Linux Beach has been very involved in this debate around the responsibility for those 92 deaths. Even today we are introducing a new page, Linux Beach Goes Postol, to bring together our most recent posts on that subject. But also today, we would like to take a step back from the technical discussions surrounding the facts of what happened on the morning of 4 April 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, to take in the broader picture and better explain why we call those on the other side of this debate holocaust enablers.
Leading Veterans for Peace member Ray McGovern is one such holocaust enabler. My his own account he has "been working with Russia for the past 55 years." Through the good times and bad, you might say. He also heads a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity [VIPS] which has generally been quiet on Syrian atrocities, but did come out strongly questioning Assad's responsibility for the sarin murders in Ghouta on 21 August 2013, and again for the sarin murders of 4 April 2017. Both now and then they have relied on Postol's proofs in their defense of Assad.
Before I started writing in support of the Syrian Revolution, I produced and directed a documentary film, Vietnam: American Holocaust. I even got Martin Sheen involved with the project. I got a lot of flack for calling it a holocaust. So did he. It came from those that would recognize only one holocaust, and they capitalize [on] it. I called it a holocaust because more than three million people were brutally slaughtered. With a half-million dead and counting, I call the Syrian conflict a holocaust in the making for the same reason.
I didn't call it "South Vietnamese holocaust" because I didn't buy the US government mythology that they were just helping the government of a small third world country besieged by powerful outside forces at that lawful government's invitation. I knew damn well it was America that was calling the shots, and responsible for the bulk of the killing. Moscow claimed to have all of Syria's chemical weapons under control in December 2012. For years now, they have been the most powerful military force operating in Syria, and have had command and control of all pro-Assad forces. This is Putin's holocaust. It is extremely unlikely that this most recent sarin attack, and even the ones that took place in 2013, took place without his authorization.
In the "It's a Small World Afterall" Department, below we have Ray McGovern questioning ex-General Mike Flynn in Moscow about the Ghouta attack of 21 August 2013:
Published on Apr 16, 2017Although this wasn't published until after the Khan Sheikhoun sarin attack, this discussion took place in December 2015. It must have been at the gala RT.com 10th Anniversary event to which saw so many connected to Putin and last years US election make an appearance. In addition to those at the table with him, apparently Ray McGovern was there. Julian Assange even made a video appearance. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was getting Jill Stein to run for president.
Gen. Michael Flynn answering a question about Syria in December, 2015 prior to joining the Trump team.
One of the things I find most interesting about Ray McGovern's and Mike Flynn's discussion is how they just referred to it as "the Ghouta attack" when they are referring exclusively to the sarin attack of 21 August 2013, as if the Damascus opposition suburb wasn't bombed before that, or since. This is central to their role as holocaust enablers. By focusing on Assad's guilt or innocence in the case of a few chemical attacks, they obscure the day-to-day barrel bombing that is doing much more of the killing, and for which Putin is decidedly responsible, or the bodies being cremated in Assad's death camps. Because if they were to speak accurately about "the Ghouta attack" as a singularity, they could only be referring to the state of siege that community has been under since 2012, and continues to this day, as the videos below makes clear, even while we continue to argue about who was responsible for the 92 deaths on 4 April by sarin:
These air strikes on Ghouta two weeks after the latest sarin massacre have not been the subject of debate with regards to causality in the US. This is the way it goes for the day to day killing carried on by the regime and Russia. Since no one in the West cares about barrel bombs, the holocaust enablers don't need to try to peddle stories about rebels setting off barrel-bombs in the street just when helicopters fly by.
Published on Apr 18, 2017As this video makes clear, this community has been under siege since 2012. Many thousands have died and still the people refuse to submit to the regime:
bombardamenti dell'esercito siriano ai danni dei ribelli a Damasco
Published on Apr 29, 2017A month after the latest sarin attack, the people attacked with sarin in 2013, are still under siege and their situation is desperate. Did those who defended Assad in the case of that chemical weapons attack, and then went silent with regards to his hundreds of conventional attacks on the same community, contribute to this slaughter?
Eastern Ghouta left to die
Published on May 4, 2017
The humanitarian situation on the outskirts of the Syrian capital is worsening. The opposition stronghold of Ghouta has been repeatedly targeted by government forces, and residents now fear they may be forced to leave. Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbara reports from Gaziantep, on the Turkey-Syrian border.
The Syrian revolutionaries in Ghouta have had to fight a war on two fronts for years now. Here they are demonstrating against the jihadists, even while the Assad regime and its western contributors claim there are no revolutionaries, only jihadists:
Published on May 8, 2017
Al-Nusra and al-Qaeda in the Levant have come among us and are intruding into the Syrian Revolution.
And like the Regime, the jihadists attack the Syrian Revolution with armed violence:
Published on Apr 30, 2017
Eastern Ghouta, Syria. Jaish al-Islam did the shooting according to sources. Demonstrators were protesting recent infighting between Tahrir al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam. Uploaded from Liveleak.
One problem with the Syrian Revolution has always been that although it has been a true people's revolution, there has been no central leadership. Both fighting and civil organizations have developed at the local level and the struggle for unity has been a constant one.
Published on May 5, 2017Here are a couple more blog posts we have published about the brave people of Ghouta:
Syrian opposition forces in Homs countryside read a statement and called the Syrian opposition forces in Eastern Ghouta area, Rif Dimashq province to halt the fight among its groups and unite against the Syrian regime forces
| 01/27/2015 With Left support, Assad continues to kill in East Ghouta 10/07/2013 The Courage of Ghouta in a Craven World |
Sadly, the situations under Assad's control is looking more like a holocaust everyday. The Washington Post reported yesterday:
U.S. says Syria built crematorium to handle mass prisoner killings
Karen DeYoung
15 May 2017
The Syrian government has constructed and is using a crematorium at its notorious Sednaya military prison near Damascus to clandestinely dispose of the bodies of prisoners it continues to execute inside the facility, the State Department said Monday.
Thousands of executed detainees have been dumped in mass graves in recent years, said acting assistant secretary of state Stuart Jones. “What we’re assessing is that if you have that level of production of mass murder, then using the crematorium would . . . allow the regime to manage that number of corpses . . . without evidence.”
“We believe that the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass murders taking place in Sednaya prison,” he said in a briefing for reporters. More...
#Sednaya & the int. media: this is the satellite image from March 2, 2013 showing the crematorium is already there for 4 years pic.twitter.com/ZJo1YhG9Du— Ruud Wedding (@RuudWedding) May 16, 2017
Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
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