Free Syria contingent at NYC May Day march
The Syrian revolution has its roots in the same kind of economic grievances faced by working people in the US and the West: widespread youth unemployment, high food prices, austerity measures, and a bloated military budget. Fearing unrest, the Bashar Assad regime muscled up on its security, pouring money into the police and intelligence services at the expense of social spending. Any vocal criticism of the government was met with persecution by the police state long before the eruption in the spring of 2011.
"We demand that Russia stop its supply of weapons to Assad
We demand that the US open its doors wide to Syrian refugees
We demand that Assad be tried for crimes against humanity"

Yarmouk refugees tell of brutal
treatment at hands of Syrians

"Our so-called leaders have their own reasons for their closeness to the Syrian regime," said Umm Sameer. "And it has nothing to do with us. Shame on them and their silence."

Syrian opposition demands missiles
to shoot down Assad's helicopters"We have been requesting repeatedly that we be allowed or that our friends and allies be allowed to provide us with some sophisticated weapons in order for us to defend our people from the death from the death from the air that has come for the last three years from the Assad regime," said Miss Allaf.
"Allow us to stop it ourselves," she said. "We need to bring down these aircraft that are causing massive destruction on all of Syria."

Rise

 HORRIFIC SCENES AS TWENTY PEOPLE ARE KILLED IN AN ASSAD AIR STRIKE. Al Atareb (Aleppo): April 24, 2014 - Scenes of death, chaos, fear, anger and mourning only moments after Assad’s forces bombed the main street in this tiny town north west of Aleppo city.

 Al Atareb was one of the first towns to rise up and protest peacefully against the Assad regime and was on of the first fully liberated towns.

 However, if Assad cannot rule over you in tyranny, then he will not allow your town to live.

 [http://www.therevoltingsyrian.com/…/horrific-scenes-as-twen…]

There is no legal barrier to UN
cross-border operations in Syria'For example, parties might temporarily refuse consent for reasons of "military necessity" where imminent military operations will take place on the proposed route for aid. They cannot, however, lawfully withhold consent to weaken the resistance of the enemy, cause starvation of civilians, or deny medical assistance. Where consent is withheld for these arbitrary reasons, the relief operation is lawful without consent.'

Syria conflict: Barrel-bombed Aleppo 'living in fear'

The BBC is still presenting Assad's war on Syria as one where it is difficult to see a right side. You see occasional bits of reporting of the real villainy.
"Tens of thousands of people have fled Aleppo in the last few months in a relentless campaign of bombing by the government."
Pannell supports the contention of Human Rights Watch that the barrel bombings are indiscriminate, without mentioning the possibility that they are in fact targeted at civilians, the intended target, not just collateral damage. We get the régime line and the BBC line, but not that of the opposition. When he finishes by saying, "Nowhere in Aleppo is safe, not on the government side, and certainly not on the opposition side," it suggests there is an equivalence between those facing the barrel bomb attacks and those who do not, further adding to the confusion of the BBC's audience.
I watched Ian Pannell's report on the One O'Clock news, and listened to another on the World Service. You could get from his reporting that Aleppo was now safer for journalists because the FSA and allied groups had kicked the extremists of ISIS out of the town, but if you didn't know the groups involved, it would just tell you that Syria has dangers everywhere.
He interviewed an English teacher who'd said he supported the revolution, but that some of the FSA had been thieves. In the actual interview he went on to say that he still supported the fight against Assad, but Pannell editorialised it in the TV version to him just saying he wanted the war to be over. And Pannell couldn't find a Syrian who would say the way the end the war is to get rid of Assad. He does report that Syrians feel abandoned, but doesn't really get anyone to understand why or what could be different.

Killing Spurs the Living to Continue Revolution
'The goal has become to destroy the regime, regardless the price they paid and are still to pay, he says, summarising the whole matter by saying that “we live in God’s hands and have always had a full faith in His will. Our life today is so difficult like as our brothers in the whole Eastern Ghouta. Despite that we have no choice but to continue to the end of the road of change we paid that expensive price to make." '
Also, "The Syrian slum areas were the first to participate in the revolution, and thus were the most vulnerable to the brutal destruction, displacement and murder."[http://syrianobserver.com/…/Features/Slums+and+the+Syrian+R…]
and, “He’s a liar. They’re still there. We got reinforcements — Hezbollah fighters with one very senior officer, about 250 of them. They are very tough and fierce. Without them, I don’t think we could have held on,” he explained. “Of course there are drawbacks,” Abu Sa’ad mused, referring to the Hezbollah fighters. “We dare not drink or curse in front of them. They are very devout and austere men. They carry a Quran with them at all times and pray. I really think they loathe us sometimes.”
[http://syrianobserver.com/…/West+Aleppo+faces+unending+assa…]

Demented Tony Blair recites the Saudis' creed in his latest speech

 Cockburn doesn't pass up the chance to slander the Syrian opposition.

 "But in Syria the armed opposition is dominated by the very jihadists – Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qa'ida affiliate and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, formerly al-Qa'ida in Iraq – against whom Blair is warning the world. They now control an area the size of Britain in north and east Syria and north and west Iraq and can operate anywhere between Basra and the Mediterranean coast of Syria."

 Cockburn does what he accuses Blair of, but in reverse, against the Sunni Muslims who have risen in revolt in Syria.
 "Blair appears to agree with the Sunni conspiracy theory whereby Shia movements in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Lebanon and Yemen are delegitimised by referring to them as 'safavids' who act as pawns of Iran and have no communal interests of their own to defend."

FSA strikes jihadist-held stronghold

 "Syrian rebels launched their biggest offensive yesterday against thousands of jihadists in the north who have used terrorist tactics and imposed strict Islamic rules on minorities.

 About 1,500 members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) were involved in the push towards the city of Raqqa, which is controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), according to an opposition spokesman.

 At least five villages in the province of the same name were seized and eight Isis militants killed, Omar Abu Layla said. A few FSA fighters died when a car bomb detonated..."

The Rise of Islamism

"Each time there is radicalisation it is a response to the actions of the state."
There's also a bit where one speaker describes how after Assad Senior had massacred 20,000 Muslims in Hama, "they went street by street, woman by woman, taking off their headscarves. A policeman took off my mother's scarf, and danced on it. She could never look her children in the eye again."
I also watched Dateline London*, where the Israeli journalist mentioned Obama's abandonment of the Syrian people when he allowed Assad to cross red lines with impunity. When they got on to the subject of Tony Blair's call for an alliance with Putin against Islamism, Abdel Bari-Atwan bemoaned the destruction the West had wrought on secular states like Iraq and Syria.
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/…/episode/…/Dateline_London_26_04_2014/]

Syrian filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia speaks
about his new film, ‘Return to Homs’“When an American audience finally feels that what’s happening in Syria is a human situation they can identify with, then we can all together find a way to do something.”
Nyrabia is quick to add that his criticism of Western indifference does not apply to the cinematic world. “We always have wonderful support from organizations, filmmakers, festivals. All of these people who are not [political] decision-makers are really very human and connected and believe in what we’re doing.
In that sense, we’re not alone. We couldn’t have done it alone.”

'The chaos continues' in Syria

“The lack of support for the FSA is a factor that led to the increased presence of Al-Qaida, and the Syrian people will hold the international community in general and the U.S. in particular responsible for that result,” Muhannad Ali said. “What happened is we have the FSA fighting on two fronts against the regime and Al-Qaida, and this is what hindered the revolution.”

Raging with the Machine: Robert Fisk, Seymour Hersh and Syria

Yassin al-Haj Saleh:
"By methodically ignoring the Syrian people and by focusing on Al Qaeda, Robert Fisk and Seymour Hersh have done us all a huge disservice. The perspective on Syria portrayed by these writers is exactly the view of Syria that Bashar Assad wants the rest of the world to see."

Hunger Games

On the topic of Mockingjay, Dormer says, “It’s incredible how poignant an allegory it is for what’s going on in the real world,” says Dormer of the series. “You only need to turn on the television and watch the terrible things about Syria, about a government turning on their own people.”

When even the Co-op wants to break ties with you for the sake of its image, you know things must really be bad

 "Blair declares that we should back Putin, be thankful we invaded Iraq, and bomb Syria."

 Mark Steel yet again ignorant about Syria. As Sam Charles Hamad pointed out a few days ago: Tony Blair now openly pro-Assad: "Syria. This is an unmitigated disaster. We are now in a position where both Assad staying and the Opposition taking over seem bad options. The former is responsible for creating this situation. But the truth is that there are so many fissures and problems around elements within the Opposition that people are rightly wary now of any solution that is an outright victory for either side. Repugnant though it may seem, the only way forward is to conclude the best agreement possible even if it means in the interim President Assad stays for a period." [http://goo.gl/gogBvI]

 I didn't bother with the rest, though Mark is probably right and funny about the Co-op, or Blair's interview with Huw Edwards yesterday, which was probably mostly about the collapse of the Middle East peace talks.

Syria Civil War Forces Brutal Split in Aleppo"Several industrial zones housing mainly garment and textile factories had sprung up all around this northern Syrian city, located a mere 40 miles from the Turkish border. In the eyes of the European Union, it was a gateway for greater economic cooperation with Syria.
But those hopes—along with a boom that brought a face-lift to Aleppo's historic center as well as some new luxury boutique hotels—have gradually turned into a nightmare. The initial shift was when the impoverished and less developed countryside, which supplied much of the labor for the factories, rose up in solidarity with other parts of Syria against Mr. Assad. Peaceful protests, including in some working class sections of the city and at universities, were brutally suppressed by hired thugs on the payroll of some businessmen, say residents."

Assad's strategy & why exposing his crimes is so critical'The children need to get back to being children and the refugees need to be able to go home. This requires not the end of the uprising, but its successful conclusion. People vested in the revolution understood that even when victory seemed remote, as it did in the beginning.Others, less personally involved, especially the broad mass of people in say, the United States, that haven't paid close attention and just know something very ugly and terrible is happening in Syria, may well settle for any outcome that just makes it go away, even if that means the same violence is going on at night and behind "detention center" walls.'

Assad's strategy & why exposing his crimes is so critical
'The children need to get back to being children and the refugees need to be able to go home. This requires not the end of the uprising, but its successful conclusion. People vested in the revolution understood that even when victory seemed remote, as it did in the beginning.
Others, less personally involved, especially the broad mass of people in say, the United States, that haven't paid close attention and just know something very ugly and terrible is happening in Syria, may well settle for any outcome that just makes it go away, even if that means the same violence is going on at night and behind "detention center" walls.'

Police make Syria plea to UK Muslim women

On last night's Sky Press Preview.
Anna Botting: "But won't some of them have gone to fight Assad?"
Stig Abell: "Yes, but there are some bad moral choices on both sides of the civil war in Syria."
He's the managing editor of the Sun. The organ through which Rupert Murdoch has influenced British politics for three decades. If there are any Western-backed rebels in Syria, it isn't from that part of the ruling class, that is happy to spread the lie that those fighting oppression are like the torturers.
As with the David Wearing piece in the Guardian* recently, in isolation, telling young men not to go to fight in Syria is not a bad thing. By and large , they do as much harm as good, and if they end up with an Islamic group fighting against the revolution rather than Assad, they are not helping at all. But much of the media narrative is designed to discredit the cause of overthrowing Assad. Referring to all those going to fight as jihadists. Claiming that there would be a problem of them being 'radicalised' and coming back to Britain to blow themselves up. One newsreader made the obvious point about this latter claim, "won't they have been radicalised before they go?" There was a woman from the Charity Commission on saying that there is no need to go to Syria, because they could donate money instead, and said in a confused manner that 87% of aid was getting through to people who need it. The truth is that aid is not getting through, because Assad is allowed by fear of Western intervention to pursue a policy of starving and brutalising civilians in Syria, that the only way there is going to be peace and a return of refugees is when the rebels get sufficient weaponry to defend civilians against the depredations of the régime, at which point it will have a short life expectancy, as its strategy will have failed.
*[http://www.theguardian.com/…/british-jihadists-playing-into…]

We cannot still ignore the perils of intervention

"In Syria for instance, the US and its allies have been claiming for three years that the real representatives of the Syrian people are discredited but well-financed exiles who dare not visit either government or rebel-held areas."
I was expecting to want to explain again how we should unpack the word 'intervention', as it is being used by the enemies of the Syrian revolution to make the token threat of airstrikes or the provision of weapons to the Free Syrian Army elide into a rerun of the Iraq invasion, but this prompts me to go: just fuck off. The Syrian opposition leadership suffers from many of the problems of those who don't actually have the power on the ground, but the idea that they are out of touch while Assad has the support of the Syrian people is an insult to those he is bombing.*
Nader Atassi suggested that Assad's re-election slogan should be, Because Syria Won't Barrel Bomb Itself.
Quickly flicking back to Cockburn's piece, I see this, and snigger at his friends on the Left, or what used to be one,
"By accepting as legitimate a government in Kiev installed by direct action, the US and EU irresponsibly destabilised a tract of Europe."
*[http://eaworldview.com/…/syria-daily-regime-barrel-bombs-a…/]