It’s been widely reported that on May 25, pro-Syrian forces massacred 108 civilians in the Syrian village of Houla, including 34 women and 49 children, many of whose throats were cut. The reported atrocity has sparked the latest round of appeals for intervention in the conflict in Syria. Syrian diplomats have been expelled from several countries over the massacre, including by U.S., Britain, France, Australia and Canada; “Syrian Diplomats Expelled Across World as Outrage Over Houla Massacre Grows,” the British Guardian (5/29/12) declared.
“Who Will Stop the Massacres?” asked the headline on a May 29 Washington Post editorial. As the editors explained: “Horrific as it was, the Houla massacre is not unique, just better documented than the crimes perpetrated by the regime of Bashar al-Assad in towns and cities across Syria.”
The editorial accused the Obama administration of inaction—”declining to exercise the U.S. leadership that would be required to stop the massacres”—and hiding behind U.N. negotiator Kofi Annan.
The Chicago Tribune (5/28/12) ran a typical news story on the massacre, reporting that Syrian Americans were demonstrating for U.S. intervention after “more than 100 people, including women and children, lay dead in the Syrian town of Houla, the latest victims of Assad’s violent rule, according to United Nations observers.” The Tribune said “follow-up reports” on Sunday indicated “that as many as 49 children were among them. Many were shot in the head or their throats were slit.”
ABC‘s Christiane Amanpour (6/8/12) quoted one “highly placed Syrian insider” saying that the massacre was part of a program of ethnic cleansing: “What’s emerging is a campaign of ethnic cleansing. These massacres [are] used by the Syrian president to expel populations disloyal to him and to consolidate control in what might become a divided Syria.”
But is the Houla massacre really “better documented” than other atrocity stories emerging from Syria? On June 7, a major fissure began to appear in the storyline, when leading German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (FAZ) quoted sources who said that the Houla massacre was carried out by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and that their victims were nearly all Alawi and Shia—populations traditionally loyal to Assad. According to Syria expert Patrick Seale (Agence Global, 6/12/12) ,who quoted translated parts of the German story, FAZ sources said after the killings, “the perpetrators then filmed their victims and, in videos posted on the internet, presented them as Sunni victims of the regime.”
On June 7, the BBC began to back away from its earlier stories that had reported the conventional line, blaming pro-government forces for a massacre that including the cutting of women’s and children’s throats. As the UK media watch group Media Lens (6/13/12) reported:
Last week, however, in what might almost be interpreted as a mea culpa, the BBC’s World News editor, Jon Williams, began a June 7 blog emphasizing “the complexity of the situation on the ground in Syria, and the need to try to separate fact from fiction.”
This was a surprising emphasis—the BBC had previously communicated no sense of “complexity” in blaming the Syrian government. Williams continued:In the aftermath of the massacre at Houla last month, initial reports said some of the 49 children and 34 women killed had their throats cut. In Damascus, Western officials told me the subsequent investigation revealed none of those found dead had been killed in such a brutal manner. Moreover, while Syrian forces had shelled the area shortly before the massacre, the details of exactly who carried out the attacks, how and why were still unclear…. In Houla, and now in Qubair, the finger has been pointed at the shabiha, pro-government militia. But tragic death toll aside, the facts are few: it’s not clear who ordered the killings—or why.
Williams added:
Stories are never black and white—often shades of grey. Those opposed to President Assad have an agenda. One senior Western official went as far as to describe their YouTube communications strategy as “brilliant.” But he also likened it to so-called “psy-ops,” brainwashing techniques used by the U.S. and other military to convince people of things that may not necessarily be true. A healthy scepticism is one of the essential qualities of any journalist—never more so than in reporting conflict. The stakes are high–all may not always be as it seems.
As Williams now avers, it is hard to tell what’s true when it comes to Syria; independent reporters or observers are not able to operate freely, and have been endangered by both sides. It is fair to assume by many accounts that the Syrian government is likely responsible for a lion’s share of the violence. It is also fair to assume that various rebel factions have acted with brutality.
So, yes, a healthy skepticism is required–preferably before publication—of tendentious, one-sided stories that cannot be confirmed independently. The cost of getting things wrong can be enormous. We still don’t know with certainty what happened in Houla on May 25. But if it turns out that rebels did the killing, this story may end up ranking with such false but effective stories of war-mongering propaganda as the the tales of German soldiers catching Belgian babies on bayonets in World War One, or Iraqis removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators in advance of the 1991 Gulf War.
UPDATE: I think it’s worth adding more detail from the June 7 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) story. The reporter, Rainer Hermann, did not travel to the scene of the massacre in Houla, and did not directly quote sources making claims about who did the killing and who the victims were. His account was based on interviews with eyewitnesses conducted by nonviolent opponents of the Assad regime who investigated the massacre. According to Hermann (WSWS, 6/13/12):
Their findings contradict allegations of the rebels, who had blamed the Shabiha militias which are close to the regime…. As oppositionists rejecting the use of force have been killed or at least threatened lately, the oppositionists did not want to see their names mentioned.
It was in this context that Hermann reported:
According to eyewitnesses, the massacre took place during this time. Among the dead were almost exclusively families of the Alawite and Shia minorities of Houla, the population of which is made up of 90 percent Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family that had converted in recent years from the Sunni faith to Shia Islam were slaughtered. Also among the dead were members of the Alawite family Shomaliya and the family of a Sunni member of parliament who was regarded as a collaborator.
Thanks to commenter Lou Proyect for pointing out that the FAZ piece does not actually quote sources making these claims. He’s right. But I disagree with him that the report was weak. I think under the circumstances, and with its explanations and caveats, it appears more credible than much of the journalism coming out of Syria.
That said, it is still not clear what is happening in Houla, which all the more reason U.S. media should not be repeating as fact stories that cannot be confirmed–and doubly so when those stories give aid to the case for a wider war.
Imperialism and the Houla massacre:
..None of these events can be understood outside the political crisis provoked by last year’s revolutionary upsurge in the Middle East. Mass protests of workers and youth forced out pro-US dictators in Egypt and Tunisia. However, the lack of a politically independent movement of the working class fighting to take power and fight for socialism gave the US and its allies time to regroup and elaborate a counter-revolutionary strategy.
The aim of the imperialist powers has been to further the colonial re-subjugation of the entire Middle East. Protests against pro-US regimes were to be crushed. As for protests in countries without close ties to Washington, like Libya or Syria, they were to be brought under the control of right-wing forces to divert protests along ethnic or sectarian lines. They would then serve as proxies in US-led civil wars—as Washington posed as a friend of the “Arab spring” because it was trying to depose Middle East regimes.
After the Saudi monarchy bloodily suppressed protests in Bahrain, the US promoted Islamist and tribal elements against Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who was toppled by NATO and Islamist-rebels in a bloody war costing some 50,000 lives. In Syria, the US relied largely on Sunni elements like the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, financed by the anti-Shiite Saudi monarchy. The massacre in Houla is the predictable outcome of Washington’s promotion of these reactionary forces.
The imperialist strategy relied on the bankruptcy of Middle Eastern bourgeois nationalist regimes and their right-wing evolution after the fall of the USSR. Deprived of a great-power defender and deeply unpopular due to their free-market reforms, they were beset with deep ethnic and sectarian divisions and vulnerable to US intervention. The Assad regime, which has carried out repeated “liberalization” policies and draws its ruling personnel from the Alawite religious minority, was particularly vulnerable…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/pers-j14.shtml
Never let the facts – or a lack of facts – get in the way of a good massacre story pinned on “the bad guys”.
The same goes for discrediting one where the perps are “the good guys”.
German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (FAZ) quoted sources
—
Actually it did not quote anybody. It said something like “eyewitnesses reported”. There is no indication that the reporter was in Houla. Frankly, that FAZ article reads nothing like, for example, the late Anthony Shadid’s dispatches from the Middle East. It is really very thin and unsubstantiated stuff.
We just have to remember, there is always a “good side” and a “Bad side”, often it’s the same people, just viewed from different angles and Points or View, you know, it’s “Good when our troops do it” and “Bad when them other guys do it”.
1984 War is Peace
….
In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference. This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one’s own side and not by the enemy, meritorious.
…..
By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter — set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ‘the proles’. The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
The question foremost in my mind is, Why all of the attention on Syria? while the fires are still burning in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and lives are still being endangered and lost in post-earthquake Haiti.
It should seem strange to even the most naïve observers of the media that so much of its concern is focused on locations where the US wants to become militarily involved and, yet, where the US has no international obstacles to entry, such as provided by Russia or China in the case of Syria, human tragedies in progress are left malignantly unattended and unaided.
US foreign policy seems to require forced military entry in order to help vulnerable populations but it then loses all interest in providing help once its entry has been made.
The outrage over civilian deaths in Syria at hands of who knows whom would be far more credible if the same Western actors had been equally outraged when the Israelis used Western made munitions to kill many more civilians during its incursions into Lebanon and Gaza.
The general guilt of Sadad is not absolved by this report from Germany. But it does alert us to the fact we are being misled by American sources that want to hide our complicity in bringing down Asad. Like Hussein, he is a tyrant. But like Hussein, he is being brought down to serve our imperialism goals. – George Beres
The West has blood on its hands again. NATO is nothing but a bunch of thugs…
Onward, JAM.
It’s time to re-occupy our minds, and read/listen to NPR, NYT WSJ etc with the smallest grain of salt…
as the the tales of German soldiers catching Belgian babies on bayonets in World War One, or Iraqis removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators…
Americans just let drones rain down on babies around the border region
As quietly as possible, BBC world news editor Jon Williams has admitted that the coverage of last month’s Houla massacre in Syria by the world’s media and his own employers was a compendium of lies.
Datelined 16:23, June 7, Williams chose a personal blog to make a series of fairly frank statements explaining that there was no evidence whatsoever to identify either the Syrian Army or Alawite militias as the perpetrators of the May 25 massacre of 100 people…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/bbcs-j15.shtml
NATO: North Atlantic Terrorist Organization; created to assist the US in world domination after WW Two. What did it do against South African Apartheid, and European colonization in Africa and elsewhere. Also, the terrorist Zionist groups that created an Apartheid state by massacres, and robbery; similar to the foundation of the United States of Criminal Insanity. Every inch of the US exists on stolen land.
We must continuously beware of the capitalist/imperialist news, and their puppet politicians who are either indoctrinated tools, or political prostitutes – Obama is both. Total and unconditional support to all class struggles of the exploited masses, and the right of total self determination for all oppressed peoples. Also, only support class conscious nationalist movements. National/international united fists in total opposition to the oppressors is vitally needed. The future of humanity is at stake. There is no better way to live one’s life than devoting it to the national and worldwide battle against capitalism/imperialism, and all forms of oppression, exploitation, and discrimination. Additionally, we must take the best care possible of our personal lives, family and friends. It is essential to have as healthy a life style as possible: physically and mentally, and have time for relaxation and laughter. I will be 78 years old in October, and because of extremely good fortune, a mainly healthy life style, and many and varied types of help from others, I am in overall better physical condition than the majority of the world’s population, regardless of age. If we do not strive to take care of ourselves through proper diet, exercise, and down time, we will not be able to make proper and sustained contributions to liberation of humanity. As we know, on airplanes we are told to put the breathing apparatus on ourselves first.
I consider myself to be a “Scientific Socialist” and a Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist. However, we must strive for as much basic unity on principled programs, otherwise we are in grave danger of being united in: concentration camps, prisons, torture chambers, and in front of firing squads and other types of executions of opponents of capitalism/imperialism, and fascism.
I erred in the last sentence: (for as much basic unity) as much as possible for basic unity on principled programs that are democratically discussed and voted on, and that are totally consistent with the goal of victory for the world’s working classes to establish the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and its allies.
Hi There Kwame Somburo! I am not an “scientific scocialist” -I do not like these kind of labels today- they are losing its substance…… I am only 73 also with good health and I think I consider myself as Green, Red, anarqist local mom and popcapitalist and I am very much against the corporations and their institutions etc.. but I really do like your expression “NATO: North Atlantic Terrorist Organization”. Thank you for that. We are wittnessing the naked global corporate capitalism of the west against the rest of us. It is the 0,01 % superexploiting all life on this planet and commodity´s of us all and everything. Yes please ! More unity!
While assigning responsibility for the atrocity to the government vs. rebel forces is a significant distinction, with significant implications, responses and rationales, I am nonetheless taken aback that the headline reads “fake atrocity” as if the atrocity were any less of a genocidal betrayal to human life and dignity. Furthermore, in the body of the article, I found no mention regarding the gravity of the killings regardless of who dunnit.
Selitykset tuntiuvat yhtä sekavilta kun Suomessa 1918 tehdyn kansamurhan osalta. Venäjän väliaikaisen vallankumoushallituksen (kansanomisaarien neuvoston) ollessa syntynyt, leimattiin Suomessa tehty kansanmurha “Punaisten ja Valkoisten-, Luokka-, Vapaus-, Itsenäisyyssodaksi oivallisesti hyvittäen milloin kummankin puolen tarpeita ja ihanteita. Viimeisin versio vainonuhrit kalskahtaa yhtä teennäiseltä tosiasiain peittämiseltä. Kysessä oli kansanmurha jonka käynnisti silloinen (ja vielä oleva) etuoikeutetut ja omstajat! Kun kansa nousee nälän ja lasten nälkäkuolemien ja yleistyneen kurjuudn pakottamana kapinaan se tekee sen todellisista syistä. Ne jotka sen seurauksena kansaa (jolla tarkoitan sen köyhintä ja oikeudettominta osaa) sen johdosta teurastavat teloittamisilla (kuten Suomessa 1918) syyllistyvät aina KANSAMURHAAN! tarkasteltakoon Syyrian tapahtumia myös tältä pohjalta jos ja kun halutaan olla rehellisiä ja objektiivisia siitä mitä on ja mitä tapahtuu! Kunnioittaen uhreja: Juho Haavisto
In my many years with the BBC I seem to recall that unless news reports had been received from TWO sources, care was taken to make known “an observer in the City claims that….”, “according to a former Member of the parliament…” or “A report on Moscow Radio said today that….”,
Syria is a very difficult case. The Assad regime is the victim of its own policies if it complains about inaccurate reporting. Would you rely on information emerging from Syrian Government agencies alone? I think not. If you ban accredited reporters from what is virtually a war zone then the scale of the carnage demands that the media relay the situation to the outside world as best they can.
When I watch CNN news, they repeatedly make it known they cannot vouch for the accuracy of filmed reports, explaining that the material has been provided by an individual, not a recognised news agency.
There was something else that I thought was very peculiar: the anti-Assad group produced a boy who claimed he had survived the massacre by pretending to be dead. The story surfaced and then suddenly disappeared. It reminded me of that “witness” to the Iraqui soldiers throwing babies out of incubators. I wonder why that boy dissolved into the mist.
Update – according to WSWS on June 13 journalist Rainer Hermann confirmed his earlier report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung refuting the official version of the Houla massacre in Syria:
Mr. Proyect, the Unrepentant State Department “Leftist”, still basking in the glorious war of “liberation” in Libya, while shilling for the next war in Syria and making propaganda for the Free Salafi Army contras in the meantime.
I would ask you something like “have you no shame?”, but I already know the answer.
If a case can be made against an anti-government group, they must be outsiders certainly (like the 700 foreign fighters trapped in Baba Amr in February) – I cannot believe Houla was the work of Syrians of any sect or party.
If outsiders, consider that some of the nations who ousted their Syrian missions ‘in concert’ immediately after Houla are widely suspected of training, arming, importing, wiring, and payrolling groups of outside fighters now active in Syria.
Are we to believe that such grave diplomatic decisions are made on nothing more serious than an unverified Big Media television report?
Or is the real story the falsehoods which so quickly decorated the coverage? Is this justs another sick attempt to defraud the world conscience and create a wave of ‘outrage’ among the poor clueless voters living in the powerful nations alligned against Syria?
I realize I am out on a limb here, but the diplomatic ousters were so sudden and wholesale as to appear to have been orchestrated – and that possibility is warrant I think for the suspicion that regional embassies had ‘wind’ from their contacts in Syria that some dreadful atrocity was soon to be staged and pinned on Assad’s forces – a very sick and very time-tested ‘cold warrior’ trick.
First of all I’m a Syrian citizen living in Homs(Hims),Syria
Al-Houla is not a village it’s a geographic location containing three major villages of Tal-Dahab, Tal-Daw and Kafr-Laha but there are more smaller villages.
The population is mostly Sunna with minority Alawi and Shia
The questions that you should ask :
1) How the hell the victims died by heavy bombardment while the photos show the bodies in one piece ? and the most have been shot at point blank range or by having there throat cut?
2)Can you explain why every time the UN or the International Security Council have a session about Syria and something like that happens ? is it me or this is just so strange ?
Finally : few days prior to these tragic events the Syrian army did had a brutal fight with the militia of the so-called “Syria Free Army” and what they did (The Syrian Arab Army) was evicting the civilian population from the location of the fight and after the fighting is over they returned to there homes few days later the militia members walks around the villages screaming through microphones that ” the army and shabeha are coming to kill you and we can no longer protect you we are running away so should you” and the people believed that and ran after a while the came back to find the militia of the so-called “Syria Free Army” have broken and entered many houses and stole a lot . by the way the the Syrian Arab Army was not there at that time !!!!
Now the origin of the word Shabeha : Shabeha’s single is shabeeh which is derived from the word shabah translation to English means “Ghost”
They are a group of smugglers used by the Syrian government in late 80s and early 90s during the economic siege on Syria to smuggle food and medicine and a lot of stuff we could not import because if the siege and when the siege was finally over the government arrested and placed them in prisons
nowadays this ward is used to describe unemployed and trouble making youth
as for the use in the recent events the term was first used by Al-Jazeera News Channel, and has been proven a lot that al-Jazeera News Channel lied and lying tones about the events in Syria,but I guess it means nothing to you, but I won’t hurt to scream my voice out, someone might actually here
sorry about the grammatical errors in the text above I guess I didn’t read and correct it before posting it
I could not believe it when NATO countries started expelling Syrian ambassadors a few days later over what was (and remains) a very murky war crime.
It would be like expelling US ambassadors a few days after September 11th 2001 because some people thought it was an ‘inside job’! An insane rush to judgment with the most powerful nations acting like spoiled sneering children.
I lost all faith in NATO countries because it was clear they were more interested in destroying Assad than helping Syrians. The West ignores so very many war crimes (especially their own and allies) but start shedding copious crocodile tears when they think they can benefit. Disgusting.
Syria – Undercover Police arrest Terrorist Groups involved in Torturing & killing civilians
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c_nsMOqX6A&feature=share
the attacks on syria are orchestrated from abroad,…by the saudis(they really love democracy!) israel US qatar turkey etc
‘Thanks to commenter Lou Proyect for pointing out that the FAZ piece does not actually quote sources making these claims’
Louis, a leftist war monger, has also not been to syria or libya..in both cases he supports the insurgencies…the syrian people do not.
These journalists have:
THE HOULA MASSACRE: Opposition Terrorists “Killed Families Loyal to the Government”
Detailed Investigation
by Marat Musin
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31184
and Anhar Kochneva
http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-interview-anhar-kochneva-situation-782.html
more from Marat Musin:
http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-marat-musin-in-the-syrian-city-of-homs-english-video-777.html
why is this journalists work, whos in syria, interviewed eyewitnesses, not made use of?
Colin Hamilton says:
06/16/2012 at 1:32 pm
In my many years with the BBC I seem to recall that unless news reports had been received from TWO sources, care was taken to make known “an observer in the City claims that….”, “according to a former Member of the parliament…” or “A report on Moscow Radio said today that….”,
Syria is a very difficult case. The Assad regime is the victim of its own policies if it complains about inaccurate reporting. Would you rely on information emerging from Syrian Government agencies alone? I think not. If you ban accredited reporters from what is virtually a war zone then the scale of the carnage demands that the media relay the situation to the outside world as best they can.
When I watch CNN news, they repeatedly make it known they cannot vouch for the accuracy of filmed reports, explaining that the material has been provided by an individual, not a recognised news agency.
====================
syria is a very easy case…the syrian govt and army have the support of its people:
http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/citizens-of-homs-if-army-leaves-homs-we.html
http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/students-from-homs-thank-syrian.html
a rare bit of truth from CBS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-57372175-503543/syrias-christians-stand-by-assad/
the victims at Houla were all pro-assad…the MSM story changed from artillery to knives and guns,…it was then the Shabiha fraud was brought out. Journalist Marat Musin has done what virtually noone else has done…gone to Houla and interviewed the locals, learned who were the victims etc…
Why watch CNN?
‘accredited reporters’? are these the ‘reporters’ who lied about Libya who gave coords to NATO? and who clearly are lying about events in syria? shame on them!
Syria: Another German Journalist has doubts about Houla massacre – SyriaNews
Another version of events in Taldu
“The fighting began around noon, when the rebels, coming from Ar-Rastan and Saan, attacked the checkpoints of the army around Hula,” says the man in his late thirties. The position at the entrance near the hospital was the first thing that was overrun.
The soldiers fled and the rebels went to the hospital and killed patients there. Why, he does not know it, and just as little why so many other people were killed. Then, several teams targeted went in selected houses and had started to shoot all of the inhabitants. “They did nothing to the neighbors”, says Jibril.
Of the two families which were killed, he knew the Sajid’s personal. “They were Sunni Muslims, like all of us”, he says. “They were killed by them because they have rejected to join the revolution.” They’ve even murdered a Member of Parliament, who insisted on his candidacy in the elections in early May and had refused the boycott of the FSA. ”
After the massacre, the rebels have brought all the dead bodies to the mosque”, said Jibril. On the question of whether the regime loyal, the Shabiha, have massacred the people, Jibril raised his head and snaps with the tongue, customary. “Exemplary nonsense”, he says.
Anyone who has seen Taldu, will have doubts about the reports, that several hundred soldiers and Assad-supporters were able to come to the village without any resistance.
Hula (al-Houla) is in rebel hands, since December 2011. Taldu lies in an open area where there is little opportunity to seek cover. The village is easy to defend with machine guns and bazookas. The Army would like to reclaim Taldu, but it has not been done.
http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-another-german-journalist-has-doubts-about-houla-massacre-845.html
how they recruit?
SYRIA – Forced to join the Terrorist Groups or their family will be Kidnapped and killed
These stories coming from Syria are so fluid it is plainly hard to know what to believe.But…..I see a general effort on the fair contributors here to turn this away from a simple truth.Many of the countries in that part of the world are ruled by leaderships that are (to put it honestly)…BAT SHIT CRAZY.Their people are so damaged by the immersion into this soup..Im not sure they can conceptualize, let alone create- a form of government that will offer real freedom to the people.Egypt has been ruled for thousands of years.Their idea of freedom was to turn over the government to a coalition of the military, and the muslim brotherhood.Good grief!Sorry to be so blunt.But Im growing tired of the same old song and dance that it is The fault of the USA or by proxy NATO,or the UN.Kwame was the best.A man who espouses the teachings of Marx and Lennon.Now there were two guys who were a bucket of yucks.Makes me great full every day to be an American.Here- to many seem to think we need to daily offer apology.
‘Many of the countries in that part of the world are ruled by leaderships that are (to put it honestly)…BAT SHIT CRAZY.’
since the US regime is the taking its military and diplomats around the world regime changing…that description better suits them
‘Makes me great full every day to be an American’
right…cause the US doesnt have a US embassy nor does it have persons seeking to undermine it…
as michael says: this is bat sht crazy:
US and Israel to Hold Largest Ever Joint Military Exercise
Focusing on stopping ballistic missiles and featuring thousands of soldiers, the October drill will simulate simultaneous rocket fire from Syria and Iran
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31700.htm
threats also by the sinister Poodle Britain, over the recent downing of a Turkish vehicle show how bat sht crazy the old empire is.
Imagine if what is happening in syria was to happen in the US: foreign regimes fund armed bast sht crazed militias who dig into towns and cities killing US police national guard, army and civilians!
was it a fabricated atrocity? Nope, a real one, unless you mean fabricated as in built, like a metal fabricator does. But then it was constructed of genuine human lives taken cruelly. Was the myth of it as sold a fabrication? That merits more scrutiny, starting with the alleged witnesses everyone’s been relying on for details.
And of course the logic of it all – who knows the new, elected, multi-party Syrian parliament was sworn in on May 24, the day before its new speaker, Abdalmuti Al-Mashlab aka Mashlab Al-Sayed, had his family and his brother’s family slaughtered? It’s the rebels who’ve warned Syrians to stay away from half-measures like these elections. Why would “the regime” issue the proper punishment for breaking the rebel stricture?
Steve Rendall, thanks for an article that’s refreshingly… well, fair. Luther Blee, well-put, and thank Syrian Citizen. We hear you! You must be a cog in “Assad’s propaganda machine,” but you failed to claim you live in Taldou/Tal Daw and witnessed the whole thing. You could have sworn you saw the Libyan Belhaj hand a suitcase full of US dollars to Haytham Al-Hallak and then join him in ripping out hearts and shooting fire from their eyes. Poor allocation of resources over there? ;)
More from one of the witnesses in a better-yet German news article.
Original:
http://www.morgenpost.de/politik/ausland/article107255456/In-Syrien-gibt-es-mehr-als-nur-eine-Wahrheit.html
Okay translation:
http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-another-german-journalist-has-doubts-about-houla-massacre-845.html
Sorry, Brian already mentioned that.
Also if I can say, I’m saddened by Mr. Proyect’s slow learning curve.
Also, the news on Houla is coming out today with the UN Mission’s report. It sounds like it will be interesting. See Alex Thomson’s sneak-peek:
http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/report-paints-dark-picture-syrias-escalating-violence/2073
I hope FAIR going to apologize for this disgraceful post on Houla. To suggest that an atrocity like this is ‘manufactured’ and to blame the victims is simply unconscionable. Steve Rendall must resign for deliberately misleading readers. This post is deliberately misleading, it excludes the only journalist, Alex Thomson of Channel 4, who actually visited Houla in the immediate aftermath of the massacre and collected on-camera testimonies. Instead it recycled a propaganda piece with invented anonymous witnesses written by regime-friendly journalist who has never been anywhere near Houla.
There were never any doubts about what happened in Houla, except the one some irresponsible Stalinist hacks cooked up. But if there was room for any, then Der Spiegel has just erased it.
Read the UN report which details Houla and that it was in fact a regime run event…
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42687&Cr=syria&Cr1=
“The commission examined the version of events reported in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 7 June 2012, by Rainer Hermann, and by journalist Marat Musin, on Anna news and Russia Today, 2 June 2012, both of which blamed the killings on anti-Government armed groups. The commission found these reports relied primarily on the same two witnesses as the Government’s report and not on additional investigation or witnesses in Al-Houla. Moreover, these reports asserted that the Abdulrazzak family had converted to Shiism. The commission confirmed that all members of both families were Sunni and that no one in either family had converted.”