Yarmouk refugees tell of brutal treatment at hands of Syrians

 "Our so-called leaders have their own reasons for their closeness to the Syrian regime," said Umm Sameer. "And it has nothing to do with us. Shame on them and their silence."

Syrian opposition demands missiles to shoot down Assad's helicopters

 "We have been requesting repeatedly that we be allowed or that our friends and allies be allowed to provide us with some sophisticated weapons in order for us to defend our people from the death from the death from the air that has come for the last three years from the Assad regime," said Miss Allaf.

 "Allow us to stop it ourselves," she said. "We need to bring down these aircraft that are causing massive destruction on all of Syria."

He will not allow your town to live

 'Horrific scenes as twenty people are killed in an Assad air strike. Al Atareb (Aleppo): April 24, 2014 - Scenes of death, chaos, fear, anger and mourning only moments after Assad’s forces bombed the main street in this tiny town north west of Aleppo city.

 Al Atareb was one of the first towns to rise up and protest peacefully against the Assad regime and was on of the first fully liberated towns.

 However, if Assad cannot rule over you in tyranny, then he will not allow your town to live.'

There is no legal barrier to UN cross-border operations in Syria

 'For example, parties might temporarily refuse consent for reasons of "military necessity" where imminent military operations will take place on the proposed route for aid. They cannot, however, lawfully withhold consent to weaken the resistance of the enemy, cause starvation of civilians, or deny medical assistance. Where consent is withheld for these arbitrary reasons, the relief operation is lawful without consent.'

Barrel-bombed Aleppo 'living in fear'

 The BBC is still presenting Assad's war on Syria as one where it is difficult to see a right side. You see occasional bits of reporting of the real villainy.

 'Tens of thousands of people have fled Aleppo in the last few months in a relentless campaign of bombing by the government.'

 Pannell supports the contention of Human Rights Watch that the barrel bombings are indiscriminate, without mentioning the possibility that they are in fact targeted at civilians, the intended target, not just collateral damage. We get the régime line and the BBC line, but not that of the opposition. When he finishes by saying, "Nowhere in Aleppo is safe, not on the government side, and certainly not on the opposition side," it suggests there is an equivalence between those facing the barrel bomb attacks and those who do not, further adding to the confusion of the BBC's audience.

 I watched Ian Pannell's report on the One O'Clock News, and listened to another on the World Service. You could get from his reporting that Aleppo was now safer for journalists because the FSA and allied groups had kicked the extremists of ISIS out of the town, but if you didn't know the groups involved, it would just tell you that Syria has dangers everywhere.

 He interviewed an English teacher who'd said he supported the revolution, but that some of the FSA had been thieves. In the actual interview he went on to say that he still supported the fight against Assad, but Pannell editorialised it in the TV version to him just saying he wanted the war to be over. And Pannell couldn't find a Syrian who would say the way the end the war is to get rid of Assad. He does report that Syrians feel abandoned, but doesn't really get anyone to understand why or what could be different.

Killing Spurs the Living to Continue Revolution

 'The goal has become to destroy the regime, regardless the price they paid and are still to pay, he says, summarising the whole matter by saying that “we live in God’s hands and have always had a full faith in His will. Our life today is so difficult like as our brothers in the whole Eastern Ghouta. Despite that we have no choice but to continue to the end of the road of change we paid that expensive price to make." '

 Also, 'The Syrian slum areas were the first to participate in the revolution, and thus were the most vulnerable to the brutal destruction, displacement and murder.'

[https://syrianobserver.com/syrian-actors/slums_and_the_syrian_revolution.html]

 and, ' “He’s a liar. They’re still there. We got reinforcements — Hezbollah fighters with one very senior officer, about 250 of them. They are very tough and fierce. Without them, I don’t think we could have held on,” he explained. “Of course there are drawbacks,” Abu Sa’ad mused, referring to the Hezbollah fighters. “We dare not drink or curse in front of them. They are very devout and austere men. They carry a Quran with them at all times and pray. I really think they loathe us sometimes.” '
[https://syrianobserver.com/foreign-actors/west_aleppo_faces_unending_assault.html]

Demented Tony Blair recites the Saudis' creed in his latest speech

 Cockburn doesn't pass up the chance to slander the Syrian opposition.

 'But in Syria the armed opposition is dominated by the very jihadists – Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qa'ida affiliate and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, formerly al-Qa'ida in Iraq – against whom Blair is warning the world. They now control an area the size of Britain in north and east Syria and north and west Iraq and can operate anywhere between Basra and the Mediterranean coast of Syria.'

 Cockburn does what he accuses Blair of, but in reverse, against the Sunni Muslims who have risen in revolt in Syria.

 'Blair appears to agree with the Sunni conspiracy theory whereby Shia movements in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Lebanon and Yemen are delegitimised by referring to them as "safavids" who act as pawns of Iran and have no communal interests of their own to defend.'

FSA strikes jihadist-held stronghold

 'Syrian rebels launched their biggest offensive yesterday against thousands of jihadists in the north who have used terrorist tactics and imposed strict Islamic rules on minorities.

 About 1,500 members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) were involved in the push towards the city of Raqqa, which is controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), according to an opposition spokesman.

 At least five villages in the province of the same name were seized and eight Isis militants killed, Omar Abu Layla said. A few FSA fighters died when a car bomb detonated...'

The Rise of Islamism

 'Each time there is radicalisation it is a response to the actions of the state.'

 There's also a bit where one speaker describes how after Assad Senior had massacred 20,000 Muslims in Hama, "they went street by street, woman by woman, taking off their headscarves. A policeman took off my mother's scarf, and danced on it. She could never look her children in the eye again."

 I also watched Dateline London*, where the Israeli journalist mentioned Obama's abandonment of the Syrian people when he allowed Assad to cross red lines with impunity. When they got on to the subject of Tony Blair's call for an alliance with Putin against Islamism, Abdel Bari-Atwan bemoaned the destruction the West had wrought on secular states like Iraq and Syria.
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/…/episode/…/Dateline_London_26_04_2014/]

'The chaos continues' in Syria

 “The lack of support for the FSA is a factor that led to the increased presence of Al-Qaida, and the Syrian people will hold the international community in general and the U.S. in particular responsible for that result,” Muhannad Ali said. “What happened is we have the FSA fighting on two fronts against the regime and Al-Qaida, and this is what hindered the revolution.”

Robert Fisk, Seymour Hersh and Syria

 Yassin al-Haj Saleh:

'By methodically ignoring the Syrian people and by focusing on Al Qaeda, Robert Fisk and Seymour Hersh have done us all a huge disservice. The perspective on Syria portrayed by these writers is exactly the view of Syria that Bashar Assad wants the rest of the world to see.'

When even the Co-op wants to break ties with you

 'Blair declares that we should back Putin, be thankful we invaded Iraq, and bomb Syria.'

 Mark Steel yet again ignorant about Syria. As Sam Charles Hamad pointed out a few days ago, Tony Blair now openly pro-Assad: "Syria. This is an unmitigated disaster. We are now in a position where both Assad staying and the Opposition taking over seem bad options. The former is responsible for creating this situation. But the truth is that there are so many fissures and problems around elements within the Opposition that people are rightly wary now of any solution that is an outright victory for either side. Repugnant though it may seem, the only way forward is to conclude the best agreement possible even if it means in the interim President Assad stays for a period." [http://goo.gl/gogBvI]

Syria Civil War Forces Brutal Split in Aleppo

 'Several industrial zones housing mainly garment and textile factories had sprung up all around this northern Syrian city, located a mere 40 miles from the Turkish border. In the eyes of the European Union, it was a gateway for greater economic cooperation with Syria.

 But those hopes—along with a boom that brought a face-lift to Aleppo's historic center as well as some new luxury boutique hotels—have gradually turned into a nightmare. The initial shift was when the impoverished and less developed countryside, which supplied much of the labor for the factories, rose up in solidarity with other parts of Syria against Mr. Assad. Peaceful protests, including in some working class sections of the city and at universities, were brutally suppressed by hired thugs on the payroll of some businessmen, say residents.'

Assad's strategy & why exposing his crimes is so critical

 'The children need to get back to being children and the refugees need to be able to go home. This requires not the end of the uprising, but its successful conclusion. People vested in the revolution understood that even when victory seemed remote, as it did in the beginning.

 Others, less personally involved, especially the broad mass of people in say, the United States, that haven't paid close attention and just know something very ugly and terrible is happening in Syria, may well settle for any outcome that just makes it go away, even if that means the same violence is going on at night and behind "detention center" walls.'

Police make Syria plea to UK Muslim women

 'David Cameron said: "We are very concerned as a government and as a country about the threat of terrorism coming out of Syria. And so what we are doing is trying to prevent people from travelling there." '



 On last night's Sky Press Preview:

 Anna Botting: "But won't some of them have gone to fight Assad?"

 Stig Abell: "Yes, but there are some bad moral choices on both sides of the civil war in Syria."
He's the managing editor of the Sun. The organ through which Rupert Murdoch has influenced British politics for three decades. If there are any Western-backed rebels in Syria, it isn't from that part of the ruling class, that is happy to spread the lie that those fighting oppression are like the torturers.

 As with the David Wearing piece in the Guardian* recently, in isolation, telling young men not to go to fight in Syria is not a bad thing. By and large, they do as much harm as good, and if they end up with an Islamic group fighting against the revolution rather than Assad, they are not helping at all. But much of the media narrative is designed to discredit the cause of overthrowing Assad. Referring to all those going to fight as jihadists. Claiming that there would be a problem of them being 'radicalised' and coming back to Britain to blow themselves up.

 One newsreader made the obvious point about this latter claim, "won't they have been radicalised before they go?" There was a woman from the Charity Commission on saying that there is no need to go to Syria, because they could donate money instead, and said in a confused manner that 87% of aid was getting through to people who need it. The truth is that aid is not getting through, because Assad is allowed by fear of Western intervention to pursue a policy of starving and brutalising civilians in Syria, that the only way there is going to be peace and a return of refugees is when the rebels get sufficient weaponry to defend civilians against the depredations of the régime, at which point it will have a short life expectancy, as its strategy will have failed.
*[http://www.theguardian.com/…/british-jihadists-playing-into…]

We cannot still ignore the perils of intervention

 'In Syria for instance, the US and its allies have been claiming for three years that the real representatives of the Syrian people are discredited but well-financed exiles who dare not visit either government or rebel-held areas.'

 I was expecting to want to explain again how we should unpack the word 'intervention', as it is being used by the enemies of the Syrian revolution to make the token threat of airstrikes or the provision of weapons to the Free Syrian Army elide into a rerun of the Iraq invasion, but this prompts me to go: just fuck off. The Syrian opposition leadership suffers from many of the problems of those who don't actually have the power on the ground, but the idea that they are out of touch while Assad has the support of the Syrian people is an insult to those he is bombing.*

 Nader Atassi suggested that Assad's re-election slogan should be, Because Syria Won't Barrel Bomb Itself.

 Quickly flicking back to Cockburn's piece, I see this, and snigger at his friends on the Left, or what used to be one,

 'By accepting as legitimate a government in Kiev installed by direct action, the US and EU irresponsibly destabilised a tract of Europe.'
*[http://eaworldview.com/…/syria-daily-regime-barrel-bombs-a…/]

Lessons of fear and freedom in Syrian schools

"The revolution has shattered this lens through which the regime had conditioned its people to see it and the world, and a return to the unconditional support Assad had once succeeded in instilling is far from likely."

Chlorine gas dropped by helicopter

 'Opposition activists in Syria have accused the Assad regime of dropping chlorine gas bombs on a town in a rebel-held area of the civil war-torn country.

 It is claimed that helicopters dropped the poisonous gas on Kfar Zeita on 11 and 12 April.'

Review: Return to Homs

 'Death is frequent in the fighting. Many are injured, including Basset and Ossama. Ossama appears more visibly traumatised by his ordeal, but all the young men are affected. Despair and desperation creep in, how can it not. They have gone from being labourers, blacksmiths, factory workers, teachers and footballers, to fighting one of the most brutal and totalitarian regimes of the modern age, with a massive imbalance in firepower and support. And yet they keep fighting. And singing.

 Basset is still in Homs. Still fighting under siege. Still trying to liberate his country. Orwa Nyrabia, the film’s producer, commented after the film screening, “There is a Basset in every town in Syria. I speak to many of them regularly, but the media does not talk to them or about them.” Orwa stated the mainstream narrative, that it is the regime versus Islamic fighters, is false, that the vast majority of those fighting are moderates, but they receive little or no coverage. This must change. But it will require action, action which has not been taken by many.

 Orwa remarked during the Q&A, “When the West threatened to attack the Assad regime, which did not actually happen, tens of thousands marched around the world. When the regime used gas on Ghouta, and killed 1,500 people, not a single march was held anywhere.” Alongside the brutality of the regime, this memory will linger for a long time, the lack of aid given by much of humanity and its progressive forces to the Syrian people.

 All progressive and anti-war activists must feel a deep shame at the lack of support for the Syrian Revolution which has left it isolated and battling the world superpowers alone. This feeling should be used to motivate, not as an excuse to ignore what is happening. There is much we can do, if we are willing to spend the energy.'

Azmi Bishara on the Continued Barrel Bombing of Aleppo

 'It shames humanity that an entire people are abandoned to face the most brutal forms of oppression and slaughter, that the tyrannical regime which they face is supported by global and regional powers. In the broad daylight of the twenty-first century, they face bombardment and displacement and forced starvation, all on their own. On top of this, everybody under the Sun gives them instructions on how to behave.

 Those abandoned to their own fate cannot be blamed for what they do to protect their lives and dignity; only those who stand by these people, in deeds and not only words, have the right to criticise and advise and suggest alternatives to them.'

The conflict in Syria is still raging

 'The way that Western leaders have washed their hands of Syria, having decided that they don’t like rebels after all, is almost breathtakingly cynical because countless people who have nothing to do with al-Qa’ida or its affiliates remain locked into a revolt that has had the carpet pulled from under its feet.'

 There are some problems with this piece, the idea that Western leaders encouraged the Syrians to revolt, when they would have preferred some sort of coup, and the minute there was an armed revolt the story was that we didn't know who these people was, and had the Arab Spring turned sour with this turn to violence. And, "they forgot to factor in Plan B: what if the Assad regime declines to fold, or if a democratic revolt against the regime morphs into a sectarian crusade?" suggests that the West was serious about arming the rebels at some stage, that it wasn't the almost complete lack of arming that encouraged sectarian groups on the rebel side, omits the sectarian crusade already being spearheaded by Hezbollah to ethnically cleanse Sunni villages.

 But the headline is at least shifting the debate onto the need to address the conflict, rather than to pretend that "intervention" is a route to an Iraq-style invasion. It would be nice if this gives solutions that empower the Syrian people a chance to be heard.

Anxious time for Syria's Christians

 This report was introduced on the News channel with, 'Syria's Christians are being increasing targeted', and it is not true. Assad deliberately bombs civilians, this is a much smaller, and somewhat indiscriminate response, which has now been condemned by many of the major rebel factions. Lyse Doucet talks about the Jesuit priest who has now been killed in Homs without hinting that his opposition was to Assad. The idea that when one mortar round falls, "there is no peace now, just daily violence," is utterly disproportionate to those Syrians, mostly Sunni Muslims, who are being killed and starved. There is one line, "Syria's Christians say they are not the only ones being targeted", which could point to the reality, but it here just enables the BBC to cover all bases.

Bombs and ballots

 'Bombs and shells are not the only ways in which the Damascus government is ratcheting up the pressure on the rebels and on the civilians who live, most of them not by any conscious choice, in rebel areas.'

 This suggests that most people are indifferent to the choice between the régime and revolution and it is not true. When you live in fear of torture or bombs you aren't free to express that choice, and the barrel bombs are because Assad has no chance of winning hearts and minds.

 'The countries helping the rebels need to reconsider their options. They could shift the military balance by giving the rebels more weapons or by using western air power. They could go on to try to revive the so far barren diplomatic process. Or they can accept that the Syrian government is going to achieve some kind of victory.'

 Only option A is a solution.

Non-Intervention in Syria Was a Grave Mistake

 'Horrors of this sort would not have come about had Britain and her allies intervened when the biggest rebel forces belonged to the Free Syrian Army.'

 I don't think any military action is better than none, but the belief that we should stop intervention at all costs was always going to mean intervention would happen anyway when the destruction had become much more severe.

Why Assad can have confidence in his survival

 'Equally, military victory by the fractious and feuding rebel groups is now a distant dream. Some of their regional backers may still want it, but the Western powers which pull many of the strings behind the scenes never did anyway.'

 So the Western powers don't really want to support the rebels, I'd agree. That a flow of arms could not change things now when it could have before, I don't agree. That as the situation gets worse, it isn't possible that they will be forced to do the right thing, I don't agree. And to claim that Assad remaining is a feasible alternative I don't agree, because the impossibility of his ever ruling over most Syrians means every day he remains, he kills more Syrians and makes more flee the country, because that is the only war he can fight.

 'That crisis [Ukraine] has given the Russian President Vladimir Putin strong motivation to assert himself against the Americans over Syria rather than go along with them.'

 Or the Russians don't need to fight on a second front.

 'But in the absence of those conditions [opposition unity but exclusion of Jabhat al-Nusra and the like], it is hard to imagine the Americans and others giving the green light for a serious infusion of the kind of quality weapons - such as MANPAD anti-aircraft missiles and much more - that the rebels need if they are to stand a chance of tilting the balance back in their favour.'

 Maybe when Assad has massacred another few tens of thousands the calculation will change again.

 'Once the heat is off, there may be a reckoning from elements currently loyal to the leadership who have paid a high price for its brutal blunders.'

 This is wishful thinking from Jim Muir. Such a palace coup would continue the régime of torture without Assad.

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.'