Over at Pulse, Idrees Ahmad points me to an Al Jazeera investigation by Mahmoud Al Ken into the Houla massacre near Homs, Syria, last May that confirms the original report that the murders of 108 villagers were carried out by Syrian government forces. Writes Pulse:
There is no reason why official stories shouldn’t be doubted, but given the heinous nature of the crime, one would’ve thought they’d be careful with regard to their evidence. As it happened, all of them were relying on a single article appearing in a German publication, written by an author who never visited Houla or met a survivor. This was no innocent mistake: it was pointed out to both Medialens and FAIR that their source was dubious and its claim highly questionable. The source was discredited soon afterwards, and Der Spiegel and the UN have since both confirmed the original reports. Neither Medialens nor FAIR has apologized.
Below is the Al Jazeera piece. Beautifully done, the kind of journalism it’s hard to put down once you start. It begins, Our Friday demonstration on May 25 was met by Assad tanks. The several men interviewed from 3:30 to 5:40 or so are genuine and persuasive, and the massacre house testimony from a brother of victims at 7:30 is also compelling. And the nighttime movement of the bodies, described by a villager, at 8:45, rivetting. The traumatized woman at 9:40: stunning.
Some of these people are very brave to come forward. The elder male witness at 10:30-11– great reporting.
And most important, please watch the highly-articulate clerical figure speaking at 13:52, saying that the purpose of the massacre was to ignite a sectarian conflict in an area of mixed Sunni and Alawite villages.
I must now ask readers to look at the comments to this Mondoweiss post, which refers skeptically to the Syrian regime-perpetrated Houla massacre, from June 15: On Syria, Clinton spins a fast one
Here is a typical thread:
riyadh says:
June 15, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Was Houla Massacre a Manufactured Atrocity?
link to fair.org
REPLY
stevieb says:
June 16, 2012 at 10:18 am
Absolutely…how is it you don’t know by now? Or is that a rhetorical question?
Yep.
REPLY
traintosiberia says:
June 16, 2012 at 12:40 pm
MEA CULPA: BBC world news editor: Houla massacre coverage based on opposition propaganda
by Chris Marsden http://www.globalresearch.ca
Unfortunately ( intentionally ) its in his blog.Blog is not news according to the apparatus that he serves.
REPLY
Annie Robbins says:
June 16, 2012 at 1:26 pm
riyadh, from the comment section of your link:
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…
link to wsws.org
i recommend the whole link
How did it come to this?
Some thoughts on Syria from Palestinian intellectual and the founder of the Balad Party, Azmi Bishara from last week:
“No people, anywhere in the world, would accept torture, false imprisonment, financial corruption and the muzzling of the media for generation after generation, regardless of the justification. Nor does anybody to have the right that those being persecuted remain quiet for the sake of grander concerns, without hopes for a change, all to placate commentators who seem to think that the suffering of the people is secondary to the “Central Question”, especially as all the evidence that no progress on that same “Central Question” in the first place.
Nobody has the right to just claim to have “understood” the people’s pain and the righteousness of their claims, and then ask those people to simply stay on the sidelines while the leaders undertake some reforms. No human likes being shot at and bombed, but you cannot expect that people who get shot at while protesting peacefully to take it sitting down. If you cannot compel the regime to deal peacefully with peaceful protests, then [any demands that the rebellion end] are demands that the people accept that they should be killed, that their losses for the revolution thus far have been in vain.
History will not be kind to the Syrian regime for the way it ordered soldiers to fire on peaceful protestors. Those peaceful protests had been the regime’s greatest fear, and so they worked to quell them in the cradle.
It seems inevitable that, if you are being bombed, driven from your home and your possessions looted, that you will reach out to anybody who stretches his hand out to you. Those who abandoned the revolutionaries at their time of need have no right to lecture them on who their sources of support are, especially if nobody is able to persuade the regime to carry out any kind of meaningful process of reform towards democracy, or even to hand over power gradually.”
It seems to boil down to a question of which anonymous sources you find more “compelling,” “riveting,” “persuasive.” And that in turn is at least partially a function of which is filmed by a camera crew with higher production values.
But while you are emoting, don’t forget to use your brains as well. What would the regime stand to gain?
Phil,
You do know that the so-called Syrian rebels, with their saudi backed alqaida friends, blackwater mercenaries, the CIA and the mossad, have been known to use Syrian army uniforms when attacking/operating in Syrian villages, right? And if you know anything about the Syrian Baathist regime, you would know that one reason why they’ve been in power for so long is because they’re secular ideologues who have maintained a relative peace between the different religious factions, including peace with the majority sunnis – that sectarianism is the Baathists’ absolute ultimate poison. So why would they want to stoke sectarianism, ask yourself please. That religious dude whom you call “highly articulate” is a bold-faced liar, an ‘articulate’ propagandist, paid for by the Saudi regime. They have thousands of them on their payroll.
You do know that since the days of Tahrir square, only a fool would believe anything Aljazeera has to say about the Arab world, especially the Arab countries considered enemies of Saudi Arabia and USA, right?
I honestly can’t believe you’re gingerly skipping down propaganda lane right behind your favorite Syrian sunni cleric (read Saudi money).
I actually was interested in a response
Phil, I am assuming that your account here of the superior production values in this made-for-western-consumption piece, this product of the consent-manufacturing industry, is somewhat at least tongue-in-cheek. The very sleekness of the production by the Qatar supported station – which obviously shills for toppling Assad – is what makes one suspicious. Is that a a harbinger of the new disinformation campaign by the bad guys, now that the “rebels” and “terrorists’ amateur videos have turned out to be fakes and/or backfired due to the reveling in violence?
I think we all know what Syria is all about and why the western powers are so interested in turning Syria into a battle zone and weakening its national structure. It’s enough to know who supports this campaign – a collusion between Hillary, Bolton, Mccain, Krystol, Feith and the many-many members of the Lobby-that-never-sleeps.
It is truly a horror show what’s being visited upon the Syrian people. To imagine that anyone from the left or anyone who understands why israel is 100% behind this campaign can confuse what’s happening in Syria with a popular uprising is galling. The people of Syria were certainly better off under Assad than they would ever be under the crazy terrorists being sent in armed to the hilt, or for that matter, under some ultra-sectarian sunni ‘revolutionary” group.
Only now we are beginning to understand why certain reactionary monarchies are so opposed to the baatists. Syria was, in fact, pretty tolerant of various religions and sects and was largely secular – a rather more enlightened regime in some ways than certain gulf countries (like all of them?). It was also allied with Iran, supported (eventually and not always cwjhole-heartedly) the resistance forces of Hezbollah and has styeadfastedly opposed israeli colonialism – if not as actively as some would have preferred.. Sure, all people in Syria did not fare as well as they wanted. Alawites and certain Sunni sects had an advantage. But so do jewish people in the US in certain professions, and that’s quite a small minority, by all accounts. what we are now also learning about Syria is that it was a very diverse country demographically with minorities – including Allawites – adding to over 40%. And of the Sunni majority, several groups are and were very strong supporters of the government – for good reason. If that had not been the case, there would have been a lot stronger support for a rebellion than the lack-luster scattered, rallies we have seen last year. Yes, some people were suppressed and discrimination was rampant. And no, it wasn’t a democracy exactly. But there was also no real popular revolt. There was no Tahrir square. And not because it was suppressed – it just never really materialized.
But – this is what we need to ask – in the context of the Middle East – were any in Syria – even the most oppressed – any worse off than the Shiites in Bahrain? the Palestinians in the west bank? were any people in Syria herded into internment camps like the Gazans? did the people have any less rights than their Jordanian bretherns – of whatever sect? what of the revolts in Yemen? what did they get other than Saleh-light? and an admonition from the UN to not oppose their oppressors?
And, come to think of it – do we really enjoy such great rights in the US? do we get to choose our government freely or are we just given a slate of republican/democrat tweedle-dee/tweedle-dams to rally behind? aren’t most of us going to vote for Obama because the alternative is so much worse? do we have a single candidate that we could honestly support as representative of our convictions? and if there’s a decent representative has he/she not being forced to sell the country’s interests to israel for a few dollars of campaign money? and should they choose not to take the big lobby moneies does any candidate stand a chance in hell? what democracy have we got – really? what of the fate of the 15% black population in the US shunted into ghettos, carted off into for-profit prisons at the least infraction, with zero hope of decent education or job prospects? we do have quite a few of our own deeply oppressed minorities in this country – many of whom live worse lives with far less hope than many minorities in Syria who at least have access to half-way decent health care and housing. Look at how the Palestinian refugees fared in Syria – not all that bad, based on what we know. And Syria took in huge numbers of Iraqi refugees escaping from the US Empire’s punitive action that tore their country to shreds.
So, you say, but in the US we have free speech. If that right be illustrated by the fact that I get to rant to my heart’s content on a blog dedicated to palestinian rights, then you’d have a point. But what of free speech that actually has import? whay MSM represents most of us? who out there in the MSM dare speak out honestly about the obvious campaign of chipping at civil liberties unbdertaken by this adminsitration? yes, there is Glenn Greenwald and a few like him, but has he succeeded is persuading a single admonistration official to relent on their secret surveillance?
So in the end, we need to look at things more soberly, meaning, we need to count the eggs we actually have hope of seeing them hatch. And it isn’t too many. And in the end we have rather more limited rights than we think we do because theoretical rights and ranting rights do not policy change. But that being said we are happy to live in a state of security so we can, in fact, shop till we drop, and we get to rant at the end of the day. But so did lots of Syrians. they just had fewer malls and ranting platforms. And some people suffered fate worse than Bradley Manning here. Maybe even a 1000 or 2 were quite maligned and some have died and some were tortured. Still, is that reason enough to tear their country apart? anyone can possibly imagine that the sectarian strife fanned by US, Israel and friends is going to bring more justice or peace or democracy to that country?
I actually think that among so-called “Tyrants” Assad was far from the worst. In fact, if there was a priority order for “regime change” from the worst to the best. his would be far, far from the top, though perhaps not quite close to Iceland. So, to my admittedly not fully informed eyes, it just seems that Syria is not exactly the place to start, if a better world, with liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness for all is what we really want.