A Zeitouna Diary

 'In writer and novelist Robin Yassin-Kassab's storyboard writing course, a young girl, adamant about sharing her story, stood at the front of the class to explain the images and text inserted she drew and wrote in each square. She nonchalantly pointed to one square with an image of her martyred brother and quickly proceeded to the next square, an image of a brother who lived. I'm still struck by her almost emotionally numb, matter of fact delivery -- perhaps she knew that there was nothing unique to her story; she must have registered the losing a loved one to war as a common place occurrence.'

What Orwell can tell us about Syria

 'Given his willingness to take shots at fellow leftists, his fanatical anti-totalitarianism, and his consistency in correctly identifying the lesser of two evils, one finds it difficult to imagine without laughter Orwell joining the sordid collection of Stalinists and “anti-imperialists” who make up the “Stop the War Coalition.” (While millions of Syrians are bombed, starving, tortured, imprisoned, and displaced, this “anti-imperialist” rabble is busy dislocating its collective shoulder to pat itself on the back for having “stopped the war.”) It somehow seems unlikely that the man who could have been describing Syria under the Assads in Nineteen-Eighty-Four would support the continued existence of such a psychopathic crime family simply because they give lip-service to anti-Zionism.'

Kenan Rahmani

 'The failure of Americans & the US government to understand the Middle East never ends. Yesterday I was held by Customs and Border Protection in Cincinnati for questioning and searches. I explained that I provide humanitarian relief to Syrian refugees.
Here is the most important part:

 Officer: "You've been questioned by CBP before, right sir?"
 Me: "Yes, sir."
 Officer: "You know why we need to talk to you?"
 Me: "Because a lot of people are fighting in Syria and you want to collect information and make sure I am not a threat."
 Officer: "It's because there are a lot of Muslim extremists and jihadists fighting and taking over northern Syria and a lot of the refugees are being converted to jihad."
 Me: "Refugees being converted to jihad? First time I ever heard of that. I thought that they were fighting the brutal Assad dictatorship that was killing them and their families."
 Officer: "No sir, these jihadists, they are the biggest threat to the USA so we need to make sure that the refugees you work with don't have connections to them."

 After this I proceeded to show and explain many of the projects we did with the young refugee kids in Reyhanli. But we need to confront the reality that Islamophobia in the West and the "Fox News perspective" on jihad are going to make it very difficult for us to have productive Middle Eastern foreign policy. It is necessary that the current generation of Muslim Americans understand their role here as Americans in changing the current reality.'

Episode 005

 Patrick Cockburn was just explaining how Saudi Arabia is funding fundamentalist Sunnis in Syria, having "taken over the file" from Qatar, that are supposed to be opposed to Assad, and to al-Qaida, while having elements with links to al-Qaida.

 George Galloway tells us that the war in Syria has turned decisively against al-Qaida.

 Obviously, all this is untrue, and insults Syrians.

In Syria, Hunger And Humiliation As Weapons Of Mass Destruction

 'Syrians will not be reduced to animals. They want to live in freedom and dignity. These are simple wishes. Why should they not be possible?'

New chemical revelations; aid cut to rebels

 'It's funny how the growing role of jihadists in the Syrian revolution is invoked as an argument against supporting the rebels, when failure to arm the rebels is exactly what allowed the jihadists to fill the vacuum.'

Arab Spring: 10 unpredicted outcomes

 'America is struggling with problematic relationships with rebels in Syria.'

 Not really, it offered rhetorical support, and shits on them. That is a problem, not problematic.

 'Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are now effectively fighting a proxy war in Syria.'

 No, there is a democratic rising against a sectarian supported tyrant who has always made out, with the help of much of the world's media, that the rebels have only sectarian motives to remove his murderous régime. The The Iranians have been offering thousands of troops in support of the massacres of Sunni civilians, the Saudis have offered limited support to the freedom fighters, limited enough that they can be outstripped by the privately-financed al-Qaida linked brigades.

 They might also mention in 8. how sexual violence has been used by the Assad régime as a weapon of war.

Islamist Wave Is Driving Out Syria's Revolutionaries

 "When the liberation happened, it was like a release -- we felt we were released," al-Abdo said recently. "The whole countryside of the north, from Homs to Aleppo to Bab al Hawa, I felt that it was mine."

 "I was unable to write about the abduction, or how the FSA had managed to win his freedom – a story that would have made good propaganda for the secular branch of the armed opposition."

 "We will not forget the regime -- they created ISIS. They made them possible."

The good guys have lost in Syria – only the bad guys are left fighting

 'This rebel-on-rebel fratricidal orgy sums up so much that has gone wrong with Syria’s revolution.'

 The exaggeration of rebel differences in this sentence sumps up so much that has gone wrong with the reporting of Syria's revolution. It's not the worst report, though it contains other common distortions, such as the idea that moderate rebels would attend peace talks with Assad, and that the régime is just winning military victories.

10 actions the “International Community” should urgently take to help Syrian refugees

 Forcing millions to flee is an integral part of Assad's war strategy. When Jeremy Bowen tells BBC viewers, "as long as this war goes on", he should really say, "as long as the régime's bombing of civilians continues". It could be stopped with anti-aircraft weapons, but the international community has been more concerned with stopping jihadists going to fight Assad.

 It is Russian and Iranian intervention that has prolonged about the crisis. The world should have been campaigning against that, not against the fantasy that the non-existent Western support for the rebels was the problem. Demanding that Syrians be allowed the means to defend themselves is still the right course. If the crisis continues with Syrians still disempowered, it will be al-Qaida and the USAF that intervene when things get even worse.

The Syrian War and “Sectarianism”

 'When we insist in light of these facts that Syria’s conflict is not sectarian, we don’t mean to suggest that the religious hatred seen in Syria today is somehow just a myth. Instead, we are arguing that sectarian violence should be seen as the result of these specific political and economic developments, rather than their cause—something that we would instinctively recognize when thinking about parallel issues in our own country.'

Rethinking Syria (in a Big Way); Assad's Gotta Stay

 'No analogies are perfect, especially one that compares 1930's Catholic Spain to today's Muslim Syria. But as the Spanish civil war developed, the Republicans increasingly received most of their materiel from the Soviet Union; it's not inconceivable that a Republican victory would have ended with a communist take-over in Madrid. Certainly, it's better Franco won than that a major European country, on the cusp of World War II, would have had a communist government.'

Mass murder in the Middle East is funded by our friends the Saudis

 'Saudi Arabia as a government for a long time took a back seat to Qatar in funding rebels in Syria, and it is only since this summer that they have taken over the file. They wish to marginalise the al-Qa'ida franchisees such as Isil and the al-Nusra Front while buying up and arming enough Sunni war-bands to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.'

 Which contradicts the rest of the article. It is not the Saudi government, still less the Qataris, that are arming al-Qaida; it is the failure of arms to get through in sufficient quantities to the FSA that has allowed the al-Qaida linked groups to fill the gap.

 'Pakistani papers no longer pay much attention to hundreds of Shia butchered from Quetta to Lahore.'

 Patrick Cockburn doesn't pay much attention to the thousands of Syrians butchered by Assad's forces from Deraa to Deir ez-Zor. A number of commenters on this piece at the Independent site choose to dispute his acknowledgement of Assad's chemical attack in August instead.

To Syria’s Revolutionaries, Assad Isn’t Looking So Bad After All

 'Even as ISIS forced her into exile, Nawfal says she will never compromise with the regime to defeat them. “You don’t fight injustice with even bigger injustice.” '

 The headline, "To Syria’s Revolutionaries, Assad Isn’t Looking So Bad After All", is contradicted by the prime interviewee. Compromising with Assad, not giving the secular rebels the means to overthrow him; that is what has led to the growth of the al-Qaida linked groups.

A Trip to the Border

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'Among the children's chosen heroes in my storytelling workshop were Robin Hood, Batman, my brother the martyr, my father the martyr, and Sponge Bob. Among the problems to be solved were a dinosaur eating people, a car hitting a pedestrian, my house being shelled, and my cousin stuck in prison.'

Whose sarin?

 'The complaints focus on what Washington did not have: any advance warning from the assumed source of the attack.'

 Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This was true when Bush and Blair told us the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq meant they must have been hidden. Now it can be applied to Seymour Hersh's genocide denial.

 Hersh bases his case on a couple of further propositions. That the al-Nusra front is a suspect in previous attacks. There is no evidence for this, except for some guy called Tariq who knows how to make mustard gas having been seen in Damascus. That the munitions could as easily have been fired by opposition forces. Apart from the improbability of any rebel forces hiding this from the population that are fighting on behalf of, the technical details are dealt with by the Brown Moses Blog*.

 'An unforeseen reaction came in the form of complaints from the Free Syrian Army’s leadership and others about the lack of warning.'

 So if there was some plot [sic], the FSA weren't in on it. "Unforeseen" seems to mean, "doesn't fit Hersh's narrative". He then implies that the figures for the dead are all over the place, deprecating "The strikingly precise US total". This is an administration that he's claiming knows every time a jar of chemicals moves in Syria, but can't work out how many people are killed in a documented attack? No.

 'The Obama administration, committed to the end of the Assad regime and continued support for the rebels,' is contradicted by, 'Obama turned quickly to the UN and the Russian proposal for dismantling the Syrian chemical warfare complex.'

*[http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/…/new-key-evidence-in-und…]

How the USA Lost Its Syrian Allies

'The Obama administration’s stance is increasingly more aligned with the Assad regime and its allies than with the opposition.

 “Rightly or wrongly, the administration’ view the jihadist opposition as the real enemy. What they would like is for the U.S.-backed centrists and moderates to work with the regime against the real extremists. The Iranians would like to see that as well,” said Jim Hooper, a former U.S. diplomat in Damascus.

 The Obama administration’s push for a diplomatic agreement now, at the moment of the opposition’ greatest weakness, was not necessarily in the opposition’s best interest, and they know it.

 “For the opposition it’s a trap. They cannot win,” he said. “You cannot recover at the negotiating table what you’ve lost at the battlefield.” '

Syrian society breaks as women & girls face hardship crisis“What very few people know is that the health system has been targeted by the Syrian government,” she added. “Doctors, nurses and hospitals have been specifically targeted and (it is) using healthcare as a weapon of war in Syria. Over 60 percent of our hospitals have been destroyed, most of the doctors have left the country.”
When she says, "Women and minors in Syria are being raped by government and paramilitary forces," she is referring to the government militias.“With the beginning of the revolution thousands and thousands of women found their voice. And for the first time in a very male-dominated society they were being included as equals with their men, encouraged to protest, to be activists …”

Dynamics and Prospects for the Syrian revolutionary process

 'The message written on this wall represents very much the determination of the Syrian people to continue their struggle until victory:

 “I am not concerned with when or where I die; All I care about is for the revolutionaries and their chants to continue filling the earth until there is no more injustice, built on the bodies of the poor and the helpless.” '

To give a human face to the conflict

 'Rahmani said the true problem in Syria is that the conflict has taken away the dignity of many Syrians.

“You have half the population living like natural disaster victims,” Rahmani said. “It’s not just about a civil war, it’s not just about a humanitarian crisis, it’s about people who want to live in dignity.” '

Growing suffering of Syria's besieged civilians

 'The townspeople say that what has allowed them to hold out for so long is of course the Free Syrian Army, who manage to steal ammunition and weapons from the army to replenish their supplies.

 But it's also the teamwork of the community, sharing food, wood for fuel and encouragement. It's this new spirit which means that even though the price has been so high, they insist they don't regret the revolution.'

When Will This End?

 '# Syria, # LccSy, Damascus Suburbs: Nabik: Many wounded were reported due to regime forces shelling the neighborhoods with toxic substances'

Desperate Syrian rebels turn homes into weapons factories

 'FSA Captain Ammar al-Aswad, one of the first officers who defected from Assad's army, said he had "lost hope in the Western countries."

 Al-Aswad added that he had participated in some of the early meetings with foreign officials assessing how to help the FSA obtain arms and ammunition.

 "Let me tell you something. They were just lying to us. They didn't even have the intention to help," he said. "But we don't need their help anymore." '

 Not so desperate.

Football becomes mother to Syria's traumatised child refugees

 "We couldn't take it in Syria anymore because our lives were threatened on a daily basis," Bassam said. "We, the Syrian people, are living under a very oppressive regime and asking for freedom. There was no differentiation for elderly people, children and women. They were targeting everybody. They were bombing homes, villages … it just became unliveable. So we fled to Jordan, fled the persecution."

On questions of disillusion among Syrian revolutionaries

Michael Karadjis:

 'This is not a socialist revolution, at least not at this stage. Revolutions in the real world don’t usually start this way either. The Russian revolution of November 1917 was the culmination of a broken 12-year revolutionary process began by a preacher. At this stage a revolution to overthrow a vicious family dictatorship involves not just workers in the narrow sense (and considering that Assad sacked 85,000 workers and closed down a huge percentage of Syrian industry when workers began to move in late 2011, we are not seeing a big narrowly defined “workers’ movement”), but peasants, urban poor in the informal economy, small urban and rural petty bourgeoisie excluded by the “secular” Baathist mega-bourgeoisie etc. Many of the leaderships of the rural and urban poor will come from the more educated or connected urban and rural petty-bourgeoisie, and will express themselves in religious terms.

Thus if we exclude the actually reactionary jihadist fringe (al-Nusra and especially ISIS), these mainstream Islamist movements based among the poor will be a major part of the revolution. Building solidarity with the left, secular and working class forces that fight alongside them in the quest to vanquish the tyranny is the best the western left can do to help such forces balance the more traditionalist forces in the make-up of this stage of the revolution.'

Syrian revolution to be examined at CSUF

 'VanDyke is neither Muslim nor Syrian, but wanted to shed light on what is happening in Syria and among Syrian people.

 MSA hopes to give new insight to students from different perspectives about the Syrian conflict and how they can help through this event.

 “It is not only a Syrian issue but a humanity issue and all humans should know about it.” '

‘I hope that I’m supporting them’

 “When you are a Syrian, you know your country more than anybody else, so for me, a Syrian born and growing up there, I know that what’s happening in Syria is a revolution; it is not a civil war,” he argues passionately. “What I’m doing is nothing compared with what children there [are living through], but this is what I can do. I don’t have the solution, but I can support my people this way, and that’s it.”

Roll Out The Barrel

 'This is a video of the barrel being tossed out the back of the helicopter. As you can see, it takes several long moments for it to reach the ground. This is why this weapon of choice from Assad is the most dreaded by people in Syria. The length of time it takes to fall is too short to run since the blast radius is so huge, yet it is more than enough time to contemplate your impending death.'

 Matthew Aslett was pointing out that another reason for loading TNT into dumpsters and chucking them out of helicopters is that it is cheaper than proper bombs. That is useful for a state that is running out of money.

The Civilian Administration of the Insurgency in Aleppo, Syria

 'Despite limited human capacity and financial means, civilian institutions have nevertheless emerged this year in the zones conquered by the insurrection movement in northern Syria. Reconstructing an administrative system from the bottom-up has enabled the public service system to restart, and it constitutes the basis for an alternative to the Damascus regime.

 The management of eastern Aleppo by the armed opposition thus constitutes both a strategic and a political challenge.The skyrocketing increase in power of the ISIL these last months has profoundly transformed the political dynamics in northern Syria. The pragmatic collaboration between groups with sometimes opposed ideologies, but united against the regime, has led to a direct confrontation that could hinder the vulnerable and fragile civilian institutions. The way that, in Raqqa, Azaz, Manbij or Tall Abiad, the ISIL eliminated the members of local administrations and now rule over the cities of Al-Dana or Saluq demonstrates the risks weighing over Aleppo’s administration.

 Since last summer, the United States and the European Union started to provide support for Aleppo’s police force, but many more resources are necessary to the survival of the functioning civilian institutions in the rebel-held territories.'

Frontline: The Bombing Of al-Bara

 Devastating documentary revealing the reality of Assad's bombing.

 When you see a story like, "Syrian aerial strikes kill at least 50 people in town near Aleppo"*, this is what happened.
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20140105212938/http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Dec-02/239596-syrian-aerial-strikes-kill-at-least-50-people-in-town-near-aleppo.ashx#axzz2mGrVIUQM]

Testimony of one of the first deserters of the Syrian army

 In French.

 'The crowd of protesters was stirred and officers positioned immediately behind us - we were all conscripts - gave us the order to fire. I refused to do so. I loaded my gun. I turned to the officer positioned behind me and I threatened to screen bullets. Thirty other soldiers were like me. The officers took fright and explained that they had nothing to do. They also do not want to shoot their own people. We lowered our weapons.'

Hunger Strike, Day 4: The Regime Tries to Make a Deal

 Qusai Zakarya:

 'Starving a population is illegal. Food should have no preconditions. The regime proposes a conditional ceasefire with the FSA living in our town, but made ridiculous and illegal preconditions! They want us to raise the regime flag inside Moadamiya and they also want all those who are not originally from Moadamiya to leave the town. That means me too, because I’m originally Palestinian. Even though I grew up in this town, they don’t count me as real citizen of Moadamiya...

 After a long and tiring day, I lay on my mattress, aware that my weakened body is trapped under siege in Moadamiya, but a strange feeling overcomes me, a feeling that my spirit is free, free to visit all the places I love in Syria, to walk the streets where I used to work and where my friends and I hung out, free to go to Homs where I went for university. This strange feeling leaves me happy.

 My body is depleted and exhausted but my spirit is free and happy.'

Much Needed Perspective on The New York Times “Disillusioned Activists” Article

 'Now, these kinds of articles have become so common that they’ve become cliched. But for the next week, the NYT’s article is going to be retweeted ad nauseam by Assad’s Leftist and socialist and “I-blame-da-man-for-everything-wrong-in-my-life” groupies. And so…here we go again. Again. Especially as, on closer inspection, there’s really next to nothing in the article that the pro-regime supporters can take comfort from.'

A Brotherhood Vision for Syria

 Q: Don’t you think that the reason the West doesn’t want to get involved is because it is scared that Syria will turn into another Iraq?

 A: The situation in Syria is different from Iraq. Rather, the international community does not want the revolution to succeed. They want to exhaust the people of Syria and the regime until the two are forced to come to a political solution; this political solution will be based on the regime being in place, but it has different faces.

Double guessing in Syria

 I'm not sure I agree with the entire analysis, but it's all worth reading.

 'The revolution was not about chemical weapons, and it was not about the jihadists. It was not even about the Americans or the Russians. In fact, during the initial protests, the Syrians had been careful not to demonise any nation. They didn’t burn American flags, and they didn’t insult or assault the Russians, many of whom were still in the country.

 Instead, the Syrians wanted to focus on one thing, the introduction of a free and democratic regime, and now the Americans were ignoring this one thing and bringing many others onto the table. This whole myriad of international considerations, and some domestic as well, may have mattered to Washington, but they hardly did so to the Syrians who were dying and fleeing the country in their thousands.'

How Obama has supported Assad's gas murder always

 'The White House responded by attempting to cover up the regime's use of chemicals and then issuing an oblique threat designed to warn Assad not to create a mass casualty event through his chemical warfare. For those of us that didn't know that Assad might already be guilty of gas murder, the "whole bunch of" comment might have seemed an "inept" slip, but Assad knew exactly what it meant. He was already using tanks, heavy artillery, helicopter gunships, jet aircraft, cluster bombs, jellied gasoline, barrel bombs and even a little gas against civilian targets and Obama was telling him "Steady as she goes." '

As the West looks away, the Islamists claim Syria’s rebellion for themselves

 'The moderate fighters in Syria, meanwhile, feel that they have been abandoned by the West where public opinion increasingly sees all the rebels as extremists.

 The West has ensured that Bashar al-Assad has got the enemy he wanted.'

US-Iran deal not likely to affect Syrian revolution

 'The military-supported political system has crumbled. It is thriving on Iranian support. It cannot hold out for long. Syrians no longer consider Assad senior or his son as their national leaders. Most of them have now realized that Assad is the leader of a tiny sect.

 It is impossible to believe that a regime rejected by Sunnis, constituting more than 70 percent of the country’s population, could survive.

 In the current scenario, it is unlikely that the Assad’s regime will survive. It now maintains authority only in a few pockets. When we say that the regime’s survival is impossible, it does not mean there is a suitable national alternative available.'

A Response to Richard Seymour

'In “How the Syrian Revolution Went Wrong,” Richard Seymour suggests that the weapons the Syrian rebels are receiving ‘something other than a few Saudi pea shooters’ is ‘already outdated.’ This is false.'

Asking Assad to stay is asking Syrians to be party to a charade

 'As world leaders discuss the merits of the Syrian opposition attending Geneva 2 peace talks without preconditions, they flip the narrative of the revolution. A narrative in which Mr Al Assad is upgraded from a brutal dictator that deserves no more than a cell at The Hague to a potential “partner” in the transitional peace process.

 The latest demeaning analysis offered to Syrians is to act “as if” Mr Al Assad maintaining power would end the brutal war that was unleashed by Mr Al Assad himself. Governments act as if dragging the Syrian opposition to the negotiation table without any preconditions will result in a political solution to a raging war. World leaders act as if Mr Al Assad’s cooperation in dismantling his chemical weapon stockpiles is reducing the amount of bloodshed, even as the cluster bombs and scud missiles continue to fall onto civilian populations...

 Perhaps we will not be able to rejoice soon (or not even for decades) that the Assad regime is finally finished. That will not change one fact: asking for him or his regime to stay will not save lives. Instead, this decision will take more Syrian lives. Thousands more lives.

 Deceptive options and skewed choices can be framed as powerful persuasions, as the “last hope” and the “moral choice”. These “solutions for the Syrian conflict” mock the Syrian people’s heavy sacrifices, bloody history, and desire for a peaceful future of freedom and dignity.'

Children targeted by snipers during conflict

 'You may find some of the images in Lyse Doucet's report disturbing.'

 'Some were just infants.'

A Response to Another Insult

 Sam Charles Hamad:

 "This thoroughly inadequate and contradictory reaction of some on the left to the Syrian revolution, and, more generally, the reaction of some of those involved in causes associated with Arabs, fits almost perfectly into this latent orientalist perspective of the Arab as some sort of idealised figure of resistance against the west; or as a constant victim of the west; or, in the case of Syria, as a faceless, passive entity who has absolutely no right to resist or rise against this tyrannical regime that somehow falls into what is so inaccurately thought of as the camp of ‘anti-imperialism’."

Dateline London

 "Unless they get a deal on the nuclear issue, it will be impossible to get a negotiated settlement over Syria."

 Owen Jones was on Dateline London. I think he's completely wrong. Each outside intervention to bring "peace" so far, whether the UN envoy or the Arab League mission, has done nothing but buy Assad more time. Any Geneva conference will be predicated in a Russian insistence that Assad will stay.

 "The vote in Britain about whether they would be military intervention in Syria."

 An elision of Western invasion with token airstrikes. To oppose the second, the anti-war movement has suggested that the first would be the result, either because it was an inexorable consequence, or it was the secret American plan all along. The lack of enthusiasm of the administrations on both sides of the Atlantic, that they passed the buck on the decision and threw up their hands when it didn't go through, should inform people that the West really isn't interested in doing anything in Syria, let alone try and overthrow Assad.

 "The reason they [the Iranians] see their fate so tied to that of the Syrian régime is because of their isolation, they've spent £3bn, which is deeply resented at home."

 That seems about right.

 "And stop a wider regional war."

 It is Assad who has tried to spread this war, by attacking Turkey, by dragging in fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, by blaming the US and Israel for the revolution. It is the rebels who want to keep this local, to insist it is about Syrians determining their own destiny. The longer Assad is allowed to keep hanging on with Syria's fate determined between the US and the Russians, the more he will provoke a wider conflict. Having cried wolf about the Western intervention now, it will be harder to resist when people say down the line, after the next chemical weapons attack, or missile salvo on Turkey or Lebanon, that there is no alternative to Iraq Mark II.

 "The Saudi sponsors of Islamist rebels"

 People who have got tired of living under a dictatorship try to overthrow it. The West refuses to arm them, so they grow beards and try to find Saudis who'll give them some guns. Now Owen Jones wants them to believe that they can lay down those guns because the international community can be trusted to stop their government killing them with its cracking negotiating skills. How farfetched is that?

 "Libya is obviously descending now into total abject chaos."

 I think Robin Yassin-Kassab would find this a pernicious exaggeration.

St. Petersburg Sends Contractors to Syria

 

 Assad's close to bust.

 'According to information obtained by Fontanka.ru, at the present time, all the security guards who went to Syria at the end of September 2013 on contracts with Slavonic Corps, Ltd. have returned to Russia. The short stay of their tour of duty was caused, according to our information, by the failure of the hosts to fulfill their financial obligations.'

Stories of Syrian rebels

 'Things changed as the bulk of private Gulf money flowed to hard-line Islamist groups - and as Washington refused to arm more moderate militias linked to the Free Syrian Army.'

'Islamist posturing' is a strategy to raise funds, says Syrian rebel

 “If our donors want us to rename our brigade ‘Syrian soldiers for Madonna’, we’d do it!”

Return To Homs

 "We'd never win if we stay peaceful."

 'In "Return to Homs" he films their resistance, that changed from non-violent protest into a bloody guerilla, where the army shoots and kills protesters. An army of young rebels forms around Ossama and Basset, using rifles and pistols to fight against tanks and bombs.'

There won't be peace in Syria so long as Britain is backing the rebels

 Words escape me. The first couple of comments are as anti-opposition as in any of the broadsheets. From three weeks ago, I don't read the Telegraph that often.

 'At a time when Assad's snipers are taking pot-shots at pregnant women, the urgency of ending the bloodshed has never been greater...

 But if the talks are to succeed, the Assad gang will need to be reassured that they, too, will also get a fair hearing.'

A Road Trip to War - the British Muslims taking aid overland to Syria

"If the world was doing what it's supposed to be doing, I wouldn't have to be doing this."

A tale of two conferences

 Louis Proyect:

 'Try to remember to have some compassion for a Syrian who might be in the vicinity, before you mouth off in the abstract on the issue; we face news every day of our friends and our relatives being killed and imprisoned.

 Take time to get to know about a few of them, the Syrian rev youth activists who started it all, in hundreds of towns across Syria, before you speak about Syria based on what happened in Iraq or Lebanon or Country X.'

Leading The Rebel Fight For Aleppo: Hajji Marea

 'Like others in the movement opposed to Mr. Assad, the Free Syrian Army said, Mr. Saleh first organized “peaceful activity and demonstration” in his hometown before taking up arms.'

 Unfortunately he died yesterday.
[http://www.nytimes.com/20…/…/19/world/middleeast/syria.html…]

Syria government site in Damascus hit by huge bomb

 The BBC choose to illustrate this story, in which the only identified casualties are four generals, with a picture of an injured child, and the message "Civilians in Damascus have been caught in the middle of clashes between government forces and rebels."

Syria’s rebel warrior queen dreams of reforming her brigade

 “After Bashar is gone I want a moderate country, I don’t want radical Islamist groups, they hate people like me. I want a normal life, where women are part of society and can go to work, get an education, where people can choose if they want to be religious or not.”

On the StWC's statement regarding Agnes's 'withdrawal' from the Nov 30 conference

 The withdrawal of Mother Agnes, but the lack of apology for the invitation, is understandable in view of the politics of Counterfire and the Stop The War Coalition. Having turned their backs on the revolution in Syria, because it occurs in a bloc not tied to American imperialism, they parody the position that Trotskyists take in the case of a sub-imperialist taking on a major imperialist power, that of military but not political support.

 But as there is no intervention by the West, their efforts have been to push the revolutionaries into Assad-prolonging negotiations all along, to maintain the fiction that America is the threat to Syrians rather than Bashar, the Russians & c., they have had to lie repeatedly about the situation that has developed.

 Thus the denial that the régime used chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta (Lindsey German used to call even the régime's possession of chemical weapons "alleged"), the claim that the FSA is nothing but a US proxy force, without these untruths it would be clear that they are defending the indefensible. So on Mother Agnes they can't say they got it wrong, because once they admit that promoting Assad's line on the conflict is mistaken, they might have to justify why it is pretty much their line.

Over 100,000 Syrians repatriated since 2011

 ' “Hundreds of families are being targeted by the regime’s warplanes every hour,” said Abu Yousef Al Darawi, an FSA commander based on the outskirts of Inkheel — where some 2,000 displaced Syrians have reportedly sought shelter.

 “This isn’t conflict, this is a one-sided massacre,” he remarked.'