tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post3140933322070029240..comments2024-03-18T22:03:28.458-07:00Comments on Monitor on Massacre Marketing: Latakia Massacres: The "Moderate" BackdropCaustic Logichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post-70252238581759440352015-12-05T19:35:03.546-08:002015-12-05T19:35:03.546-08:00First, the latest link is May 12 post visual evide...First, the latest link is <a href="http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/05/syria-ghouta-massacres-visual-evidence.html" rel="nofollow">May 12 post</a> visual evidence the victims were prisoners. WhiteMorgue doesn't come up much in that.<br /><br />I haven't analyzed the WM video carefully, just to do a basic count, some correlation. I noticed some mucous issues, but nothing Sarin-like as you say. <br /><br />Is it a mosque? I was thinking that at one point, still maybe. Location not clear at all (different places are given, Douma most frequently and logically, but no geolocation seems possible - apparently not An-Natr school, popular morgue there, but maybe near) Garage clues (pit) might help. Didn't notice that. Disturbing content, yes. The baby-shaker is especially infuriating, as usual. <br /><br />Looking at your analysis now. Caustic Logichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post-18869658029761628012015-12-05T11:26:59.657-08:002015-12-05T11:26:59.657-08:00CL, no, I had not seen your Jun04|15 post on befor...CL, no, I had not seen your Jun04|15 post on before-after body analysis. As per usual, some very interesting observations and a lot of things to think about. I quickly viewed the long WhiteMorgue vid in early 2014 and included it in my table of vids at #17. There are a number of my comments there: <br /><br />http://logophere.com/Syria/Table%20of%20Vids.htm<br /><br />That vid really needs to be dissected frame by frame, there is so much information. At the time what was important to me was that, like Kafr Batna, it shows a large collection of bodies and not a single one indicating the massive vomit, urine, feces that would be virtually universal in a population of people killed by sarin. Also, w/ exception of a couple of naked kids, everybody in street clothes. Did you guys at CLOS dissect this vid? If you did, it would save me wading back through it. <br /><br />Do we know where that building is? You say you think it's a mosque, but the first 7:18 is definitely some sort of garage complex/workshop. For instance, there's a crawl pit for getting under vehicles and you can see the garage doors. <br /><br />At 7:18 the scene suddenly cuts to a different looking venue, but the same bespectacled, chubby dude is on the mic and the pillars/floors look like they are of the same construction. That room also looks like a large shop of some sort, for instance there's 4" PVC sewer pipe elbows lying around. The high ceilings do look like a mosque, I guess. Never been in one, and do my best to stay out of churches and synagogues. But there is a huge amount of info in that vid. It unsettles me to think that all those dudes walking around and yabbering on the camera are probably the ones who killed those kids. <br /><br />I note that when I added that vid to my table in early 2014 there had been 85,749 hits, and when I just looked at it 97,774. So it is possibly still getting a few hundred to 1000 hits/month. A lot of people still want to know WTF happened.<br /><br />Matching bodies is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, eh? If the clothes of a body are indisputably the same, or indisputably different, then that will be all I need to accept/reject an ID. Especially helpful for kids who have bright, capricious clothes. But if the two photos being compared were taken days apart, it is really tough to make a call. Like you have done, I sort of add up the points that make the case and see if I can explain any marks or features that are contrary. Ears can be very helpful but the angle of the head can make them look quite different from one photo to the next. <br /><br />Note that in the WhiteMorgue quite a few pants are pulled down, but I don't see any syringes or syringe wrappers, But I gotta' have another look to be sure. Denishttp://logophere.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post-1795923281395703692015-12-03T01:44:49.622-08:002015-12-03T01:44:49.622-08:00OK, partial response:
- 1429 as 1492, hadn't ...OK, partial response:<br /><br />- 1429 as 1492, hadn't thought of that. Interesting - not the same Islamic (A.H.) year, but most Muslims I think know the Western system... might be sign to Westerners, too, or a total coincidence. Close to the highest numbers offered, maybe the same as one we haven't seen yet. <br /><br />- Hostages: HRW's report has a list of dead and of captives for checking. Sounds like none released at the time. I think the ACLOS page has release news for the kids, but I may be mixed up. If you wait, I plan to review that and search for all news/ask around, and do another post to cover the hostages in more detail. (will wait 'til after FSA-ISIS post is done, which it finally almost is)<br /><br />- Victim ID: Agreed, obviously all details provided by opposition are suspect, but neither surely true, surely untrue, or guaranteed pure either way. We take what's reported, try to remember that's all it is. <br /><br />- Only non-Sunnis? Right idea, except they'd also happily kill Sunni families and kids as well, if they were of soldiers, pro-government, too secular, unknown loyalty, in the wrong place when non-Sunnis were scarce, etc. More to the point, watever religion/politics/whatever, they can be seen visibly to be, probably, people the rebels had imprisoned beforer poison gas killed them. I'm thinking you missed <a href="http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/05/syria-ghouta-massacres-visual-evidence.html" rel="nofollow">this post</a>, and will find it exciting. Other than being a bit thin on your contributions. :)<br /><br />- Lebowski, didn't recognize but I love that movie. The dude is one of my investigative inspirations, to not let my thinking about any case get too "uptight." :)<br /><br />- Other: I may need a prod.Caustic Logichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post-52224952634734859832015-12-02T16:15:05.589-08:002015-12-02T16:15:05.589-08:00Just too busy/tired for a good response now. But h...Just too busy/tired for a good response now. But here's A response. Will be back.Caustic Logichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post-89860271177313704882015-12-01T18:52:23.441-08:002015-12-01T18:52:23.441-08:00Muttering continued . . .
I think a more germane ...Muttering continued . . .<br /><br />I think a more germane question than how many dead there were is: Who were they? My position remains that the people we see in the morgues in Kafr Batna were executed by being gassed w/ CO or CN. That tells me they must have been Shia/Alawi. Kurds is an outside possibility. But the point is that these Sunni bastards were not going to execute Sunni children. The victims had to come from somewhere, it almost certainly wasn’t Ghouta. They were not pulled from their beds that night and they did not flee into the dark b/c of a sarin attack – we know that because every single one of them is fully dressed in street clothes. <br /><br />Taking Mother Agnes’ lead that the Ghouta victims were from Latakia, I perused the all of the vids/still shots from Latakia I had. There weren't too many and I thought if I could just identify one of those Latakia kids as being a victim in the Kafr Batna morgues, it would be a huge piece of the puzzle. I never did, but the absence of an ID means absolutely zilch. There was one website that purported to match photos from Latakia with photos from Ghouta but I was never convinced that the same people were shown.<br /><br />I wonder if there is a collection or list of those Latakia vids from mid-2013 just prior to the Ghouta Massacre. I have probably missed some and would like to inspect every one I can find. <br /><br />In Mother Agnes’ ISTEAMS report there is a rather large list of kidnapped victims from Latakia – gender, age, village. I’ve been waiting for HRW to go back in there an confirm those identities and interview survivors to determine how many came back. You say that the children were released, but I have never seen the evidence of that. Would love to see what you have. BTW, that HRW report on Latakia was absolutely amazing, given the risks they must have taken to get in there when they did. <br /><br />In addition to the point that al-Nursra would not have gassed Sunni children, one of the strongest arguments against all the Ghouta bodies being locals was Mother Agnes' assertion that the Ghouta area was a ghost town in Aug 2013. I can see the rebels/insurgents trying to hold on against Assad’s shelling, i.e., young males. But I can't see whole families just sitting it out, which suggests that those kids/women we see were imports. <br /><br />And yet the vids of KB show men/women/kids completely dressed milling around outside the SunMorgue, some stressed, some not so much. And we've got the vid of the young folks, mostly girls, sitting around on the floor of the SunMorgue late at night before it was filled with bodies. They are all in street clothes, too. Where did these people come from? Who are they? Did any of them end up on the floor of the SunMorgue the next day? – not that I can see. Denis O'Brienhttp://logophere.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post-86852935684298503052015-12-01T18:50:20.557-08:002015-12-01T18:50:20.557-08:00CL -- that Stranger I quoted was Sam Elliot in The...CL -- that Stranger I quoted was Sam Elliot in The Big Lebowski. Likely before your time :-) Eh?<br /><br />"And the reason I say it is . . . well, sometimes there's a man, an' I won't say 'a hero' because what's a hero? But sometimes there's a man . . .an' he's the man for his time and place." – The Stranger. Yeah, I think that’s the goal we should each aspire to: being the man or woman for our own time in our own place. <br /><br />This note is more in response to your Jun09|15 piece on the death toll of Ghouta, which you link to in your comment above.<br /><br />Assuming that we agree that identifying the perpetrators of the Ghouta Massacre is one of the most worthwhile tasks we web-warriors could accomplish, your work on the body count is incredibly important. Even a ballpark number of say 200 one way or the other would help limit the hypotheses as to what happened and who was responsible. <br /><br />Unfortunately, nothing that comes out of Ghouta can be trusted. I would not trust a single one of those Arabic sources without knowing who the authors are and what role they played. Once you come to the conclusion that those people were killed not by Assad or SAA but by the rebels/insurgents, then nothing any rebel/insurgent group says can be trusted. That’s the trap the UN/OPCW fell into. As you note, Sellstrom eventually admitted as much – they are a bunch of liars. Those so-called “medics” are the biggest liars of all. Unfortunately, only the rebels/insurgents have the data we need and there is no way to verify what they say. That’s why the numbers are all over the place. <br /><br />I mean, look at the ratios of the dead to "affected" in your June post. The ratios are, like: 0.72, 0.18, 0.06, 0.03 Why would those ratios vary by a factor of up to 25-fold? I don’t know who the “Violations Documentation Center” are, but I would consider their numbers as about as reliable as Eliot Higgins’ or Rami Abdulrahman's.<br /><br />Speaking of whom . . . I always thought Kerry got spoofed with that ridiculously precise number of 1429. I mean, look at that number – most Muslims would immediately see “1492,” one of the most deadly and important years in the history of Islam. Even bin Laden alluded to it when justifying the hit on the WTC. Seems like either Obama et al. were getting spoofed or there was a message in that number. Who in their right mind would have even suggested such a precise number of dead in the days immediately following the attack before anyone could verify any fatalities? Even the UN/OPCW, who went in there days later, did not investigate, sample, or even see a single corpse.Denis O'Brienhttp://logophere.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post-55472003424884772942015-11-29T18:01:25.315-08:002015-11-29T18:01:25.315-08:00Denis, always glad for the occasional words. I kno...Denis, always glad for the occasional words. I know kids were released, need to do moree research to figure out the rest. A weak spot. <br /><br />I've been saying for a while all Ghouta victims seem to be in Ghouta, presumably from nearby. But that point you mention is a good support I never thught of, thanks. If you haven't seen it: <a href="http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2015/06/syria-ghouta-chemical-massacres-death.html" rel="nofollow">daeth tolls</a> at the bottom, "our estimate."<br /><br />Maybe "they" (who exactly?) knew both events were coming, let the critics think the one fed into the other, for a false lead. But they don't seem to connect. Just two massive crimes, both needing punished. <br /><br />The Stranger is/was that Seattle paper with the famous personal ads, right? <br />Caustic Logichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03082923821952309709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091580307813686433.post-32732028620337926112015-11-29T15:59:04.561-08:002015-11-29T15:59:04.561-08:00Hey, Dude. Whew -- it's a complex post and it...Hey, Dude. Whew -- it's a complex post and it'll take a while to sort through it. <br /><br />I dropped in b/c my focus remains on Ghouta. If I could just figure out who the fucks were that gassed those people, I could die with a smile on my face, as The Stranger once said. <br /><br />As you know there was a lot of talk from the Carmelite nun about the people kidnapped in Latakia ending up in the morgues in Ghouta. And this fits with my conclusion that the people in the Ghouta vids had been gassed with carbon monoxide or cyanide, definitely not sarin as Obama, and Kerry, and all the world claimed.<br /><br />So we're 2 years down the road and I have yet to see any hard evidence that any of those folks missing from Latakia are the same folks in the Ghouta vids. The nun seems to have disappeared. <br /><br />In that Jan2014 Crikey article you link to the mayor of Latakia says the kidnapped folks are all accounted for, alive, and authorities are trying to work out terms for their release. So the case that hundreds of dead Syrians in Ghouta came from Latakia seems . . . well, weak. <br /><br />Do you know if that release ever happened? I mean, 2 years downstream what is the status of the kidnapped people?? Did Mother Agnes-whats-her-name ever definitely tie the Latakia kidnap victims to the dead people in the Ghouta vids? -- and by that I mean has anyone definitely identified the dead people by saying: "This kid in the blue top and pants is my nephew so-and-so from such-and-such village, and that woman dead on the floor in the salmon-colored dress is my daughter so-and-so from such-and-such a village.<br /><br />The Latakia Massacre is obviously extremely troubling, but if it is connected to the Ghouta Massacre, there is a war crime here that is so massive that no person with a conscience should let go of it until the perps are ID'd and punished. IMO. (I'm getting a Simon Wiesenthal complex and I ain't even Jewish.) <br /><br />Denis O'Brienhttp://logophere.comnoreply@blogger.com