Art is a luxury in Syria

 "Some musicians, for example, write songs that are influenced by traditional Syrian music, but they mix it with rock – especially Pink Floyd. We love Pink Floyd! They wrote revolution songs."

Like a Child Looking into a Candy Store

 'Eventually, the blackouts were officially blamed on a cat getting into an electric transformer. Turks on social media had a lot of fun with jokes about the “Kedi Lobisi”, the sinister cat lobby that had tried to derail the elections. The highlight of my week was the very serious statement on the part of the Turkish Union of Electrical Engineers, to the effect that it was impossible for a cat to get into an electric transformer and cause a blackout. Turkey, one can’t help but love it.

 Three months later, there would of course be nothing funny about the charade of an election held in Syria. It was the typical Assad-orchestrated made-for-TV spectacle that Syrians had seen played out time and again for over forty years, and it would neither enhance the regime’s position or solve the country’s conflict. It was a lesson the Assad family had yet again failed to learn.

 But for me personally, watching the Turkish elections would be an education I would never forget, and seeing a democracy in action only made me want it that much more for my own society. Someday, the war in Syria will be over, and Syrians will have the luxury of complaining about the loud election-vans blaring out music and slogans.

 And I’ll be there to remind them of what it was like before we had the vans.'

George Butler draws the Syrian refugees in Lebanon

 'The family that brought these belongings from Syria arrived in Lebanon from the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk. George had drawn one leg on the doll and, before he could draw the second leg the youngest girl asked: “Why does my doll only have one leg?” She then asked the room if the missing leg had been lost during the war. No adults present had any response. Children regularly express confused and troubled notions about the war and parents express deep concern regarding the effects of the prolonged and extreme trauma children are suffering.'

Amnesty says ISIS killed seven children in north

 'The al-Qaeda-linked group is currently battling rival rebels in the north, as well as the Syrian government.'

 It isn't battling the Syrian government, but is fighting those actually rebelling against Assad, so perhaps this report should commence, "Seven children were among 15 civilians killed by jihadist allies of Assad." That might make things clearer.

The Betrayal of the Intellectuals on Syria

 Louis Proyect:

 'Now in its bloody third year of warfare against its own population, the Ba‘athist dictatorship in Syria has reached a level of criminality that demands comparison with Franco’s Spain. How and why some of the West’s most prominent intellectuals continue to make excuses for Bashaar al-Assad demands an answer. Here I hope to provide such an answer, as well as to recommend an alternative intellectual and moral approach.'

After Assad’s poll victory, fear grips Syrians who didn’t vote

 'Those who know how much I oppose Assad already know that I didn’t go, and those who don’t know can keep their illusions,” he said.'

 That's the truth of these elections, that most Syrians won't vote, and many of those who do do only because they are scared of torture and murder by a state that does so all the time. Not so Robert Fisk*. He thinks that those who voted are good Arabs who are Western democrats like us, while the bad Arabs are scary in their Islamic clothes. I've seen a lot of people write a lot of ignorant things about Syrians, that those who are fighting Assad are jihadists and proxies for America, but this is one of the most blatantly racist things I've seen in the mainstream media.

 'Is it by chance that the Arab peoples who were influenced by European politics over the past 150 years - the ones who generally wear Western clothes rather than Arab robes and whose forefathers read Voltaire and Rousseau and the great Victorians - imbibed the ideals of representative government? And does this explain why the Gulf Arabs, proud in their 'abayas', largely - but not entirely - show little interest in parliamentary democracy?'

The Independent did at least print this letter** from the Chief of Staff to the president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition,

 'Assad caused the negotiations in Geneva to collapse by refusing to accept political transition as per the Geneva Communiqué road map. Since it seems that he only understands force, the West should help the moderate opposition with arms and training.

 If Assad is not tackled, he will end up ruling over a brutalised and devastated section of Syria, and continue with his war, causing the escalation of a historic-scale humanitarian catastrophe, and also the strengthening of extremists, as moderates are frustrated and weakened.'

*[http://www.independent.co.uk/…/syria-election-bombs-and-the…]
**[http://www.independent.co.uk/…/letters-breakaway-london-goo…]

Has Iran prevented the Syrian regime's collapse?

 'Iran’s giving up on Bashar al-Assad, who gave up all Arab relations for Iran’s sake, is difficult. But what’s even more difficult is for Iran to win its Syrian bet. This is unlikely for the simple reason that the sweeping majority of the Syrian people don’t want Iran. If it had been possible to eliminate the Syrian people, their revolution would not have lasted for over three years and despite all the injustice and backstabbing practiced against them from inside and outside Syria.'

Syria: Remains of a State

 "Where in the world do you butcher people with a saw?"

 "The régime is all lies. Even Israel would not do this to us."

 "Nobody is giving any support, not the Arab countries or the West. They support lip service, nothing more."

Supporting grassroots movements in Syria

 Leila Al Shami:

 'Our failure to engage in social struggles as we find them leaves them open to being monopolized by reactionary forces. Practical solidarity with the Syrian revolution has come mainly from political Islamists and this of course raises broader issues as to what the left can learn from political Islamists as to the meaning and nature of solidarity, why the left complains about the dominance of Islamists when it has left the stage wide open to them and why the left continues to believe that fighting a tyrannical regime is somehow the exclusive domain of secular leftists. The left will have no voice if it does not engage to actively support comrades in the struggle instead of limiting its activities to criticizing those who do.'

David Cameron: Syria terror threat 'more dangerous' than Afghanistan

 "We should be backing the legitimate democratic opposition not with weapons but with support, advice to try to help them get both sides to the negotiating table."

 Forcing Syrians to accept Assad's continuation is what creates the despair of terrorism. I heard the hollow phrase, "Western-backed opposition", from Jeremy Bowen on the BBC again this morning.

Syria’s ‘western-backed’ rebels? Not in weapons

 'After the Geneva peace talks floundered this year, rebel leaders say Washington began training small groups of carefully vetted mainstream rebel groups in Qatar and supplying them with TOW anti-tank missiles, but these have done nothing to offset the regime’s air power.

 In the meantime, rebel groups have continued to all sorts of captured and homemade weapons, including something as crude as medieval-style catapults and trebuchets, to launch explosives at regime targets.'

 It has been said many times that those who identify themselves as anti-imperialists have nothing to say about the billions of dollars of weaponry the Assad régime has received from its backer Russia, with which it has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, by contrast with the US airstrikes, which were never going to happen, and were a convenient way to salve Western liberal consciences with the idea that they were saving Syrians from war.

Syria, Sy Hersh, and the Art of Mass-crime Revisionism

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad:

 'Before looking at Hersh’s evidence for these claims, his editors should have asked the obvious questions: If Assad’s opponents are in possession of sarin and ballistic missiles, why have they never used them for battlefield advantage? If the opposition were determined to trigger Western intervention by any means, including fratricide, wouldn’t the likely agent be the West-friendly Free Syrian Army (FSA) rather than the intransigent Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that is itself in Western crosshairs? (The United States has designated it a foreign terrorist organization.) If the United States were determined to intervene, as Hersh insists it was, would it confine itself to a doubtful chemical pretext when there were so many indubitable humanitarian ones to avail? If the regime was innocent, why did it deny UN investigators access to the site for four days and subject the area to unrelenting artillery fire?[i] Why would Turkey, a country that has no chemical weapons program, risk its membership in NATO — and, potentially, future membership of the EU — by manufacturing sarin, and do so specifically for a clumsy false flag operation?

 For the London Review of Books, it appears, the Syrians are proxies in an ideological battle. Far easier to entertain a conspiracy theory, however far-fetched, than to accept that Obama and the intelligence community might be right about the Syrian people’s tormentor. The magazine has now published four articles laying Assad’s crimes on his victims. Yet it hasn’t allowed a single Syrian to write about the conflict. It might, for example, have considered speaking to the first responders; it could, for instance, have allowed the survivors to tell their stories. But this might cause cognitive dissonance. Accepting that Assad might be responsible for his own crimes means questioning, or at least qualifying, the axiom that the United States is the exclusive font of all evil.

 By now even the most dogmatic among Hersh’s publishers must have realized that they were hoaxed. Their ideological proclivities and eagerness for clicks made the deception easier. They got played — they relayed what is in effect pro-fascist propaganda. If they have any concern for their credibility, they would reveal the name of their source — or be forever associated with a monstrous hoax.'

Syria's refugee exodus

 'The first waves of refugees began leaving Syria amid a government crackdown on
street protests. Anti-government demonstrations began in March in the southern city
of Deraa following the arrest and torture of a group of teenagers who painted
revolutionary slogans on a wall. By July, hundreds of thousands were taking to the
streets. Government forces responded with large-scale military operations...
The beginning of 2013 saw growing numbers of people flee. Deraa, Homs, Aleppo
and Damascus saw most leave. Government forces, boosted by fighters from the
Lebanese Shia Islamist movement Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militias, recaptured key
areas and reports emerged that chemical weapons had been used.'

Father's plea for six-year-old British boy trapped in Syria

 Like millions of Syrians, he is held hostage by the Assad régime.

 'He has not spoken to his son for four months, but was told he was living out in the open under olive trees, after their neighbour's home was struck by a bomb.

 He said Muadh was "absolutely traumatised", had stopped speaking and clings to his mother's side, too frightened to leave her.

 He also believed his son had developed a squint in his right eye, which required urgent medical treatment.

 Daraa is a 15 minute drive away from the border with Jordan, but it is closed.'

Syria's Election May Be a Sham, But Assad Survival Still Surprising

 This sort of " I'm not pro-Assad, but...", is very like, " I'm not a racist, but...". The rebels who were starved out of Homs have relocated to fight on other fronts. I could go through Bill Neely's talking points, seeing a pro-Assad bias in all of them.

 'The rebels who vowed to fight until he fell are retreating and his opponents are in disarray across the country.

 The West will have to live with a leader who is popular with significant sections of the Syrian people, not only his own Alawite sect, but Christians and many Sunni Muslims who now fear the rise of al-Qaeda linked militias and see Assad’s iron fist as, ironically, the only way of preserving a more tolerant Syria.'

No Holds Barred

 'Syria is the victim of a Western conspiracy, masterminded by the USA, Israel and the Gulf states. Some 160,000 dead, the destruction of almost the entire infrastructure, the disintegration of the country, the uprooting of half the population – all this is presented as self-defence by the heroic Syrian regime in its battle against ruthless imperialists.

 This may seem absurd, yet the Syrian regime's strategy of turning facts on their head for propaganda purposes has been remarkably successful to date.

 The Assad regime is currently doing all it can to present itself as the lesser evil or the secular alternative.

 Some Western media makers, experts and politicians would be happy to believe that it is – especially as the Syrian opposition is no stranger to propaganda either and it is becoming increasingly clear that many of Assad's opponents are not in favour of democracy. Yet the fact remains that the main responsibility for the emergence of the conflict, for the mass destruction and murder in Syria, lies with the Assad regime. On 3 June 2014, what's at stake in Syria is not "sawa", not jointly repairing the country, but whether the Assad clan will maintain its grip on power.'

Talking to Qusai Zakarya

 "Bashar al-Assad is the cancer. We cannot keep giving bandages; we need to operate and take the cancer out, and we need more support for the FSA."

Syria War SITREP After the Kerry-Lavrov Deal

 'The price Assad's side has paid for these limited gains has been so high that I don't see how they can endure much more to defeat a rebellion that does not lose its will to fight.

 And with our external arms and training and other support, there is no reason for the rebels to give up before the government does.'

Syrian Regime Hunts Down Men Dodging Mandatory Army Service

 'Across the country, an increasing number of would-be soldiers are ducking Syria's mandatory 18-month military service requirement.

 In most cases, the young men are either hiding out — or taking up arms for the opposition.

 Hossam, a 26-year-old from Hama, has been summoned by the Syrian army to fulfill the compulsory 18-month service required of all young men here. But three years into a conflict that has killed more than 62,800 fighters from all sides, he is refusing to comply.

 "The Syrian army is no longer the nation's army, and nothing motivates me to join it," he says.'

 And that's why Assad isn't going to win, however many bombs he drops trying. This fracturing for society is ignored by those who have looked at the balance of weaponry held by Assad and the opposition and assumed inevitable victory for the former.

Reading Between the Lines

 'Within the currently prevailing dynamics, in which moderate insurgent forces remain comparatively weak man-for-man, it could be argued that it is too soon for Friends of Syria states to encourage moderates to actively oppose Jabhat al-Nusra on the ground. In the immediate term, doing so would also pose a significant risk to the prospects of ongoing battles with the government. Like it or not, FSA-branded groups are coordinating dozens of ongoing operations with Jabhat al-Nusra across the country.

 The unrivalled ability of Jabhat al-Nusra suicide operatives to break through established military defenses makes it a force that the insurgency as a whole would struggle to live without, for now. After all, the recent gains in Idlib between 23-26 May were only made possible by at least six large suicide vehicle bombings, all by Jabhat al-Nusra fighters (including an American national, "Abu Hurayrah al-Amriki"). Without more sophisticated heavy weaponry, moderate insurgent forces have simply proven incapable of exerting anything matching equal force.

 This may be a controversial thing to admit, but without doing so, one risks further jeopardizing the prospects of the military opposition to one day attain at least a favorable political solution. The West's sustained failure to sufficiently support the moderate Syrian opposition means we are now faced with dynamics that cannot be overturned at the click of a finger.

 Recent coverage regarding President Obama's purported decision to establish a military program for training moderate insurgent forces is a much-needed first step on this road ahead. But make no mistake, much more will ne necessary to turn the tide of the conflict. Patience is wearing thin within moderate insurgent circles and without a genuine qualitative and quantitative enhancement in military support, it is only a matter of time before the West loses any of its remaining leverage over internal conflict dynamics.'

Jeffrey Goldberg’s Whitewashing of Obama’s Syria Policy

 'After more than three years of genocidal slaughter in Syria, it is time to face the fact that Barack Obama was never serious at all in seeing Assad deposed. Not only has the Obama administration never contemplated getting involved in Syria the same way it did in Libya, it has done everything in its power to make sure the Syrian opposition never got the kind of arms and assistance that would have changed the balance of power on the battlefield.'

‘Friends’ of #Syria: Right Direction, Wrong Speed

 ' "[The opposition] need[s] the force they have now, which is trying to protect local villages and try to harass the regime and level the playing field. They need something that eventually will be able to hold ground. And they need a counterterror capability – all of which is responsive to Syrians. And we are not on a path currently to provide that. … That’s the conversation that we [West and its allies — NGS] need to have."

 This is good news for the revolution but it is too little help and too slow in coming. It is a positive development compared to their previous policy of imposing a heavy arms embargo on the Free Syrian Army but negative compared to what can and should be done to the save the Syrian people and their revolution.'

Obama: Not every problem has military solution

 The BBC just had the strapline, "Obama Says There Is No Military Solution In Syria". Not quite true.

 'The president also discussed ways to provide more help for rebels in Syria battling Bashar al-Assad's government.'

Syrian pianist pursuing dream at UW-Eau Claire

 "I quickly got involved and was very enthusiastic about the revolution," said Hanana, who also worked as a music theory teacher at a Damascus music school. "In addition to teaching, I worked in community service just like everybody else because a lot of people needed help. But then friends started disappearing. Friends were kidnapped and tortured and many wouldn't come back. It was intense."

Britons accused of brutal killings

 'In a letter to The Times, Brig-Gen Abdulellah al-Basheer of the Free Syrian Army asks for help in curbing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. He claims the group attacks opposition forces, not the Assad regime.

 "We the Syrian people now experience beheadings, crucifixions, beatings, murders, outdated methods of treating women, an obsolete approach to governing society. Many who participate in these activities are British. The UK and US governments must support us to defeat terrorism in Syria and prevent it from being exported to Europe and the US." '

Syrian cell phone war doc humbles Cannes

 'In Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait, which Mohammed said took about 12 month to film, a young teenage protestor stripped to his underpants is forced to kiss the boots of an army officer before he is raped. "I don't know how the soldiers feel," said Mohammed. "They are also the victims of this horrible, corrupt and barbaric regime."

 In another image in the film, a father recounts how his son's finger nails were pulled out after he was caught writing anti-government messages on a wall. "Nobody knows what the coming days will bring us," said Bedrixan, who was in Cannes for the film's screening.'

Despite Assad’s assertions, civil war is not over

 'The Assad regime bears the majority of the blame for turning a beautiful country into a war zone. But there is much blame to go around. The Washington Post asked the question squarely: “Why did we allow Syria to become a hell on Earth?” That is true. Inaction by the United States has allowed Mr Al Assad to gain the upper hand. It is only because of the tenacity of the rebels that there is still a revolution to speak of.

 Syria is already a hell on Earth. The only question now is how long must it remain so before the international community involves itself in a meaningful way?'

U.S. inaction on Syria helped make it a hell on earth

 'For more than three years, President Obama has resisted advice from inside and outside his administration to abandon his passivity and do something to help Syria — not to send ground troops, the straw man his spokesmen regularly erect to fend off criticism, but rather to train and equip the rebels or to help patrol a safe zone for them to evade Mr. Assad’s depredations. Mr.Obama’s excuses have varied: Mr. Assad’s downfall was inevitable with or without U.S. involvement; the rebels weren’t deserving of U.S. help; anything the United States did would make things worse.

 But without U.S. involvement, the worst-case predictions are coming true: More than 160,000 people have been killed, more than 9 million have been displaced from their homes, and terrorists allied with al-Qaeda are establishing safe zones from which they can attack Europe and the United States.'

Video shows chlorine gas floating in streets

 'A freelance photographer told Reuters he arrived at the scene of the attack an hour after a helicopter dropped the bomb.

 "The smell of chlorine was very obvious. It smelt like vinegar, or bleach. I started to cough and hyperventilate. My eyes were burning," he said.'

Mercy Corps forced to close Damascus operations

 'Leading provider of aid in Syria told by Assad officials not to operate in opposition-held areas in defiance of UN resolution.

 "Humanitarian relief has become so politicised because it was a big step for the Syrians to acknowledge that they could no longer control the whole country and for Russia to acknowledge that those who were suffering were real people, not terrorists. It defied both their narratives." '

 It also disrupts the narrative of those "anti-imperialists" for whom there is no suffering if it is at the hands of a non-Western backed dictator, there aren't really any rebel-held areas, there is no genocidal policy by the régime.

Russia blocks ICC action on Syria, heightening 'anti-war' contradiction

 'The "anti-war" left is simply getting everything backwards this time—essentially serving as the propaganda arm of a fascistic one-family regime that continues even now to use chemical weapons against its own people.

 While ultimately, I suppose I share Anderson's position of supporting the Syrian revolution while opposing US military intervention, I can't merely state "Against US attacks!" and "Against the Assad regime!" (with exclamation points), as if there were no contradiction there. The Syrian left-opposition groups that oppose Western intervention, like the Revolutionary Left Current, are now a fairly marginal force within the civil resistance movement—which has itself been significantly sidelined by the armed insurgent groups.

 And the notion that anti-imperialist principles mean we must oppose even intervention against a genocidal regime strikes me as hardly less problematic than supporting intervention. I see this as a genuine moral dilemma. But I'm clear on this: We, as "anti-war" voices in the West must put solidarity with the Syrian revolution front and center—not opposing purely hypothetical military adventures (as opposed to Assad's extremely real ones), or imaginary "destabilization" campaigns.'

For those who think Labour chose the wrong Miliband …

 Owen Jones' scenario for what would have happened if David Miliband had been leader of the Labour Party shows what a wanker Owen Jones is.

 'Labour's support for the disastrous US-British bombing of Syria brought back bad memories of Blair and Iraq. And as well as triggering regional conflict, the intervention appeared to shore up Syrian support for President Assad. The west was now portrayed as the new allies of al-Qaida. As the tide turned in favour of the dictator, every time a rebel-held town fell to the regime, the misjudged western bombing campaign was blamed.'

The West must stay the course in southern Syria

 A number of untruths about weaponry in Syria have been designed to discourage support for the Syrian rebels. One of the more transparently baseless was that whatever weaponry was provided by the West or their puppets/puppet-masters in the Persian Gulf, the Russians would simply provide more to Assad in retaliation, without making it clear how bombing the shit out of more civilian neighbourhoods would help him win the war or be acceptable blackmail to give in to.

 And as it turned out the Russians have continued to fight the Syrian war on the cheap, letting the Iranians and Hezbollah make themselves unpopular by doing the actual murdering in Syria. And there were every possible variety of Don't You Know You'd Only Be Creating A Level Killing Field? by those casting this as a civil war with roughly equal support to both sides, rather than a revolution where only those committed to the régime don't want it gone, with only its massive firepower advantage keeping it on life support. But rather than Assad being an eternal feature, as the war drags on, more people in the government held areas will wonder if the only way for it to end is for Assad to go, which will cause the torturers and murder gangs that are the government forces to crack down on any indication of dissent what soever, creating an intolerable situation with revolution the only tolerable answer.

 If Assad does persist, there is going to be exactly the opposite result to that the realists suggest, not a calming of the situation, but an increase in all the indicators of instability. It will be hard to see how the régime will be able to present itself as at all legitimate when it gets to force more than half the population out of the country entirely, but may stagger on if it can't be knocked over. Again in contrast to the realists, the evidence of the last three years is that it is the lack of support to those most interested in a striaghtforward revolution that has encouraged the growth of extreme Islamism. If Assad persists, the entire country isn't going to turn into an al-Qaida support group, but it will be far more messed up than it ever had the need to be.



 There is quite an accurate assessment of the size of the rebel forces, but much less understanding of the relationship between them, by another pro-Israeli analyst here*, whose analysis falls short because he looks at all the groups through the focus of their expressed attitude towards Israel, rather than the struggle in Syria they are actually engaged in. The piece is worth reading though, and I might get back to it at some point.

 'As an extremist group which owes its existence to the West’s reluctance to act in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra’s behavior in Deraa is a clear sign of desperation. The aging US-made TOW anti-tank missiles which recently appeared in the hands of approximately 12 FSA units have already boosted American credibility in both northern and southern Syria.

 The Assad regime and jihadist rebels are undoubtedly pinning their hopes on the West’s track record of abandoning Syria’s moderates at the most inopportune times.

 In its efforts to discredit Western involvement, Nusra will likely spare no effort to get its hands on some of these systems. As this media-savvy group is surely aware, videos of their fighters with these weapons appearing on American television screens will deter the Obama administration from transferring even more potent arms into the coffers of Syria’s rapidly-rebounding moderates. With President Obama weighing a request by Syrian National Coalition leader Ahmed Jarba to provide anti-aircraft missiles to selected rebel units, Nusra’s window of opportunity is closing.'

*[http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/180622…]

The rebel leader behind tunnel bombs

 'If Assad had bombed your family and friends, I'm pretty sure anyone with the nads and know-how would have done the same.'

How the West reports the Syrian news

 Yassin al-Haj Saleh:

 'I believe that if what’s happened to us over the past three years happened in Britain, and if Tony Blair had destroyed a quarter of Birmingham, for example, and had already killed 25,000 of its inhabitants in a previous generation, then passed on the rule of the United Kingdom to his son who had studied medicine in Syria, and when a revolution broke out against Blair Jr., he carried out massacres in scores of British towns, and attacked Bradford with chemical weapons, and destroyed Sheffield with war planes, and launched Scud missiles on Manchester, and killed 11,000 Britons with torture and starvation in the prisons of his security forces….if something approaching this happened, the British would behave in a very similar manner to the way Syrians are acting today. We’d see the appearance of narrow-minded extremists, and maybe Blair Jr. would secretly fund some extremist groups so that he could say he’s fighting against terrorism, etc., etc..

 And maybe some Syrian journalists who knew a few words of English would attribute, in their media coverage, all of the violence and brutality to the nature of Britain and the religion of her inhabitants, or to a conspiracy by India, Egypt and France against the Blair Jr. government, which opposes Indian imperialism!'

Searching for a ‘realistic’ solution in Syria has inflamed the conflict

 Idrees Ahmad:

 'If neoconservatism is an ideology of intervention, realism sustains the status quo – sometimes to equally disastrous effect.

 Syria is once again testing the limits of realism.

 The US could have potentially played a constructive role in Syria. Instead, it offered hot rhetoric and minimal support. Indeed, it placed restrictions on the supply of weapons to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for fear that they might be turned on its ally, Israel.

 Starved for arms, the FSA withered and the vacuum was filled by the hardline Jabhat Al Nusra and the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – the latter with the tacit approval of the regime. For Mr Al Assad, the jihadists were a boon. He could cite them to launder his repression as a war against terrorism.

 The rhetoric played well in Washington – especially with realists. Just as realists had justified support for some of the more odious regimes during the Cold War on “national interest” grounds, some are now arguing for a rapprochement with Mr Al Assad to thwart terrorists.

 “Do we really want the alternative” – Mr Crocker asks, for example – “a major country at the heart of the Arab world in the hands of Al Qaeda?” Mr Al Assad may be bad, he says, but the alternative “is something worse”. Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden echoes this assessment.

 This is a false choice. True, Mr Al Assad is winning, but that is only because he has complete impunity. His air force bombs at will; his armour is impenetrable to most of the rebels’ rudimentary arms; he even gets away with using chemical weapons.All of this could change if his air force were made vulnerable. This could be achieved either by arming the rebels with more anti-aircraft weapons or by imposing a no-fly zone.'

Syrian Islamists’ call for a free state likely directed at West

 “The Syrian revolution . . . is based on morals and values with the objective of achieving freedom, justice and security to the entire Syrian society with its diverse multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian social fabric,” the statement says. “The Syrian people aim to establish a state of law, freedom and justice without any pressure or dictations.”

Syrian soccer goalie-turned-rebel becomes icon

 "He is one of the true revolutionaries who never strayed from the goal of this uprising, which is bringing down this regime."

Air defence chief Gen Hussein Ishaq killed

 'The air defence forces' headquarters is in a fiercely contested area of the current fighting around Damascus, AFP news agency reports.

 The rebels do not have an air force, the agency adds, so forces under Gen Ishaq's command have rarely been deployed for air defence.'

 The Argentinian air force used to take rebels and suspected rebels and drop them tied and blindfolded into the Atlantic. The Syrian airforce is too lazy, or has too many people to kill, to do that.

Turkey: Deterrence failing, Ukraine crisis partly result of Syria inaction

 'The United States, and the West at large, has appeared reluctant to become entangled in the Syrian civil war.

 President Barack Obama set a “red-line” for the Assad regime – the use of chemical weapons – but when that line was crossed he opted for a Russia-brokered diplomatic deal with the Syrian regime, rather than forceful intervention.'

 Invading Syria and doing nothing are not the only options here.

The war on bread

 “Did you ever see a starving person? I hope you never may,” wrote an American college professor, almost a hundred years ago, in the country then known as Greater Syria. “No matter how emaciated a person may be from disease he never looks exactly like the person suffering from pangs of hunger. It is indefinable but when you have once seen it you can never mistake it, nor ever forget it.”

In the Syrian Prison: Disconnected and Desubjectified

 'According to the testimonies of many survivors, there are growing numbers of detainees, arrested for involvement in peaceful demonstrations or relief work, who may have perished in detention and their bodies buried in secret mass graves. The testimonies of survivors frequently point to how detainees face a crushing limited space and excessive overpopulation in the place of detention. The extreme conditions of torture become routine. Violence and inhuman degradation are not confined to interrogation sessions, but appear to be part and parcel of the life of an inmate in a Syrian detention center.'

Not all fighters going to Syria are extremists

 ' ''The point I was making is that we should not jump to conclusions that the young people who want to fight are extremists,'' he said.'

 The point I might make is that extremism in defence of liberty is no vice, a point first made by Barry Goldwater when running for the US presidency, though in his case I think by liberty he meant racism.

 Shahid Malik was saying this while a guest of the Qatari government, so those who would rather nothing was done about Assad would say this is him trying to get in with them, and they are probably right. But it is still much preferable to politicians who label the fight for Syria's freedom as jihad.

This spread of 'holy fascism' is a disaster

 'The result is deepening sectarianism as Shia are targeted as non-Muslims, and non-Muslims of all descriptions are forced to flee, so that countries such as Iraq and Syria are being emptied of Christians who have lived in them for almost 2,000 years.'

 Oh, that's why there are nine million refugees from Syria, not because Assad has bombed them to Hell. I bet the Saudis wish they'd supported the Iranians in killing lots of Sunni Muslims in Syria instead.

 'There are signs that the Saudi rulers may now be coming to regret giving quite so much support to the jihadis trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In the past few days, they have invited the Iranian foreign minister to visit the kingdom. But it may be too late: having had their government denounce Mr Assad as the root of all evil in Syria, Saudi jihadis will see it as a betrayal and the height of hypocrisy if the state now threatens them with prison terms when they return home.'

 If they are fighting to overthrow Assad, they are not simply jihadis. The Saudis are the most unreliable of friends, but their alleged rapprochement with Tehran doesn't invalidate the Syrian struggle. Assad is the root of the evil in Syria.

 Fascism is an over-used term. The Decent Left applied it to Saddam Hussein, so that we would forget about American imperialism, then to Islam in general, so that we would think that liberal intervention would sort out Afghanistan. Now it is being used by Patrick Cockburn to say we should prefer Assad to revolution.

Syria Islamists pledge 'state of law, freedom, justice'

 ' "The Syrian revolution is committed to the respect of human rights that are also encouraged by our religion," said the covenant, which all but revoked a November denunciation of democracy by the Islamic Front, which had also called for the establishment of an Islamic state.

 "The Syrian revolution is a revolution based on morals and values with the objective of achieving freedom, justice and security (for) the entire Syrian society, with its diverse multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian social fabric," added the statement, posted by the Islamic Front on Twitter.'

Syria Documentary Uses Amateur Footage

 ' “For all the people, demonstrating against Assad was an explosion of cinema. People screaming ‘Freedom! Freedom!’ and filming for the first time,” Mohammed said. “It was a revolution of cinema, of images, of expression.”

 But, interestingly, the images he used also come from members of Assad’s military forces. In a clear sign of internal rebellion against the regime, the shocking torture scenes at the start of the film were shot “either by a soldier or a secret service officer,” Mohammed said.'

Mr. Obama ignores Syria’s renewed chemical attacks

 'There are, of course, many actions Mr. Obama could take to punish Syria for its use of chemical weapons and to prevent their further deployment. He could begin by granting the opposition’s request for antiaircraft missiles to use against the helicopters that are dropping chlorine bombs. He could revive his plan to launch U.S. military strikes against Syrian infrastructure that supports those attacks.'

 I used to think we should balance the answer between yes for option A (arming the rebels), and no for option B (airstrikes). But largely the arguments against B have been to prevent any option being discussed, which allows Assad's only airstrikes to continue.

 And I never seemed to get a straight answer about what would be wrong with strikes against Assad's airforce, just a mélange of possible consequences: it would put Syria's destiny in imperialist hands (untrue, and it is not as if Syria wasn't in destructive imperialist hands already), that you couldn't predict what the airstrikes would escalate to (untrue, as they were going to be no more than token anyway, because the Americans weren't interested in changing Syria, they weren't going to escalate to shit, a belief confirmed by there being no airstrikes at all, disproving the belief that anyone was dragging us into a war), that it would exacerbate sectarian tensions across the Middle East (it is the continuation of the régime that has done so). And so while I still don't tend to think that option B is the answer, I don't think it is the problem.

 The problem is that waiting for the US to take action of its own may wait until that action can do no real good. But what is most important in the argument about Syria is whether people support the right of the Syrian people to defend themselves. Millions of Syrians have risen in revolt, it isn't a tiny minority of revolutionaries whose desires need to be related to, but a people and a country whose immediate need is to be able to stop the rain of terror from the skies. Whether you are helping the Syrian situation depends on whether you are arguing for such empowerment, other differences are secondary.

Syria is Not a Stalemate

Mohammed Alaa Ghanem:

 'The moderate Syrian opposition maintains the capacity not only to win militarily, but also to transition into a post-Assad Syria for all Syrians. They are fighting ISIS, safeguarding the rights of minorities, and continuing their struggle against the Assad dictatorship. Even at this late stage, serious international support would decisively propel the moderate opposition to triumph. But time is running out. Misguided assessments of a "stalemate" in Syria only deceive the public into discounting the urgency of the situation. If mainstream rebels in Syria are defeated, radical extremist groups (including Hezbollah and ISIS) will turn Syria into a transnational terror launch pad.'

#ChicagoGirl

 "We need to show the world what the régime is trying to cover up."

Will There Ever Be Justice for Syria’s Rape Survivors?

 Some of this may be quite upsetting.

 'There is already a large body of evidence that rape is happening and that the Syrian government is aware of it and letting it continue. It remains to be seen whether evidence will turn up that shows the high command and the top political leadership ordered that sexualized violence be used as a weapon of war. Right now, the best plan is to keep gathering as many stories and as much forensic evidence as possible in the hope that governments, the ICC or a special tribunal will do something with it.'

Massive tunnel bomb hits Syrian army base

 'Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad regularly carry out guerrilla attacks but have only started using large tunnel bombs in recent weeks on military targets, including a hotel used by soldiers in Aleppo last week.

 The government boasts far superior firepower and its forces killed more than 40 people, many of them civilians, in air strikes on Wednesday.'

Syrian rebels cut off water to Aleppo in botched attack on regime areas

 Patrick Cockburn turns in another pro-Assad report.

 'Aleppo used to have a population of 2.5 million though at least one million have fled fighting.'

 They have overwhelming fled Assad's rain of terror.

 'The government has been dropping barrel bombs packed with explosives on rebel districts causing heavy casualties and a further exodus of the population. The rebels have been firing mortars randomly into government areas.'

 These are supposed to be equivalent. There has been some limited shelling of government-controlled areas, which whenever it has been against civilian areas, has been condemned by much of the opposition. That's not like the mass murder of the government side.

 'The forces of the opposition are dominated by Jabhat al-Nusra and other al-Qa’ida type groups.'

 Cockburn isn't interested in telling us about anyone else. And as they are fighting a war against the al-Qaida type Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that collaborates with Assad, who are the bin Ladens here?

Love and power across Aleppo's front lines

 ' "We'd be thanking God we only received 16 barrel bombs on the day, while on the other side they'd be complaining on Facebook about the price of tomatoes."

 Debates about morality have come a long way since the uprising began, when any form of militarisation was frowned upon.

 Today, while many activists are opposed to shelling civilian areas under regime control, they see actions such as cutting off electricity or water as mild punishment compared to their suffering.'