Rebels defy Assad by carving out their slice of a free Syria

[tabatha]

Within a few miles of the hellfire of being poured on to the rebellious suburbs of Homs by an enraged dictator, people can walk the streets hurling venom at him with impunity, smuggle arms to the rebel army, and take on his forces and win.

This is the safe zone long sought by Syrian activists and their international supporters and - for now at least - it exists.

For months exiled Syrian activists have talked of a buffer zone. They have begged Turkey, or Nato, or the Arab League to construct by force if necessary a strip of land inside Syria to act as a base for the opposition, a refuge for those fleeing the violence, and a focus for humanitarian assistance.

But the reality now is that in the countryside around Homs, an area that is ten, perhaps hundreds of square miles in size and stretches to the Lebanese border is free of President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9075903/Rebels-defy-Assad-by-carving-out-their-slice-of-a-free-Syria.html

[inna]

1. unrec

(joke)

[tabatha]

3. Syrian Army Targets Wounded In Homs

The city of Homs in western Syria has been under siege for five days now. With no sign of the violence abating, the Syrian Army is now attacking medical personnel, field hospitals, and the wounded in some of the most vicious fighting yet. “Medicine is being used as a weapon of persecution,” Marie-Pierre Allie, president of Doctors Without Borders, told CNN. The city’s streets are littered with bodies because the shelling has become so intense that people are afraid to leave their homes. The BBC reports that pro-government militias are storming residences, murdering people. President Bashar al-Assad has been cracking down on antigovernment protesters for the last 11 months, during which time U.N. officials estimate roughly 6,000 people have died.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2012/02/08/syrian-army-targets-wounded-in-homs.html

(not a joke)

[tabatha]

2. MY COMMENT ON #ROBERTFISK ‘S LATEST SYRIA DIATRIBE - HE & #LIZZIEPHELEN R SOULMATES

MY COMMENT ON #ROBERTFISK ‘S LATEST SYRIA DIATRIBE - HE & #LIZZIEPHELEN R SOULMATES: “I think your #Syria 'friend' - which is the sole source of all this adverse 'ISLAMIST's UNDER THE BED' information about the #FSA - in your superficial and poorly researched article - is probably on #Assad 's payroll - let them listen to whatever music comforts them in their battle to survive bombardment. BIG F**KING DEAL.

If you were a real journalist - not just a jaded, over the top, hack - you would go into #Homs - and spend some time with the #FSA - to see and experience the reality of their situation for yourself - and THEN write about it - but you are too busy supping cafe lattes with your looney leftie layabout friends in Beirut bars to be bothered by such boring tasks as in depth field research.

And BTW - #Libya may at present be far from perfect - but it is a thousand times more free and comfortable - than it was under #Gaddafi

Robert Fisk:["I always like to be different"]: “Could there be some bad guys among the rebels too?”
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-could-there-be-some-bad-guys-among-the-rebels-too-6719999.html

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/frn2cj

[inna]

7. um, not exactly a sort of comment one would brag about... but ymmv

[tabatha]

4. Payback is a bitch for China- Chinese Government sites get hacked by the Syrian Revolution

http://www.hzgt.gov.cn/sbz.html

http://www.lcaudit.gov.cn/sbz.html

[leveymg]

5. This reads like pure neocon propaganda, which is what it is.

This isn't journalism, and it doesn't come transparently labeled as opinion. It's propaganda. George Orwell called this sort of over-the-top political messaging, "Purple prose", for its florid, emotion-laden style and bloody-minded purpose. The first sentence of the article tells you its specific ideological trajectory and how hard its trying hard to hit all the emotional buttons along the way:

Within a few miles of the hellfire of being poured on to the rebellious suburbs of Homs by an enraged dictator, people can walk the streets hurling venom at him with impunity, smuggle arms to the rebel army, and take on his forces and win.

Consider its source. For decades, The Telegraph has been the mouthpiece for the British Conservative Party. Even after publisher Conrad Black was forced to divest in 2004 after indictment for fraud, the paper has maintained its reputation as part of the neocon network, and hosts some of its most prominent London-based propagandists, such as Michael Weiss: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/01/neocon-israel-mouthpiece-writes-syrian-opposition-policy-paper.html

Michael Weiss is Director of Communications and Public Relations for the Henry Jackson Society, a British neocon organization which patrons include the U.S. neocons Richard Perle, William Kristol and James Woolsey. He also has a blog at the Telegraph website. Michael Weiss is also executive director of Just Journalism a "pressure group whose stated goals are to focus "on how Israel and Middle East issues are reported in the UK media." Critics characterize Just Journalism as a "privately-funded mouthpiece for Israel". Until the end of 2009 Weiss published a blog for the Jewish magazine Tablet.

Recently Weiss wrote a policy paper Safe Area for Syria - An Assessment of Legality, Logistics and Hazards (pdf) which is an amateur attempt (Weiss is, as far as can find out, neither a lawyer nor does he seem to have military experience) to write a playbook for military intervention in Syria:

In the interest of assessing all suggested options for hastening the end of a totalitarian dictatorship and/or averting a mass humanitarian catastrophe, this paper examines the way in which foreign military intervention could work for Syria.

The paper was written for the Strategic Research & Communication Centre, a somewhat mysterious organization in Britain that claims to offer "Informed insight on Syria", founded in 2010 and run by the Syrian expat Ausama Monajed who "previously served as the director of Barada Television". As is known from Wikileaks cables: Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria.

I don't know if there's really room at DU for single-issue propagandists, but there is a rule against Neocons. This comes awfully close to crossing a line.

[tabatha]

6. I will avoid quoting from the Guardian.

There are plenty of other sources documenting the hell that is in Syria.