Slashdot Mirror
Syrian Rebels Claim Hundreds Killed By Poison-Gas Attack
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Haroon Siddique reports for The Guardian that opposition activists have accused forces loyal to the Assad regime of using chemical weapons in towns in the eastern Ghouta. Accounts of the death toll vary wildly. The British based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights put the number killed at 'dozens.' Others put the figure much higher. The Local Coordination Committees said 'hundreds' were killed, the majority of them civilians. Graphic videos purporting to show the victims of the attack have been posted online (WARNING: graphic) showing chaotic scenes of people, including children, having seizures, being treated, and dead bodies lined up. 'Symptoms of the patients include nausea, hallucinations, suffocation, hard coughing, high blood pressure, seizures etc,' says the Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC). 'There is still no clue of the chemical weapon/toxic gas that was used by the regime's forces to target the innocent civilians.' Ake Sellstrom, the Swedish scientist who heads the U.N. inspection team in Syria, told the Swedish media that he had seen only the television images of the alleged attacks. 'But the high number of wounded and dead they are speaking about sounds suspicious,' Sellström told Swedish news agency TT, via telephone from Damascus. 'It sounds like something one should take a look at.'. The official Syrian news agency called the reports 'untrue' and designed to derail a United Nations inquiry into charges of chemical weapons in the conflict."
The timing and location of the reported chemical weapons use - just three days after the team of U.N. chemical experts checked in to a Damascus hotel a few km (miles) to the east at the start of their mission - was surprising.
"It would be very peculiar if it was the government to do this at the exact moment the international inspectors come into the country," said Rolf Ekeus, a retired Swedish diplomat who headed a team of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s.
"At the least, it wouldn't be very clever."
When did slashdot turn into an Economist or BBC wannabe? This isn't related to tech or geek news whatsoever.
Stay in your lane. This isn't tech news, therefore it shouldn't be here.
The side that's winning decides to piss off everyone by using poison gas on civilians/rebels. I guess now all the bleeding hearts will be chanting for Chairman Obama to "liberate" and "freedomize" the nation of Syria from their secular ruler so we can gain a level headed theocracy in it's place.
time to draw a new hard line.
Seems very obvious other nations are not going to get involved so good luck Syria. We'll keep watching.
After seeing the way the rebels run around cutting everyone's heads off and all that jazz I don't really blame the Assad regime for using chemical weapons. IF THIS WERE TRUE that is.
...video linked supplied, there's no chaos, and despite the insinuation of more than one person, including children, having seizures - I saw one guy whose legs were trembling. I've seen shock victims trembling worse.
I'm not saying this didn't happen, I am just saying that the video basically shows nothing (and maybe there's something wrong with me, but I didn't think it was 'graphic' in the slightest.)
Maybe they linked the wrong video.
Loading...
Would the political/religious/military philosophy of the "opposition", one that routinely deploys "suicide" tactics, be opposed to obtaining chemical precursors from the formerly Iraqi stocks and deploying them on themselves to gain propaganda points?
US meddling in mid-east affairs is a guaranteed disaster for the US.
Help one tribe, and the opposing tribe will hate you forever. Then the tribe you help will soon hate you also. Bottom line: Muslims must hate infidels, it is a key part of their religion.
No matter who the US helps, the US involvement will be called an "invasion." The US will be accused of using the US military to steal mid-east oil. It happens every time.
Sadam, Osama, and the Muslim Brotherhood, were all the good guys, and our buddies, at one point. Now, even Kuwait hates us.
There is no way to win in a mid-east conflict. The only winning move is not to play.
Other than buying oil, the US has no business in the mid-east. Let the crazies kill each other, if that is what they want to do. It is part of their culture, I guess.
But why is this on Slashdot? This isn't a discussion on the engineering of the gas or the dispursement methods used, just a news article.
I remember when Iraqi soldiers were throwing babies out ot incubators in Kuwait, and there were mass graves of hundreds of thousands of people in Kosovo.
Track record is key at this juncture. The rebels can say anything atrocious they want about Assad's supporters/regime and it will seem plausible. I have no significant evidence one way or the other, but at this point, the rebels' claims seem more credible than the denials.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Syria for Sirians!
That's why this is new for nerds.
Let me guess. It is the same poison gas Saddam had.
This isn't news for nerds. This seems like a propaganda piece since the video "evidence" seems to show nothing abnormal. Damn it Slashdot: Stop posting stuff like this. Many of us come here to escape the normal stream of bad news on mainstream media outlets -- it's the same reason many of us watch shows like Star Trek.
It's not like this story isn't on every major news outlet. I go to Slashdot to avoid this stuff (especially when it's mostly anecdotal).
If you'd looked at goatse.cx as much as he had, nothing would seem graphic to you either :)
"shooting bits of metal through people is right and honorable, blowing people up with naval batteries from 10 miles away is the height of chivalry, using remote controlled airplanes from 6k miles away to blow up people we don't like with hellfire missiles is fine and dandy,....but poison gas, im horrified, bring me my fainting couch"
The Sherman quote says it best "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." If Assad thinks chemical weapons will end the war faster who are we to judge him for possibly causing "more" harm now to prevent longer term harm in the future.
We will stop at nothing to punish the one or ones who leaked this information, you have our word on that!
I wonder why we gave them poison gas...
That was kind of stupid of us...
The Department of Public Safety deployed crowd control measures vs. The regime is brutally murdering its own people with chemical weapons. ..all the same nowadays.
This is bullshit. It is not news for nerds, it does not matter. This is day-to-day noise. The Syrian bloodshed has been going on for years, and it will continue for years to come. There are no good guys, just an armed minority on one side and Islamic fanatics on the other. Falsifying atrocities for the benefit of UN inspectors is nothing new, and has been refined over decades to an art form. Fuck this story. It does not belong here.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I'm calling BS on this. None of those people displayed any symptoms of a chemical attack. Nerve agents don't work like that and I could see some really bad acting in that vid.
In 2012 Obama pretty much said thet the US would not intervene in Syria unless they used chemical weapons. Colour me surprised with the numerous allegations of chemical warfare since then. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-issues-syria-red-line-warning-on-chemical-weapons/2012/08/20/ba5d26ec-eaf7-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html
Many of the "rules of war" are intended to create lots of wounded, creating lots of costs for the enemy.
I just find it funny/sad that the question about this topic seems to be "which group of psychopaths should ultimately wind up with the deadly weapons in this particular geographic area?"
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Angel of Death Dust?
of Al-Qaeda terrorists who have been videotaped eating the heart and liver of the enemy and who executed dozens of government prisoners after a battle? Who are the sworn enemy of the United States and the West? Who would kill every Christian and Shia Muslim if they got the chance?
But of course, this is the Western media, who will glorify this filth and pretend that Assad is the greatest evil, when he's the one fighting to save Syria from becoming Somalia/Afghanistan.
Possibly off-topic, but thank you to the editor for including the warning about graphic images. I for one don't want to see that kind of thing, and thanks to you, I didn't.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Well, for starters we can judge his thinking as "wrong".
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Obama has no red line. The only line Obama has is the yellow one running down his back.
Bullets are relatively expensive for the damage they do. One bullet might cost $1 and kill one person. Bombs aren't cost effective at all unless you're counting the damage to structures as a plus, but often it is not.
Chemical weapons, on the other hand, are relatively cheap for their killing capability, and do not harm important infrastructure. $1 worth of Sarin gas will kill thousands. Chemical weapons make war too easy. That's why we're outraged when governments use them.
(Could be worse; they could be using bioweapons. $1 of weaponized smallpox could eradicate a small country all by itself. Can't wait until that's the red line someone crosses...)
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Um, actually it would be the first. Do you have any references to support that claim outside of your cult/compound/tree house?
Israel doesn't have a dog in this fight.
You need to look up a little place called the Golan Heights and its history and tell me again that Israel has no security interests in Syria. They've actually traded shots a few times over this neutral territory since the war began, after Syria sent in a few tanks last November.
That's even without Hezbollah and Iran's involvement with Syria. Remember that both got involved in the Lebanese Civil War on opposite sides, and Israel basically kicked Syria's ass. As neighbors of Israel, Syria is a huge issue and one that has a choice between bad (Assad as a proxy of Iran) and worse (a country run by Sunni militants).
The US should do what even the Israelis are doing, and stay out of it.
You mean like the air and missile strikes they've launched on Syrian government forces aimed at preventing supplies being sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon in January, May, and July of this year?
For the most part Israel isn't taking sides per se, but they aren't staying out of it at all.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This isn't a discussion on the engineering of the gas or the dispursement methods used, just a news article.
Because nerds aren't all clinical sociopaths more interested in the method of killing than the fact of it.
Plus, being a nerd is all about caring about some important, intellectual topic that the mainstream doesn't see the point in compared to who the latest pop star is sleeping with. Few things are nerdier than international policy, even though most of it is carried about by non-nerds. (Kind of like baseball.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
1. Not a single old person. It's either children (poor babies! think of the children!) or young men of combat age. With the occasional young woman thrown in. I guess there are no elderly at all in Syrian "civilian areas"? There are real dead people mixed in with living people, that much I'll grant you. However this chemical agent is "curiously selective" of its victims, and the cause of death is unknown and debatable until someone does an autopsy.
2. No evidence of fasciculations. I see plenty of people having tonic clonic seizures that somehow permit them to still be aware of their environment and look at the camera-man (doesn't happen in a real seizure), or point their index finger in a religious sign to their God. Fasciculations however are involuntary. You can't fake them. They're a sign of lower motor neuron damage/blockade, the sort you'd expect with chemical weapons (especially organophospates and nerve agents like Sarin/Tabun and family). But since they can't be faked you won't see any.
3. The timing, as has been pointed out elsewhere, is highly suspicious.
That's my $0.02 worth. But most people will believe whatever they are fed. I mean there's video, so it has to be real, right? No one has ever faked a massacre before for the cameras, right?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
because you do realize there are other options for the middle east than theocracy and autocracy
like democracy
you think that's funny? then you're part of the problem
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The US tried this false flag a few months ago, and the UN found out it was the US supplying the poison gas to the "rebels".... now that's calmed down and they are trying again.
As for the US staying out of the Middle East, we can't do that, because it would cause the fall of the Petrodollar, and we'd all be at least 50% poorer, overnight, if not worse off. (Hopefully avoiding the fate of the Weimar republic).
It makes no sense for Assad to do this, and the symptons are that of Chlorine Gas which is easy to make. This looks more like the acts of the muslim brotherhood; they are the onese that like to throw people off roof tops, attack christians and burn churches, setup ambushes, and impose Sharia law, even when they said they wouldn't.
No, this has all the signs of being done by the Muslim Brotherhood, which are the puppets of the New World Order.
A lot of what is said about the son is projection, and more accurate about his father than about him. President Hafiz al Assad made sure that his influence was felt throughout the region, starting very early. In the 1970s, he did the Hama Massacre, which you linked to. When Egypt, under Sadat, threw its lot with the US, he made sure that Syria remained with the Soviets. He meddled extensively in Lebanon, either to prevent Lebanon from going Christian, or from going Palestinian i.e. Sunni, but supported Iranian/Hizbullah growth there. He opposed Egypt's treaty with Israel, and whereas Egypt got back the Sinai, Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel, which annexed it. In the 80s, he was allied to Gaddafi and Libya, as well as to Iran (more about that below). In 1991, he supported the US against Saddam in the first Gulf War.
The thing to understand about the Baathists is this. Although they pass off as 'secular' to the outside world, and are Socialist ideologically, there is a simple reason behind that. The Baath ideology, as propagated by Michel Afleck, was about getting non-Muslims or minority Muslim sects (such as Sunnis in Iraq or Alawites in Syria) together behind the banner of Arab Nationalism, and trying to make that a competing party vs Islam. When a country is an Islamic state, it's not a live-and-let-live state, where all Muslims of all sects can peacefully co-exist. It's about the majority sect declaring themselves the true Islam, and then persecuting the others and calling them Infidels. That's the case in every Islamic country. So Baathism was an ideology for such minority sects to rally against Islamic theocratic rule as run by the majority sect. It's not like Iraq's Sunnis, or Syria's Alawites were or are 'secular': it's just that being the minority, they wouldn't be the ones defining Islam in their countries. So first, they had to seize power and hold on to it by force, and then keep their majority population distracted by other adventures. In case of Iraq, it was first a jihad against Iran, and then an attempt to become a Sunni majority by annexing Kuwait, so that he'd not have to remain Baathist in an environment where Socialism was largely discredited. In case of Syria, it was maintaining the frenzy against Israel, supporting Hizbullah's jihad in Lebanon and to undermine any support to his Sunnis, supporting first Iran against Iraq, and later US against Iraq. Despite both of them being Baathists, Saddam and Assad couldn't stand each other, for a simple reason: one was a Sunni busy persecuting Shias and Kurds, while the other was an Alawite busy persecuting Sunnis.
Once he died, his son took over, but was a lot less obsessed with power. However, his party knew that if they go democratic, then like in Iraq, they'd be fodder for the Sunnis, eager for revenge. So they had no choice but to strengthen their hold. That's the main difference between Syria and other Arab Spring countries, such as Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. In those countries, there wasn't a threatened minority community backing the regime to the hilt, so it was easy for the regimes there to collapse. In Syria, even without surrendering power, there has been a genocide of Alawites & Christians; it would be the same had Assad gone quietly.
If anything, Syria's situation is most similar to Bahrein, again with the reverse population: a majority Shi'ite population persecuted by the ruling Sunni monarchy. Here, Saudi Arabia just marched troops in when the monarchy looked like toppling. In Syria, while they haven't had the Iraqi army come in in their support, the Baathists have done a good job doing without foreign help what the Hanafas in Manama did with foreign help.
The FSA have faked 'chemical weapon' attacks many time before. This one is no different.
Oh come on! How is pointing out accurate, truthful history of chemical weapon use in the Middle East, as believed by all regional parties "flamebait"?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Most modern military-use poison gasses are pretty efficient. They are designed to kill without tipping off the down-chain targeted, which would make them run for gas-masks and upwind locations. Read Anthony Swofford's 1st Gulf War book "Jarhead" for a description of an aftermath of a nerve-gas assault.
Dramatic gagging and kicking, burning pain and going rashy with acid-burn is the stuff of industrial chemical release events. Explosions of chlorine tanks and acid vats. If deliberate, not accidents, those are more likely produced by applications of home-made explosive devices to opportunely located or obtained containers whose contents were originally intended for industrial uses. A "pressure-cooker bomb" under a 5-gallon (20-liter) box-bag of battery-acid in a public square on a still day would provide more scream and pain and gasp and gag and better rash and writhe camera footage than a dozen long rolls of nerve-gas would.
How about you counter GP's claim by actually naming the dog? [...] If you can not name the dog, just admit Israel has no dog in the fight.
I don't think you understand what the phrase means. It doesn't mean to have a favored side. It just means that you "have a stake in the outcome of the problem at hand" or if you have no dog in a fight, then "you are not concerned and will not be affected either way by the outcome of something." Here, have a few more citations.
The "dog" doesn't have to be a favored side that they're betting on. Neither side may be appealing to them, but they most certainly care about the progress of the civil war and whether or not it turns into a greater regional conflict that will suck them in.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
1) I do not believe in Christianity, or Judaism either.
2) Even if the bible is evil, it changes nothing about what is in the Qur'an. I was challenged to prove that the Qur'an is filled with hatred, violence, bigotry, and intolerance. I did just that.
It always has been. The Qur'an makes this very clear, over, and over again. When the verses are put in context, it is even more obvious.
All this stuff about Islam being a religion of peace is only to fool gullible non-Muslims (that is also mandated in the Qur'an, it call taqiyya ). Listen to Muslim clerics preaching in Islamic countries. You will no "peace and love" messages for infidels. Quite the opposite.
Or, just look at the history of Islam. Both ancient, and recent.
Islamic nations certainly do that - to this day.
How about death by stoning for adulterers?
How about death for apostasy? Blasphemy? Being the victim of a rape?
How about fatwas against anybody who criticizes their religion?
Gee, could it be that Iraq sent their wmd's to Syria to make it look like they (Iraq) never had them in the first place? Perfectly plausible and probable!