- US occupying forces in northern Syria are continuing to plunder natural resources and farmland, a practice ongoing since 2011
- Recently, US troops smuggled dozens of tanker trucks loaded with Syrian crude oil to their bases in Iraq.
- The fuel and convoys of Syrian wheat were transported through the illegal settlement of Mahmoudia.
- Witnesses report a caravan of 69 tankers loaded with oil and 45 with wheat stolen from silos in Yarubieh city.
- Similar acts of looting occurred on the 19th of the month in the city of Hasakeh, where 45 tankers of Syrian oil were taken out by US forces.
- Prior to the war and US invasion, Syria produced over 380 thousand barrels of crude oil per day, but this has drastically reduced to only 15 thousand barrels per day.
- The country’s oil production now covers only five percent of its needs, with the remaining 95 percent imported amidst difficulties due to the US blockade.
- The US and EU blockade prevents the entry of medicines, food, supplies, and impedes technological and industrial development in Syria.
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Yeah, I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for BBC to cover Western atrocities in the developing world, let alone any US outlet (or rather frame it as justified in response to retaliatory attacks to violence initiated by US intervention in the first place). The issue with over relying on sites like MBFC is that they inherently have a western bias. The US exploiting Syria for its oil isn’t even news at this point, this has been ongoing since 2011.
Can you provide any somewhat reliable evidence to support your claims about the USA stealing oil?
I’m just trying to understand the mechanics and the utility of it. The US military has exceptional logistics, a vast oil reserve, and extraordinary oil production and refining industries. This doesn’t even mention any of its allies in the region where it can base logistical support.
Not to mention what others have pointed out: that there likely aren’t very many, if any, US military installations in the world capably of refining crude oil or turning wheat into flour.
Again, the US exploiting Syria for oil has been occurring since 2011. BBC has a decent article on Syrians oil production post-US intervention. but have your pick.
https://www.bbc.com/news/50464561
https://www.newsweek.com/syria-trump-stealing-oil-us-confirms-deal-1526589
https://www.newsweek.com/syria-first-message-biden-withdraw-troops-stop-stealing-oil-1563165
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221213-syria-regime-again-accuses-us-of-stealing-its-oil/
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN24Y0MI/
https://orinocotribune.com/us-steals-more-than-80-of-syrias-daily-oil-production/
https://english.news.cn/20220817/437cb1bd33ea40999cda96c521f31d21/c.html
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-military-still-stealing-oil-syria/5790752
Those are all news sources that say Syria has accused the USA of stealing oil, or Trump saying it wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I could not find any sources (aside from the last two, of which I similarly question the validity and reliability) that corroborate the US military stealing oil directly from any Syrian entity, as the original source asserts.
So, no, it’s not “common knowledge” that this happens. It’s an assertion made by a geopolitical rival in the context of a very messy and complex conflict, and I dispute it. You have yet to provide any actual information supporting the claim, as does the Syrian government.
Saying things over and over again does not eventually make them true.
No, your right. Syrian oil production plummeting after US occupation is actually just a coincidence. We also 100 percent invaded Iraq for WMDs. You’re not going to find BBC, Reuters, or the Washington Post outright stating the disposition of US interventionism.
There’s an entire fucking civil war going on in Syria. Of course oil production is going to fall.
The invasion of Iraq is not a good comparison for the conflict in Syria. The geopolitical situation is different between 2003 and now. The USA exports significant amount of oil now. It imported it then.
Listen, the United States military has done plenty of terrible shit. It’s still happening, and it’s going to happen. But this suggestion that it’s just going out and hijacking tankers of crude oil and driving them to some random forward operating post and then refining it there or sending it to the black market somehow is just… rather far fetched.
Please avoid citing MBFC as a valid source.
Dave Van Zandt is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence-based reporting. Since High School (a long time ago), Dave has been interested in politics and noticed as a kid the same newspaper report in two different papers was very different in their tone. This curiosity led him to pursue a Communications Degree in college; however, like most 20-year olds he didn’t know what he wanted and changed to a Physiology major midstream. Dave has worked in the healthcare industry (Occupational Rehabilitation) since graduating from college but never lost the desire to learn more about bias and its impacts.
The combination of being fascinated by politics, a keen eye to spot bias before he even knew what it was called, and an education/career in science gave Dave the tools required for understanding Media Bias and its implications. This led to a 20-year journey where Dave would read anything and everything he could find on media bias and linguistics. He also employed the scientific method to develop a methodology to support his assessments.
If you’re going to discredit a source, please try to do the legwork of actually discrediting it. A guy with a Bachelors in Physiology and being “fascinated with politics since high school (a long time ago)” cannot be considered a reliable source, nevermind one who claims to follow the “scientific method” which he, presumably, learned while studying to become an occupational therapist or through his 20-year journey of reading political news.
If you have photos of this man, any record of interviews with him, records that support his credibility/the incorporation of his company, records of his job in occupational rehabilitation, details about his team, or anything else, please feel free to share them. Please do not confuse him with Dave E. Van Zandt (Princeton BA Sociology, Yale JD, London School of Economics PhD, ex-managing editor of the Yale Law Journal, ex-Dean of Northeastern’s School of Law, ex-President of The New School).
I don’t understand. Unless you have a degree in journalism or something similar you’re not allowed to be an expert on media outlets? How many professors of practice at universities don’t have a degree related to what they’re teaching?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m super put off by this notion that he had a “super keen eye“ and natural aptitude for spotting “bias.” I also object to the way that people talk about bias, but that’s another discussion. The point is yeah there’s a little bit of bullshit in there, but his background does not discredit the endeavor.
Professors of Practice tend to have experience in the industry they are professors in. Their reputation is hinged on their achievements, and they don’t cite their degree as being instrumental to their credibility.
Edit: professors are also, y’know, subject to scrutiny and can’t hide behind anonymity when they get things wrong.
The site’s history speaks for itself. Because or in spite of him, it’s a solid way to at-a-glance assess an outlet. It is not the whole story, it’s not even a great story, but it’s a start that’s pretty solid.
How would you support this claim? It’s solid because it exists and people read it?
Burden of proof is on you here. What about the site are you disputing here?
It’s credibility and reliability, which I’ve already done and which you’ve acknowledged.
Just do the legwork to critique the source, it’s not that hard. There’s no need to cite bad sources just because they exist.
MBFC is a good enough source for routine information, and its system is accurate enough to give a general idea of who finances, who writes, and whether the articles are sourced according to journalistic standards. It’s a good tool to help with critical evaluation of media sources. But you’re right: it’s not flawless.
Your attack on the founder is an ad hominem attack, and I don’t think it’s relevant. Are you suggesting that people can only learn things through a university education?
Besides, it’s often cited by university sources and experts as being a decent enough indicator of reliability and bias, if not necessarily held up to standards of something like a peer review.
It’s a tool to be used in conjunction with critical thought and evaluation of the source itself, and for that I think it’s rather accurate and useful.
Thing is, even if he is good at media criticism, there’s no stakes for him. Nobody knows who he is, what he looks like, he has nothing on the line, and his credibility in his primary occupation cannot be harmed if he is wrong.
Nevermind that he lacks the credentials nor any legitimate scientific expertise, and yet claims that his Bachelor’s in Physiology was sufficiently advanced to teach him everything he needs to know about the scientific process.
The dataset is seen in academia as being accurate enough to train machine learning models for or to make aggregate claims on. Machine learning models are not the bastions of truth, nor are their datasets.
Machine learning has nothing to do with this. I am referring to academics who study journalism, communication, political science, or sociology.
And it’s doesn’t really matter who he is at this point, the product he created works well and continues to be a reliable source to interrogate media sources.
I am happy that a person is able to create such a useful product, maintain it and continue to prove reliability in the product, and maintain anonymity. I certainly would want to remain anonymous if I was creating something that actively worked to check people’s information bias.
But it’s an irrelevant discussion: who he is doesn’t really matter when evaluating the work of the site itself.
“[MBFC’s] subjective assessments leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in. Compared to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets’ production.” - Columbia Journalism Review
“Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific.” - PolitiFact journalists
MBFC is used when analyzing a large swathe of data because they have ratings for basically every news outlet. There, if a quarter or a third of the data is wrong, you can still generate enough signal to separate from noise.
It absolutely matters who is running a site because there’s an inherent accountability for journalism. There’s a reason you don’t see NYT articles from “Anonymous Ostrich.”
I accept your point about why it matters who runs the site. I would just argue that in this case, it’s not as relevant because the goal seems to legitimately be information transparency, which is consistently delivered across its work. Its findings are at least generally reproducible. But no it’s not scientific. I believe I’ve stated that already, however it’s a good indication of reliability of a source.
Yes, human bias creeps in, hence my point of using it alongside general media literacy and critical thinking when evaluating media.
It aggregates and analyzes a ton of sources, and gives generally accurate information about how they are funded, where they are based, and how well the cite original sources. These are all things that can be corroborated by a somewhat systematic reading of the sources themselves.
An LLM also “aggregates and analyzes a ton of sources, and gives generally accurate information about how they are funded, where they are based, and how well the cite original sources.”
That doesn’t make an LLM a useful source.
MBFC shills need to be reeducated. There is an incredible overlap in Anglo nationalists and MBFC shills, considering these self appointed immoral police fact check western propaganda sources as legit.
