Calais after Sangatte: The migrants 'worth less than cattle'

 'I meet Anwar, an unkempt, sallow Syrian man in his 30s who tells me he fled in terror from his home town near Damascus after his younger brother was tortured by supporters of President Assad's regime. "In Syria, we see television programmes about France - we learn it is the country of freedom, of human rights and solidarity."

 He looks at me closely and asks: "Do you think this is a country which respects human rights? I have nothing here, Madame." '

Four key tests face the Syrian opposition

 Revolutionaries often say that the difficult time comes when you've overthrown the tyrant. Reassuring Alawites is essential, reassuring senior security personnel seems more likely to worry those that have suffered the most that nothing will really change.

 'The developments in recent days in the Syrian opposition will be a game-changer if they achieve four critical and linked goals: coordinating internal military action, generating legitimate and credible local governance bodies in areas liberated from government control, connecting with Alawites, senior security personnel and other regime supporters to convince them of their safety in a post-Assad Syria, and managing a rising flow of international diplomacy and aid.'

'An explosion shakes Almazah area
in the capital #Damascus. #Syria

 The Syrian regime is close to the end'

Syrian rebels take villages near Israeli-held area

 ' "The Syrian army is displaying ever-diminishing efficiency."

 The civil war in Syria has renewed tensions over the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in 1967. Despite hostility between the two countries, Syria has been careful to keep the border quiet since the 1973 Mideast war.'

 Fears over what might happen next in Syria and Jordan may help to explain the timing of Israel's attack on Gaza.

In war-torn Syria, secrets and double lives

 "I am keeping my work as a rebel secret because I need the money for my wife and children," he says, winking. "You don't get paid to be a rebel."

Newly unified, Syrian rebels seek arms while government forces have ‘more than enough weapons’

 'Syria's estimated 300 jet fighters — mostly Russian-made — lack the appropriate maintenance, spare parts and missile warheads. Syria's estimated three dozen helicopters, also mostly Russian-made, are being "exhausted from overuse," ' then the rebels won't have to fight in their shade much longer.

Matilde Gattoni: The Swallows of Syria

 “I was expecting the revolution to be brief and successful,” she says. “But I am still hopeful. Assad will fall soon, and we will be able to go back to Syria victorious.”

Terrorists Increase Mortar Attacks on Damascus

 'TEHRAN (FNA)- Reports coming from Syria said terrorists' bomb blasts in the capital, Damascus, have now been replaced with an increasing number of mortar attacks.
FNA dispatches from Damascus said the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) changed its strategy and resorted to firing mortar shells on different districts of Damascus after its terrorists failed to gain anything from bomb explosions in the capital.'

[http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9107118410]

[Note 26/1/25: This is Iranian state media rebranding Assad regime false flag attacks as by the rebels]

A Daily Diary From War-Torn Damascus

 The BBC World Service are about to report on "A Daily Diary From War-Torn Damascus". Their excerpt at the top of Newshour was something like "The MiGs drop bombs, I try to ignore them...", but I may not be doing the poetry justice. I don't like poetry much at all.

Syria opposition bloc elects Christian as leader

 'Sabra said he is a former geography teacher and writer for children's television, including for the Arabic version of Sesame Street produced in Kuwait.'

Syrian rebels hit Damascus’ elite where they live

 'The rebels are now threatening to take their fight into the very heart of the capital.'

Is Syria now about to blow?

 Politics.ie seems to have some people who know how to fact check on Syria. First though:

 'Got this sent to me by the US-based think-tank and global intelligence company Stratfor as a free sample advertisement looking for subscriptions.
So it is Ok to reproduce here in full gives a good idea of whats happening in Northern Syria from it's POV.

 Sample Article: Syrian Rebels' Northern Gains
 Summary

 Syria's rebels have been making significant gains in the north that could culminate in the capital, Damascus, being cut off from the Alawite-dominated coast. As part of the rebel push in the north, heavily armed rebels from five different units launched an attack Nov. 3 on the Taftanaz Air Base, one of the most important regime air bases in Idlib province, which serves as a major hub for the Syrian military's helicopter operations. The attack came shortly after significant rebel gains in the north, including the seizure of Saraqeb and the advance on Harim, illustrating a shifting dynamic in the fighting and a clear erosion of the regime's strategic position in northern Syria. If the rebels can secure the north, including the strategic city of Aleppo, they will be positioned to mount an expanded offensive in Latakia province and seek to connect with beleaguered units in the Orontes River Valley, cutting off Damascus from the sea."

 Originally Posted by Truth.ie

 'More sectarian attacks. This time a link from the BBC.
Indiscriminate shelling of minority Allawite community.
BBC News - Syria rebels attack Assad strongholds in Damascus'

 "Mortar shells landed in Mezzeh 86, an Alawite district near the presidential palace, and hit the prime minister's offices and Mezzeh military airfield.
And as if SAA does not indiscriminately shell Sunni areas!!"

 I originally tried to check the veracity of this claim,"Insurgents blew up an evangelical church in Aleppo's old town."[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ka…/obama-syria_b_2092362.html], which gets a less complete response.

 Originally Posted by Partizan

 The report has also been picked up by other media sources so there must be grounds in the report.
https://www.google.ie/search?q=Armed...=hp&channel=np
"And all of them quote the same source. Repeating A Lie Does Not Make It True!!. But maybe you are more of a Lenin supporter? “A lie told often enough becomes truth” – Vladimir Lenin." 

 I was expecting that quote to be bogus. Wikipedia seems to approve of it, but I can't immediately find the original.

 I did see this counter-claim elsewhere, but as it is from a medical group opposed to the régime, would require independent verification before it is widely accepted as fact:

 Allegations of Syrian soldiers looting foreign aid surfaced on Wednesday after a medical aid group said troops had been seizing the supplies and reselling them or channeling them towards government loyalists, putting millions of lives at risk. When the regime attacks one of our medical facilities, whether it's a hospital or something else, they load up everything they can carry, and they burn the rest," said Tawfik Chamaa, a Geneva-based doctor and spokesman for the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations (UOSSM).'

Growing Up in a War Zone

 "That's something that no child should go through, and that's what I'm thinking about when I hear about Syria" Nadja says. "Months and days are passing, just like they did in Sarajevo, and more and more children are losing their childhoods, their limbs, their lives."

Seven Syrian generals defect to Turkey

 'Seven more Syrian army generals defected to Turkey on Tuesday to join opposition fighters as the regime in Damascus renewed air strikes across the country, the Anatolia news agency reported.

 Amid tight security, the generals were taken to a camp in the southern border province of Hatay, it said.

 Turkish officials refuse to give an exact number of Syrian generals currently on Turkish soil as some are returning to Syria to join the active fighters inside the conflict-wracked country.

 Turkey is currently home to nearly 112,000 Syrian refugees registered in several camps along its volatile border, as well as the exiled Syrian opposition's political and military leadership.

 Army defectors, flanked by their families, stay in the Apaydin camp in Hatay province where security is tighter.

 Turkey fell out with one-time ally Syria after the regime's unleashed a deadly crackdown on protests in March last year, and has joined in Arab and Western calls for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.'

Syrian regime in demolition mode

 'Whole Syrian cities and villages have been flattened just to kill the armed revolutionaries fighting the army from within, which reminds one of what the Russians and the Americans did in both Grozny in Chechnya and Fallujah in Iraq.'

BTL Y-wing starfighter

 "We're using Y-wings because of their greater firepower. But they move like a sleepy Hutt, so watch it." ―Luke Skywalker, during the Assault on Kile II

 With this sort of bigotry from the rebels, no responsible heavy weapons manufacturer would support their sectarian civil war.

The face of Syria's military resistance

 Trudy Rubin:

 'The image of the Syrian opposition in the USA is of raging militants who want to establish an Islamic state. But most of the fighters are young soldiers or officers who defected because they couldn’t bear killing civilians, or else they are civilians - teachers, accountants, students, workers, farmers- who took up arms when the Syrian regime started bombing their towns.

 One good example is Abdul Razak Tlas, a handsome, baby-faced 25 year old former Syrian army lieutenant from a famous Sunni family that produced a long- time defense minister. He was one of the first Syrian army officers to defect and became a hero of the Farouk brigade that defended residents of the Bab Amr district of Homs which was pounded to smithereens.

 Tlas now sports a beard but he bristles when I ask him if he is a salafi, the militant believers who seek an Islamic state.

 “I am a Muslim. Period,” he says.

 “Ninety-five per cent of those who are labeled as salafis are indigenous Syrians and observant Muslims, not salafis in the true sense. Although their religion mandates them to fight against those who are killing their families, they do not espouse any extreme ideology. This is not a religious war.”

 Most of these fighters, he says, would go back to their old jobs, once the war ended. But, echoing what I hear repeatedly from non-Islamist commanders, he adds that the small number of militant fighting groups is always well-supplied with funds and money from individuals in the Gulf states, while the non-Islamists get no weapons or funds from the West. And the longer the war lasts, the more attractive militant ideology may become to desperate young men who feel the world looks on as their towns and villages are bombed into dust.'

A Tribute to Activist Fatima Saad

 'The uprising in Syria is a subject I wish I could avoid. It is a topic that makes my blood boil, for I still cannot understand how it is humanly possible for the leader of a nation to crack down on his people in such a brutal way.
Fatima was subjected to physical and psychological torture by the Syrian regime in an attempt to make her name those in her photos. Her death brings the number of Syrians killed specifically under torture of the regime to 1,125.'

Only Happy When It Rains

 'Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – are already directly intervening, providing arms and other military support. Their interests are hardly humanitarian, given Saudi Arabia's terrible human rights record and Turkey's longstanding oppression of the Kurds... We take the view that it is for Syrians to decide what happens in Syria.'

And if that means tens of thousands of Syrians are killed, so be it. Lindsey German isn't so much a hypocrite as a philosophical idealist, who believes reactionary ideas among the Gulf monarchies are more real than the Russian bullets, shells and bombs that have killed thousands and forced hundreds of thousands into exile.

Evidence of large unguided Blast Bombs reported from Syria

 'That this coincides with the government having lost military control of Maraat Al-Numan, and there by with a strategically important part of the M5 Damascus - Aleppo highway, seems an obvious reason for an escalation in use of weapons, like what this evidence indicates.'

Syrian rebels kill 28 soldiers as fighting rages

 ' "The international community is responsible, through its lack of support for the Syrian people, for the growth of extremism in Syria," SNC director Abdel Basset Saida told AFP. "The international community should criticise itself, and ask itself: What did it give the Syrian people? How has it helped the Syrians to stop the regime's crazy killing?" he said.'

 The first line says a couple of things,"Syrian regime forces launched new air strikes Thursday in what is seen as a desperate attempt to reverse rebel gains." Sad but promising.

Rebel victories in Syria show up fragility of Assad regime

 'Assad’s regime is running out of men, with many either defecting, surrendering or going home. His troops cannot regain areas they have lost. This is a war of attrition that Assad is losing.'

Hand in Hand for Syria

 Road to Syria Aid Convoy

 A registered charity working to relieve the pain and suffering of the Syrian people.

Democalypse 2012 - We Missed NLCS Game 7 for This

 'Listen to these guys duet on Syria.'[2m31s]

HE'S BEHIND YOU

 'And now as the Arab Spring unfolds and reveals the true chaos and messiness of the real world – above all the horror of what is happening in Syria - we find ourselves completely unable to understand it or even know what to do.'

 Adam Curtis is far too Platonic* about how ability to distinguish the shadows on the cave wall; last year he wrote**, "Nobody knows what is going to happen in Syria today. The optimistic view is that a new generation is emerging who really want a proper representative democracy in which all groups can negotiate with each other without violence. The pessimistic view is that those sectarian divisions, encouraged by the French - and then incubated further by the Assad family - will re-emerge. In truth no-one knows," which is now only a claim supported by those who oppose the Syrian people controlling their own destiny (and the genuinely ignorant), but he's always very interesting.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
**http://www.bbc.co.uk/…/2011/06/the_baby_and_the_baath_water…

Damascus

 ' "After doing so many benefits for Palestine, for Iraq, for Haiti, now I'm doing them for Syria," he said over lunch in Hollywood. "But at the same time, it's an amazing time to be Syrian — people are saying things that you haven't heard there in 50 years." '
[http://www.latimes.com/…/la-et-ms-syrian-rapper-omar-offend…]

Syrian rebels advance into Aleppo

 Remember this was an endless civil war?

 No wonder Assad wants a ceasefire.

Will al-Hassan’s killing spell end for Assad?

 'Just like the overthrow of Saddam’s ugly Baathist regime in Iraq, it is the right of the Syrian people to topple the Syrian Baath regime too. This is the desire of the majority of Syrians and they have declared it with their blood, and it was not the desire of the Gulf states or an American agenda. On the contrary, these countries supported Assad at the beginning of the revolution in order to persuade him to absorb the demonstrations.'

Life in Marea - a rebel-controlled Syrian town at war

 ' "The new Syria will be a Syria without corruption, without bribery - we won't have a system like Baath where everyone is corrupt - we want justice," says Abu Ra'ed, the black-bearded electrician who leads the battalion defending the town.'

On Syria

Luna17

 Alex Snowden does one of the least bad accounts of Syria I've seen from the anti-revolution left. The first paragraph here is bang on; the answer to the second in the first instance is to support the demonstrations of Syrian revolutionaries rather than those who support Assad, as his organisation Counterfire has done. If they really believe that imperialism (Western, they don't seem to recognise any other type) is the main enemy in Syria right now, they should be showing open support for Assad's military, rather than pretending to be on the other side.

  'Seymour’s argument is that the internal class struggle inside Syria – regardless of any kind of imperialist dimension - is the "dominant antagonism" here. Therefore the ‘strategic priority’ – the thing that dictates what we should ‘bend all of our words and efforts around’ – flows from recognising ‘the principal contradiction is the class struggle in Syria.'

 What does this mean in terms of our practical activity in this country? I have no idea. But if ‘practical activity internationally, including antiwar activism, should be based on this understanding’ then we presumably shouldn’t be focusing our energies on campaigning to stop Western intervention. What we should be doing remains a mystery.

In Syria's Idlib, tired rebels try siege tactics to gain ground

 'The rebels' changed approach has brought some successes. Several towns and checkpoints have fallen into insurgent hands after being besieged for about a week.
It is an easier way to make advances while sparing lives and saving ammunition, said Lieutenant Ali al-Ali.'

 That they can besiege suggests that they are winning.

Syria booby-traps ammunition to take out rebel fighters, weapons

 'The primary source for doctored ammunition has been the Syrian government, which mixes exploding cartridges with ordinary rounds on the black markets through which rebels acquire weapons, the commanders said.

 Some booby-trapped ammunition may have entered Syria from Iraq, where the Pentagon and the CIA secretly passed doctored ammunition to insurgent groups, several US veterans and officials said.'

Prelude And Fugue In A Minor

 'Mehmet had deserted the army and fled Westward, but the smugglers had sent him to sea on a dangerous boat. His favourite music was the preludes of Johann Sebastian Bach.'

 Syrian refugees in Izmir remind the BBC's correspondent of the mess the British and French left in former Ottoman territories.
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ng09d]

Why lie to the Syrians?

 Abdulrahman al-Rashed:

 "Supporting the rebels will secure the downfall of the regime and put an end to the Syrian people’s tragedy, and the time has come to stop the lies about mediators, envoys and promises."

Syrian rebels make own arms

 ' “Our revolution, as God knows, is a poor revolution. We have arrived at one year and eight months, and our people are being struck by the... highest types of weapons, you know, MiG aircraft, helicopters, missiles, tanks, and artillery,” Abu Hurriyah said.'

Tales from a Syrian jail: Filmmaker witnesses regime's 'cruelty'

 'A liberated Syria will swing toward "those who saved the people in need," Nyrabia explains. "Qatar gives us $55 million in humanitarian aid when the US promises to give us only 15. The West says it is preventing the Islamist danger by not intervening, but the result will be the opposite.”

 But what was really striking was that most of his cellmates (65 out of 80) were soldiers in their twenties without any political conscience who had been held for two, five or seven months, suspected of “thinking about deserting” or accused of “criticizing the shelling of their village.”

 For Nyrabia, the confusion stems from the fact that there is no communication among the regime’s four main security entities. Military intelligence, air force intelligence, political security, and state security are even fighting each other for Bashar Al-Assad’s favor.'

The charm of telesalafism

 'Mr Arour has now paired up with Mustafa Sheikh, a secular-leaning leader of the Free Syrian Army, and has spoken of a need to channel funding through military councils in order to reduce rivalry among the myriad rebel groups. Criticising the involvement of foreign jihadists, he has also denounced suicide-bombings as criminal. His blood-curdling video threat to Alawites is often taken out of context, since he directed his meat-grinder rant only at those Alawites who were actively suppressing the revolt; any of them who stayed neutral, he insisted, should be protected as equal citizens.'

A Homegrown Arab Alliance to Settle Global Nerves

 Rubbish like this gives support to the enemies of change in Syria.

 'As an evolving constitutional monarchy, Morocco is in the unique position of offering political support to transitioning democracies as well as trust to its GCC partners who are at a more junior stage of reform.'

Beyond the Violence

 'The liberalization of the economy over the past decade resulted on the one hand in modernization and progress, yet this has also led to the impoverishment of large sections of the population, especially in rural districts. Economic misery in combination with massive corruption and political stagnation developed into an explosive mix that could no longer be diffused with mere rhetoric of future reforms.'

Syria Business Squeeze

 'Assad has so far been able to keep his head above water with financial support from top ally Iran, he noted. "The question is whether this is sustainable in the longer term and I don't think it is," Skinner said. "What Assad is counting on at present is a bare-bones economy that is able to fuel his armed forces." '

Syrian Rebels Burn Down a Marijuana Field on Facebook

 Not helping.

 'The incineration of the weed underscores a basic problem for the U.S.’s approach to Syria’s bloody civil war. No, not because the U.S. suddenly decriminalized marijuana. It’s because the Farouq Brigades, generally considered a competent and media-savvy rebel militia, is promoting its willingness to destroy a drug crop. That’s an action usually identified more with Islamic militant groups than secular ones.'

From books to bullets: Syria students on front lines

 'Abu Abdu Sahari, 20, studying electrical engineering at Aleppo University, at first only engaged in non-violent protests against Assad's regime.

 But after he was arrested and detained for a month he joined the armed rebellion.'

Syrian rebels in Aleppo mostly poor, pious, rural

 'The blend of poverty, religious piety and anger could define the future of Aleppo, and perhaps the rest of Syria, if the rebels take over the country's largest city, which is also its economic engine. They may be tempted to push their own version of Islam, which is more fundamentalist than what is found in the city. Their bitterness at the business class may prompt them to seek ways of redistributing the wealth.

 "Those who have money in Aleppo only worry about their wealth and interests when we have long lived in poverty," said Osama Abu Mohammed, a rebel commander who was a car mechanic in the nearby town of Beyanon before he joined the fight.'

Syria's revolutionary cartoons

 'A group of artists, Comic4Syria, are producing comic strips on Facebook in response to the brutality in their country'

Rebel fighters capture historical town of Azmarin in 3-day battle

 ' “This was Captain Shardi, a three star commander in Assad’s army,” said the town's rebel commander Dr Hassan Ghnnam as he pointed at the body of a hefty man in a blood stained army uniform that lay in a side street. “He burned many houses in this town. The people were so afraid of him.”
Dr Ghnnam worked as a urologist in Azmarin before taking command of rebel forces in the town.'

Gunmen kill 4 on factory bus in Homs

 'Syria's state news agency says a suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden sedan into a coffee shop at a Damascus residential neighborhood, causing damage but no fatalities.'

 They hate our freedom, they hate our coffeeshops.

 Very similar to this tale from August, 'SANA says that an explosive device detonated in a car in Jaramana on Monday killed its driver. It says the device was attached to the car by an armed "terrorist" group. Another car blew up in the area overnight, also killing the driver. No further details were immediately available.'

Cluster Bomb Usage Rises Significantly Across Syria

 'Over the last few days there's been a marked increase in the number of cluster bomb remains being filmed in Syria, and until today most were filmed around Maarrat al-Numan, along the main highway that connects central Syria (Hama, Homs, then Damascus and Daraa) to northern Syria (Idlib, Aleppo), which has recently come under opposition control. The concentration of reports from that area suggested at first that the use of cluster bombs was related to attempts to regain an important supply route to Aleppo.'

You've got it all wrong, says Salafi Sheikh with the 'moderate' views

 To get a balanced view on Hezbollah, you have to go to the Salafists.

 ' “Let Hezbollah explain this strange coincidence: Nobody supports the Syrian regime except the Shia of Iraq, Iran and Lebanon. Explain this coincidence to me. If the Syrian regime considers itself secular, why has it become sectarian in the eyes of political Shiism and Hezbollah?“

 Despite his antipathy to “political Shiism,” the sheikh stresses he supports Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel. “Anyone who resists Israel is honorable, and we support anyone who resists this enemy regardless of their beliefs, even if they are Marxist,” he says. “We wish the Lebanese would unite against this common enemy.” '

Free soldiers and controlled minds

 'Neither the West nor oil has anything to do with the chaos that Syria is in, except what allows all external teams — Arab or Iranian or Western — to support the side that concurs with them politically. It is not strange that the regime promotes its conspiratorial explanations for the conflict. But when senior officers and young soldiers defect, after crossing the border, we hear them repeating the same arguments they read in newspapers such as Tishreen.'

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Tough Cats

 'The men joked and chuckled while telling the most horrific stories.'

 The Aleppo segment has men describing their torture by the Syrian régime. But I was struck in the first segment the way the MDC has been tamed having been seen to save Zimbabwe from civil war by power-sharing with Mugabe: that is much like what what those who refuse support for a revolution in Syria seem to wish on that country. And there are some tough cats in Jerusalem apparently.

Al Jazeera speaks with PKK rebel leader

I think he may be a bit disingenuous about the PKK's links to the Syrian government, but does seem to be genuinely distancing from them now, probably because he doesn't think Assad can last much longer.