Saturday, December 17, 2011

All the Roads… !

As peoples of the world get more educated about Syrian politics, geography and ethnography, the Syrian people are getting a crash course in world politics as well, including American politics.

Friday 16, 2011

Today’s death toll: 22. The Breakdown: 9 in Homs City, 3 in Hama Province, 3 in Deraa/Hauran Province, and 2 in Rural Damascus. Also, the leader of the local coordination committee in the town of Qseir in Homs Province was reportedly killed in clashes with loyalists. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 protesters took part in anti-Assad rallies despite the ongoing crackdown.

Chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, called on Assad to step down, while the newly elected Tunisian President, Munsif Marzouki, suggested he relocates to Russia.  

Protesters had dubbed this Friday “the Arab League is killing us” in reference to the dithering by Arab leaders and their continued befuddlement regarding the situation in Syria.

Links

SNC Meeting

The Syrian National Council organized the first meeting of its general assembly in the Tunisian capital earlier today. The meeting it scheduled to last for 2 days and is said to be attended by 200 members of the opposition. Several independent Syrians wanted to attend the meeting as monitors but were not allowed to. Lack of transparency regarding its operations, evidenced as well by restricting media access to the event, is still one of the main weaknesses of the SNC and is not likely to improve its image. This is already a bad start for the conference and contradicts the call for unity issued by SNC president. "We need to emerge from this congress with a higher level of organisation, clearer targets and more momentum,"
declared Burhane Ghalioun in a press statement earlier. But so long as SNC leaders remain more preoccupied with winning international recognition than they are with internal cohesion or outreach to their own people, they are destined to become as irrelevant and cut-off from realities as Assad is today. 

A Message to GOP Leaders from the inhabitants of Kafrenbel

Protesters in the village of Haass in Idlib Province make an excellent point “Security Council, where is your security?” http://youtu.be/ShGCEPf6B7U In M’arr Tehmeh, locals go a step futehr in gauding the international community “For every oen who doesn’t [sic] see the Holocaust, it is repeated again in Syria” http://youtu.be/VE6vIbECkqc

But the inhabitants of nearby Kafrenbel go a little step further still, by joining the Republican Party “Obama’s procrastination kills us: we miss Bush’s audacity. The world is better with America’s Republicans” http://youtu.be/QkOpo89NLcg 

Next, Republican candidates will be holding a debate in Kafrenbel, and for that, we will definitely need a buffer zone, a no-fly/no-go zone, and a few humanitarian corridors.

When a town of several thousands in northwestern Syria begins identifying stakes for itself in the potential outcome of American elections, the whole concept of “leading from behind” acquires a certain new relevance, rather irrelevance. Is America missing out on a chance for establishing new outpost for its interests in the Middle East?

On a more philosophical note: should all the peoples of the world become citizens of Pax Americana with equal rights and votes? Or will that lead to the dilution of the whole concept of citizenship, as happened with Pax Romana? As an aside, Caracalla, the Roman Emperor who granted Roman citizenship to all freemen in the Roman Empire, was half-Syrian: his mother, Julia Domna, was from Homs City.

But in today’s Homs City, protesters were calling for the establishment of safe corridors connecting them to the local cemeteries so they can bury their dead in peace (Qarabees Neighborhood) http://youtu.be/3kSgOKXfjN8 To drive the point home, snipers take turn shooting at the protesters http://youtu.be/JW7Zc2h-aJ8

And despite the mass show for the protests throughout the city, including Baba Amr, the neighborhood nonetheless receives severe pounding http://youtu.be/5hUnUgxJzGY , http://youtu.be/tekHKe5gE4k , http://youtu.be/ndIv3xar-c4

Loyalists open fire on a passing car, killing 2 and wounding 1 in Deir Baalbah Neighborhood in Homs City http://youtu.be/TxsD5MU6O1M Protesters taunt loyalists in Wa’er http://youtu.be/cjBxazGFaW0

The nearby town of Houleh is shelled http://youtu.be/c7g_f11LLOA even as locals demonstrate http://youtu.be/EobSpDmm1NQ , http://youtu.be/cO1IiAa99nw The nearby town of Qseir was shelled as well http://youtu.be/wCwEKccnSCM Another nearby town, that of Shamseen, witnesses an episode of heavy shelling as well  http://youtu.be/_Rn0NmFqrxg  leading to a funeral http://youtu.be/QgU1cJ5zY-4

Protesters http://youtu.be/_ZlrGUW2nIE in Aleppo Road Neighborhood in Hama City come under fire http://youtu.be/g8oFUP_SDE0 , http://youtu.be/UuOzGYenu5o , http://youtu.be/Yc7DgNVjgD0 Worshippers in a local mosque in Qoussour Neighborhood are fired upon http://youtu.be/0HTZ1-WOvPI

Kurdish Protesters in Kobani north of Aleppo city are fired upon http://youtu.be/NEb8JsV3bUY

The town of Jassem in Deraa “sleeps” to the sound of automatic gunfire http://youtu.be/Txkhn43pV6c

The sound of gunfire in City of Deir Ezzor in the northeast has become a recurrent affair as well http://youtu.be/o4ujk8YTtOg , http://youtu.be/5lPwtO7oNRk , http://youtu.be/FB3Zi24DOlc , http://youtu.be/FfW0TEQv5Oo The city and the larger province have been witnessing increased defections http://youtu.be/Vcqm0F1qBv4

Demonstrations












LATTAKIA: Hiffeh http://youtu.be/9CuEC3LH5rM

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