Hunger Strike, Day 4: The Regime
Tries to Make a DealQusai Zakarya"Starving a population is illegal. Food should have no preconditions. The regime proposes a conditional ceasefire with the FSA living in our town, but made ridiculous and illegal preconditions! They want us to raise the regime flag inside Moadamiya and they also want all those who are not originally from Moadamiya to leave the town. That means me too, because I’m originally Palestinian. Even though I grew up in this town, they don’t count me as real citizen of Moadamiya...
After a long and tiring day, I lay on my mattress, aware that my weakened body is trapped under siege in Moadamiya, but a strange feeling overcomes me, a feeling that my spirit is free, free to visit all the places I love in Syria, to walk the streets where I used to work and where my friends and I hung out, free to go to Homs where I went for university. This strange feeling leaves me happy.
My body is depleted and exhausted but my spirit is free and happy."

Much Needed Perspective on The New York Times “Disillusioned Activists” Article"Now, these kinds of articles have become so common that they’ve become cliched. But for the next week, the NYT’s article is going to be retweeted ad nauseam by Assad’s Leftist and socialist and “I-blame-da-man-for-everything-wrong-in-my-life” groupies. And so…here we go again. Again. Especially as, on closer inspection, there’s really next to nothing in the article that the pro-regime supporters can take comfort from."

A Brotherhood Vision for SyriaQ: Don’t you think that the reason the West doesn’t want to get involved is because it is scared that Syria will turn into another Iraq?
A: The situation in Syria is different from Iraq. Rather, the international community does not want the revolution to succeed. They want to exhaust the people of Syria and the regime until the two are forced to come to a political solution; this political solution will be based on the regime being in place, but it has different faces.

Double guessing in Syria
I'm not sure I agree with the entire analysis, but it's all worth reading.
"The revolution was not about chemical weapons, and it was not about the jihadists. It was not even about the Americans or the Russians. In fact, during the initial protests, the Syrians had been careful not to demonise any nation. They didn’t burn American flags, and they didn’t insult or assault the Russians, many of whom were still in the country.
Instead, the Syrians wanted to focus on one thing, the introduction of a free and democratic regime, and now the Americans were ignoring this one thing and bringing many others onto the table. This whole myriad of international considerations, and some domestic as well, may have mattered to Washington, but they hardly did so to the Syrians who were dying and fleeing the country in their thousands."

How Obama has supported Assad's gas murder always

'The White House responded by attempting to cover up the regime's use of chemicals and then issuing an oblique threat designed to warn Assad not to create a mass casualty event through his chemical warfare. For those of us that didn't know that Assad might already be guilty of gas murder, the "whole bunch of" comment might have seemed an "inept" slip, but Assad knew exactly what it meant. He was already using tanks, heavy artillery, helicopter gunships, jet aircraft, cluster bombs, jellied gasoline, barrel bombs and even a little gas against civilian targets and Obama was telling him "Steady as she goes." '

As the West looks away, the Islamists claim Syria’s rebellion for themselves"The moderate fighters in Syria, meanwhile, feel that they have been abandoned by the West where public opinion increasingly sees all the rebels as extremists.
The West has ensured that Bashar al-Assad has got the enemy he wanted."

US-Iran deal not likely to
affect Syrian revolution
"The military-supported political system has crumbled. It is thriving on Iranian support. It cannot hold out for long. Syrians no longer consider Assad senior or his son as their national leaders. Most of them have now realized that Assad is the leader of a tiny sect.
It is impossible to believe that a regime rejected by Sunnis, constituting more than 70 percent of the country’s population, could survive.
In the current scenario, it is unlikely that the Assad’s regime will survive. It now maintains authority only in a few pockets. When we say that the regime’s survival is impossible, it does not mean there is a suitable national alternative available."

How Critiquing the Syrian Revolution Went Wrong: a Response to Richard Seymour

'In “How the Syrian Revolution Went Wrong,” Richard Seymour suggests that the weapons the Syrian rebels are receiving ‘something other than a few Saudi pea shooters’ is ‘already outdated.’ This is false.'

Asking Assad to stay is asking
Syrians to be party to a charade"As world leaders discuss the merits of the Syrian opposition attending Geneva 2 peace talks without preconditions, they flip the narrative of the revolution. A narrative in which Mr Al Assad is upgraded from a brutal dictator that deserves no more than a cell at The Hague to a potential “partner” in the transitional peace process.
The latest demeaning analysis offered to Syrians is to act “as if” Mr Al Assad maintaining power would end the brutal war that was unleashed by Mr Al Assad himself. Governments act as if dragging the Syrian opposition to the negotiation table without any preconditions will result in a political solution to a raging war. World leaders act as if Mr Al Assad’s cooperation in dismantling his chemical weapon stockpiles is reducing the amount of bloodshed, even as the cluster bombs and scud missiles continue to fall onto civilian populations...
Perhaps we will not be able to rejoice soon (or not even for decades) that the Assad regime is finally finished. That will not change one fact: asking for him or his regime to stay will not save lives. Instead, this decision will take more Syrian lives. Thousands more lives.
Deceptive options and skewed choices can be framed as powerful persuasions, as the “last hope” and the “moral choice”. These “solutions for the Syrian conflict” mock the Syrian people’s heavy sacrifices, bloody history, and desire for a peaceful future of freedom and dignity."

Syria: Children targeted
by snipers during conflict
"You may find some of the images in Lyse Doucet's report disturbing."
"Some were just infants."