, of course, does not admit the use of cluster or incendiary bombs for PR reasons. There is literally no cases when any warring state has behaved differently;
6) it is good if you are not interested in pushing the StateDep agenda. If so, then you should be able to separate the establishment “reports” on what happens Syria from reality if there is no either independent confirmation, or even rationale for the claimed acts to happen;
7) demanding that I would prove a negative is a not a proper discussion move. Things do not work that way. Establishment/pro-regime change/pro-StateDep organizations make claims that were never verified independently, and you are demanding that I would somehow prove that something what they claim did not happen.
Imagine someone accusing you of being a child rapist, but somehow you would be required to prove that you are not. Even if you would provide witnesses or video surveillance that at some points of time you were not raping children as you engaged in different activities, there is nothing that you can prove about other time periods.
You can almost never prove a negative.
welcome to the comments
How come you never provide your sources?
What I mention is google-able in one step. For example, you can check how many planes/helicopters Russia is using in the military operation in Syria, you can check the number of bombs Russia has already dropped, you can look at the military map of Syria and assess the length of the front lines, et cetera. With those figures “carpet bombing” not physically feasible, unless we accept that some sorcery is used to carry them out.
(And, by the way, the comment system does not allow more than one link per comment, so I stopped bothering to put links into comments maybe a year or two years ago already.)
I just mean I never notice you say anything along the lines of, “According to (insert source here).” You write as if matter-of-fact but never state where you find your information. Then often times if somebody challenges you with information they found from a particular source, you discredit their source. Obviously this suggests that there are a multiple answers to any given question put into Google. I’m just wondering which sources you do find reliable.
1) Most of the time there are so many details in what I am writing that comments become already too big. If I would start citing sources for everything they would become even more big, let alone the time it would require. If I was writing an article, not a comment, then it would be a different story; in a proper article you should always cite sources; though even the media do not work that way any more. For a comment the current format is appropriate;
2) I am not just “discrediting sources”. For example, if Amnesty International claims that Russia “deliberately targets civilians” I am interested to see if there is any evidence of Russia “targeting civilians”, let alone “deliberately” (they offer none; it is just a claim they collected from terrorists on the ground and use for pro-“regime change” PR). This organization serving most of the time as a StateDep tool is only secondary factor;
3) and if there is nothing to discredit in essence, then I do not. For example, there is evidence that Syria, though extremely rarely, uses barrel bombs, that Russia uses both cluster and incendiary bombs, it is objective, and it is rational, and even if the only source for that would be Amnesty International or HRW it would not matter, as well as the fact that Syria and Russia may never admit that they use it. (The claims that those things were/are used to “target civilians” is totally different thing; there is no reliable evidence of that so far; nor there is even a motive why they would do it, what exposes those claims for what they are.);
4) as seen from earlier items in this list I do not find any sources reliable by default. I am interested in the essence of what they reporting, if it makes sense, if it is rational as much as in who is behind the sources;
5) things I mention in the root comment are quite simple and do not require such complicated processing and assessment, though. Google does not give answers that are different in any meaningful way. For example, depending on what and when is counted, the number of aircraft Russia is using in Syria could different from “around fifty” estimation I gave. However, at no point it ever went beyond eighty five units. The number of bombs that is counted usually lags behind actual number, so you may find that Russia dropped thirty thousand bombs, but this this data is months old; but the number does not go above forty thousand by now in any way. The length of the front lines also differs depending on who is drawing the military map and how old it is, but the figure you can estimate from it can never become so small that with all other figures it would be even remotely feasible to carry out “carpet bombings”.
Good points. I’m guessing that dDErss just takes whatever the Kremlin pays him/her to take; I’ve given up on someone that is so obviously a propaganda stooge, and i will not engage again.
For instance, do you think Democracy Now is reliable? Amy Goodman interviewed ZAHER SAHLOUL, a doctor who has spent time in Syria providing medical care, and he says that civilians are being targeted.
Doctors works with patients in their clinics. They can know who is targeting whom or not as much as you and me. He personally can speculate anything but it has no weight of evidence.
He talks about helicopters dropping barrel bombs – Syria is the only force using helicopters.
>1) a war crime would be use, say, using incendiary bombs target civilians or bomb places in the very vicinity of civilian-populated areas. But there is simply no evidence that Russia (or Syria, or USA) is engaged in that. Saying that you believe in this is not any better than saying that you believe that Saddam had WMDs and was tied to 9/11. No real, verified evidence to confirm either of those claims;
A doctor can speak to the numbers of patients he sees and the severity of their injuries. If, as you say, civilian populated areas aren’t being bombed, why is the doctor seeing so many civilians killed and mutilated? Are you suggesting that a doctor wouldn’t be able to distinguish the type of injury that a bomb would inflict? Also this particular doctor went to medical school with Assad.
1) as I mentioned earlier, Syria does use barrel bombs, though extremely rarely (as they have nearly unlimited supply of industrially-made bombs; there is no point to bother with the barrels), due to logistics issues. That said, they in fact more accurate than usual bombings as they are dropped from helicopters that statically hover above places they want to drop, so whole hysteria about serves just PR purposes, there is nothing into it in terms actual humanitarian concerns.
2) however, the evidence of barrel bombs use are not words of doctors. Their job is in the clinics, they do not actually see what happens outside. Most of the time when it is said that “barrel bombs” were used it means regular bombs, dropped from helicopters. People can not possibly discern the two neither visually nor by effect.
3) there is no meaningful difference between injures that are inflicted by barrel bomb versus regular bomb. And retelling what patient says is a double layer of hearsay. Claiming that particular party done the injuries and, the more so, deliberately, can not be derived from the type of injures, and besides bearing no value in terms of evidence indicates that those doctors might be under pressure from the “rebels” to say “the right thing”. After all, the “opposition” there is so moderate that they can slowly and gleefully cut off 11 year old child’s head with a dull knife ON CAMERA. Doctors that work there are either Wahhabi/Salafist themselves (but, of course, they never says that in interviews) or are literally in a constant danger of being slowly torturously murdered if they says something “wrong”.
Yes, Democracy Now is reliable.
The pipeline issue is a no-brainer. Stop it before we have another BP Spill 2.0. Just look up what oil spills have done to people in Ecuador. Outrageous. It has to stop. Keep it up Standing Rock!!
The loser donald section at the end here is a real concern that’s just short of measurable. There is a LOT of precedent where people say one thing to pollsters and vote another way once they are protected behind a polling booth because they are concerned of being judged as racist.
It’s called the Bradley effect, and very googleable/wikiable. Trump is the most racially charged candidate in modern American history, so if the Bradley effect makes a difference at all, it will make the biggest difference in this election.
Whats amazing, is that the Trump campaign hasnt mentioned this at all, even though its a fairly basic political science topic. They wind up making their own nonsense terms with no real reference to history. Trump staff are a lot of things, but competent isn’t one of them.
@Bechoseveth
Wait, you were counting on the Trump campaign to make good use of relevant political scientific concepts? ;)
Re corporations’ fiduciary responsibility to maximizing profits, since the manufacturer of Epipen has no competitor, and has a monopoly why don’t they raise the price to $700 or 800? Why stop at $600?
more loserdonald plezzzz!!! the best way 2 start the day
That cop had NO reason to cuff the native woman. She did nothing wrong.
Video not working for anybody else?
love the new thumbnails on the hour one and hour two videos
Thats just your assertion man, on the pipe line Cenk