Implosion of The Houla Massacre Story -- Is Anyone Paying Attention?

by Daniel McAdams

A respected mainstream publication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), has reported that the infamous Houla massacre in Syria, which the US and NATO hoped would be the casus belli for their planned invasion, was in fact carried out by rebel forces.

Highlighted in the National Review, of all places, the FAZ investigation was exhaustive and convincing.

NRO reports on the original FAZ story:

According to the article's sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time "dozens of soldiers and rebels" were killed.

"According to eyewitness accounts," the FAZ report continues,

"the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla's Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla's population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

For weeks, alternative media analysts and even eyewitnesses had been poking enormous holes in the suspiciously convenient Western narrative that Assad's forces slaughtered the villagers, cutting and killing at close range. No one paid attention, as usual.

The NRO piece continues with a fascinating story from a Christian monastery in the vicinity:

"Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agn?s-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities' being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery's website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. 'Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,' Mother Agn?s-Mariam wrote."

Either Mother Agn?s-Mariam is a liar or Hillary Clinton is a liar. You decide.

A few things to consider in light of these dramatic developments:

1) Western governments and media blamed the Assad government immediately and without evidence, pushing condemnation through the UN Security Council without delay to take advantage of the horror and outrage.

As astute observer James Jatras predicted a month before the Houla deception:

Watch for staged "atrocity" to trigger ?#NATO? action in ?#Syria?: "From ?#Srebrenica? and ?#Racak? to ?#Benghazi? and ?#Homs?" http://t.co/JfyUvKMq

2) The Assad government was telling the truth when it said that Syrian forces did not commit the massacre. According to the "regime change" narrative, the regime to be changed must be immediately and totally discredited so that nothing it claims is to be believed. Even some alternative and antiwar sites painstakingly repeated regime change propaganda about the horrors of the Assad regime -- repeated with particular venom by those who six months earlier could scarcely find Syria on the map. The question is now, if they were telling the truth about Houla, what else have they been telling the truth about all along?

Could it be that the "democratic" Gulf States of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are indeed playing a dirty and destabilizing game? How about Israel, which stands to benefit enormously from the downfall of Iran's closest ally in the region? Today a senior Israeli minister accused the Assad government of genocide and urged international intervention to overthrow the regime. Not to be outdone, Netanyahu added that it is not only the Syrian regime undertaking genocide: also Iran through its proxy Hezbollah is guilty. Some might mention a slow-motion genocide resulting from Israel's policies in the occupied territories, but that would not be polite.

3) UN Secretary General is, as was his predecessor, a mere tool of the US and Western governments who pay his salary. Though he is supposed to be a neutral party he is clearly and unreservedly repeating Western regime-change propaganda.

4) U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, is a psychotic, bloodthirsty monster who deserves to be jailed as a war criminal. When the Syrian government denied responsibility for the Houla massacre, Rice with no evidence immediately dismissed the denial as a "blatant lie." Rice and her evil partners Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton are hell-bent on ensuring that left-wing interventionism is as bloody and destructive as its right-wing counterpart, even if they call it "humanitarian." Alawi and Shia minorities do not count as human to the likes of Rice, Hillary, and Power, so they are not entitled to the same human rights protections. They are standing in the way of progress by continuing to live, so their destruction is all for the greater good.

Syrian government responsibility for Houla was a lie; it was in fact a provocation by the rebels to get the Libya-style foreign intervention they need to overthrow the government. Will anyone listen now that a major mainstream outlet has reported it?

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'Susan Rice, is a psychotic, bloodthirsty monster' - I was listening up until this line. Your court-room-level proof, please?

Regardless of your point-of-view or motives, this is character assassination. It blows your argument to pieces by destroying this article's claim to being impartial. It is clearly biased. It cannot, therefore, be trusted.

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15 Trillion In Debt, But We Can Kill Anyone In An Hour... Nailed It?

Chris | InformationLiberation

The US government is officially 15 trillion in debt, unofficially over 116 trillion, but don't worry, the regime can now kill anyone anywhere in the world within an hour using a "hypersonic" missile!

From AFP

WASHINGTON ? The Pentagon on Thursday held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour.

Launched by rocket from Hawaii at 1130 GMT, the "Advanced Hypersonic Weapon," or AHW, glided through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific "at hypersonic speed" before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.

Kwajalein is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii. The Pentagon did not say what top speeds were reached by the vehicle, which unlike a ballistic missile is maneuverable.

Of course, to actually accept this technology even works as described is hugely questionable. As Tom Woods discusses in the video below, most of these "super weapons" are just scams to get taxpayer loot.

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another book sale

what is really going on, what is the script, the conspiracy?

the occupy movement is the (div) 'V for Vendetta', their job is to sell out the poor in the name of fairer government, with the target of the stock exchange, the money system. that is to sell out themselves. in V for Vendetta we had radiation experiments being conducted systematically on people, you will find that historically and that is worth check as it reveals who was at it, eg. in britland the national health service. what pepole tend not to notice is themselves, being irradiated at a joke. the media in britland present this as a farse just like they had charlie chaplin mocking hitler so they could have a great war. for people to join in the joke is to be the joke for it is talking about the audience not to them. that is what the media does, talks about you and you are supposed to think it is to you and to join in any argument they rake up.

some people here believe in free trade. what is the most profitable business on earth? it is the prison business, the market is owned, the people, all things, lies, myths and riddles. it is called 'society' and it requires perpetual war.

i picked up this history from the street, it may be innacurate but it is the safest task not to pick a prophet but to examine for yourself.

back in 1049 in britland the freemasons set up in suffolk. that is substantlally about sheep, the wool business, the place to be long ago for trade.

the 'orwell' in the name george orwell was, officialdom hinted may be true, came from a river in suffolk. (the foresters were here before, later the oddfellows so you could be openly sexually out of the mainstream ie group 'em all up). page 33 of animal farm is chapter V.

so they have free trade, the trade is the pyramid scam and they have been flat out imprisoning all of you and themselves.

in animal farm, which the bbc proclaims top book (a simple template which does not reveal itself as conspiracy unless you know what is going on). in the book alcohol is proclaimed poisonous by the dictator, something the bbc and nhs are doing now.

history was re-written by two words, there was a recent example with patents in the US. <'No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.'>

11 ie them, ie nwo in the current contex. as per 'At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends.'

despite the government closing all the pubs in britland you can still see history (what is still being lived). this includes looking at the names of pubs, the queen victoria, the mason's arms, the king's head, the railway etc. you might believe these are appropriate names, but then if you travel round you might ask who owns the shops, aren't i missing what is right in front of my nose?

that is the elephant in the room, you are surrounded by the military industrial complex (military the means). the business operators have the best trade union that you can die for, it is called government. it is an assembly or representation of vested interests and the stockholders have freedom of trade. i would think mayor of london boris johnson is a 'freeman', freedom to trade in the prison.

as i mentioned the war (2), people were told they were saved from oppression, they are free because of it. that is the opposite of the truth.

if people are looking for psychopathy, in commerce there it is. it opposes humankind, everyone is sold out.

animal farm a fairy story, a fairy story, eric blair was taking the p*ss.

in the media they announced recently no expense would be spared to protect the olympics, they mentioned that surface to air missiles would be used if necessary to defend the site.

i kind of take this in the occult sense. the olympics, that running track and the first past the post. in britland they run a system called first past the post, if i have 2 votes and that is more than others (i can lie as it is a game of cheat), the business roles on.

i spoke to someone who was tasked to one of the electoral reform cons, those delphi discussion units. their job was in effect to coming up with a new way of presenting the first past the post system. it is a cheat, they are voted out by absense of votes and are required to go.

they don't want to go. sams i take as americans, that they will use their US military to protect the dictatorship here, the system it depends on at any cost. they are already doing that, brainbusted units like the cia and us marines already propping up the system. this includes rather significan american military bases in cambridge, to do with stuff you aren't meant to know about as it is about you not for you.

as for animal farm, did barack obama receive the nobel prize for peace (dictator's peace)? did tony blair award himself the highest award the US corporation is allowed to give? did david miliband (now william hague) front global torture, including if you knew it you? extraordinary rendition indeed it was. did a vast some of money go missing, what is called 9/11? and what of the building?

animal / manor farm

As they approached the farm Squealer, who had unaccountably been absent during the fighting, came skipping towards them, whisking his tail and beam with satisfaction.>

i thought they got the presentation of blair after 7/7 perfectly right, salivating after 7/7 after a pre-prepared speach (pre 7/7) was read out when the hot word game rolled, the terrorist gang because it was a general assembly of war crafts, awarded themselves power to do all manner of things to you. their army, their courts, their business. i have the means to kill, i don't have to award myself that power, i am not part of a gang where it proves anything symbolic, but that is the land of land of politics which is of necessity based on a system perhaps best described as mafia.

O GB

<'What victory, comrade? Have we not driven the enemy of our soil - the sacred soil of Animal Farm?'
'But they have destroyed the windmill. And we had worked on it for two years!'
'What matter? We will build another windmill. We will build six windmill's if we feel like it ...>
<'Then we have won back what we had before.' said Boxer...>

i think some remember the bank-notes, it was a rather large sum, i think people have found out all government money is a forgery. it suits not to leave people with things that would, without permission be of use.

i guess if i presented as a vested interest i should declare i don't have a penny but it isn't to me about rich or poor, it is about the division as is well known. hence it is that V is what it is all about, the game requires it and it is the most dangerous game.

you will hear the media say 'orwell' warned people. you have to see the mirrors to know what that means. eric blair was the official prophet of manor farm. as we saw on 9/11 the fairies included the USAF, what 'U2' called the saints.

challenge is inherent in life. courtesy of commerce this comes with what patterns to malice. the prison population will i presume decline no matter of the politicians and their borders to keep people inside the corporations identified by flags. already the dicatorship looks absurd, it fooled me, perhaps you too?

the 'occupy movement' is government, selling as in all politics 'austerity' and to maintain itself, as per animal farm, revolution is the method. in this instance it is being called marxist, one of the money men's scripts.

someone said the fbi were involved in an attempt to shoot Obama. (the battle of the cowshed, the white house, i seemed to have read the brits burned it down - as in erasing history). as for obama, oh boy, he must need protection. truth backwards, the false prophet is the danger and the protection he has means he is the most imprisoned slave in america.

as for the video and stealth fighters, if you control what people see you have stealth, what the media network does. until now, ie when everything has been stolen so the empire has to reverse to go forward again, people didn't realise who the rescue services were. in britland they are told but they were programmed in advance, the phone number is 101 (V), aka orwell, aka the duality game.

with the video games kids have, they are animating the kids having them literally dance out history of war, being watched as they watch. who is an actor, who is real, that is for each to decide.

i heard on the radio the bbc V 'live' keep asking the poor to phone in, what a contradiction. the raven as per animal farm spoke in their names (the church of england has a huge stake in the media so representation was with issue). they didn't dare let a single real poor person on, not one, the whole thing make believe just like they don't let troops tell people what was done to them and what they have just lived.

i post this with a view of the military industrial complex. i know it is the military industrial complex as there is a wall, uniforms the other side, lots of police uniforms but is mainly industrial. right on cue the signs on the wall tell me this is 'manor farm' not 'animal farm', ie uk plc. what is not so easy to see is that i am living in the 'complex', that is the big part, that is the fool most of the people part.

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How Can Anyone Not Realize the War on (Some) Drugs Is Racist?

by Wilton D. Alston

"It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without becoming more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of the relationship to mankind?" ~ from the Preface to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Although watching it as much as one would like can be tough to do ? particularly during the NBA Finals ? most libertarians would probably agree that John Stossel?s TV show is both entertaining and educational. On a recent show ? watched via DVR ? Stossel had Dr. Walter Williams as a guest. Williams did not disappoint. His brilliance was breathtaking at points. He provided clear, concise examples. He offered parables and life experience that should have been unassailable. And he provided much of it through a prism that resonated acutely with the life experience of this author.

The subject of this particular show was "The State Against Black People" and profiled how many, if not most, of the programs and policies implemented by the government have decimated the black race over the years. (As an aside, this author does not generally support a statist, collectivist view of any race of people. No race is monolithic. In this case, however, that point of view will be used for simplicity.) The aspect of the show that gives life to this essay happens to be one that Dr. Williams did not specifically focus upon, but one that troubles me greatly, and has for some time ? the war on (some) drugs.

Having written on this racist monstrosity many times, both for LewRockwell.com and elsewhere, it should be relatively easy to deduce my stance, but just in case, let me re-state it for clarity: The prohibition of recreational drugs is a means by which the busy-body, and often racist, losers who desire to control America have decimated and continue to decimate that group of people for which they hold the most animosity and the least regard ? black men. The drug war is not to protect the children, save the babies, shield the neighborhoods, or preserve the rain forests.

The drug war is a violent campaign against black men and by extension the black family, among many others (not all of them black, by the way); it has been so since it started. Furthermore, almost every prohibition of substances consumed in the United States of America has had as its raison d'?tre the subjugation of one group (generally some "minority" group ? whatever group happens to partake of that substance) to the benefit of one other specific group of statist, power-mad megalomaniacs. (One might be tempted to suggest that this megalomaniacal group is primarily composed of white males, but the current occupant of the White House seems to be dancing to the same music and from all appearances, he likes it. And, he?s not alone. So there?s that.)

This might be ballsy stuff to say, particular on a website as widely read as this one, but (paraphrasing ?Rhett Butler?) frankly my dear reader, I don?t give a damn ? the facts and the logic bear this out. By the way, this essay will not focus on proving that the war on (some) drugs has been a failure. It has been, but ample scholarship already illustrates that fact. Two excellent recent examples may be found in Brian Martinez?s "The Drug War at 40: Fascist and a Failure" from The Libertarian Standard and Charles Blow?s "Drug Bust" from the New York Times. Back to Stossel?s show?

One of his guests (a woman whose name escapes me) raised several objections against both the characterization of the drug war as racist and, more generally, drug legalization. What she said amazed me. Just as amazing was that neither Stossel nor any of his guests batted down her baseless and asinine points as the lightweight B.S. that they were. Unfortunately, it is likely that similar, and just as ignorant, points of view are widely held in the U.S. Let us consider that the secondary purpose of this essay. The next time someone presents such tripe as was uttered on that day, you will be armed. (By the way, this piece also will not discuss why legalization of drugs would not, despite the wildest dreams of people like Sean Hannity, result in crack whores taking over the streets. Glen Greenwald has already done that with his exceptional white paper on drug decriminalization in Portugal.)

In summary, here are the two arguments made by Stossel?s guest: One, more black men are in prison for drugs because black men abuse drugs more, ergo the war on (some) drugs is not racist. Two, even if drug prohibition was immoral, black men could avoid going to prison if they just didn?t abuse drugs so much. (They are free to choose, after all.) No, really, those were her arguments. It is my most sincere hope that there are no regular readers of this website who believe the same banal hooey.

More Users Equals More Inmates?

How can one say the drug war is racist? Let us start with some pretty basic numbers: Black people ? men, women, and children ? compose approximately 12.6% of the population of the United States. Black people ? primarily black men ? compose approximately 35.4% of the prison population. Anyone not living under a large stone or just arriving to Earth from another galaxy already knows America has a very healthy prison population, as evidenced by this handy chart. (For those not wishing to follow the link, the bottom line is this. The U.S. incarceration rate is over 700 people per 100,000 of population. The next highest rate is either in New Zealand at approximately 168 per 100,000 or Spain at approximately 164 per 100,000, dependent upon who is counting and which chart one examines.)

So putting folks in jail is a hobby for the American State. Putting black folks in prison, well, that?s just a bonus! "Amerika" has more people in prison than any other nation on Earth, and the percentage of those people who are black and male is roughly three times the percentage of black people in the general population. Why? Again, Stossel?s guest opined that this is because black people commit more drug crimes, and, therefore, get arrested more, convicted more, and incarcerated more. Each of these statements is so ignorant as to be comical, but more importantly, each of them is so cataclysmically incorrect as to be criminal, pardon the pun.

First of all, with the possible exception of crack cocaine, black people do not abuse drugs at a higher level than white people; that is, the absolute number of drug users who are black is lower. Ergo, the assertion is incorrect on its face, as evidenced by this illustrative chart from a study by The Stanford Law and Policy Review.

Here?s the thing, though. It is possible (nay, even likely) that black men do get arrested more, convicted more, and incarcerated more. That does not mean that they, in fact, commit more drug-related crime. The available data illustrates rather starkly that for illicit drug use, black people are not leading the parade. (Let us, for the time being, put aside the issue of whether or not any person putting a substance into his own body can ever truly be criminal for the moment, since the overwhelming majority of Americans, and maybe even a few LRC readers may actually believe that the State establishes what is criminal versus discovers it. [Hat-Tip: Richard Marbury])

Secondly, the mathematics of drug distribution and drug production preclude the possibility that a group so small as black males could possibly be responsible at a level to justify their incarceration rate. In other words, drugs like crack and weed are produced in large quantities, but could be manufactured and packaged pretty much anywhere, assuming the raw materials are present. However, the shear amount that is being produced and distributed suggests a larger operation than could be supported by just black folks. For more "sophisticated" drugs like heroin and cocaine, it seems that the production is almost exclusively off-shore. The finished product is then shipped into the States. Do you reckon there are lots of boats and planes berthed in the Inner City, where the predominant arrests of black males are made? Of course not. Yet, drug warriors continue to target and arrest black men, and ignorant people like Stossel?s guest continue to deny that there is a racial component afoot. Notes Blow:

?no group has been more targeted and suffered more damage than the black community. As the A.C.L.U. pointed out last week, "The racial disparities [in drug arrests and prosecution] are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.

Black people, comprising 12.6% of the U.S. population ? are incarcerated for drug offences at a rate 10 times higher than that of whites ? resulting in 35.4% of the overall prison population. If that doesn?t sound like an old-school racist?s wet dream, I don?t know what does. (Sure, all the black folks in prison aren?t there for drug offenses, but the overwhelming majority of people in prison are there for non-violent drug offenses.)

Depending upon from whence one obtains the numbers, the estimated total annual drug trade in the U.S. exceeds $100 billion dollars, at retail. (Taxpayers spend approximately $70 billion a year fighting the war on (some) drugs. Both the drug producers and the drug warriors are getting P-A-I-D. Nice racket, huh?) Does anyone really think that 12.6% of the total U.S. population is buying all those drugs? Oh, please. With roughly 38.9 million people in the entire U.S. black population, if one assumes that fully half of them are drug abusers, and that those blacks account for half of the retail sales of drugs in the U.S., each of them would need to spend over $2,500 per year on drugs. Does that sound reasonable? If the assumptions are modified, say with regard to only the black folks living in cities or only the black folks of a certain age, the numbers get even more ridiculous.

Conclusion

How is it then that so many black drug "offenders" end up in prison? Those black drug recreational drug users end up in prison because drug prohibition was likely created to snare them (among others, including Chinese immigrants, for example) and has almost always been implemented with that goal in mind. As the Stanford Law Review states, race defines the problem:

Race has been and remains inextricably involved in drug law enforcement, shaping the public perception of and response to the drug problem. [16] A recent study in Seattle is illustrative. Although the majority of those who shared, sold, or transferred serious drugs [17] in Seattle are white (indeed seventy percent of the general Seattle population is white), almost two-thirds (64.2%) of drug arrestees are black. The racially disproportionate drug arrests result from the police department's emphasis on the outdoor drug market in the racially diverse downtown area of the city, its lack of attention to other outdoor markets that are predominantly white, and its emphasis on crack. Three-quarters of the drug arrests were crack-related even though only an estimated one-third of the city's drug transactions involved crack. [18] Whites constitute the majority of those who deliver methamphetamine, ecstasy, powder cocaine, and heroin in Seattle; blacks are the majority of those who deliver crack. Not surprisingly then, seventy-nine percent of those arrested on crack charges were black. [19] The researchers could not find a "racially neutral" explanation for the police prioritization of the downtown drug markets and crack. The focus on crack offenders, for example, did not appear to be a function of the frequency of crack transactions compared to other drugs, public safety or public health concerns, crime rates, or citizen complaints. The researchers ultimately concluded that the Seattle Police Department's drug law enforcement efforts reflect implicit racial bias: the unconscious impact of race on official perceptions of who and what constitutes Seattle's drug problem . . . .Indeed, the widespread racial typification of drug offenders as racialized "others" has deep historical roots and was intensified by the diffusion of potent cultural images of dangerous crack offenders. These images appear to have had a powerful impact on popular perceptions of potential drug offenders, and, as a result, law enforcement practices in Seattle. [20] (Note: The footnotes shown reflect references in the original piece.)

This author would modify that last sentence to say "law enforcement practices everywhere." The money quote about the war on (some) drugs from Blow?s piece might be, "It feeds our achingly contradictory tendency toward prudery and our overwhelming thirst for punishment." Certainly the war on (some) drugs feeds a thirst in the American psyche, but it ain?t just for punishment. It reflects the same goals of which the writer spoke in the Preface to Douglass?s Narrative ? and it appears to be just a strong today as it was back then.
__
Wilt Alston [send him mail] lives in Rochester, NY, with his wife and three children. When he?s not training for a marathon or furthering his part-time study of libertarian philosophy, he works as a principal research scientist in transportation safety, focusing primarily on the safety of subway and freight train control systems.

Copyright ? 2011 by LewRockwell.com

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