Noam Chomsky: 'No individual changes anything alone'

Sean Doherty, I think it was, did a meeting on Chomsky about ten years ago for the SWP, where he started by pointing out that Chomsky's influence was orders of magnitude greater, and so it would be better to focus on his excellent critique of American foreign policy than their differences with him. Having said that, I think he's wrong about Syria, and the road of death is that with Assad still in charge.
'Should the west arm the opposition? Should it intervene? "I tend to think that providing arms is going to escalate the conflict. I think there has to be some kind of negotiated settlement. The question is which kind. But it's going to have to be primarily among Syrians. Outsiders can try to help set up the conditions, and there's no doubt that the government is carrying out plenty of atrocities, and the opposition some, but not as many. There's a threat that the country is on a suicidal course. Nobody wants that." '

Close To The Edge

"Syrian rebels said on Monday they had fired mortar bombs at the presidential palace, the Damascus International Airport and security buildings to mark the second anniversary of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
Some 70,000 people have been killed over the past two years in a revolt that started with peaceful protests but descended into a civil war after Assad's forces shot and arrested thousands of opposition members."
[http://www.ndtv.com/…/syria-rebels-say-fire-mortars-at-pres…]

“Hand in hand, we will rebuild"

- from Bustan Al Qasr, Aleppo (Syria)

Syrians rebels 'use chemical weapon'
Putting the last three words in quotes doesn't avoid the conclusion that it is primarily the Syrian state's version that is being reported; given that they have missiles and chemical weapons and the rebels don't, one might think a different starting point for this story would be appropriate.

Note 6/4/15, the headline now reads, "Syrians trade Khan al-Assal chemical weapons claims".

Website of the Russian president's
representative violated by Syrian hackers

In Norwegian.

"Hackers have broken the website of the Russian president's attorneys representative in the federal circuit Russian Far East and laid out where a request to the Russian people, with a request not to support the Syrian leader Bashar Assad.
The group that calls itself the SRES (Syrian Revolution Electronic Suite) urged not to supply heavy weapons to Syria. They asked also apologize for the site's failure."

Syria's economy continues to suffer

“The liberalization of the Syrian economy was always stopped by the mafias surrounding the ruling family,” said Taqi. “The family was never investing their revenues into the country, but mainly investing in the telecoms sector and ‘hit-and-run’ sectors.”

We need weapons against
planes -FSA commander

"Noting that there were few countries which supported FSA such as Turkey, Asaad said that other countries either preferred to remain silent or adopted the strategy of supporting Assad regime indirectly. 
For instance, Israel has been supporting Assad regime from the beginning, while Russia, China, Iran and Hezbollah have been actually fighting against us, said Asaad, adding that the regime would be taken down eventually. 
We need weapons to use against the planes bombing our children, and if FSA reaches the weapons, the problem will completely be solved, he said."