Quote:
Originally Posted by Husker
I'll just cut and paste my response which you never bothered to engage with cos it's 'tin foil hat'
The Ahmad piece is problematic:
Firstly he sets 'the context' by evidencing that it is the sovereign government that is responsible for the bulk of the violence. The true context is, as we know, far more complicated with human rights abuses on all sides in a multi faceted proxy war. Turks, Syrians, Americans, British, French, Russians and the myriad of Jihadist groups are at large. To ignore this for the sake of attacking Fisk isn't particularly honest.
Re the comment on the bombing of the Scottish ambulance Ahmad says
he heavily implies that the bombing was merited... Fisk’s allies are not facts but suggestion, insinuation and innuendo. His method is insidious and part of a pattern. It merits closer scrutiny.
Unfortunately we cannot scrutinise this at all because there is no link to the original.
Next he argues with regard to the perpetrators of Daraya massacre that Fisk spoke to 'a few frightened survivors' but misses out a key statement from Fisk
we could talk to civilians out of earshot of Syrian officials – in two cases in the security of their own homes
a very different emphasis to Ahmad's interpretation. Fisk's authenticity is precisely the occasional vagueness, Ahmad's firm insistence on the Syrian regime being largely to blame is much more suspect.
He puts much faith in a journalist Janine Di Giovanni claiming she had 'sneaked into Daraya disguised as a local and interviewed survivors without the intimidating presence of regime forces' and that 'human rights watch corroborated her report'. However in the Guardian article linked there is no such claim that she sneaked in disguised, and
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has interviewed Daraya residents and analysed satellite images of the battle, evidence points towards government responsibility for the killings, although it is not clear whether uniformed men or the shabiha militia carried out the killings after the town was bombed by helicopters and shelled.
So who is corroborating who and who did the interviews? I cannot find anything about the Daraya massacre on the HRW website. There is nothing in the piece which shows regime forces responsible for the massacre. This is not to say they weren't, but it certainly does not 'quickly set the record straight' as Ahmad claims. In the other Guardian links there are lots of interviews done by Skype. make of that what you will.
Re the rest of it, havent got time now but I can safely say this guy is looking rather suspect.
That stuff about Vanessa Beeley is just a very bad smear. I will post some stuff later, there is quite a bit.
And BTW a conspiracy theory is one in which the lines between fact and speculation are blurred which is precisely the motivation for bombing Syria recently "alleged, likely, points towards" in other words made up.
Last edited by tomj; 04-20-2018 at 02:53 PM.