Houla Massacre, Syria: What If?

[Caustic Logic]

Came across a couple of interesting articles by a guy who went to the refugee camps on the Turkish border.

Just thought I'd post them because the bit about lazy people swallowing what SANA

SANA's on topic. You're not. Nothing there about the Houla massacre.

If you can find what the Assad supporters who've fled from the Houla area en masse are saying, that would be on-topic.

This is off-topic too but I have (just) a bit more patience for it:

Well truthful russian journalists have shown an unfortunate tendency to get beaten up.

Might be more/other factors than honesty that causes that. Too many variables, too detailed to reach an agreement here. It's a difference of opinion if some beatings prove that Russia+media=lies. On the ANNA descriptor-fair enough. They serve Russian interests. The same disclaimer on BBC, CNN, NYT, etc. would be at least as truthful, but it's not there.

Specific evidence they're lying on the subject at hand? As opposed to implicitly by default? None yet.

Do consider again: which media outlet ran the geo-political useful misinterpretation of the farm access roads we've already discussed here? As well as the Activist-provided image of the dead children of Houla (killed eight years in advance but not too far away really)?

You see how you're picking the fight and losing it at the same time? Engaging that is only fun to engage it (up to a point), but not useful. So NOW I'm moving on to actually do nothing more on this for now. Effectively distracted, but no more.

 

[geni]

Specific evidence they're lying on the subject at hand? As opposed to implicitly by default? None yet.

They are a new russian based media organisation with no reputation to lose who produced a report inline with what their most likely sponsors wanted. Which means on a practical level it has about zero credibility.

Even if the more serious news organisations aren't prepared to lose futher journalists in syria anyone wanting a credible report out of the place could have hired some freelancers with something of a reputation. Thing is that would risk getting a report that you didn't want and not being able to shut the reporters up afterwards. That the sponsor wasn't prepared to take that risk is pretty damning.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Good catch on the whois. Doesn't surprise me at all. Looked like a small operation from the beginning. Your argument that they could not possibly be independent is still an air number*, now even more so, and even if they are supported by some organization that wouldn't say anything about the authenticity of those witness reports.


* edit: figured that a literal translation of "Luftnummer" might not carry the meaning I wanted to deliver, so I asked my translator and it recommends "much ado about nothing".

 

[I Ratant]

1)because the wepons are mobile and the syrian millitary isn't entirely composed of idiots (they probably assume they are going to be bombed by NATO at some point so are acting acordingly).

2)The satilites aren't that good. Spotting weapons in action would be tricky.

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I'd think any military satellites have that information.
We'll never see it, as that would reveal the ability to see those kinds of things up close.
The stuff that Google gets comes from commercial satellites, and shows up months to years after being imaged, but the resolution is pretty good with the optics up there now.

 

[Toontown]

Whoa. What's this? Who framed him?

Aw, come on, Virus. Let him paper over that. We don't really want to bomb the Syrian regime, do we? Such a bother. Why not let the insurgency fester indefinitely. Keeps them busy. Keeps them off Israel's back and off Iraq's back. And perhaps not quite elbow-deep in Lebanon.

 

[I Ratant]

...


Yeah true, and it's not like they always hover over a set spot and take continuous video...

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A geostationary satellite has to be in an orbit around the equator. It may move a bit north or south during an orbit.
Any such looking at Syria, abt 34° N would be looking kinda sideways at the area from the south, and 30,000 miles distant.
The birds that pass over and with a good vertical view will be moving all the time.

 

[I Ratant]

Again thats pretty normal when moving a short distance to firing positions.



Never heard of him. He's on linkedin as the owner at McKenzie Intelligence Solutions Ltd which companies house has listed being formed 17/02/2011. Interesting it gives an adress of 30 St. John's Lane EC1M 4NB athough the even street numbers only go up to 16.

Probably just some small time bussinessman looking to make a name for themselves. The private "Intelligence" industry is littered with such folk but very few of them are worth much (Jane's Information Group and some of the equipment nerds might be exceptions).



The cause is that someone is stupid enough to disspute the will of Assad's regime. The effect is rather predictable for the case where those doing the dissputing lack an effective millitary force.



I'm not sure that running the country for the last few decades can really be described as being about to take over Syria.

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The dates on the images prove the "caterpillar" tracks were in place months before any shelling.
Ergo, any use of these tracks for weapons movement isn't provable.

 

[I Ratant]

Pardon? Look at a map. You can drive there by car. Maybe 800 km.

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Go to Google Street Maps... their mapping cars have been in the area...
The yellow lines..

 

[Captain.Sassy]

You support fascism Caustic.

Yeah, the guy questioning the bellicose narratives is the fascist...

 

[Captain.Sassy]

Agreed. More than likely, one side or the other was responsible for both phases of attack.

I'm not sure I follow. Why would it have been impossible for some of the people to be killed in an artillery bombardment, and others to have been killed by other parties in another incident involving knives and small arms?

I agree generally with the 'motives' analysis - the Syrian government would have little rational incentive to do something like this, knowing how likely it would be that this would lead to increased calls for humanitarian intervention in the West, unless they had some back channel promises from Russia to the tune of 'we will support you militarily no matter what'. I don't know that Russia would give these kinds of assurances. That's not to say syrian gov't forces definitely weren't responsible, and it's not to say that it was or wasn't the shabiha either.

RE abkhazians using Russian passports- this is true, few other countries recognize Abkhazia. But I'm not sure how it demonstrates that the abkhazian reporters in question are necessarily Russian stooges.

 

[Virus]

If course there is incentive. States that rule by terror have an incentive to terrorize.

How do you think totalitarians deal with threats to their power? Tea and biscuits?

 

[geni]

If course there is incentive. States that rule by terror have an incentive to terrorize.

How do you think totalitarians deal with threats to their power? Tea and biscuits?

Leaving bodies behind is unusual in the normal course of things. Chucking them out of a helicopter into the ocean or burying them in the deserts somewhere is more common. Opposition should disappear.

You see it sometimes as a tactic in a full blown guerrilla war where you dump the tortured body of the last guerrilla you caught in front of the parents house as a scare tactic but even that's not common.

 

[geni]

unless they had some back channel promises from Russia to the tune of 'we will support you militarily no matter what'. I don't know that Russia would give these kinds of assurances.

It might but you wouldn't be able rely on them. Putin is too pragmatic for that.

RE abkhazians using Russian passports- this is true, few other countries recognize Abkhazia. But I'm not sure how it demonstrates that the abkhazian reporters in question are necessarily Russian stooges.

Its more the lack of an alturnative funding source combined with the stated aims on their website. The passport thing is just that Putin is likely to react poorly to journalists using his passports to report things that he doesn't want.

 

[Toontown]

The lack of journalistic freedom and/or ethics in Syria and it's foreign support structure results in the complete uselessness of this thread, wherein no one knows Diddly.

One says A
Another says not A, but B
Another says not A and not B, but C
Another says A and B and C

 

[Virus]

Leaving bodies behind is unusual in the normal course of things. Chucking them out of a helicopter into the ocean or burying them in the deserts somewhere is more common. Opposition should disappear.

You see it sometimes as a tactic in a full blown guerrilla war where you dump the tortured body of the last guerrilla you caught in front of the parents house as a scare tactic but even that's not common.

Before criticizing their clean-up job, first you'd have to acknowledge the basic fact that states who rule by terror have an incentive to terrorize people. Captain Sassy says they don't. Captain Sassy struggles with the concept.

 

[Toontown]

Before criticizing their clean-up job, first you'd have to acknowledge the basic fact that states who rule by terror have an incentive to terrorize people. Captain Sassy says they don't. Captain Sassy struggles with the concept.

Looks like Captain Sassy has his hands around the concept's throat, and is doing his utmost to choke it into submission.

 

[I Ratant]

Leaving bodies behind is unusual in the normal course of things. Chucking them out of a helicopter into the ocean or burying them in the deserts somewhere is more common. Opposition should disappear.

You see it sometimes as a tactic in a full blown guerrilla war where you dump the tortured body of the last guerrilla you caught in front of the parents house as a scare tactic but even that's not common.

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50,000 such in Mexico in the drug war.
Dumped in large numbers in public.

 

[Toontown]

.
50,000 such in Mexico in the drug war.
Dumped in large numbers in public.

Terrorism works, and even attracts supporting sycophants.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

Before criticizing their clean-up job, first you'd have to acknowledge the basic fact that states who rule by terror have an incentive to terrorize people. Captain Sassy says they don't. Captain Sassy struggles with the concept.

So does Stratfor:

Another set of reports, which Syrian opposition groups including the Syrian National Council, the FSA and the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights began to disseminate Dec. 9, claims that regime forces besieged Homs and imposed a 72-hour deadline for Syrian defectors to surrender themselves and their weapons or face a potential massacre. Although regime forces have been cracking down on dissent in Homs, there have been no signs of a massacre there. Syrian opposition forces have an interest in portraying an impending massacre, hoping to mimic the conditions that propelled a foreign military intervention in Libya to prevent former leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces from leveling the opposition stronghold of Benghazi. However, the regime has calibrated its crackdowns to avoid just such a scenario. Regime forces have been careful to avoid the high casualty numbers that could lead to an intervention based on humanitarian grounds.

 

[Toontown]

So does Stratfor:

Copycat strangler.