Early yesterday morning I received an email pointing me to three videos that had been posted on LiveLeak, claiming to show the Syrian opposition group launching the August 21st sarin attack. I posted the videos on my blog, and highlighted the dubious nature of the videos. Having spent the last two years examining videos from the Syria conflict on a daily basis, these videos appear suspicious for a number of reasons I detail on my blog post, and are totally unverifiable.
This has not stopped Russia Today using the credibility of my blog to give credence to this videos. This is a transcript of their 10am BST broadcast
Thabang Motsei - ......Meanwhile a prominent Syrian blogger known as Black Moses has posted footage allegedly showing chemical weapons being used by rebels. Let's get the details from our correspondent Paul Scott here in the studio. " Paul Scott - The blogger is a staunch critic of Damascus and a staunch critic of President Bashar al Assad's regime and in the past he has monitored all sorts of news sources and claims and counter claims emerging from the Syrian Civil War to use it as a stick to beat the Assad Government with and implicate Assad in all sorts of atrocities. But it is interesting now that he has posted a video on this blog that suggests that it actually could be the Syrian Opposition that had been using these chemical weapons. It represent a slight shift in focus from what the narrative that the blog has been taking in recent weeks. Thabang Motsei - So this Brown Moses that we were talking about what are experts saying where the rebels could have obtained these chemicals from.
The later 11am broadcast also uses my blog to give credence to these dubious videos
To be absolutely clear, I do not consider these videos to be reliable evidence of anything. They came from irregular sources, and are filmed in a way not consistent with videos posted previously by Liwa al-Islam, among other issues. I do not support Russia Today's use of the credibility of my work to prop up videos I consider to be highly dubious. I believe all credible evidence points to the Syrian military being responsible for the August 21st attack, and have produced large amounts of work examining the evidence that supports that conclusion, which can be found here.
If you wish to contact me with further questions on this matter please email me at brownmoses@gmail.com
Over the past few months I've been collecting UXO evidence of what has appeared to be crude DIY barrel bombs being dropped by the Syrian Air Force. CJ Chivers has also written about these DIY weapons on the New York Times At War Blog and the Russian Military Analyst Col. Evgeny Khrushchev has written for Russia Today describing reports as "barrel bomb baloney".
Now for the first time we have video footage, apparently leaked or captured from members of the Syrian Air Force and filmed inside a Mil Mi-8 (Hip) helicopter, showing what appears to be DIY barrel bombs thrown out of the rear door of the helicopter.
This seems to support earlier video footage that appeared to show a barrel bomb being dropped in much the same way (35s)
This seems to clearly demonstrate that bar any accusations that the videos have been faked (certainly not by the opposition, unless they suddenly have access to helicopters) that DIY barrel bombs are being used by the Syrian Air Force, as opposed to claims of their use being "baloney".
Big thanks to @RobotNickk for highlighting these videos.
Egypt’s new leader Mohammed Morsi receives disturbing calls to destroy ancient pyramids. Some Radical Islamists deem the monuments “symbols of Paganism,” and are encouraging the president to tear down the relics.
Bahrain’s president of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, has called on Cairo to demolish the pyramids and “accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”
This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As, and his ancient tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt in 641.
Calls from a Bahraini Sunni cleric urging President Mohamed Morsy to destroy the Giza Pyramids were issued from a parody Twitter account online, the Daily News Egypt has learned.
Several right wing online portals ran with the controversial news as a means to raise alarms over the rise of an Islamist-led government in Egypt and its threat to rich historical sites. According to the rumours, Shiek Abd Al-Latif Al-Mahmoud denounced the pyramids as idolatry and asked President Morsy to destroy them.
So another fine example of Russia Today posting a load of old nonsense.
Alex Jones' Infowars is a popular conspiracy website that likes to reveal the "shocking truth" behind a variety of subjects, including the Syrian Uprising. In their latest article, Shocking Videos Reveal Truth Behind Syrian “Freedom Fighters”, they promise to reveal the truth behind "a minority of extremist Wahabi thugs who are anti-freedom, anti-Christian, anti-Shia, anti-Sunni and who will stop at nothing to entrench their ideologically fanatical power base."
The article starts poorly, by posting the video from the Russia Today article I've previously criticised, repeating the error I raised in my original blog post, that "In this video, family members of slain children accuse Syrian rebels of committing the atrocity." Except, as I've pointed out before (and Russia Today corrected on their original article but not their Youtube posting), that at no point in the video does that family make that claim, and the updated Russia Today article now instead says "Sources say that opposition rebels committed the atrocity."
Another video shows a grieving woman talking to Syrian State TV, with the article stating "This woman’s son, Sari Saoud, was shot in Homs. While Al-Jazeera claimed it was the army that killed him, the woman insisted it was the insurgents.". In this earlier video taken of the woman grieving over the body of her son you can hear her in the background at around 50 seconds in shouting "Fuck you, Bashar" in Arabic, which is an odd thing to say if you think the FSA killed your son
Liberal talk show host Tawfiq Okasha recently appeared on "Egypt Today" airing a video of Muslims in Tunisia slicing a young man's head off for the crime of apostasy, in this case, the crime of converting to Christianity and refusing to renounce it.
Another clip from the InfoWars article claims to show opposition members faking wounds for propaganda purposes, but in fact it has been claimed that clip is from Bahrain, which this video in Arabic explains. In this video "“Eyewitnesses” are caught on camera coordinating how to lie about casualties.", at around 1:35 we see the activist in the video pointing, followed by a bang, with the clip claiming he is giving orders to fire. This is an excellent example of crude propaganda, as you can see the original video on Bambuser, where it was originally live streamed, and at about 10 minutes you'll see exactly the same moment in the original clip, except when he points there's no bang. So whoever made the video quoted on InfoWars has added their own sound effects for propaganda purposes. In this video, chants supporting Christian and Muslim unity are incorrectly subtitled to chants attacking Christians
Crude, but effective propaganda. The post also links to another piece of anti-FSA propaganda also quoted in Russia Today, which claims Syrian rebels ransacked a church and attacked another, something I debunked at the bottom of this post. Another article by the same author linked in that post I've previously debunked is Al-Qaeda Rebel Pictured With UN Observers In Syria. Apart from the usual mistake made by a number of sites, that the black flag always means al-Qaeda, when in fact it doesn't (but that's another story), the story claims to have a photo of a man dressed in an al-Qaeda uniform meeting UN observers. As my blog post on the story explains the same man later appeared in a video after his defection from the Syrian Army, claiming
he was a member of the Republican Guard in the Syrian Army, displaying his ID, and was given the uniform to wear.
In the same article it's also claimed:
Meanwhile, a separate video clip leaked to the pro-Assad Truth Syria You Tube channel purports to show an anti-regime rebel being transported by UN observers in trucks bearing the distinctive UN text.
Except this video wasn't leaked to anyone, but posted on an activist channel is a very famous clip of activist Hadi al-Abdallah showing UN monitors a checkpoint in Qusair, driving in their own car, the UN telling them they would not protect them, and leaving them at the end. It's been previously used by activists as an example of the UN failing to protect them. After that he adds a bit more information
At the end of the clip, the men in the UN vehicle break out in a spontaneous chant of “Allahu Akbar,” a phrase widely associated with fundamentalist Muslims who are engaged in jihad.
Also widely associated with Muslims in general by anyone who knows anything about these countries, so just another way for the author of the article to tar the men in this video with the "jihadi" brush. Now all of this took about an hour of research, obviously something Paul Joseph Watson either chose not to do, or didn't care about doing, either making him a terrible journalist or propagandist. I've not had time to examine all these videos, and I'm certainly not saying the Free Syrian Army are angels descended from Heaven, but it seems that for sites like InfoWars the truth is secondary to their agenda. If you have any more information about the videos in the InfoWars post, or other comments please contact me using the details below, or leave a comment. You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com
As many of you no doubt are aware Russia Today, the English language government funded global news channel, has taken a rather strong stance against the Syrian opposition, and it here's a couple of examples of that stance that edge towards propaganda, or just bad journalism.
In this first article Russia Today claimed, before changing the article
Footage showing the results of an alleged massacre in the Syrian city of Hama in April has been obtained by RT. In the video, family members claim opposition rebels committed the atrocity.
The original text can be seen here, and on other similar sites. Having no doubt watched the actual video they posted online they've now changed the text to this
Footage showing the results of an alleged massacre in the Syrian city of Hama in April has been obtained by RT. Sources say that opposition rebels committed the atrocity.
But still leaving the original text on the Russia Today Youtube page for the video. So some kudos to them for correcting their mistake, even if it does undermine the main source of the claims made in the article, leaving them to unnamed mysterious "sources".
Shocking images have surfaced, revealing the alleged desecration of Christian churches in Syria by Western-backed rebels. The pictures, taken by local Christians outraged at the violence, were published by PrisonPlanet.com.
In one of the photos a man who is said to be a member of the Free Syrian Army poses in a stolen priest’s robe while brandishing a looted cross in one hand and a machine gun in the other. The photos were taken by a Christian woman in Homs, one of the cities most devastated by continued violent clashes between rebels and government forces.
“Everyone knows simply removing these garments from the church is a sin. The priest is the only one who wears them. They even pray before putting them on,” the woman told PrisonPlanet.com.
She added that after the rebels tore the church apart, they went inside to document their violence.
Images show church pews broken apart, with pieces strewn all over the nave. The floor is covered with rubble, and even the altar looks like it has been desecrated.
There's also a watermark across the photograph that says in Arabic "Lens Young Homsi", in case there's any doubt. As for the other accusations of the rebels tearing the church apart, this video from inside the church filmed by activists appears to show a hole in the roof from shelling
So it appears that copying posts from conspiracy websites like Prison Planet doesn't really do much for your journalistic credibility.
