The killing of a soldier and his six-year-old son paints a chilling picture of Syria’s war

"By chance, among the military mourners was Colonel Omar Shaaban."
I wonder if he is any relation to Bouthaina Shaaban, the régime's chief propagandist. This is like stories about cycling that ignore the hundreds mown down by car drivers, to focus on one pedestrian who stepped out in front of a bike.

'There is no sectarianism in the army':
Syria’s war – the general’s view

How low Fisk has fallen. He gives a coded message to his left wing readers that he's not totally taken by the general, "And that, of course, is exactly what the British Army used to say in Northern Ireland when it was also searching people's homes." But it is just a thin veneer over his peddling of every lie the general tells. And there must be a foreign conspiracy against Syria because Robert Fisk has seen Belgian weapons in government hands in Aleppo. He is no longer a journalist, unlike those his friends in the Syrian government have kidnapped and murdered.

Syria: After three years of horror, the West's kneejerk peaceniks have some explaining to do

I'm uneasy about the politics of condemnation, and while Bloodworth may be opposed in legacy to the Iraq war, many of those he has politically associated with were gung-ho then, lending credibility to the peaceniks' justification for their cautious approach. Mind you, this is bang on, and a truth often deliberately hidden.
"This isn’t ‘collateral damage’ either, to use the ugly euphemism. This is the result of a deliberate war being waged against the civilian population of Syria by the thuggish Ba’athist regime. The Syrian government’s position is to make life for those living in opposition areas as difficult as possible. This is why it has been bombing and shelling civilians, denying them access to UN-ordered cross-border assistance and blocking vaccination efforts in opposition held areas."

THREE YEARS LATER, SOUTH SYRIA’S DARAA PROVINCE LOCKED IN STALEMATE
'In February, as rumors circulated that Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and others would redouble efforts to arm Syria’s rebels with heavier weaponry, local groups announced a slew of unifications. But thus far, says Bardam, rebels are still waiting.
“Obviously, the main reason [rebels have yet to advance] is that no new weapons have arrived,” he said.
Instead, they make do with what they can make or capture. Rebel groups “have what are considered ‘individual weapons,’ in addition to whatever they can capture from regime forces,” he said.'

Al-Qa'ida, the second act: Syria’s secular uprising has been hijacked by jihadists

"Why has the Syrian uprising, whose early supporters demanded that tyranny should be replaced by a secular, non-sectarian, law-bound and democratic state, so totally failed to achieve these aims?"
Because Assad has plenty of weapons, but only the Islamic factions have had a regular supply of weapons. Cockburn continues the fantasy that the solution is to end the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Peace will come when Assad is gone, but that's not on Cockburn's agenda for Syrians at all. At least he's not among the genocide deniers, though his use of the kidnap of Razan Zaitouneh to discredit the whole idea of armed resistance is unreasonable.

Three years since war began in Syria, ordinary people remain the real victims
This is a nasty piece, writing off the rebels as "hate-filled fighter(s)" and "various groups that want to kill each other".

DESPERATE CHILDREN PRETEND THEY GO TO SCHOOL, SAYS LATAKIA HOUSEWIFE
"This year, we reopened a school with the help of the rebels after the regime destroyed all the schools in our area."

Syrians must not let the extremists undermine their revolution"The negligible support that moderate rebels received from the international community, often in the form of nonlethal aid such as communications equipment and night-vision goggles, at a time when Gulf donors were busy supplying cash and weapons to more extreme factions, proved another crucial factor in the ongoing marginalization of moderate elements from the scene, allowing for the effective hijacking of the revolution by extremists."

WH orders Syrian embassy and consulates shuttered

It's not actually. ISIS have committed lesser crimes than Assad, and against actual rebels, not against Assad.
"It’s possible that this report from UN human-rights investigators could have prompted this, but it’s just as condemnatory on Assad’s enemies as the Assad regime:

Jihadist rebels have carried out mass executions of detainees in Syria, UN human rights investigators say.
The commission of inquiry’s latest report documents several incidents blamed on the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
Government forces are meanwhile accused of sharply increasing their use of indiscriminate weapons, such as barrel-bombs, against civilians. …"

This is on point though:
"Some might find it a surprise that we still have diplomatic relations at all with Assad, but that’s been a relic of the initial conclusion by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that Assad was a “reformer.” Even after demanding Assad’s resignation, freezing his assets, and threatening to bomb Assad’s forces for crossing the “red line” of chemical-weapons use, the US and Syria have maintained diplomatic relations. Suddenly closing off consular services seems like small potatoes in comparison."

Syria: The Battle Beyond

Educated, middle-class Syrian exiles share their thoughts on the revolution and their determination to return home
"I talk a lot about Ghouta because I love it."

Revolutionary Left Current in Syria: Establishment of the “People’s Liberation Faction” to commemorate the third anniversary of the Syrian Revolution"We see that our revolution is part of the struggles of the global toiling masses, of the oppressed and of the marginalized everywhere for freedom, equality, social justice and socialism. We see it in the struggle of the Palestinian people to recover all its land and rights, in the struggle of the peasants without land and labor in Latin America, in the strikes of the miners in South Africa and in other countries, in the struggle of the masses in Europe against neoliberalism and capitalist globalization, in the struggle of the oppressed workers of Southeast Asia, in the struggle of women for their rights and equality throughout the world...
The time has come, at that particular moment of the revolution, for the revolutionary left current to play its role in the popular armed struggle through the establishment of the People’s liberation faction without giving up for a single moment all forms of peaceful mass struggle that allow us to confront both the violent fascist regime and the reactionary counter-revolutionary forces. This is the road for the victory of the popular revolution, in rooting its nature in democracy and socialism from below, in defending the immediate and general interests of the popular classes, in securing the independence of the will of the people from any imperialist or regional intervention from any foreign power, and in recovering our occupied territories of the Golan by all means possible."