The looted fuel was sent to their bases in Iraq, through the illegal settlement of Mahmoudia.

  • 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.
  • nahuse@sh.itjust.works
    39·
    7 months ago

    You are making the claim about its funding. Please provide your argument, rather than making oblique references to things.

    I haven’t had time to watch and contextualize the long video you sent me to respond to it.

    But if you have concerns about the bias of a well known and widely respected source of fact checking (not even first hand news), then please expound and cite it.

    Otherwise, I have to assume you are making a bad faith argument, and cannot source your assertions, so I don’t have any need to engage with you.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
      114·
      7 months ago

      I mean it’s right on their site, the fact that you can’t figure out how to find basic information on the internet says a lot about you. It’s funded in large part by ads. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/funding/

      There are also plenty of criticisms of the site and the methodology that are well known. For example, The Columbia Journalism Review has described MBFC reviews as subjective assessments that “leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in”

      https://www.cjr.org/innovations/measure-media-bias-partisan.php

      There is an obvious inherent bias given that what’s considered centre is liberal mainstream centre in the west. That’s what’s known as anchoring bias, being to the left of what’s the current mainstream in the west doesn’t make something extreme in objective sense.

      MBFC has also rated US propaganda outlets such as VoA and RFE as being “least biased”. Even wikipedia considers these sources unreliable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreliable_sources

      Just a few examples for you there. Hopefully that’s enough expounding and citing for you to get a picture.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
          113·
          7 months ago

          Your condescending tone certainly makes you an unattractive conversation partner.

          Then don’t converse with me. Simple solutions are available given that this is an entirely you problem.

          Who cares if it’s funded by advertisements? Why is that relevant? I would rather open funding by sponsors I can see than dark money or anonymous donors.

          Entire books have been written on how advertisement models create biases in favor of the advertisers. If you don’t understand why that’s relevant what else can I say. Also, nobody is arguing for any dark money here. That’s just a straw man you made. The argument is that the whole premise is flawed.

          I’ve acknowledged the criticisms for the site, and have only made the argument that it’s a useful tool to use for media literacy. It’s based on US media, and approaches things based on the political circumstances of (primarily) the US and the anglosphere.

          It’s a useful tool for reinforcing mainstream western views and promoting these biases. People use it to shut down discussion and to smear sources outside western mainstream. This is problematic in the extreme.

          Yes, MBFC it has a bias towards western political bias, because those are the circumstances within which the room was created. That’s a drawback, and, again, something that needs to be accounted for when using the tool.

          And that’s why it’s highly problematic in a context of the media published by US adversaries. It should not be difficult to understand why, but here we are.

          These are flaws that need to be taken into account when using it, but it doesn’t make to tool useless.

          Given that people keep trotting it out to promote their political biases, seems that the tool is outright harmful.

          But the fact remains that it is considered a reliable enough source to have qualified support for it on various university resource lists.

          This is just appeal to authority.