HE'S BEHIND YOU

HOW COLONEL GADDAFI AND THE WESTERN ESTABLISHMENT TOGETHER CREATED A PANTOMIME WORLD

"And now as the Arab Spring unfolds and reveals the true chaos and messiness of the real world – above all the horror of what is happening in Syria - we find ourselves completely unable to understand it or even know what to do."
Adam Curtis is far too Platonic* about how ability to distinguish the shadows on the cave wall; last year he wrote**, "Nobody knows what is going to happen in Syria today. The optimistic view is that a new generation is emerging who really want a proper representative democracy in which all groups can negotiate with each other without violence. The pessimistic view is that those sectarian divisions, encouraged by the French - and then incubated further by the Assad family - will re-emerge. In truth no-one knows," which is now only a claim supported by those who oppose the Syrian people controlling their own destiny (and the genuinely ignorant), but he's always very interesting.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
**http://www.bbc.co.uk/…/2011/06/the_baby_and_the_baath_water…

Damascus

"After doing so many benefits for Palestine, for Iraq, for Haiti, now I'm doing them for Syria," he said over lunch in Hollywood. "But at the same time, it's an amazing time to be Syrian — people are saying things that you haven't heard there in 50 years."
[http://www.latimes.com/…/la-et-ms-syrian-rapper-omar-offend…]

Syrian rebels advance into Aleppo

Remember this was an endless civil war?
No wonder Assad wants a ceasefire.

Will al-Hassan’s killing spell end for Assad?

"Just like the overthrow of Saddam’s ugly Baathist regime in Iraq, it is the right of the Syrian people to topple the Syrian Baath regime too. This is the desire of the majority of Syrians and they have declared it with their blood, and it was not the desire of the Gulf states or an American agenda. On the contrary, these countries supported Assad at the beginning of the revolution in order to persuade him to absorb the demonstrations."

Life in Marea - a rebel-controlled Syrian town at war

 ' "The new Syria will be a Syria without corruption, without bribery - we won't have a system like Baath where everyone is corrupt - we want justice," says Abu Ra'ed, the black-bearded electrician who leads the battalion defending the town.'

On Syria

Luna17

 Alex Snowden does one of the least bad accounts of Syria I've seen from the anti-revolution left. The first paragraph here is bang on; the answer to the second in the first instance is to support the demonstrations of Syrian revolutionaries rather than those who support Assad, as his organisation Counterfire has done. If they really believe that imperialism (Western, they don't seem to recognise any other type) is the main enemy in Syria right now, they should be showing open support for Assad's military, rather than pretending to be on the other side.

 "Seymour’s argument is that the internal class struggle inside Syria – regardless of any kind of imperialist dimension - is the ‘dominant antagonism’ here. Therefore the ‘strategic priority’ – the thing that dictates what we should ‘bend all of our words and efforts around’ – flows from recognising ‘the principal contradiction is the class struggle in Syria’’.

 What does this mean in terms of our practical activity in this country? I have no idea. But if ‘practical activity internationally, including antiwar activism, should be based on this understanding’ then we presumably shouldn’t be focusing our energies on campaigning to stop Western intervention. What we should be doing remains a mystery."

In Syria's Idlib, tired rebels try siege tactics to gain ground

"The rebels' changed approach has brought some successes. Several towns and checkpoints have fallen into insurgent hands after being besieged for about a week.
It is an easier way to make advances while sparing lives and saving ammunition, said Lieutenant Ali al-Ali."
That they can besiege suggests that they are winning.

Syria booby-traps ammunition to

Syria booby-traps ammunition to

take out rebel fighters, weapons

"The primary source for doctored ammunition has been the Syrian government, which mixes exploding cartridges with ordinary rounds on the black markets through which rebels acquire weapons, the commanders said.
Some booby-trapped ammunition may have entered Syria from Iraq, where the Pentagon and the CIA secretly passed doctored ammunition to insurgent groups, several US veterans and officials said."