Talk:Jisr Al-Shughour massacre

Great work on this so far! This is a real monster of a story I never really heard clearly about. --Caustic Logic 21:12, 20 September 2012 (EST)
 * Thanks, same with me. Stumbled across a link to the SANA article in a blog article about mutilations the "rebels" commit these days, and thought "how the hell could I have missed this event?" And yesterday's research showed that it is a crucial event indeed, with the advantage of some good after-the-event stuff as it happened "so long" ago. Have the story halfway outlined in my head, including sticking it to Chulov ... maybe I get to continue it today, but likely not. Stay tuned... :D --CE 21:49, 20 September 2012 (EST)

Uthman
He said “I’m going to tell you what happened, even at the cost of damaging the cause of the revolution,” in a token manner, pleading to a much lesser crime, in effect, at the lowest possible and basically no cost to the cause of the revolution, he re-brands the massacre at the Post Office. Yes, the protest had guns, yes, they wound up getting fired towards the postoffice, but y'see... (rolleyes) --Caustic Logic 21:18, 20 September 2012 (EST)

Orontes River
Liking a link to a story I know, I wondered about the Orontes river dump mentioned. The video I was thinking of was however circulating in early August. Great article here with most of what we'd need for a page on that. Same video, however, at Infowars and mentioned by CNN by July 4 at the latest. So maybe... --Caustic Logic 21:12, 20 September 2012 (EST) And then I remember we're even talking a whole different year here ... you got all historical on us. No wonder I didn't hear about this, wasn't even following Syria last year. --Caustic Logic 21:23, 20 September 2012 (EST) And then noticing the story (first link) is from 2011. Okay, sorry. I'll stop now. --Caustic Logic 21:24, 20 September 2012 (EST)
 * The Orontes River also flows through Tremseh... --CE 21:49, 20 September 2012 (EST)
 * Yep, and as I presume we've noted, some fifty bodies of 'farmers killed by the regime' were fished out and, in some counts, added to the tally of the big massacre there.  --Caustic Logic 22:27, 2 October 2012 (EST)

Blurb
How about this (from re-reading the intro,still hazy on the details)
 * Idilb province, June, 2011: Around 120 security personnel and an unknown number of civilians, especially postal workers, were killed by rebel fighters, and/or their own comrades, and/or mobs of civilians. They were reportedly killed either for trying to defect to the rebel side, for marauding in the town as rebels in uniform filmed themselves doing, or for simply geting in the way of the rebel agenda.  --Caustic Logic 22:24, 2 October 2012 (EST)
 * Not bad, should be added that this created the first refugee wave to Turkey ... yes, yes, I know i've been slacking with this, will finish soon ... promised ... yesterday Houla distracted me. --CE 22:32, 2 October 2012 (EST)
 * No rush, AFIC. I think blank spaces can spur others (not me, booked) to help fill them in. We just need more not me's. :) --Caustic Logic 22:36, 2 October 2012 (EST)

Significance Notes
Not touching the front page, but wnting to see this page develop, I suggest a section for explaining the significance of the event, helping establish effect/motive (if predicatable) aspect as a clue. There's the refugee crisis (of what type of people? Etc.) One small thing I saw was the event's distinction by the BBC as a landmark moment (see their graph) of the death toll up to this May 29 2012 article. Only three events are given reference lines - "Jisr al-Shughur Fighting," June, then the Homs bombardment of February 2012, then UN mission in April. Implied at the end with a shudder, Al-Houla. Since then, whoo boy. --Caustic Logic 20:15, 21 October 2012 (EST)
 * I'll tackle this today - finally. The videos I just added were re-uploaded by this new account, 91 vids uploaded in the last days, many potentially relevant - also about Houla but I didn't make it there yet. List deserves scrutiny. --CE 20:24, 21 October 2012 (EST)

Another BBC thing, from December, with an interesting take: Timeline: Syria's bloodiest days
 * Jisr al-Shughour, 3-6 June 2011
 * In June 2011, the Syrian government announced that 120 security personnel had been killed in the north-western town of Jisr al-Shughour.


 * The figure may have been inflated but it was a major attack and, as the BBC's correspondent Jim Muir said at the time, it showed that the government was facing an armed uprising rather than mass peaceful protests.


 * Opposition groups initially denied they were behind the killings, but later investigations suggested that when protesters were fired on during a funeral, they attacked the state security forces. Some soldiers may also have been killed when they refused to shoot demonstrators.


 * Afterwards, thousands of residents fled Jisr al-Shughour fearing retribution from the army. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:59, 30 March 2013 (UTC)


 * This must be the oldest game in the book, except the book has never been published or made public. Therefore we do not know if this is from the CIA Handbook for Regime Change or Al Qaeda Handbook for Regime Change. It could even have been in the earliest anarchist manuals from the 1890s.
 * The plan is this:
 * Get a martyr
 * Gather a large number of supporters and sympathizer for a peaceful demonstration. A funeral march for the martyr is a perfect setup. After all, even dictators cannot stop burying people.
 * Hide snipers in near-by buildings.
 * Shoot at protesters or security forces or both.
 * Blame the government for unprovoked acts of violence.
 * There is a long history of this tactic used for destabilization. I started gathering evidence on Wikipedia here. One of the earliest cases was Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland in 1972. (The Wikipedia article now blames the government for everything.) -- Petri Krohn (talk) 02:55, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Petri, too true. The Bloody Sunday example is new to me. Interesting possibility. Bosnia 1992 is of course going to be one of your more fertile hotbeds for examples, especially the high-profile Serb sniper killing of David Kaplan even the UN felt was a false-flag op. --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:32, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Jabal al-Zawiya Massacre, 2011
Another incident listed in the above-linked BBC article is worth considering alongside the Jisr Al-Shughour massacre. It helps illustrate a common pattern and should have a page eventually. Also in the north, near Idilb, a mass-killing of government troops from later in 2011 who more clearly defected, once dead at least. --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:37, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Villages in the area of Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib province were the site of a massacre of army defectors in December last year.


 * Opposition activists said around 70 soldiers were mown down by machine-guns on 19 December after hundreds fled their positions between the villages of Kafrouaid and Kansafra. This was later backed up by eyewitnesses and a report by Human Rights Watch.


 * The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a further 111 people - also mostly army defectors - were hunted down by the army and killed the next day in an "organised massacre".