April 14, 2012 These Live Videos Of The "Shelling Of Homs" Are Staged Three current headlines: AFP: Syria forces shell Homs as UN votes on observers Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad shelled the Jurat al-Shayah and Al-Qarabis districts of the city for around an hour during the morning, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, without giving any immediate word on any casualties. VoA: Activists Accuse Syria of Renewed Shelling Activists are accusing Syrian government forces of shelling the central city of Homs, raising new questions about the country's already tenuous cease-fire. Reuters: Syrian forces shell Homs on day three of truce Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad shelled the battered city of Homs on Saturday, opposition activists said, the first bombings since a ceasefire began two days ago. I doubt these reports. There was a lot of twittering this morning about a live video feed from Homs showing the "shelling" taking place. The live feed was on Bambuser which allows to stream cell phone live video to the web. The feed was by the user mahmoud homs. It came in several parts with over an hour of total length. I have watched it all. The view is mostly across a street towards a ten story high rise which seems to have never been inhabited and which has some serious shelling damage though we do not know when that occurred. There is a slightly damaged van in the street. The camera is about 20-30 meters away from the building. Lets take this 26 minute part for further analysis. There is sound of explosions throughout that part though it sounds rather strange. At 0:56 there is a small explosion though the only thing we see is rather small cloud of dust and smoke. At 1:15 there is another explosion at the facade's fifth floor with a small cloud of dust and smoke which immediately gets blown away. Astonishingly the facade in that place shows no difference before and after that explosion. The following minutes include noise of explosions every few seconds but only few visible impacts at 2:47, 4:05, 4:50 and so on. All of them seem to have some thing in common. there are nearly no explosion flashes and those that are visible are very small

the smoke and dust clouds after each hit are rather small

there is no discernible damage done by these explosions One can also hear a car passing by at 5:30 using its horn. At 6:30 one can hear someone walking past. At 11:30 someone nearby the video-grapher is saying something, at 11:38 someone uses a cigarette lighter and there is more talk up to 12:30. All these sounds are quite crisp. The peoples' voices seem content, not like people under an hour long bombardment. All the sound of the shelling is very different. It seems artificially prolonged with some echo and somewhat muffled. I have heard nothing like that in my times on army tank and artillery ranges. Real guns do make quite crisp and loud sounds. At 13:30 the camera turns to the ground and one can see a second camera on a tripod and a laptop next to it. Meanwhile the shelling sound continues coming every few seconds and once a while there is another small dust puff visible. The following 5 minute and 48 minute videos are quite similar to the first one. In the last one the cameraman is also walking into the open street where all that shelling is taking place. At 20:30 someone steps into the picture into the open street with an explosion just a few meters behind him. He is ranting something and at a point holds up what seem to be the rears of used small mortar rounds. The only words I understand from what he is saying is "Kofi Annan". Then more explosions nearby and still no panic at all. At 27:30 the guy appears again and repeats his stand-up routine. All this leaves some intriguing questions: Homs is a rather large city with some 750,000 inhabitants. How did these people know where the shelling would take place so they could be there with all their equipment just in time to witness it?

Why would several people with cameras and laptops on the ground stay in the open street while the high rise across the street is subject to shelling with, from the sound, impacts every few seconds and visibly every few minutes?

Why are those people so near to the shelling so very content and not afraid at all?

Where is the fresh damage after all these impacts?

Why would the Syrian army shell an empty high rise with no discernible hostile target for over an hour wasting valuable ammunition and at a time where it is critical for the Syrian government to keep the ceasefire? My impression is that this whole thing is a staged to impress on the people voting today at the UN Security Council. The sound of the shelling is likely coming from a tape recorder or a laptop recording which explains the rather different and muffled complex tone in contrast to the clear nearby voices. The visible puffs are from small grenades, probably from some small hand held 40mm grenade launcher fired from nearby. They are certainly not from bigger mortars or artillery. This foreign financed revolution in Syria has routinely used fake video and untrue accounts of events on the ground. Today's "shelling of Homs" seems to be another one of these fake stories. Unfortunately the media are, again, falling for it. Posted by b on April 14, 2012 at 13:46 UTC | Permalink Comments