At Least 30 Killed as Syrian Forces Shell Homs

Arab League Observer Wounded, Condemns Campaign as 'Genocide'

Arab League monitors arrived en masse in Syria today to observe the rising violence across the nation, and immediately got something significant to monitor as regime forces shelled the city of Homs, killing 30.

One of the observers got a little too close for comfort in his observations, getting injured in the shelling of a crowd of protesters. The observer, Mostashar Mahgoub, was quick to lash the government for its actions.

“This is a regime taking revenge on its people” Mahgoub noted, saying further that the violence against protesters amounted to “genocide.” Protesters have been demanding that the Arab League take action to halt the violence.

Syria’s state media has left the situation in Homs entirely uncovered, focusing instead on clashes with army defectors in the far south. The arrival of the Arab League monitors came after over a month of negotiations which saw the Syrian government expelled from the league for failing to get the situation under control.

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Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz

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Gordon Arnaut

I also love the fact the the supposedly neutral observer is screaming genocide…

One of them even got injured…probably due to the fact that he was right in the middle of the armed elements within the supposedly unarmed protesters…

So these “observers” are anything but neutral…will antiwar ever raise this question…?

Don’t hold your breath…this antiwar newswriter (rewriter ?) has been talking up the Trojan Horse observers without any critical counterbalance whatsoever…

This despite the fact that we have a long history of “observers” being used to further fan the violence, as in Kosovo and elsewhere…
- ML3
  
  I don't buy it either. We're just supposed to take their word for it? The "Arab League" comprised of nations who have reaced the pinnacle of democratic freedom…Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc…then the Human Rights Groups from NATO nations…they wouldn't have any reason to bend the truth, right? No, not at all…
- thedissenter
  
  How much is Assad paying you, dude?
Gordon Arnaut

I just did a google images search for “Homs shelling…”

Found zero pictures of shelled buildings…ZERO…

Lots of pictures of Syrian tanks…acouple of burned out vehicles (like we see in suicide bombings)…and a few shots of smoke clouds (as in smoke bomb)…

BUT NO SHELLED OUT BUILDINGS…

One very low resolution picture shows a couple of buildings obviously still under construction with no window glass…with smoke hanging overhead in the background…

This one picture has been distributed over and over again by numerous news agencies from Canada to Australia and everywhere in between…I guess because it is the most convincing one…

here is one of dozens of links showing this same picture…here is a link:

http://tinyurl.com/7qla7an

But there is absolutely no rubble visible, as would be the case if the buildings had actually been shelled…

Also note that there is not one single pock mark on the buildings’ facade…how is it possible…?

We are supposed to believe that the windows have been shot out…but not one stray bullet or shell has marred the surrounding walls…?…Incredible…

Also a giveway that these buildings are half-finished is that the “roofs” show concrete pilings for building up subsequent higher floors…

Also note that these pilings are all very crisp and angular…a building that has been shelled is full of rough and jagged edges…there is not one jagged edge here…even though the photo is VERY low res…

The construction crew will be back here tomorrow morning…continuing work on these obviously half-finished buildings…

A photo spoof…nothing more…the low resolution and only one single shot from one single angle adds further proof…

A smoke and mirrors show…and at the kindergarten level…and here we have the entire Western World’s media spinning an elaborate yarn about Homs being shelled…

It is incredible to think that our entire journalistic establishment is either so incompetent or so cynical that they can basically fabricate a storyline out of whole cloth…

But we saw this whole charade with Kosovo” “genocide,” with Iraq’s WMDs, with Libya’s “genocide” etc…
- thedissenter
  
  Psst…psst…don't look now but Assad's regime doesn't allow the press in and there is no free access to other media or forms of communication. How exactly do you expect to see the pictures that haven't been taken? Too bad that you just don't pack and move to Syria already so that you can enjoy all that Assad and his regime have to offer. So sad that those of you that condone, defend and cheer crimes against humanity are never, ever willing to put your body where your mouth is.
  - Gordon Arnaut
    
    Hey dissenter…there's a brand new thing called a cell phone camera…have you ever heard of it…?
    
    Not too many around yet…but I think they will probably catch on…
    
    Probably don't have them in Syria yet…otherwise there would be PHOTOS ALL OVER THE NET OF SHELLED OUT BUILDINGS…
    
    Also see that one of my posts never got through the "moderator" here…
    
    I mentioned how shelling with artillery and tanks leaves massive damage to buildings…it is unavoidable…if you fire tank shells or artillery guns at a crowd at close range…as antiwar.com is reporting here…then those shells will go right through the people and explode when they hit the buildings behind them…
    
    If you set up artillery at a distance you will still hit buildings because you have to lob your shells in on a ballistic trajectory…
    
    Either way shelling results in massive building damage…OF WHICH THERE IS NONE
    
    ZERO NADA ZIP BUBKUS…
Gordon Arnaut

Where have we seen this fake photo ploy before…?

Remember the “Picture That Fooled the World…?”

http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/BOSNIA_P…

Bosnia 1992…an emaciated man is photographed standing behind a barbed wire fence in what is said to be a concentration camp run by Serbs…

Only it turns out there was no concentration camp…the man was emaciated due to a medical condition…and the men in the picture were standing OUTSIDE of a SMALL barbed wire enclosure that surrounded a small utility building…

With the photographer having clambered over that barbed wire fence and into the utility building yard so he could photograph his subjects through that fence…

Plain to see the subjects are standing outside the fence because the wire is fixed to the poles on the side on which the supposed “prisoners” are standing…no fence in the world is made this way…the fencing is always affixed to the poles on the outside…

This one fake picture was circulated throughout the world and convinced the world the Serbs were Nazis…

Here we go again…this one grainy low-res photo of a half-finished building in Homs and with smoke obscuring as much detail as possible…

But still easily seen that there is ZERO destructive damage to the outside of this building…

And behind this one picture lies a huge lie about Syrian tanks shelling peaceful protesters and homes…
- thedissenter
  
  Where have you seen this ploy before? Hmmm…lemme see, it seems to play in each and every single nation where there's a self-appointed sanguine dictator slaughtering his people while hypocritically decrying the crimes of others and talking the anti-imperialist talk. That's all it takes. Y'all self-brainwashed idiots close your eyes and fill in the gaps with whatever it is that y'all wanna see, hear and believe, facts and reason be damned. It's appalling to see how much like the right wing y'all are at the end of the day. Same sh*t, different name and f***ing up the world in exactly the same way whilst claiming to want to save it.
  - Gordon Arnaut
    
    I for one and everyone else here I'm sure has a problem with dictators slaughtering people…either their own or somebody else's…
    
    Problem is when these stories are fabricated from whole cloth, for the sole purpose of launching a real war, a real invasion, a real bombing, and actually killing REAL PEOPLE…NOT MADE UP CARDBOARD PEOPLE WHO EXIST ONLY IN WESTERN MEDIA PRINTED PAGES…
    
    And if you have a problem with brutal slaughter of people then why don't you start right here at home…?…There are more than 1,000 extra-judicial killings by law enforcement and prison personnel each year in the US…that is more people than are lawfully executed in China for criminal offenses after a conviction in court…
    
    Not to mention that the US has more than five times as many people behind bars as China, a country with five times the population…
    
    And why not go back a bit…if you want slaughter…America is built on the bones of 20 million native American Indians exterminated in the most comprehensive genocide the world has ever known…
    
    Not long after that they decided to take their killing abroad…hundreds of thousands in the Phillipines…Teddy Roosevelt ordered every male age 10 or above a legitimate "kill…"
    
    Hawaii cam next…and on and on…
    
    How many millions did Americans kill in Vietnam…?…at least 3 million…How many in Iraq…?…In Afghanistan…in Yugoslavia which was a peaceful and prosperous nation before the US decided to get rid of a "dictator" and improve things…
    
    Riiiiight…Nobody believes that story any more…the whole world sees the unending human toll and the careless way the US just tramples on human life…
    
    Those are the REAL FACTS…not made up bs about how some "dictator" or other is acting atrociously…
    
    NOBODY HAS MORE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS THAN THE US…
David Daniels

And your source for this (which you hide behind an already suspicious link to a VOA story) is…the very murky London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights!! This is “NGO” is funded by US and British governments to provide atrocity reports for Western media. Their “reporting” consists exclusively of telephone calls and Youtube reports received in their offices in London. In other words, they are an “information launderer” for the regime changers on the ground and their allies in London and Washington.

Sound familiar to anyone? Well it should, because this is the exact same set-up that was made when the phony reports on Libya were blasted onto the Western press. Has your “news editor” and the rest of the staff at Antiwar.com already forgotten the “Days of Rage” against the Libyan regime organized out of London by the Hague-coddled National Conference for the Libyan Opposition? Was it really that long ago? Mahmoud Elwarfally? Do these things ring a bell?

Libya is playing out again in Syria to the “t” and a website supposedly dedicated to opposing war is cheering it on by completely uncritically repeating the same lies manufactured in Washington and London to foment the conditions for acquiescence to a bloody coup and regime change.

Honestly, I think Antiwar.com owes its readers an explanation. Absent that, anyone who donates a penny to this website who is truly antiwar should have his head examined.

[moderator’s note: Here’s your explanation — Antiwar.com does its best to keep its readers informed, using the sources it can find. 100% accuracy on topics like this is obviously impossible. On the other hand, as unreliable as our sources may turn out to be, they’re probably more reliable than your fuzzy inferences and leaps of fantasy – TLK]
- David Daniels
  
  Moderator's note? No, a snide side-step of the issue at hand. If you would like to disprove anything I have written, feel free to do so. I am am happy to provide solid links to everything I have written (as others regularly do here). Otherwise have you not noticed that I am hardly alone in pointing out your atrocious Syria coverage? Even your own regular columnists are speaking out. Talk about "leaps of fantasy!"
  
  VOA as a source? The "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" in London? Really?
- thedissenter
  
  How utterly dishonest! Posting the very same crap, verbatim, from two different accounts. One more way in which you're exactly the same as the right wing only you spell it different.
Anna

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights! The Supreme and only source of information for the West! It is outrageous, that a London-based "Rami Abdul Rahman" should be the most "reliant" source for all the media of the world!!!
jan burton

What is antiwar.com supposed to do? Parrot the claims of Assad and Iran?

If Syria were a pro-US regime these same posters would be praising the uprising to no end.
thedissenter

Assad Sr. must be smiling up at sonny from down below. And I see that all the usual supporters and defenders of sanguine tyrants are hard on the job. If only they'd realize that (a) the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend; and (b) they are the only ones that fall for the dictators' ploy and jabber. What does that say about their self-perceived superior intelligence…over the right wing? Ha ha! What a bunch of idiots! Idiots on the right, idiots on the left, idiots everywhere! Too bad we can round them all up and exchange them for the people of those countries they're trashing while defending and celebrating the slaughter. Too bad indeed.
Gordon Arnaut

BRAVO DAVID DANIELS…!!!

Also nice to see someone using their real name, unlike trolls who hide behind their fake online persona…

Yes, antiwar owes its readers a VERY BIG explanation…

Saying “we are trying” while regurgitating line for line the exact same storyline in the MSM is TOTALLY BOGUS…

So Mr. Knapp, what is your response to the lack of photo evidence of shell damage on buildings in Homs…?

You just said you were relying on “sources…”…WELL WHERE ARE THE PHOTOS…?

Even your pro-civil war, suicide bombing regime-change sources funded by US NGOs would surely have cell phone photos of shelled out buildings, no…?

SO PRODUCE THE EVIDENCE…OR PRINT A RETRACTION OF THIS STORY THAT SYRIA IS SHELLING PROTESTERS…

[moderator’s note: I am not in charge of news operations at antiwar.com. I’m just asking you to consider the possibility that rather than being US regime moles, etc., people like Jason Ditz are doing the best they can with the information they can find. If not, it works both ways. At some point, I have to wonder if your real last name isn’t Assad – TLK]
John

Jason Ditz, you have gotten taken for a ride by Syrian opposition propaganda. http://www.sana.sy/eng/22/2011/12/26/390709.htm

Arab League: Person Who Gave Statements to Media about Conditions in Homs is NOT a Member of Mission Delegation
Dec 26, 2011
CAIRO, (SANA)- An official source at the command center of the Arab League Secretariat General's Observers Mission to Syria underscored that the person who gave statements to some satellite Channels about conditions in Homs is NOT a member of the Mission delegation.

The source added, in a statement in Cairo Monday evening, that the name of Mistashar Mahjoub, who claimed to be a member of the Mission is NOT correct.

The source declared that a 50-member delegation would leave Cairo to Damascus later in the evening to join the Mission Chairman and the already there first delegation after their meeting with the AL Secretary General.
Jan Burton

Just imagine that Assad was an Israeli/US-backed puppet regime, as opposed to a close friend of Iran.

The same folks cheering on Assad now would be denouncing him as a monster.

So sad to see how one's wider geo-political views can so distort their view on a micro level.

"Screw the Syrian Sunnis who are tired of 40 years of Shiite rule! Assad's in the "resistance" so the Sunnis must therefor be nothing but CIA stooges!"

Pathetic, condescending partisan crap.
Gordon Arnaut

Mr. Knapp,

If your news people were doing the best they can and simply got a few things wrong once in a while that would be a different story…

But this website’s news coverage on Syria have been completely skewed in favor of the pro-war crowd for literally months on end…

I will name just three instances of flagrant journalistic failure…

1. Since the beginning the reporting has taken Syrian opposition at their word about alleged state violence against innocent and unarmed pro-democracy protesters…

There has been no attempt to question this highly improbable storyline even though there is loads of solid material online that debunks this nonsense…

I mean when you see street scenes of boulders an bonfires then that is hardly a peaceful protest now is it…?

And why on earth would any security force fire on unarmed protesters…? other than US occupation forces in Iraq, but that is a different story…

If you are going to disperse an unarmed crowd you use riot police like they busted up the occupy movement in US cities…works great…

If more force is needed you get out the water cannons, the dogs, etc…

But what happens if there is a crowd of demonstrators and snipers start shooting at police from nearby buildings…?

But oh no, that could never happen right…?…so let’s not even go there…

2. This website completely ignored reports of foreign interference, including weapons smuggling, training of insurgents, funding etc…

For weeks this website ran with fantastic opposition claims that the government was killing its own soldiers who didn’t want to shoot protesters etc…

Only when it became no longer deniable that there was an armed insurrection going on and hundreds of police and soldiers were being killed…then the storyline suddenly shifted to an “inevitable” civil war…

While at the same time taking great pains to claim that there was no connection between the armed insurgents and the pro-democracy demonstrators…

HUH?????

No connection…?…Says who for crying out loud…?…they’re both working to get topple the government, but there is some kind of separation between the two…what am I missing…?

This absolutely ridiculous claim became a constant talking point here…

I guess at this point even the biggest dunce would say “wait a minute…something doesn’t add up here…maybe the Syrian government’s claims are starting to ring a bit true here…”

but not antiwar’s news department…no siree…they can just make the sharpest U-turn sweet as you please…

3. And now the absolutely incredible news reports that the Syrian army is “shelling” peaceful demonstrators…

Well it must be some kind of new super secret type of artillery shell that leaves no building damage…like a neutron bomb…remember that one…?…kills people great but leaves buildings standing…

Too bad the US doesn’t have these “neutron” shells…they could have used them in Fallujah, without having to reduce an entire city to rubble and kill thousands of children, women, old people, sick people in wheelchairs, and probably even a few fighting men…

And now you are saying well we are doing the best we can with the sources we have…

Well as a number of people here have pointed out, those sources are bogus…VOA…?…the Syrian opposition in London…?

GET REAL…

The time to print a retraction of this garbage about shelling is right now…

PS: My real name is as stated and is no secret…I am a citizen of Ontario, Canada and that is no secret either…I am just a real person who is really AGAINST NEEDLESS WARS

And also the slimy propaganda that makes these needless wars possible in the first place…
- Thomas L. Knapp
  
  Mr. Arnaut,
  
  I'm taking off my Antiwar.com moderator hat for a moment so that I can respond to this personally in the only appropriate way:
  
  "But this website's news coverage on Syria have been completely skewed in favor of the pro-war crowd for literally months on end…"
  
  Bullshit.
  
  Antiwar.com opposes US military adventurism abroad, period. Antiwar.com would oppose US intervention whether the demonstrations, or the response to them, were violent or not. Therefore, even if you deem what you read here inaccurate, any perception of "skew" toward "the pro-war crowd" on your part is entirely in your imagination.
  - Lawrence Cutter
    
    From the perspective of an anti-Imperialist, the coverage here has been atrocious since the beginning of the "Arab Spring". For the reasons stated clearly enough by Mr. Arnaut, in the past year this site has dropped from the first on my reading list to just hanging out at the bottom for nostalgia's sake.
  - Maidhc Ó Cathail
    
    Mr. Knapp,
    
    Would you care to explain to us incredulous readers of Antiwar.com in what respect your uncritical "reporting" of claims coming from Western-based and -backed opposition sources has differed from the pro-war propaganda in the mainstream media?
    
    The only difference I can detect is that the MSM at least refrains from making snide remarks when they report the Syrian government's version of events.
    
    And dismissing those who challenge your abysmal reporting as “shills” is a bit rich coming from a website whose radio show just provided a platform to a well-paid advisor to anti-government activists to spout his disingenous encomium to the supposedly "spontaneous" Arab Spring!
  - Maidhc O Cathail
    
    Mr. Knapp,
    
    Would you care to explain to us incredulous readers of Antiwar.com in what respect your uncritical “reporting” of claims coming from Western-based and -backed opposition sources has differed from the pro-war propaganda in the mainstream media?
    
    The only difference I can detect is that the MSM at least refrains from making snide remarks when they report the Syrian government’s version of events.
    
    And dismissing those who challenge your abysmal reporting as “shills” is a bit rich coming from a website whose radio show just provided a platform to a well-paid advisor to anti-government activists to spout his disingenous encomium to the supposedly “spontaneous” Arab Spring!
    
    Knapp’s response:
    
    Mr Cathail,
    
    I don’t do any “uncritical” or “abysmal” reporting at Antiwar.com, because I don’t do any reporting at all at Antiwar.com (I moderate comments and edit the letters column).
    
    I have “dismissed” none of you as shills; I’ve simply mused that if I apply the logic of those who keep making repetitive allegations — not of inaccurate reporting but of malign intent — vs. Mr. Ditz et. al, without evidence, and even in the same boilerplate language, back upon those same people, that would be the obvious conclusion.
    
    If I could snap my fingers and cause Antiwar.com to be able to afford to send its own correspondent to Syria and environs to get the real scoop, I’d snap them immediately. Since I can’t, I try to be understanding of the fact that Mr. Ditz et. al have to rely on outside sources and try to squeeze the truth from the information they can get, a process that’s obviously vulnerable to error.
    
    Here is one simple, irrefutable fact: At no time in its history has Antiwar.com supported or endorsed US or NATO military or covert ops intervention in the Middle East or anywhere else. Period. That includes now, and it includes Syria. That’s a fact, and it will remain a fact whether you find it congenial to your theories or not.
    
    Ask yourself this: If we were attempting to subtly bend the debate in favor of intervention, would I be discussing this with you, or would I just 86 your comments and those of everyone else screeching that AWC has been purchased by Soros and other such twaddle, just like I do the Stormfront BS?
    
    Best regards,
    Tom Knapp
    
    PS: I apologize for the removal of accents from your name in this comment — it’s a bug in IntenseDebate’s function that lets me respond inline.