Talk:Aleppo "Playground Napalm Massacre"

Questioning the Allegations
Mostly from the later BBC report, some questions and issues:
 * Playground massacre ... always suspect-sounding. The last one we looked closely on, allegedly with widely-banned cluster bombs, didn't look so clear at all. More like a home invasion by men with guns, really, and some old cluster bomb remnants laid on the ground.
 * School bombings where people of all ages are present - in the past included refugees, and seem to have been attacked by rebels. Consider Aleppo University.
 * Here, the victims are students in class - math, in one case - but also include largely adult and teenage males. BBC reported the first victims: "a seven-month old baby boy arrived, his pink face was blistered and raw. His father was also burnt and sat helplessly on a stretcher clutching his son as the staff rushed to help."
 * "It is hard to imagine or to describe the horrors of what the pilot did." It's at least as difficult to explain how we can be sure it was a pilot at all.
 * "Eyewitnesses described the same thing - a fighter-jet circling overhead, apparently looking for targets. A large crowd had gathered at the school where the incendiary bomb was dropped."
 * "There were no shrapnel injuries or loss of blood typical of most aerial bombs."
 * "Fathers and mothers desperate for news fought to be allowed into the hospital, cursing their president, Bashar al-Assad."

Attack Timing
The first BBC report started ''a BBC team inside Syria filming for Panorama has witnessed the aftermath of a fresh horrific incident." In fact, a later report noted the victims were in front of the crew within an hour of arrival, as if the attack were timed with their arrival for maximum freshness. "Within an hour of being there we received the first sign (first patients) of what was to come." This allowed the world to bear witness as well to what seems to an exceptionally difficult witnessing to bear. (I haven't watched a thing yet). But "the regime" just can't resist a chance to brutalize its people in novel and shocking ways in front of every visitor. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:41, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Fakery Claims
First, re-cycling of the footage to say "chemical weapons" - (event one week after Ghouta attack). This doesn't really fake much except her use of that potent term. She could have said it! The story is still presented as the same. I never did watch the video - the stills looked real enough I never doubted it. But seeing that zombie scene, starting on cue, yes ... like the walking dead, like the TV show. Burn victims do not act like shambling zombies waving around with rigor mortis and drool (??), but like extremely pained people trying to move as little as possible. Apparently the actors were given the wrong script, in addition to excellent prosthetics. The doctor being Mousa al-Kurdi's daughter wasn't explained, but It fits the bill.
 * Media 'staged' Syria chem attack (E36) – RT Truthseeker, March 23, 2014

That said, when they say people died in a school full of displaced people, and it was horrible, I still tend to believe that - it has the ring of realism, with precedent. But the real victims would be allowed nowhere near the BBC propaganda unit - too many things could go wrong. Best to use actors and movie-grade FX people as it seems they did. --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Fuller explanation of the fakery analysis and detailed complaint letters to the BBC, and responses, here. Also, Free Halab may have seen the fakery and hinted at it by defensively denying it: "For any sane person, the BBC report suffices. However, in a world where hundreds of massacres are imagined to be staged “and-or[!]” committed by the victims just to get on the news to advance the great conspiracy, it might not." Staged and committed here, I suspect. The former at least. --Caustic Logic (talk) 02:04, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I couldn't help but slap this together. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:05, 24 March 2014 (UTC) tZdt-AEayxk