Solidarity With The Syrian Revolution
 From The Teachers' Strike
In Spanish.

Rebels find care packages
destined for top army officers

"The captured supplies are a stark indication that the regime’s army, which is making gains elsewhere in the country, has all but abandoned such isolated posts and their troops to their fate."

Syria: Ghouta Residents Live in Fear of More Chemical Attacks

 'The paramedic who designed these makeshift gas masks makes them in yellow to persuade local children that they are dressing up as the cartoon character Sponge Bob Squarepants. Abu Salah is unconcerned about the international community’s shifting policy.

 “With no electricity or TV news, it’s easy for us not to care what decisions are being made, and to focus on our work. No one really cares about us,” he said.'

Malek Jandali Ya Allah (Oh God)

Malek Jandali: “I thought: what can I do? How can I help? All I have is music.
When the world abandoned the Syrians, forsook them, they had nothing left to do – they went back to their creator, and asked ‘Ya Allah, please help us.’ This song was a way to translate their chant through my orchestra and piano into a universal language.”
[http://www.theguardian.com/…/malek-jandali-syrian-composer-…]

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad:
On Monsterphilia and Assad

'If a boy cries “wolf!” while being set-upon by a wolf pack, then fixating on his propensity for lies will not conjure away the threat. Memory can distort sight; it can’t override it. Where skepticism hardens into cynicism and dogma precludes context, ignorance and apathy parade as virtues. Bromwich and the anti-imperialists forget that in Iraq only the possession of unconventional weapons was being alleged; in Syria they have actually been used. In Iraq pretexts had to be manufactured for intervention; in Syria their abundance has done little to encourage action. It is one thing to distrust the government and quite another to extend this skepticism to the supposed objects of its humanitarian concern.'
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It is no accident that Syrians have received such little sympathy. Western citizens usually sympathize with perfect victims; moral ambiguity dissuades many.
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'The threat of a US intervention was momentary; it passed. But the people who had shown little concern for protecting Syrians from Assad went to unusual lengths to protect Assad from the US. Though only a handful openly embraced Assad, many opted for a subtler approach, focusing exclusively on the opposition, caricaturing it, amplifying its failings and erasing its suffering. They manufactured doubt to exculpate the regime. Uri Avnery has derided this tendency as “leftist monsterphilia” – one that, in times of crises, turns otherwise sensible people into apologists for tyrants.'

Bombs And Bottles

 An explosion near the airport in Syria's capital, Damascus, has been followed by a blackout in parts of the country, state media say.

 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24647808]

Syria Spotlight: “Regime Attempted Ground Invasion Of Moadamiyyah Via Humanitarian Route”

 “At least we managed to embarrass the U.S. government into saying something,” Zakarya said. “But it’s not enough. We can’t print out that statement and eat it.”

 The starvation is the second story here. The first is that those who entered the town, including nuns from the same monastery as régime propagandist Mother Agnes, may have told the government troops where to attack.

Debating Syria

Corey Oakley:
 "The revolution is undeniably messy, contradictory, ideologically and socially variegated. Given the history of Syria and the region, it is utopian to think it could be anything but. Nonetheless, for all its weaknesses, the Syrian opposition has fractured the regime to an extent that virtually no one believed possible. The regime has lost territorial control of large swathes of the country, and faces both armed and civil opposition in almost all the areas it still controls. If this is simply a “popular struggle” and not a revolution, it is a non-revolution of a quite unique kind."

A poster in Yabroud, Damascus: We want a Syria like this ______. Not this ______.

 "This family has been living in utter misery for close to 3 years. They survived everything Assad threw at them. From gas attacks, to daily shelling, to murderous raids and of course now, the starvation. Yet today, their luck ran out. 

 In the suburbs of Damascus some may call this family “lucky”. They all had their heads blown off together. The parents did not have to watch their child die. The boy did not have to become an orphan and starve. Welcome to Syria. The way Assad always wanted it to be."
[http://www.therevoltingsyrian.com/…/graphic-an-entire-famil…]