Syrian intelligence hospitalizes Deir Ezzor militia leader

 The traditional English football chant, "You're going home in a fucking ambulance," now seems to be the way disputes are settled between Syrian régime commanders.

Hezbollah's media machine changes gears

 “Hezbollah is combating Syrian rebels. It's true a portion of them are extremists but we know the majority want a free country. Hezbollah’s media arms are trying to show the dark face of the revolution in Syria while there are many bright faces that they intend to cover,” he said. “The worst thing is that western media is becoming affected by the Hezbollah rhetoric. They want us to believe that all the Syrians are Al-Qaeda and [Islamic State].”

Bodies were everywhere

 'In the afternoon of 04 June 2015, a horrific missile strike devastated a town centre in Idlib Governorate, Syria. The wounded arrived in wave after wave at a nearby small makeshift hospital that is supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF immediately started organizing a major resupply of essentials for the hospital. The hospital director, who requested to remain anonymous for security reasons, describes the situation.

 "At around 3pm we heard a deafening sound as a result of 3 rockets exploding in a town nearby. A town overwhelmed, desperate locals living alongside many displaced people from other areas in Syria.

 Apartment buildings and shops, demolished in a few minutes, all turned to rubble.

 Bodies ripped apart, flesh everywhere. This is a massacre. This is carnage.

 Total destruction that is hard to describe; a state of hysteria took over, first among the families looking for their loved ones, neighbors searching for their neighbors, and then it spread to us medical staff." '

Don’t mention the war

 'Anti-war activists have a duty of solidarity to the Syrian people. It is not enough to oppose US/UK intervention, while remaining silent about the governments of Iran and Russia intervening on the side of Assad. Refusing to support activists on the ground who continue to organise and fight for the the original goals of the revolution is a terrible betrayal. The abandonment of Syrians is a primary reason for the growth of extremist factions like the Al-Qaeda linked Jabhat Al-Nusra.

 Syria is complex, but complexity is not a worthy excuse for inaction or silence. Understanding Syria starts with talking to Syrians and Syrian civil society.Saturday’s Stop the War event is yet another anti-war conference without a Syrian activist or speaker talking about the situation in Syria. This shameful stance must be corrected, or Stop The War will be forever known as the organisation which turned its back on Syria.'

A stream of relief to Syria

 'When Assad’s forces brutally attacked antigovernment demonstrators in 2011, Nadia Alawa was outraged — and sickened by their torture and murder of a 13-year-old boy. She forced herself to study the macabre photos on Facebook documenting the ensuing violence.

 NuDay volunteers collect donations in mosques, churches, and clinics across New England. They sort and pack the items into shipping containers and send them to Turkey, where a NuDay employee drives them to the Syrian border. Syrian partners pick up the goods and distribute them in areas of northern Syria controlled by rebel groups — and never in regions under the sway of the Islamic State or the Assad regime, Alawa said.'

No-Fly Zone: A dangerous illusion

 The Syria Solidarity Movement UK is hosting a debate on the merits of a No Fly Zone for Syria. Most are in favour, I tend to sympathise with the argument against by Mark Boothroyd, one of the most active of the few Syrian solidarity activists in the UK, so not one of the numpties claiming the West is the main enemy in Syria, but just that they are not coming to help protect Syrians from Assad. The picture is one Mark tweeted, showing Peter Tatchell holding a placard calling for a NFZ.

 'While this demand would be supportable if those countries [Britain, France and the US] were honest and pure in their intentions towards Syria, they are not. They are imperialist powers whose history of interference and reactionary policy in the region goes back to the Sykes-Picot agreement and before.

 Their actual intentions can be gauged by their actions towards the Syrian revolution so far, and particularly their actions in the last few months as the demand for a NFZ has been raised in earnest by the White Helmets and other campaign groups.

 Throughout the entire course of the Syrian revolution these countries have refused to give the armed opposition anti-aircraft weapons to protect themselves and civilian areas against air attack. A number of spurious reasons have been given for this, none of which stand up to much scrutiny.

 The argument was raised that the weapons might fall into the wrong hands (meaning Da’esh or Al-Nusra), yet far more weapons have been taken by Da’esh from the Iraqi army—armed and funded by the US—than have ever been taken from Syrian armed opposition groups. And it was the refusal by the US, Britain and France to arm the nationalist and secular opposition forces loosely organised in the Free Syrian Army, which lead to these groups becoming marginalised due to lack of weapons and resources, leading eventually to what little arms and fighters they had being taken or absorbed by better funded and armed Islamic rebel groups.'

UN again refuses food, aid to Moadamiyeh

 Dani al-Qappani:

 'A senior UN representative visiting Moadamiyeh today as part of a delegation in the company of regime officials, told residents of the town that the UN “can’t in any way bring any food or medicine” to the besieged civilians, despite rising illness, endemic malnutrition and increasing numbers of deaths from starvation due to the continuing regime siege.

 The UN’s latest visit to the town is widely viewed by residents as yet another piece of political theatre by the regime and the UN, with one resident saying, “The visit’s only meant to save Assad by misrepresenting the so-called truce in Moadamiyeh as perfect in order to sell de Mistura’s ‘political solution.’”

 The UN’s and Assad regime’s continuous attempts to force the Syrian people into accepting a ‘political solution’ allowing Assad to stay is flatly rejected by the people of Moadamiyeh as by most of Syria. In the words of another resident of the town speaking after the latest UN visit, “We refuse any political solution that doesn’t force Assad to leave and doesn’t break the siege of Moadamiyeh. We’ll fight again if we’re forced to do so.” '

Israel contemplating life without Assad

 It would be more accurate to say that ISIS has joined the fight against the anti-Assad forces around Aleppo.

 'ISIS isn’t part of the rebel coalition operating in Idlib, but has joined the fight against Assad’s forces around the major cities of Homs and Aleppo. The Arab media is full of speculation that
the rebels are also planning a new offensive in southern Syria, near the city of Daraa.

 In response to the recent defeats it has suffered, the regime has stepped up its airstrikes – including a massive use of barrel bombs, which cause heavy civilian casualties. Speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv, Golan said that from Israel’s perspective, the strategic situation on the northern border “may be better than ever before,” despite the many potential threats, because thousands of Hezbollah fighters are busy in Syria and the Syrian Army has effectively ceased to exist.

 Nevertheless, he added, this convenient situation is unlikely to last. Meanwhile, Hezbollah “has acquired operational capabilities that no terrorist organization ever had in the past.” And while Syrian rebels aren’t currently targeting Israel from the Golan Heights, that, too, could change, he warned.'

U.S. accuses Syria of backing Islamic State's advance

 'Some rebels have questioned why U.S.-led forces bombing Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have not focused on bombing the jihadists around Aleppo city.'

 Good question.

The Pietà of Syria

 'The massacres perpetrated by the Assad regime against his people -- Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians and others -- touch him deeply and he tries to convey their pain and suffering to the international community, which he said, “did nothing to help the Syrians.”

 But Omar also wants to leave a note of hope that a better Syria will emerge from all the destruction and death – which is why a dove appears in many of his paintings: “The blood of the youth that was shed will not go to waste. It will lead to freedom, dignity and peace.” '

Assad’s Barrel Bombs Have Us Fearing the Sun

 ' “People now, in Syria, consider the sun as a hateful thing,” the doctor, referred to in the video by the name Majed to protect his safety, says. “Because a sunny day means that the military jet can move freely, and can hit more targets, and kill more people.”

 Majed then describes the terrifying 30-second span spent watching the bomb drop from a helicopter to the ground: “It will be horrible.” '

Key Rebels Ready to Quit U.S. Fight Vs. ISIS

 'The news comes as ISIS is marching on the suburbs of Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city. Rebels currently fighting the jihadists there told The Daily Beast that the U.S.-led coalition isn't even bothering to respond to their calls for airstrikes to stop the jihadist army.

 “[My men] don’t want to be beholden to this policy because it can be used against them in Syria—that they’ve betrayed the revolution and now they’re just mercenaries for the coalition forces,” Sejari said.

 Sejari has worked for years with the so-called "joint operations command" in Turkey, where the CIA and a host of Western and regional spy agencies have coordinated with vetted moderate rebels—sometimes arming them, although without the stifling proscription on whom they couldn’t fight. “In the past, we got some support through the [Western-backed] Friends of Syria group. Very small amounts. We were hoping there would be more support from the Americans,” Sefjari said.

 “The American intelligence services have a fair idea who the good guys and bad guys are in Syria and they know which groups are fighting both extremism and dictatorship,” Sejari said. “If the Obama administration were sincere in putting an end to the suffering of the Syrian people, they could do that in three months.”

 “The Syrian-American community asked the Obama Administration for airstrikes on ISIS near Marea many months ago,” complained Mohammed al-Ghanem, the senior political advisor for the Syrian American Council, a Washington, D.C.-based opposition group in constant contact with the Aleppo Military Council. “We were rebuffed for the astounding reason that aiding the rebels in Aleppo would hurt Assad, which would anger the Iranians, who might then turn up the heat on U.S. troops in Iraq. The rebels are the only ones who can fight ISIS in northern Syria—Assad forces are losing ground rather quickly now—so I hope President Obama will reconsider his willingness to compromise the ISIS fight for the sake of an Iran deal.” '

Absolutely remarkable

 "Jaish al-Fateh captured the major Idlib city of Ariha in 2hrs."

Even the cats are traumatised by Assad's barrel bombs

Who’s Lying About Syria’s Christian Massacre?

 Muhammad Idrees Ahmad:

 ' “In Adra on the northern outskirts of Damascus in early 2014, I witnessed [Nusra] forces storm a housing complex by advancing through a drainage pipe which came out behind government lines, where they proceeded to kill Alawites and Christians.” Cockburn was witnessing a war crime.

 But there is a problem. The atrocity might or might not have happened but Cockburn certainly didn’t witness it.

 Long before he placed himself at the center of the episode, Cockburn wrote about it in his January 28, 2014 column for The Independent. By his own account, he arrived in Adra after the alleged massacre and he was told the story about rebels advancing through a drainage pipe and massacring civilians by “a Syrian [regime] soldier, who gave his name as Abu Ali.”

 For Cockburn, the situation in Syria is stark: you are with the regime or you are with the terrorists. He is an enthusiast for the war on terror—Bashar al-Assad’s war on terror. He criticizes the U.S. for excluding from its anti-ISIS coalition “almost all those actually fighting ISIS, including Iran, the Syrian army, the Syrian Kurds and the Shia militias in Iraq.” “The enemy of our enemy”, he insists, “must be our friend”—and those who reject this formula are “glib” and “shallow”.

 He even gets to speak to “a local FSA commander” (at that point, Cockburn was still acknowledging the FSA), who tells Cockburn that he changed sides “because of general disillusionment with the uprising.”

 Only later are we told: “Listening to [the FSA rebel] impassively were Syrian army officers.”

 Cockburn gives no indication that he is troubled by the officers’ presence while he interviews a surrendered soldier. Far from it. The trip leads him to conclude: “The only way to bring the political temperature down is by local ceasefires and peace deals.” Syria would be at peace, in other words, if all Syrians just re-submitted to regime rule.

 Cockburn is only following the precedent of his illustrious colleague Robert Fisk who, in August 2012, after a massacre of 400-500 people in Daraya, rode a Syrian Army armoured personnel carrier to the scene, interviewed survivors—“in the company of armed Syrian forces”—and concluded that, contrary to initial reports, “armed insurgents rather than Syrian troops” were responsible for the massacre.

 Veteran war correspondent Janine di Giovanni, however, visited the town unaccompanied and interviewed survivors without the menacing presence of the Syrian Army. They told di Giovanni that the massacre was carried out by the regime, a conclusion corroborated by Human Rights Watch.

 At their best, journalists exhume truth, as Seymour Hersh did after the massacre in My Lai. At their worst, they try to bury it, as Seymour Hersh did after the massacre in Eastern Ghouta. Six months after a clumsy attempt at mass-crime revisionism, Hersh blurbed Cockburn’s book. Generous praise from Hersh would once have counted as an honour; after Syria, it has turned into an indictment.'

Assad: The beginning of the end?

 'Assad has lost much of his power when he failed to deter or scare people into submission in the first few months of the uprising.

 And once he used force and failed to defeat his enemies, and then failed again when using terrible and illegal violence against civilians and fighters alike, it all signalled that his time was up, and the countdown had started for his demise.

 If he survives at all, Assad will be a tidbit militia leader for a bit longer.'

 Pretty much. There is renewed reporting that the régime would accept a partition of the country*, but it has no basis in reality; If the régime were to abandon Western Aleppo to the threat of terrorist massacres, then how can it pretend to be the protector of Syrians, one of its few remaining claims to legitimacy? Especially when those massacres don't take place.
Hassan Nasrallah is in trouble**, 'Hezbollah’s war in Syria is an Iranian war, and a lost cause too. Hezbollah’s fighters will later see that Tehran will have to sell them out.' The War Nerd*** is still providing the educated but stupid with an analysis that says Assad can go on, because the Alawite community are right behind him.
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20150526014104/https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/May-25/299191-syria-regime-likely-to-accept-de-facto-partition-of-country.ashx]
**[https://web.archive.org/web/20150527132851/http://www.aawsat.net/2015/05/article55343619/opinion-morons-and-traitors]
***[https://web.archive.org/web/20150524235438/http://pando.com/2015/05/23/the-war-nerd-doing-the-math-on-alawite-casualty-numbers/]

I saw massacre of children

 Three years ago now, this was the first major massacre of Assad's war against Syria. Assad sent his soldiers door-to-door to massacre Sunni Muslims, with the message that either Bashar stayed in power, or they would burn the country.

 The régime lied, said it was the Free Syrian Army's work. And the world watched not sure to believe*. And when the truth became irrefutable, it was said to be just another massacre in a war where atrocities are committed by all sides. This is a pattern that was already well established by the time of Assad's chemical attacks of August 2013, throw sand in the world's face to obscure Assad's responsibility, and then congratulate yourselves for preventing a war by the lack of response. That's been what much of the left, abetted by much of the Western media, has done, and it has enabled Assad to intensify his war, and spread the catastrophe to neighbouring countries. The subtitle of this piece, "As UN envoy warns of all-out war", is in that vein, as if Assad's war to keep himself in power will relent as long as we don't over-react.
*[http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-look-back-at-the-houla-massacre-in-syria-a-845854.html]

How did Hamas' expertise end up with Syria's rebels?

 ' "Today Hamas is in a tough spot. It made moves towards reviving ties with Iran and Hezbollah but they (Tehran and the Lebanese movement) have responded with coolness, demanding a high political price," said Khader.

 "Hamas is asked to publicly back Assad," said Khader, adding that such a U-turn could not be contemplated by the Palestinian movement, which wants its "stances to be based on principles, not opportunism".

 "Besides," Khader said, "the vast majority of people in Gaza are with the Syrian uprising, save a minority of leftists and some others who switch sides to what benefits them at any given moment." '

 Sadly, this is like many leftists everywhere, who have chosen blind opportunism over solidarity, which will put left-wing politics on the defensive around the world, when Assad falls, the full extent of his crimes becomes obvious, and people turn away from those associated with the politics of denial.

Syria: The Imperative of Protecting Civilians

 I don't think you can lump the Gulf Arabs and the Turks in with the Russians and Iranians, the latter have provided intermittent support to those fighting Assad's genocide, while the latter have facilitated it, but the rest is to the point.

 'Some two years ago, a senior White House official told visitors from Capitol Hill that there were no attractive parties in Syria: that there was merit in simply allowing the fire consuming the country to burn itself out. That civilians—many of them women and children—would be disproportionately incinerated in the resulting inferno seems not to have struck the official as morally relevant or policy pertinent. Yet now, as reports of regime shakiness begin to accumulate, some additional practical, policy consequences of having done virtually nothing to protect Syrian civilians from an Assad regime campaign of mass homicide come into focus.

 To put the matter succinctly, the willingness of the Obama administration to make do with moralistic rhetoric about Assad regime war crimes and crimes against humanity has led it to an astounding analytical conclusion: he who has authorized acts of mass homicide on a daily basis—Bashar al-Assad—ought not be removed from power too quickly lest Islamist rebels take Damascus and conduct massacres in communities involuntarily implicated by regime criminality. The barrel bombing, starvation sieges, chemical attacks, and door-to-door atrocities have been so widespread, so intense, and so unopposed by a hollowed-out West that now the specter of additional mass atrocities—perhaps genocide—transcending Arab Sunni Muslims presents itself.

 President Barack Obama continues to insist that the only alternative to leaving people utterly unprotected—the alternative he insists his critics favor—would have been the invasion and occupation of Syria. The President has misleadingly made it a matter of all or nothing, thereby justifying his choice of nothing.

 Whatever use a straw man argument might have as a here-and-now excuse for inaction or as an alibi for future historians, it fails the test of truth telling. No one has advocated invading and occupying Syria. Even the most dedicated advocates of protecting human beings from mass murder have not recommended such a step. Ways and means that are much more modest are available to an administration willing to transcend talk and do actual things. Examples abound.



 Is there a diplomatic strategy aimed specifically at persuading Tehran and Moscow to pressure their client into abandoning mass homicide? Has President Obama wrung from his military advisors every conceivable option—short of invasion and occupation, and even short of bombing airfields—to stop (or at least complicate) the barrel bombing and (if necessary) neutralize possible mass murder alternatives such as Scud missiles and field artillery trained on residential neighborhoods? Is there an ongoing diplomatic offensive aimed at binding regional partners to the creation of safe havens inside Syria? Is there a move afoot to transcend an anemic train-and-equip program by creating an all-Syrian national stabilization force capable of protecting Syrian civilians? If patriotic Syrians cannot find ways to overcome their divisions and unite against both Iran and ISIL while themselves pledging to protect civilians, they will lose their country forever. If Iranians, Russians, Turks, and Gulf Arabs see civilian vulnerability merely as an inevitable cost of doing business, Syrians should rise up against the lot of them.

 Giving the protection of Syrian civilians operational priority as opposed to lip service can save lives, build a foundation for political conflict resolution, and prevent ongoing mass homicide from assuming the additional dimension of genocide. Yet it will take more than words. It will take this President changing course. For as bad as Syria and its neighborhood are today, they can be immeasurably worse twenty months from now.'

Regime’s Idlib front collapsing

 What Assad has left are not supporters, but hostages. Hopefully many more will get the chance to escape when the pocket around Ariha closes.

 'Five regime troops in the hospital reportedly handed themselves over to rebels on Thursday afternoon.

 According to pro-opposition outlet Siraj Press, the surrendered servicemen told the rebels that morale among regime troops still under siege had collapsed due to a lack of food and water after attempts to air drop supplies failed.

 The servicemen also said that a number of soldiers who tried to defect had been shot by the officers present, which made the remaining servicemen fear making a similar attempt.'

Islamic State seize historic Syrian city

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 "It's terrible that they do control half of Syria, but of course most of the area they control is desert. So they don't actually control much of the populated areas, so it's over-exaggerated. It's very sad that minds are focused on Syria, whenever these horrific pirates, these strange people with their black flags in ISIS, do something very photogenic, when they cut the head off an American, or when they destroy some heritage, then immediately everybody pays attention, but people haven't been paying attention to what's been going on otherwise, which is much more significant.

 Recently, a combination of the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front, and Jabhat al-Nusra, which is a jihadist group, have defeated the Assad régime in Idlib, in Jisr al-Shugour, in the Mastoumeh military base, at the Nasib border crossing in the south, at Tel Kurbi just outside Damascus; so there's a string of defeats for this régime, which has been propped up by Iran , mainly; Iranian occupation forces and Lebanese and Iraqi Shia militias backed by Iran; and the régime is now in the biggest trouble that it's been, that despite all of these Iranian forces, Lebanese and Iraqi forces, on its frontlines, it's losing battle after battle after battle. ISIS, the "Islamic State", has also been defeated by the rebels. The media rather lazily seems to equate ISIS with the opposition, but ISIS is really a third force which is exploiting the chaos in Syria to come in and expand where it can. It's really very unpopular amongst Syrians, as is the Assad régime.

 ISIS has been defeated by the rebels, who are at war with it, in the Qalamoun region, in Quneitra, in the Damascus suburbs, just in the last couple of months. On the other hand, ISIS is defeating the Assad régime in Palmyra, and a couple of days ago it defeated the US-backed Iraqi army in Ramadi. So at the moment the strongest player on the ground seems to be a combination of the Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front.

 Recently, it seems that things have changed around. I think one reason for this is just the exhaustion of Assad's forces. He's really down to the foreign powers that will help him, and his very narrow sectarian base. The vast majority of the Syrian people have deserted him, his economy is collapsing, and he's running out of men. I think that's the crucial factor. The second factor is that the Islamic Front groups, that's different groups as well, and the Free Army groups, have recently been able to work together much better than they had ever been able to do so before. They've become much better organised, and much more cohesive. They've formed new alliances, one called the Army of Conquest, which has been winning so many battles in the north. So it's a sign, I think, of various things; it's a sign of the new cohesion of the rebel groups, a sign of the exhaustion of the Assad régime, and also a sign that Saudi Arabia and Turkey have put aside their differences, and Qatar as well, the regional powers have recognised the huge threat of Iranian troops in Iraq and in Syria, and how this is just expanding the Sunni jihadist appeal, and they've decided to give much more anti-tank weaponry to the Free Syrian Army."

 Before that, Jim Muir had said, "It seems that the bulk of the population has fled, certainly that's the government narrative." It isn't true*, just as they left the lower ranks to be massacred when they lost Tabqa airbase**, but it is easier to report the Assad version as the plausible Syrian narrative, rather than point out it has been a lie from Day One, which would involve more careful reporting.
* "The official line of the Syrian military and State media is that President Assad’s forces evacuated all civilians as they fled on Wednesday. However, residents have said only high-ranking military officers and their families, as well as some “collaborators”, were able to leave." [http://eaworldview.com/2015/05/syria-daily-civilians-trapped-in-palmyra-after-islamic-state-takeover/]
**[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2736764/Marched-deaths-Sickening-ISIS-slaughter-continues-250-soldiers-captured-Syrian-airbase-stripped-led-desert-mass-execution.html]

Western leaders must heed Syrian concerns

 "Return to the cause of all this evil, which is having a dictator that is terrorising his citizens and preventing them from having a free life. We must clean this wound before closing it."

 "Where is the revolution [in the media’s reporting]? It’s not our fault. The Syrian people keep fighting the regime but nobody cares about that now because they (the media) don’t want [to show] that."

 "Most of them (JN) are Syrians [so] when you (the West) fight them … when you bomb them, they get more supporters."

 "When America blacklists, the Syrian people [are starting to] whitelist."

 "Obama can cover the whole world in red lines. Who cares? We are dying here. And Ban Ki Moon? He is ‘worried’ all the time. Ban Ki Moon is worried, Obama is drawing red lines, everybody is talking and nobody is doing anything."

 "The regime are killing people [with barrel bombs] … and they (the West and its allies) didn’t stop them. But they moved the whole world to destroy [Islamic State] in Kobane."

The moment civilian crops began burning in Daraa

 'In this video, one civilian shows us around the southern Syrian city of Daraa, where he says government forces began burning precious crops in retailiation to rebel gains there.'

 Assad does this every year, as part of his "kneel or starve" policy.

Reporters on Syria's war

 ' “Usually barrel bombs come in the morning when you have a blue sky, so we wake up to this,” says Fouad, a media activist with a trim beard and flannel shirt who has worked four years in Aleppo.

 So why doesn’t he leave?

 “Because it’s our cause. It’s not a civil war, it’s a revolution and we are not terrorists,” says Fouad, who asked not to be identified further. “We lost so many friends and relatives, and this forces you to stay. If we leave, the regime will take over, or the extremists will be in charge.” '

Fears for Palmyra's ancient treasures

 'Even Syrian rebels were resting their hopes in the régime forces,' said Channel 4 News just now. It's a lie.

 “We’re trapped between a rock and a hard place. In me there’s a sense of deep resentment that this binary narrative that the regime has worked so hard to impose on Syria has actually finally paid off.

 They succeeded in fostering and encouraging and allowing to emerge such a horrible entity that when you put the regime next to them, the regime seems to be a more benign option than them.”

 21:40 Sky News, "In Syria, various militia are fighting each other."

"The Will to Survive" Documentary

Raed Fares:

 "While Assad continues his mad efforts to destroy Syria just because its people asked for freedom, the Syrians, with unbeatable will, continue building what that criminal destroys."

Syria's First Responders Say They Need a No-Fly Zone

 ' "The Syrian people have lost confidence in all the international community,
the Syrian people have been killed for 4 years and nobody acted seriously to stop the killing."

 Asked about the perpetrators of the chlorine attacks, Saleh laughed. "There are two options," he said. "Either it's the regime or the international coalition. We believe that the recent escalation from the regime comes as a reaction to the victories of the revolutionaries on the ground," said Saleh. "The regime applies a collective punishment policy to make revenge on the population that are supportive of the revolution." '

Syrian Rebels to Rohingya: Invitation for 500 Families Trapped at Sea

 ' “We know full well what it is like to suffer from hunger and anxiety. We can barely maintain what we have but as the Prophet said: ‘Food for 2 is enough for 3′. Hopefully we can stretch it bit more, but we can’t sit by and watch our brothers and sisters die at sea and do nothing.”

 Their plan is to convince Malaysian or Indonesian authorities to allow 500 families to come ashore and be escorted directly to the airport on a chartered flight to Istanbul wherein Turkish authorities would be asked to escort several chartered buses to the Turkish-Syrian border where they would be met and taken to a refugee camp on the Syrian side.'

Around-the-clock torture

 'Most prisoners of the Assad regime are referred to as "the vanished". These are people who were arrested at checkpoints, border crossings or in house searches and whose subsequent fate is unknown, says the Syrian lawyer Z. He estimates their number at 150,000.

 Conditions are particularly dire in the underground torture chambers operated by various intelligence services to which no one is given access, says the lawyer Z.

 He and several colleagues have been documenting the conditions in Syria's prisons for years. "About 100 prisoners are crowded together in cells measuring four by four metres. They can neither crouch nor sit, but must in some cases remain standing for weeks. The lucky ones are able to lean their backs against the wall," says Z. The prisoners are driven to the very limits of their physical and mental endurance. Some of them break down; others end up going mad. "There are prisoners who beat their head against the wall until they're dead." '

‘The whole school shook and I heard the kids screaming’

 "The regime wants to empty the opposition-controlled areas of Aleppo and punish those who continue to live there. Civilians have always been targeted. Every time the opposition controls a new area, civilian areas are bombed. The regime has bombed many schools."

Do we value stones more than flesh and blood?

 Yvonne Ridley:

 'The real story to emerge this week is about the heroic team of "Syrian Truth Smugglers" who have risked their lives to gather and preserve documents that provide evidence of war crimes committed by the Assad regime, but apart from one story in the Guardian newspaper in London it has been largely ignored.

 To date, nearly a quarter of a million people are thought to have been killed in the Syrian civil war, more than double the death toll of the war in Bosnia two decades ago. Eyewitness accounts tell us that barrel bombs are still being dropped on residential areas and the torture dungeons are still jammed with men, women and children who are being starved to death, as well as being beaten and abused.

 And while the cruel axis of evil – Assad and ISIS – forge ahead with their continually crossing paths of destruction it seems that the media and politicians can only express their outrage over the threat of what amounts to a few stones.

 Yes, Palmyra is beautiful and we should be angry at its wanton destruction, but I put the life of one Syrian child above any ancient city; so should you if you value human flesh and blood above stone.'

 Palmyra is the location of one of the Assads' most notorious prisons*. You can see some pictures of Palmyra, as well as other parts of Syria's heritage, in this video.**
*[http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/09/the-50-craziest-prisons-and-jails-in-the-world/tadmor-military-prison]
**[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx4-hwVzoE4]

Tide of Syria civil war turns against Assad

 I don't know about 'warlords', and ISIS would lose any remaining legitimacy if there was no longer a worse alternative in the form of Assad, but generally the Telegraph is more accurate than the more liberal papers.

 ' “The Syrian regime is much more hollow at its centre than one might think,” said a well-connected Syrian businessman, who asked not to be identified. “It’s a house of cards surviving on the projected image that it can still win the war. But the officials I know have already packed their bags, ready to run should that impression collapse.”

 These developments spell neither the certain end of Mr Assad, nor the victory of his rebel enemies. But they reveal how four years of civil war have reduced the government to a shell. Power is concentrated in the hands of an inner circle of security chiefs - and their grip may not be as firm as the propaganda suggests.

 The setbacks also show how Mr Assad has been forced to rely on his regional ally, Iran, for men and money - at a cost of relinquishing much of Syria’s sovereignty.

 A diplomatic solution to the conflict would involve Mr Assad’s departure - probably to Moscow or Tehran - and a change of leadership, but the preservation of the regime’s institutions, including the deeply repressive security system that led many Syrians to join the first protests in 2011.

 Under this scenario - which may pass as the best case - the debilitating war of attrition would grind on even after Mr Assad’s removal. Power would continue to slip out of the hands of whoever occupied the presidential palace in Damascus, flowing towards the rebel warlords who now control large expanses of Syria.

 The insurgents would tighten their grip on their fiefdoms in the north and south, while Isil would hold on to the eastern region along the Euphrates valley. The slow and bloody disintegration of Syria would continue - with or without Mr Assad.'

A Woman’s Harrowing Account of Torture and Abuse

 'I was studying at the Secretariat Institute when the revolution erupted in parts of Damascus. It started to become clear to me that this corrupt regime was killing innocent people for claiming their freedom and dignity and I decided to join up.

 I was held by the intelligence division for 47 days. I was questioned 19 times and every time they hit me on my face, then with a rifle they hit me on sensitive places on my body; they electrocuted me then put me in cold water then electrocuted me again. I died a thousand times each second. Because of the torture I confessed to things I had nothing to do with, like working with armed groups, and I told them random names that I made up. All this caused me to get in trouble for things I had nothing to do with. I still have marks of the electrocution on my body.

 Praying was forbidden for all religions, Muslims or Christians, but the majority were Muslims. The food was so bad – some days they brought us rice with bugs in it or old, freezing bulgur. We used to wake up every day to the smell of rotten bodies – people who had died from the torture. Nobody could say anything because it was forbidden to knock on the door of your cell unless you had something to add to your confession. Every day we saw no fewer than 12 bodies.'

U.S. President Obama in an interview with Al Arabiya

 Nadia Bilbassy-Charters: "Somehow it’s perceived in the region that you’re putting down the Sunni Arabs, that somehow you link them to extremists."

 Not immediately following, or it would be obvious -

 President Obama: "The problem we also have is that on the other side inside of Syria, we have extremists who may be opposed to Assad but also deeply opposed to the United States, are deeply opposed to the GCC countries; are interested in establishing a very destructive order and have engaged in the same kinds of brutality and violence that we don't want to see deeply entrenched."

 He's probably had his national security advisors tell him that Jabhat al-Nusra are just as bad as Assad or ISIS, so this may be as much down to ignorance and ideological preconceptions as mendacity. He doesn't have any problem with extremism when it comes to Saudi Arabia or the GCC countries. On what could be done to sort Syria out, he must know that it's a lie that the only options were an American invasion or nothing at all.

 President Obama: "If the United States simply sent in troops into Syria -- our military is very effective, and for a short period of time, we potentially could come down on the side of the opposition against Assad.If you look at the history of the process, essentially what they're arguing is that we should have invaded Syria and overthrown the Syrian regime."

 He should be criticised not only for not arming the Syrian opposition, the sort of action that could have seen the advances on the battlefield taking place now occur three years ago, and averted much of the destruction, but also for preventing others from giving them the weaponry they needed to change the balance of forces. But that is the sort of criticism he just ignores. And the diplomatic solution he's looking for isn't one that sees the overthrow of the régime, and the punishment of the war criminals, but one that keeps as much of Assad's state in place, and excludes as many Islamists as they can. If the rebels win, you can be sure he'll remind us that he called for Assad to go all along, but he's going to do as little as he can to help.

 President Obama: "People may criticize us for not having launched missiles against Assad after chemical weapons had been used, but keep in mind why we didn't. We didn't because they got rid of their chemical weapons.

 And that, in fact, was very important. It didn't solve barrel bombs. It didn't solve the incredible hardships that all the Syrian people are going through. But to solve those larger problems, that requires the kind of international work in which we are obviously a very significant part and a very significant partner -- and my Secretary of State, John Kerry, has been tireless in trying to arrive at a diplomatic solution to this problem."

You fool our nation, I tear your picture

 'This same hand that hung your picture fondly and proudly on my office wall, considering you an icon and symbol of the resistance against the Zionist enemy is the same hand that tore your picture today with disgustedly and disdainfully.

 Hezbollah entered Syria to rescue the murderer Bashar Al-Assad and eliminate the Syrian people after the army failed to end the war in its favour. Nasrallah is bragging about his achievements in Syria and forgot all he, and his leader, Khamenei, had said in the past about standing by the helpless and vulnerable people in the world. Is the killer Bashar Al-Assad considered helpless and vulnerable while the Syrian people who revolted to demand their freedom and dignity are considered brutal tyrants who are stamping Al-Assad with their boots?

 Nasrallah and his party fooled us, but I thank God that we are finally seeing the light and they they are being exposed.'

Meet The Syrian Doctor Treating Aleppo’s Civilians

 'Khatib is the only doctor serving two hospitals in Aleppo. He says the supplies come from various international aid organizations. He has worked in four different hospitals since the start of the war. Two of them were shelled by the regime. He said a Palestinian doctor visited him two years into the war. 'He asked: “Why don’t you give the GPS coordinates of the hospital to the regime so they won’t hit it? We always do that with Israel,” ' Khatib recalled with a bitter laugh.

 He says he does not understand why Assad targets hospitals. “Why would the regime be killing the children? Why would the regime be killing the women, the old people? Why would they be hitting with chemical weapons?” He wondered aloud. “He (Assad) has crossed all the lines.”

Drawings from the edge of death

 'As a political refugee in Switzerland, Hani Abbas chose exile to escape Syrian security forces. Many of his fellow cartoonists and journalists had been assassinated, imprisoned or tortured.

 Abbas was born in 1977 in Yarmouk, a large Palestinian refugee camp in the suburbs of the Syrian capital of Damascus.

 Following the sudden disappearance of his two closest colleagues, who were tortured to death by the security forces of the regime, Abbas took advantage of the countrywide chaos and managed to cross the border into Lebanon with his family.'

Obama — “Assad Gave Up His Chemical Weapons”

 “Chlorine is not historically a chemical weapon.”

 The victims will be thrilled to know that.

The Muppet Show

 Jim Muir has a piece on the BBC website¹ that illustrate's Desmond Tutu's point, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor," and not in a good way.

 Let's start with the first couple of paragraphs.

 'Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has dismissed...', 'His Lebanese ally Hezbollah, led by Hassan Nasrallah, agrees...'

 So do we hear for balance from the Syrian National Coalition, the Free Syrian Army, or any other Syrians opposed to Assad and his foreign backers? No, we are told "some of his adversaries and critics" think his régime could collapse, an unnamed diplomat thinks he's on the ropes. So he appears the one with a plausible case, while his critics hide in the shadows.

 'Even some of his core constituents - and many ordinary citizens in Damascus and elsewhere - were deeply unsettled by recent regime losses, especially in the north-western province of Idlib, where the regional capital fell at the end of March to a rebel alliance, followed shortly by the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughour.'

 So ordinary citizens are worried that he might fall, rather than being the people who are fleeing in their millions from his bombing. This isn't really reporting the news, more catching up on what others had reported. Since the capture of Jisr al-Shugour the rebels have moved close to Ariha². As with the couple of hundred Assad soldiers trapped in the basement of the National Hospital in Jisr al-Shugour, there may be several thousand in Ariha with no way out, their capture or death would be a devastating blow to Assad's credibility. The rebels have also cut the highway to Hama³ in what looks like preparation to take the remaining régime-held areas in Syria second city, Aleppo. Incidentally, where Jabhat al-Nusra seems to have been excluded from the Fatah Halab coalition in Aleppo it seems to be happy with that, the division of labour seems like another sign that all the rebel factions are focusing on fighting Assad to the exclusion of other differences.

 'The absence of further rabbits to pull out of the hat is why some diplomats are cautiously hopeful that the low-key peace consultations launched in Geneva by the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, might just bear fruit.'

 The Syrians have given a firm reply to this⁴:

 'Your positions and statements, especially the one which said Bashar al-Assad is part of the solution in Syria, have shown clear confusion in the way you deal with Syrian affairs. Your statements gave us a clear impression that you do not care about the massacres committed by the regime in Syria – such as the massacre in Douma that took place not far from your seat in Damascus, where you did not show any sign of objection or denouncement, and you also did not show any form of sympathy with the victims. This convinced us that the UN envoy had given up his neutrality, preferring one side over the other.

 The invitation lacks any clear foundations or means to reach a solution, especially as it is based on Geneva statement which did not mention the departure of Assad and his regime with all its symbols and pillars, a request upon which all the revolutionary forces agreed as the basis for any supposed solution.'

 Jim Muir isn't interested in this, the only objectors to the Geneva process he notes are by "the Saudis and their Gulf partners." That's because he sees Syria not as a revolution by Syrians, but as a proxy war⁵. While we're looking at his record, here⁶ he is from April 2014.



 '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.'

 While the regional powers were willing to go along with the Americans in neutering the revolution, this mutual alibiing could hide the truth that it was Assad who was relying on foreign backers, and the Western role was as a spolier not an enabler of the opposition.

 'By using their unique influence and penetration in Damascus to engineer the removal of Mr Assad and a transition to a figure acceptable as an interlocutor to the rebels and their regional backers, for whom the demise of the hated ruler is a must, the Iranians could at least hope to secure the "useful" parts of Syria rather than lose everything.'

 As we have seen, the removal of Assad, but keeping his régime in place is not acceptable to anyone in the opposition. How would any of the refugees return, with the torturers still in place? How could there be any stability with the many crimes of the régime unpunished? How could Syrians put up with any Iranian control over their country, after the ethnic cleansing they've engaged in⁷? The answer is they couldn't. So the UN process is either a way of betraying Syrians again, or at best a holding operation so the international community can be seen to be doing something.

 'Neither [Tehran or Washigton] wants to see a regime collapse and a sudden rush of more or less extremist Sunni Islamist elements to fill the vacuum.'
Washington has made it clear that it still worries more about Islamists than Assad.⁸ It is Assad who has created the sectarian problem, as Michael Young points out this week.⁹

 'Assad gave up any pretense of heading an Arab nationalist regime when, in 2011, he took the conflict in Syria in a sectarian direction. He always knew that by ordering his men to fire on unarmed protesters and labeling them Muslim extremists, he would provoke rising sectarian tensions between Alawites and Sunnis.'

 'Any ceasefire would leave Syria effectively divided into five zones of influence or control, some overlapping: areas held by government forces; "moderate" rebel forces; the Islamist al-Nusra Front and its allies; the extremist Islamic State; and the Kurds.

 If the removal of President Assad and his circle somehow paved the way for a truce between rebels and a regime under new management, all four of the non-IS forces could be motivated to go after the militants.

 The only major city in Syria controlled by IS is Raqqa, its headquarters. Analysts believe that if the other forces banded together under a joint operations room with US-led coalition air support, it would not take more than a few months to clear the militants out.

 That may seem like extreme fantasy now, but steadily-building pressures are likely to produce scenarios that are hard to predict.'

 It's a fantasy that only enables the extremists of the Assad régime to continue their genocide.

 'Most analysts rule out an outright collapse of the Alawite-dominated regime. As one put it: "They have nowhere to collapse to." '

 This again is the Assad narrative that Alawites and Christians will fight to the end to protect him. It ignores the way tens of thousands, including Alawites, have fled rather than be accomplices in genocide. It ignores that a rump state would lose international legitmacy, so the opposition could get the recognition and weaponry they need to finish off the war. It follows the pro-Assad narrative that Jabhat al-Nusra will murder all non-Sunnis if they get the chance., and that all those still in régime areas believe that, despite the fear still engendered by the arrest and torture of anyone who is alleged to be disrupting national sentiment. And what are the remains of Assad forces going to do when they can't retreat any further, just declare that the collapse isn't happening?

 While I'm at it compare Robert Fisk at the Independent a month ago,¹⁰

'Ten years later, and we still don’t know who assassinated Lebanon's leader'

 with now,¹¹

 'Rafiq Hariri tribunal: Was the former Lebanon PM's assassination the work of Syria's President Assad? A special tribunal at The Hague has heard dramatic new evidence apparently linking the Syrian regime with the 2005 killing of Lebanon's former leader – and it concurs chillingly with what Robert Fisk was told at the time.'

 The Independent must be edited by goldfish. Finally former Lebanese government minister has been sentenced for planning to carry out sectarian bombings in Lebanon for Assad.¹² It is Assad who has destabilised the region, not some combination of Western powers, and whoever the conspiracy theorists want to implicate this week. Samaha got 4 1/2 years, with time served he'll be out in December.

1. "Is Syria's war edging towards an outcome?" [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-32703945]
2. [http://eaworldview.com/2015/05/syria-daily-rebels-move-on-ariha-1-of-regimes-last-positions-in-idlib-province/]
3 .[http://syriadirect.org/news/rebels-assault-regime-supply-lines-in-hama-ahead-of-aleppo-showdown/]
4.  [https://web.archive.org/web/20150515133422/http://syrianobserver.com/EN/News/29173/Revolutionary_Factions_Reject_De_Mistura_Geneva_Invitation]

5. [http://notris.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/syria-proxy-war-heats-up-as-endgame.html]
6. [http://notris.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/analysis-why-assad-can-have-confidence.html]
7. [https://syriadirect.org/sunni-activist-says-iran-behind-demographic-change-in-damascus/]

8. 'However, the official told VOA that the US was wary of any no-fly zone because it meant involvement with rebel factions and thus — because of battlefield cooperation — the Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra: “Jabhat al-Nusra is a designated terrorist organization, we are prevented by U.S. law from working with the group.”

He also cited the supposed dangers of others in the Jaish al-Fatah rebel operations room, which was launched for the successful rebel offensive in northwest Syria and is now being implemented in other parts of Syria: “Other militias [Jaish al-Fatah] in the Army of Conquest like Ahrar-Sham may not be designated terrorist organizations and we may consider them more gray, but it is a gray which is pretty close to black.” ' [http://eaworldview.com/2015/05/syria-feature-senior-us-official-no-fly-zones-safe-havens-are-not-happening/]
9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20150515002118/http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2015/May-14/297874-bashar-assads-perilous-dance-with-iran.ashx]

10. [http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ten-years-later-and-we-still-dont-know-who-assassinated-lebanons-leader-10171414.html]
11. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/rafiq-hariri-tribunal-was-the-former-lebanon-pms-assassination-the-work-of-syrias-president-assad-10245381.html]
12. [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/14/ex-minister-bomb-plot-conviction-lebanon-shady-ties-syria-assad-mamlouk]

An Account Syncopated by Death: Littell’s Syrian Notebooks

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:

 'Reporting from Syria has been cursed by journalists who embed with the regime’s army or fall prey to regime-planted conspiracy theories. Littell mentions an article penned by Georges Malbrunot for Le Figaro blaming the Free Army for journalist Gilles Jacquier’s death “on the basis of an anonymous source in Paris citing an anonymous source in Homs.” Similar blame-the-victims hoaxes were retailed by Assad’s useful idiots after the Houleh and Ghouta massacres.

 Littell’s account is unembedded, and his narrative – pared down to the physical, psychological and political details – is never gullible. He records an informational chaos in which contradictory versions swirl, and remarks, for example, on revolutionaries feeding al-Jazeera a false report of captured Iranian officers – they turned out to be engineers working at a power plant. The civilian Media Office, then still clinging to the revolution’s non-violent image, persistently obstructs Littell’s investigations. The armed resistance is more helpful, though it too betrays anger that foreign coverage doesn’t translate into solidarity. “The period when we showed things is over,” complains one officer. “If your peoples haven’t understood for eleven months, there’s no point.”

 Littell travels not by permission of the regime’s security grid, but via the “counter-grid” which circumvents it, a network including revolutionary Christians, an Alawi resistance fighter, and a woman who, having lost three sons to Assad, has vowed to cook for the fighters daily. He drinks syrupy whisky with a man who “believes in Karl Marx the way others believe in Jesus or Muhammad,” and affectionately finds the Free Army to be “novice guerillas; novices in PR, above all.” '

Doctors in Hellish Aleppo Ask the World for More Help

 'Following the release of an Amnesty International report accusing Bashar al-Assad’s government of war crimes in Aleppo, the city’s few remaining doctors are appealing for more assistance to treat hundreds of wounded people.

 The northern city has witnessed some of the most gruesome deaths and the worst destruction of the conflict. The government has systemically attacked the city’s civilian areas, notably with barrel bombs – filled with explosives and shrapnel and designed to kill and maim as many people as possible – leading Amnesty earlier this month to accuse the Assad government of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the commercial capital.

 Notably, the government has repeatedly targeted field hospitals in its aerial campaigns, not only in Aleppo, but in other cities such as Raqqa. Overall, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented the destruction of 200 hospitals across the country by the government since July 2013.'

Heartbreaking images of Syria's child refugees

 'Ahmed, 8, is blind. He lives in a plastic tent with his family and dreams of getting an operation so, one day, he can see. ‘There’s a rubber tire outside our house that I like to play with. But sometimes it rolls away and I can’t find it,’ he said.'

Smuggled Syrian documents enough to indict Assad

 'The prosecution cases against the Syrian leaders focus on their role in the suppression of the protests that triggered the conflict in 2011. Tens of thousands of suspected dissidents were detained, and many of them were tortured and killed in the Syrian prison system.'

 Many thousands more are still being tortured and killed.

Mayhem in Middle East as Blair plays the Invisible Man

 Once more Eamonn McCann brings us pro-Assad propaganda, unchecked for any veracity.

 'In Syria in September 2013 the residents of a Christian village, Maaloula, which had been overrun by al-Qaida-aligned Islamic extremists, appealed for and were given arms by nearby units of Bashir Assad's army. They had been horrified by credible threats from the invaders to destroy two of the most ancient Christian sites in the world.'

 There was no credible threat to destroy Christian sites in Maaloula. ' "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.'

 It was all part of the Assad régime's diverting attention from its campaign of mass murder against Sunni Muslims in Syria.

 'The government recently facilitated reports on the presence of ruthless Islamist fighters in Maaloula, a town of Christians, whom the regime depicts as under threat from the rebels. Meanwhile, thousands of Syrian civilians mass in camps in the north, unseen on Western television screens, as they flee from salvoes of regime rockets.'
[http://notris.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Maaloula]

 Eamonn's next paragraph contains multiple untruths.

 'At the time, under pressure from Israel, Saudi Arabia and elements in the US Congress, the Obama administration was contemplating a bombing campaign against Assad in retaliation for a chemical weapons assault on a suburb of Damascus which had killed dozens (at least) of civilians and which was widely attributed to Assad.'

 It's just a lie about Israel. Like Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, there is just no evidence for it whatsoever. At the time the story was put about that hundreds of AIPAC [the main pro-Israel lobbying organisation in Washington] staffers were being sent to Capitol Hill to argue for US airstrikes, it simply didn't happen. Israel has maintained a policy of neutrality in the Syrian conflict, as worried about a jihadi takeover of Syria as Eamonn McCann appears to be. There was a story that a UN report showed co-operation between Israel and Jabhat al-Nusra (or in the more lunatic version, ISIS). I've read that report. The Israelis handed over two boxes, probably of medical supplies from the context, to people not even positively identified as Nusra. And the Israelis treat Free Syrian Army casualties, not those of Nusra, and certainly not those of ISIS who fight against the Free Syrian Army rather than Assad, in their hospitals, because the Assad régime has bombed every hospital in rebel-held areas of Syria.

http://notris.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=hospital]

 The Obama administration didn't contemplate a bombing campaign, but a few token airstrikes to get off the hook of having announced red lines over Assad's war crimes, and doing nothing to enforce them. It went to Congress for the same reason Cameron went to Parliament, to get someone else to say no to military action. As I wrote at the time:

 'If the Left claims that thousands will die in carpet bombing, that depleted uranium will be scattered across Syria, that American soldiers will be dying to help al-Qaida, and none of these things turn out to be true, it will discredit the Left, and because the Left does not control the media, that impression will stay for a long time, and when the US does want to intervene, the pendulum will have swung back to it being easy again for the US to do what it wants. And if the situation in Syria takes another step towards Hell, then there is a greater likelihood that American, French or British power will be brought to bear on Syria, rather than the empowerment of those rebels that we just don’t know about from what we’ve read in the press.'
[http://notris.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/dominoes.html]

 The hoax that the US was going to attack Syria was designed to divert attention the means that could have empowered Syrians, giving them anti-aircraft missiles, which would have stopped the barrel bomb attacks, stopped the refugees fleeing from the bombing, and left Assad without a strategy to maintain terror in Syria.

 And then there's the chemical weapons denial. There is no evidence that the rebels used or possessed any chemical weapons, and it is ludicrous to suggest that the rebels would have gassed themselves to provoke US intervention, a suggestion reminiscent of Israeli claims that Arabs don't care about human life. Especially as the proposed agent, Jabhat al-Nusra, is completely opposed to US intervention in Syria. I believe they had no presence in the areas of Damascus attacked, and would certainly have been noticed by the forces of the Free Syrian Army and the Army of Islam who were. And against the idea that Assad had no reason to use chemical weapons, he has since carried out daily attacks with chlorine bombs, and despite the deal to remove his chemical weapons stockpile (which the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on record as approving), traces of VX and sarin are still being found at Assad's facilities.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150510050142/http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/08/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-chemicals-exclus-idUKKBN0NT1Z120150508]

 It is one thing to ignore Assad's genocide against Syrians, this really is in the realm of Holocaust denial, though without the gap of seventy years it is even less plausible and more offensive. And 1500 civilians were murdered, many of them children sleeping on the ground floor because their parents feared for them if the upper floors were bombed, not dozens.

 The rest of the nonsense in this piece may be more easily picked apart by those expert on the particular subjects. The Saudi war are not acting as a US proxy in its war against the Houthis, the US want a ceasefire to go along with their nuclear deal with Iran, which is one reason the Saudi king is refusing to attend a summit with President Obama and sending his crown prince instead. This language of proxies has been a mainstay of pro-Assad propaganda about Syria, the reality is that the rebel forces are overwhelmingly Syrian, and have received minimal support from the outside world, while Assad would not have survived this long without a billion dollars of weaponry each month, and since 2013, tens of thousands of Iranian, Lebanese and Iraqi sectarian mercenaries.

AP rare glimpse as Hezbollah fights for mountain range

 It's not rare for Western journalists to be embedded with Assad's forces, like Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk of the Independent, or Jeremy Bowen of the BBC, and report their view that this is a civil war against terrorists, rather than a revolution against tyranny. It is those Assad and Hezbollah have been bombing mercilessly who have trouble getting their story told in the world's media, because Assad murders and tortures journalists, as do the barbarians from ISIS he has encouraged to take over the liberated areas.

 'Some 3,000 militants are in the Qalamoun region, almost equally split between the Nusra Front and the Islamic State group, a Hezbollah commander recently said in Beirut.'

 Those from Nusra, and all the other rebel groups that Assad and his tame journalists pretend don't exist, have been fighting ISIS in the Qalamoun. Hezbollah has no intention of fighting ISIS there.

 ' "The situation is better than perfect," one smiling Hezbollah fighter said, speaking along with others anonymously as part of the conditions Hezbollah set to allow AP journalists to make the trip.'

 So they don't tell us that Hezbollah have already lost 7 commanders and another 40 troops in this operation before it has barely begun.

 'Christian politician Karim Pakradouni told Hezbollah's Al-Manar television station Sunday that "the battle should be carried out no matter how much it costs because it will end terrorism in Lebanon." '

 Hezbollah ally told Hezbollah's TV station.

 ' "Only Hezbollah is responsible for the repercussions of its involvement in the war at the service of" Assad, said Hariri, who lives in self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia and France.'

 There is a Special Tribunal for Lebanon at the moment investigating the murder of Hariri's father, Rafic Hariri, by Assad in 2005, so his exile might be seen as a little more than self-imposed.

Life in Syria for Christians

 'My colleague, Salam Al-Haddad, jumped in. He’s a Sunni Damascus native who has been volunteering at Zaatari since fleeing Syria two years ago. He asked the kids if they knew the story of the Caliph Omar. They shook their heads.

 He told them how the Caliph Omar, the second caliph of Islam, made his way to Jerusalem to sign a peace treaty that said, “… the inhabitants of Jerusalem are granted security of life and property. Their churches and crosses shall be secure. This treaty applies to all people of the city. Their places of worship shall remain intact. These shall neither be taken over nor pulled down. People shall be quite free to follow their religion. They shall not be put to any trouble.”
So, Salam asked them, if the Caliph Omar wanted to protect Christians and their places of worship, shouldn’t we want to do the same?

 The kids stared back at Salam and me, a Muslim and a Christian standing there side by side. I waited as our message sunk in. They seemed to be absorbing the idea that Syria could in fact belong to both Muslims and Christians.

 “Now who wants to rebuild both a Mosque and a church in our arts activity to rebuild Syria?” I asked. They jumped from their seats and gathered in small circles around the art supplies I had laid out for them on the floor as they shouted “Me! Me!” I looked at them pass around markers, glue sticks and cardboard while planning the design of their “new town.” '

‘No-one helped Syrians; they’ve only helped Assad’

 “When Isis was created Europe and America directly got together with Nato and entered into Syria. But for three years Assad has massacred his people. And no one moved. Why?”

 I've just seen Kevin Ovenden, a former assistant to the Assad supporting George Galloway, write this:

 "The people fleeing to Europe are overwhelmingly from Syria, where Western policy has helped ensure social collapse in large parts of the country."

 It's very much the lie that Western support for the opposition rather than the lack of it has destroyed Syria and created the refugee crisis that makes Syrians so bitter about the West.

ISIS mostly skipping Qalamoun battles, focused on Arsal

 ' “ISIS’ main objective is to end the existence of the FSA, and attack Arsal,” the source said. “It might not have won the battle of Arsal, but ISIS worked and is succeeding in weakening the FSA in some areas.”

 After suffering major losses in Iraq’s Tikrit, the bulk of ISIS fighters in Qalamoun have withdrawn to Syrian territories following instructions from senior command. What was originally a fighting force of approximately 2,000 militants has been reduced to 400-450, the source said.
“That is why remnants of this battalion are putting the fight on the FSA, to force them to push allegiance, corner them or make them settle with casualties to reduce pressure on their forces on the eastern side of Qalamoun,” explained Mario Abou Zeid of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

 ISIS’ focus on the FSA during the current battle is also “an indicator of how much the Syrian regime is deeply connected to and interacting with ISIS,” he added.

 According to sources in Qalamoun, this relationship is also reflected in how ISIS receives its supplies, which must cross regime checkpoints on its way from Raqqa.'