Angelina Jolie makes brief, unannounced visit to Lebanon

"Their memories of Syria are fading. They have stopped counting the days in displacement. Nothing is certain and they feel abandoned."

Incomplete victories: Civilians call on rebels to focus efforts on airports

'If a small demonstration in a small town in Syria’s north is any indication, citizens are openly beginning to demand action to stop air raids, or else be considered complicit in them. As one child’s sign at the Maarat A-Numan protest read: “If you can strike the airport and you don’t, you’re a partner in our killing.” '

Worst Month Yet for Attacks on Hospitals in Syrian Conflict

'The Syrian government’s dramatic spike in the number of attacks on medical facilities appears to be in retaliation for recent advances by opposition groups across Idlib and Hama governorates.
“After losing territory to opposition forces, Assad responds by attacking civilians and the health care system – killing the very people who strive to save lives in the midst of war,” said Brown. “Assad is punishing people who are beyond the reach of his repressive security forces.” '

Children’s drawings offer insights into the terror of Syria’s war

“Syria is not always drawn as a place of cruelty, but as a green space, with water and tranquility, as if they have remained attached to the ‘before’ in the hope of going back, as if nothing had disturbed that harmony.”

Syria’s remaining hospitals under bombardment

It is Assad who is bombing hospitals, not the rebels. Why then does Alex Thomson blame unnamed external superpowers for prolonging the conflict, as if it were all sides that are doing this, rather than that backed by Iran and Russia?

Is Iran paying Afghan mercenaries to fight in Syria?

"From there, some have joined the fight against IS."
Half a minute in, James Lobel uses these words, which ruin his report. The Iranians are recruiting Shi'ites wherever they can to prop up Assad's sectarian régime fighting against the real rebels, but according to this account, they are going to fight the people who chop people's heads off and make sex slaves of Yazidi women. Not cool. Maybe not anti-Muslim in intent, but all the claims that Muslims in Syria are all crazy jihadists, if you give weapons to so-called moderates they will only end up with ISIS, have the same effect. Note too that the video of captured Afghans, from the Revolutionary Forces of Syria media office, is labelled as "couldn't be independently verified", like every demonstration of the facts from the rebels opposed to both Assad and ISIS since the revolution (or bitter civil war if you will) began. Assad's pronouncements are not labelled, "could not be independently verified", just the occasional vague doubt expressed when he comes out with the most blatant lies, such as there being no barrel bombs. This is how the anti-Syrian media narrative is created, by allowing confusion to prevail, making it all about ISIS, with it looking like Assad and the Iranians are fighting them.
I see that rs21 have a new magazine out tomorrow, with a picture of migrants in a boat, and the headline "Borders Kill". I would hope that it would point out that the largest group of refugees trying to get to Europe are Syrians, that they are overwhelmingly fleeing from Assad, not from "the conflict in Syria", and that the reason they have to flee is that the US has refused to allow the Syrian rebels the anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons that could have brought Assad's rain of terror to an end. But I don't expect it to say anything of the kind.

Seventy powers demand Syria barrel bombings end

Veronica Ramadan: "Great, another 'outraged' statement to add to four-and-a-half years' worth of 'outraged' statements - heaven forbid any of the powers actually DO SOMETHING to help protect Syrians and stop Assad's genocide..."

Witnesses of Assad's Chlorine Warfare in Syria Issue Emotional Plea for Help From Congress

 'Dr. Annie Sparrow, a pediatrician and health activist who has worked on the Syrian border since 2012, told the committee the Assad regime has only targeted civilian populations with improvised barrel bombs and chlorine gas attacks.

 “I'm a doctor, and I'm very familiar with death. But I have never seen a more obscene way to kill children. I've never watched so many suffer in such an obscene manner,” Sparrow said. “Our preoccupation with ISIS is distracting us from these systematic assaults on civilian homes and neighborhoods and hospitals and schools.” '

Syrian doctors to show the US evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons

"Recent reports suggest that militant forces in Syria, including Isis, are developing a chemical weapons capability of their own."
My apologies if this has already been pointed out, but it is a libel on the Syrian rebel groups fighting Assad that they have done any such thing, just as it was a lie two years ago when it was claimed that such rebel groups attacked themselves with sarin. This libel should not be reproduced in a respectable newspaper.

'Elephant rockets' kill dozens in Damascus suburb

"The Syrian government has used so-called elephant rockets in an attack on the Damascus suburb of Douma, killing at least 36 people, including children, according to activists.

The rockets, named after the distinctive noise they make when they are launched, are improvised weapons made by attaching rocket motors to much larger bombs - a process that increases their destructive power while greatly reducing accuracy.

Speaking in the US on Tuesday, John Kerry, secretary of state, said he was confident Assad's government was responsible for a "preponderance" of chemical attacks against his own people.
"I think everybody's patience is wearing thin with respect to the extraordinary depravity of the weaponry and mechanisms for delivery which Assad has used against his own people," he said."
I think the Syrian people's patience with John Kerry's half-hearted condemnations, and double-act with the Russians to do nothing, is wearing thin.

Ecos del Desgarro

"A self-managed and collective documentary about the activists of the Syrian revolution.
The story of an impossible revolution."
In English, Spanish and Arabic, with English subtitles.
"More than 15 kids between 12 to 15 years-old, got arrested because they wrote on the wall of their schools, that the people want to end the regime."

Damascus suburb hit by poison gas remains cut off, besieged

'Dr. Muhammad Kattub, a doctor who last year escaped eastern Ghouta and moved to Gaziantep, a town in Turkey, said that doctors come in contact daily with children who lose consciousness because of malnutrition. He recalled advising a mother to feed her daughter three spoons of yogurt a day.

“The mother said she can’t, because she has two daughters, and she feeds them by turn, one child each day,” he said.'

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/12/269736/damascus-suburb-hit-by-poison.html#storylink=cpy