Kidnapped French journalists released 10 months after abduction in Syria

 'The objective of Isis is to establish an Islamic state in the land it controls in northern Syria and is often in conflict with other rebels as well as the government.'

 The last part is not true, they are rarely if ever in conflict with the government, their headquarters in Raqqa is never bombed by Assad's airforce, which has civilians to drive out of the country. Hopefully this is a result of ISIS' weakening, and there will be more to follow.

Peter Oborne has been a fan of Syria’s genocidal dictator for some time

 'That Peter Oborne has been a fan of Syria’s genocidal dictator for some time is clear... Oborne suspects that some of the accounts of the government’s dreadful atrocities “have been exaggerated”; would that include the evidence of the Assad regime’s systematic mass torture and starvation until death of over 11,000 Syrian men, women and children?..

 It is outright dishonest of Oborne to claim that “jihadist groups make up the opposition” when the Free Syrian Army, formed initially by brave defecting soldiers who refused to carry out Assad’s orders to kill their compatriots, is the only force actually fighting the very jihadists of ISIS who the Assad regime never attacks...'

More Regime Chemical Attacks in Hama Province on Friday?

 'Footage has also been posted of suffering infants.'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL6CGoyF8YQ]

 Anyone who mistakes this for the stories of Iraqis ripping babies from incubators in Kuwait in 1991 is doing these actual victims a disservice.

Ukaine and Imperialism

 'Syria remained a key Russian ally. Russia had troops stationed in Syria, and supplied Al-Assad with weapons to put down the revolution. At this point, the Stop the War Coalition argument that “the real enemy is at home” slogan was appropriate ceased to be a principled anti-imperialist position, and became nothing more than apologism for Putin’s Russia and the regimes he supports. This is not internationalism, as the real enemy for the people of Syria was not the US, but Al-Assad and the Russian state backing him.'

US Ambassador Power slams ‘industrial-style slaughter’ in Syria

 Samantha Power says what is happening, and Fox News reports it, while much of the Left buries its head in the sand.

'She described the photos of Syrian prisoners as showing “systematic, industrial-style slaughter and forced starvation killings” – photos which, she noted, were from just three of the 50 Syrian-run detention centers. “And to that we can add the Syrian victims of chemical weapons attacks, the children felled by barrel bombs and those being starved to death in besieged towns and villages, or those executed by terrorist groups.” '

The one certainty about Syria's looming election

 'The number of Syrian refugees is now close to nine million, more than six million of whom remain internally displaced in opposition-held areas, with little chance of getting to a government office to register, even if they wanted to.'

 I'm reminded of this: 'Dall'Oglio warned that ''let's imagine for a second that, even with the decisive help of Christians, the regime manages to crush the revolution. We can predict there will be some 500,000 dead and 10 million refugees. What remains of our Christian testimony? Even if Christians were to return - an unlikely prospect - to Syria, what would we go back to doing after having accepted such a genocide?'' '
[http://ansamed.ansa.it/…/Father-Oglio-book-the-Syrian-trage…]

Brighton teenager Abdullah Deghayes killed in Syria

 "He couldn't sit still watching the news of the gross injustice taking place in Syria. For Abdullah it was not enough to just donate money or baby milk, he felt he needed to do more."

Why does the mass media ignore mass murder in Syria?

 'One of the best indications this is the mainstream media's policy came this week when the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition traded accusations over who was using poison gas again in Syria. This should be a big news story for the mainstream media but it has raised hardly a murmur.

 The media paid attention to Syria as never before after the 21 August sarin attack because it involved Obama's called bluff and it showed the bodies as never before. As if a hundred thousand people had not been slaughtered already by non-chemical means, the media jumped all over the chemical attack as though it was a fetish. The shameless pro-Assad forces in the blogosphere took up the defense of Assad as if proving he didn't do the sarin attack was the same as exonerating him of mass murder. Even while the media failed to report on Assad's continuing siege of Ghouta, using both bombardment and starvation as weapons, they gave coverage for everybody's opinions and findings on the chemical attack.

 There can be little doubt that there have been new chemical attacks in Syria, since both sides agree there have been. While they both predictively point the finger at get other, if the reports that the gas bombs there dropped out of helicopters are accurate, there can be little doubt that those were Assad regime helicopters. Given the history of coverage on the chemical question in Syria, one would expect reports of a new chemical attack to break through this news blackout.

 Why hasn't it?'

Syrian rebels warn of potential Homs massacre as regime troops advance

 "The regime has reduced what was the soul of the revolution to rubble and ruin. The international community must watch to ensure the regime does not massacre the remaining brave people left in the Old City."

British jihadists in Syria are playing into Assad's hands

 'Syrians clearly have the right to defend themselves against Assad's brutal response to what began as peaceful calls for democracy. And, notwithstanding the moral and practical preferability of nonviolent struggle, an argument can be made that only force could ever topple a regime with a core as formidably solid as this one.'

 I was pleasantly surprised by how much I agreed with David Wearing's piece. A lot of people in the pro-solidarity crowd will dispute his assignment of a low probability to the idea that the worst Islamist group is a régime tool (and the claim needn't be that strong, if there isn't control, that they never attack each other shows commonality of interest). He doesn't address the question of the more secular groups receiving the arms they need, and, "those wealthy states who were agitating for military intervention last autumn", just isn't true, the trips to Congress and parliament to pass the buck were to enable Obama and Cameron to appear to have done what they could, without risking any political capital in trying to do anything whatsoever about Assad's mass murder with chemical weapons. And the real military intervention in Syria is by Russia and Iran and Hezbollah, blah, blah, blah.

 But the rest is good.

Talking about the presidential elections is ridiculous

 'Given that Assad does not accept any political transition process and will not too, Sabra says that “there seems no solution other than toppling Assad with the force of weapon”.'

Many war crimes documented in Syria

 "Outside military intervention is necessary. This should include, in his view, the enforcement of a no-fly zone to prevent regime attacks on civilians, and arming the opposition."

And these war crimes are much better documented than any genocide in history.

Behind Assad's victory boasts

 “I'm not sure that Assad would want to expend the time or effort to reconquer those parts of Syria whose inhabitants he largely holds in contempt.”

 You can't remain a legitimate president forever when your strategy is to make a desert and call it peace.

Maaloula's monastery destroyed after Assad forces drive rebels out

 ' "Imad, said there had been 32 churches in Maaloula and claimed that "all of them have been destroyed" - although it was clear from the vantage point near the monastery that in fact churches were still standing, albeit with signs of damage and some burning.

 I can't describe my feelings because the terrorists are destroying the Christian religion," said Imad, who said he had been an electrician in Maaloula before he joined the military and the rest of his family moved to Damasacus two years ago.'

 He was probably a plumber.

Jordanian warplanes destroy vehicles trying to cross from Syria

 'Jordanian security source says targets were Syrian rebels in civilian cars mounted with machine guns.'

 Those can't be the 'Western-backed' rebels, because there aren't any. Actually an unnamed Western country had provided an FSA brigade with 20 anti-tank weapons, hardly making up for the weapons the US has stopped going through Jordan, while the Russians continue to supply as much weaponry as Assad can pay for.

Women Rock the Syrian Revolution

 'The two largest coalitions of grassroots groups that organise the protests in Syria are led by women.'

 One of them, Razan Zaitouneh, said this of the responsibility for the August chemical attack, on a show with Patrick Cockburn, which may be why he hasn't found himself going fully denialist.

 RAZAN ZAITOUNEH: This is—if this is the question—first of all, if you believe that we are a crazy people who would kill themselves and their children, then you can ask such a question.

 AMY GOODMAN: Did you—since you were in the area, was there any physical evidence that you saw that the government was responsible for this?

 RAZAN ZAITOUNEH: That the rockets which was used for the shelling coming from the regime forces, it’s clear. There is no doubt about it. And why wondering? The Syrian people killed hundreds of people when the Arab observers mission was there, and they turned a blind eye to it. So what made you think that? After 100,000 victims and after all that crimes committed by the regime, the regime is not able to do anything to stay in power.
[http://www.democracynow.org/…/syrian_activist_on_ghouta_att…]

Talal Derki's 'Return to Homs' wins Middle East Now

 ' ''Syria is not just Assad or Al-Qaeda. Don't be fooled by the Syrian president's words, because the choice is not between him and religious extremists. There are moderates in the country and they account for about 70% of the population, but nobody is interested in them. No one - and especially not the media - speak about them, since they don't make a good news story." '

Note 9/3/25, link broken.

The moral depravity of our Syria policy

 I think Jennifer Rubin is not someone I would agree with on much, but I think it is true that there never was any intention to use force in Syria, and Obama and Cameron got their legislatures to alibi the deception.

 'Power really must be pulling our leg when she said that the president put out the “credible threat of military force.” Yes, he did. And then looked to Congress to bail him out. And then did not use the threat of force. If this is “credible,” then the word has no meaning.'

A Mixed Record

 'In 1974, Hersh wrote that the US envoy in Chile was warned of the coup against Allende before it happened. Years later, Hersh apologized and said what he wrote wasn’t true. A book he wrote on former US President John F. Kennedy contained several inaccuracies. In 2004, Hersh said he documented information that George W. Bush’s administration would launch a war on Iran. It turned out that none of this was true. During the US occupation of Iraq, Hersh said that 1 billion US dollars had disappeared and that a television station was under threat of being excluded from press briefings because it had asked embarrassing questions of then-First Lady Laura Bush. None of these claims were proven true.

 The truth is, he who desires to examine the man’s achievements will find plenty of them, and he who wants to examine the man’s failures will not be disappointed either. It’s necessary to remember this when reading Hersh’s recent piece on Syrian chemical weapons—he based his report on what he described as a single “well-informed” source, without presenting any document, photo or even official report."

86'd

 'A top Iranian military officer has said Tehran managed to fend off a campaign by 86 countries to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.'

 [https://web.archive.org/web/20140415093455/http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Apr-15/253354-iran-defeated-plans-of-86-countries-guard-officer.ashx#axzz2ywmo0ZzI]

 The US are saying this:

 'The United States on Monday took issue with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's analysis that the bitter conflict was turning in his favor, saying it had become a "war of attrition."

 "Our analysis remains what it has been, that this is a war of attrition and neither side has been able to deliver or hold onto significant gains," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

 She told reporters that she was not "going to give ground game updates. Certainly our efforts to engage with the opposition continue." '

 [https://web.archive.org/web/20140415090654/http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Apr-14/253344-neither-side-holds-upper-hand-in-syria-us.ashx#axzz2ywmo0ZzI]

 Mazen Syrian in Homs has had this to say this morning:
aircraft in Homs' sky
and
Launchers mounted on the edge of every streets, the shelling has not slowed since the morning, stray bullets everywhere, sounds are terrible....
‪#‎Homs_Now‬

Syrian Doctor In Cary Pushes For Free Syria

 'They are not ashamed of anything. You could kill someone in Syria and nobody would question that...

 As a revenge they executed him along with a number of people with no trial...

 What you and you family speak about, what you don't do in front of strangers; you speak one thing to one person, another thing to another person, and everybody learns how to live this double life...You are always afraid that someone will report that you've said the wrong thing...
I was preparing a sign for Libya, and the Syrian revolution started, so I did two parts of it, Down With Assad, and Down With Gadaffi; and a friend of mine who's an American woman, who helped write it, her name's Annette Stevenson, who never heard about the whole thing, helped write the sign...

 We were full of hope that it would last a few months, and Assad would be gone...

 I never thought that three people could meet in Syria and say Down With Assad...

 To have people go out and say, "we want freedom", it was a dream...

 Children wrote on the walls, "we want freedom", and the government arrested them , tortured them, pulled their nails out, and people reacted...

 It's becoming more complicated. Most Syrians were hoping the international community would help us much sooner....

 We're not asking about American soldiers to be on the ground, or American life to be put in jeopardy. I don't want the United States to be in a bad position, but at the same time, to have people by hundreds of thousands getting killed, two million refugees, families torn apart; if you can help, at least change the equation on the ground, whatever it takes, whether providing political support, military support, defensive weapons at least; we can liberate ourselves, and that is what we are asking for.'

Allies must honour weapons 'promises'

 'But without heavy, particularly anti-aircraft, weapons, Mr Jarba faces an uphill struggle to defeat President Assad, and that is a goal to which he is implacably committed, our correspondent adds.

 "Syrians, after paying this price for freedom, won't allow this stupid man to rule them once again - whatever the price is," Mr Jarba said.'

A rebel with a cause

 'Maarouf, 39, is an example of the younger generation of commanders in the bottom-up Syrian revolution. The previous Free Syrian Army leader in the north, Gen Salim Idriss, was a thoughtful, German-educated former professor at a Syrian war college. By contrast, Maarouf is high-school graduate who served in a tank unit during his two-year mandatory service in the Syrian army and then worked in construction in Lebanon.'

Reports of poison gas attack in Syria so far 'unsubstantiated', Powers says

 One of the claims made by the Sarin left is that the claims of wrongdoing by the Assad régime are propaganda emanating from the US State Department, so I note yet again that the US are responding, or not responding, to reports of what has happened, not originating them. A few people talking about the CIA and false flags in the comments, including one promoting Seymour Hersh's LRB piece. I see that Aboud Dandachi has been replying to such comments in various places on the internet.

 The conclusion in this piece is that everything is murky, because the writer has not made any effort to find out what the detail of the case made by each side about the chemical attacks is, as far as I can see.

 Syria faces a lost generation of children because they have been made refugees by Assad, and are not getting schooling. "The biggest single problem remains the lack of a political solution to the crisis in Syria," that would be removing Assad and his régime.
[http://www.theguardian.com/…/syria-children-funding-lost-ge…]

Alternative Left Perspectives on Syria

 Danny Postel:

 'There is a fourth camp, however: a small but growing group of progressives who embrace the goals of the Syrian revolution. There are several shades within this camp – it includes Marxists, pacifists, feminists, Third Worldists and leftists of various sorts. Some support the armed struggle in Syria, others do not, standing instead with the nonviolence activists in Syria. But what unites this camp is its solidarity with the Syrian struggle for dignity, justice and self-determination.'

Syrian government blocking aid to millions of refugees

 The headline tells the simple truth; it isn't a few people, it isn't both sides, it isn't too complex to understand.

MI6, the CIA and Turkey's rogue game in Syria

 Bullshit from the off.

 'The US's Secretary of State John Kerry and its UN ambassador, Samantha Power have been pushing for more assistance to be given to the Syrian rebels. This is despite strong evidence that the Syrian armed opposition are, more than ever, dominated by jihadi fighters similar in their beliefs and methods to al-Qa'ida.'

 I saw John Kerry being questioned by senators on C-Span today, and he wasn't pushing for the arming of any rebels. He was saying that it is only through the Geneva process that peace will be achieved, and had sharp exchanges with John McCain, who has supported arming the Free Syrian Army with the weponry it needs. And weapons to the FSA do not strengthen al-Qaida linked groups, it is the lack of arms to the FSA that has drawn Syrians to groups that can get weapons. This descends far into fantasy when he mentions ISIS, the group that doesn't fight Assad, and other rebel groups have been trying to get rid of.

 'It may also be starting to strike home in the US and Europe that aid to the armed rebellion in Syria means destabilising Iraq. When Isis brings suicide bombers from across the Turkish border into Syria it can as easily direct them to Baghdad as Aleppo.'

 One thing Cockburn doesn't do is go along with the genocide denial over the chemical attacks. But he does like the theory that America was shipping weapons from Libya to the Syrian rebels, which is nonsense given their role in Jordan stopping the FSA from getting heavy weapons. He comes up with the usual arguments against arming the Syrians, including lies like this:

 'A problem here is that the secular moderate faction of committed Syrian opposition fighters does not really exist.'

 There will certainly not be one if the only people supplying arms are Saudi Arabia, and on a far greater scale, those who supply Assad. That Cockburn doesn't see Russian arms supplies as the creator of destabilisation and encouragement of jihadism, shows how little he cares about the actual dynamics of the conflict.

Emerging Trends in Syria

 I must read the rest of this:

 'The only coun­try that ben­e­fits the longer the Syr­ian cri­sis con­tin­ues is the US. This is due to the US con­stantly fail­ing in find­ing a loyal alter­na­tive to Basher al-Assad. The US from the very begin­ning has delayed all its solu­tions as it did not have a trusted alter­na­tive to al-Assad. The real rea­son for not inter­ven­ing directly in the coun­try is the fact that the US has failed to cul­ti­vate a loyal alter­na­tive. This is why the US and its allies have given al-Assad all the nec­es­sary cover to put down the upris­ing. The inva­sion of Libya was jus­ti­fied on the blood bath that was going to take place in Beng­hazi, Obama said: “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atroc­i­ties in other coun­tries. The United States of Amer­ica is dif­fer­ent and as Pres­i­dent, I refused to wait for the images of slaugh­ter and mass graves before tak­ing action.” In Syria after mul­ti­ple mas­sacres the US, as well as the wider West has still refused to intervene.'

Note 10/6/25, link broken.

Obituary of an ‘Arabist’ who knew no Arabic

 'Rana Kabbani is everything Patrick Seale was not.

 When in 2006, she wrote openly to demolish Hafez Assad’s "Corrective Movement" that Seale had urged Bashar al-Assad to follow, and was banned from entering her country for that first critical article, Seale happily betrayed her stand, boarding planes bound for Damascus to dine with Assad, whom he continued to defend till his last breath. He never tired of belittling Kabbani’s far greater knowledge, or showing disdain for the refined and destroyed Middle East that had produced her, as it had so many highly-educated and erudite individual Arabs from liberal old families like hers.

 Patrick Seale will be forgotten, except by people who share his worldview. They, too, are on the wrong side of history, and like him and his "scholarship", will be proved irrelevant by the mammoth groundswell of Arabs seeking freedom from every sort of ideological tyranny, whether secular or religious.'