Excellent photos

Free Syrian Army rebels ‘behead a Christian and fed him to dogs’ – fears grow over Islamist atrocities

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255103/Syria-rebels-beheaded-Christian-fed-dogs-fears-grow-Islamist-atrocities.html

TV documentary of life in Syria

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWUjgSmrN7Y&feature=youtu.be

Are you Assad’s P.A.? You appear to have a strong interest in supporting the regime. Maybe you should go and live there for a while and be the Lord Haw Haw of the middle east.

Actually was in a taxi the other night driven by a Syrian who used to be an engineer. He swore to me on his family’s livlihood that Assad is the good guy and its the rebels who are shelling and killing civilians. I believe him over western media. I think he’s right.

Rebecca, please don’t be so naive. Of course Assad has supporters that are going to say that Assad is not at fault. You are going to believe one person over all the evidence out there. These pictures are telling you what’s going on.

B Lowe, I see your still in denial.

Declan, don’t be so naive. Look at the photo of the child soldier. Human Rights Watch has documented the use of child soldiers by the so called ‘rebels’ , which are mainly just foreign Islamic jihadists. What have you got to say about FSA using children as soldiers?
It does show that the elected Syrian government and it’s security forces have managed to kill housings upon thousands of these foreign terrorists and that they are getting so desperate that they use children as soldiers.

Strongbow 62. Someone needs to make a standard here. All we are hearing time and time again from Western media sources re Syria is nothing short of Propaganda. When you have major news sources citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights time and time and time again as a legitimate source for a Syrian article you do have to worry. When you have major news sources constantly disregarding the terrible atrocities and human rights abuses being committed by the ‘rebels’ and only heard of undocumented government mess ups you have to worry.

B Lowe, are you suggesting that you are setting the standard. The only one spouting propaganda on here is you.

@Blowe
Try a youtube search for “Daraa massacre” and see what you find. Is this what you quaintly refer to as “undocumented government mess-ups”?
This is the regime YOU are defending!!

And as for ‘elected Syrian government’, multi-party elections have been banned in Syria since Assad senior seized power in a coup!

Mattoid, I am defending the representative body of the Syrian people, the Syrian government. It has every right to defend itself against both foreign and domestic terrorist attacks.
Hopefully the Syrian government can defeat these terrorists and then real change can occur in Syria.
I see you are and have clearly fallen for the propaganda re Syria just as Declan and a few others have.

No BLowe – it is you who has fallen for the propaganda – the Syrian and Russian propaganda.

I am under no illusion about elements fighting against the regime that are exploiting the situation for their own agenda, and that have also committed war crimes – yes, and some of them are foreign jihadists.

You seem to think that opposition fighters are a unified homogenous group, which is just utter naive nonsense! There is clearly savagery in many guises in this conflict, and many diverse participating elements.

But lets not forget that this conflict was initially sparked by ordinary people rising up against a brutal dictatorial regime – the videos say more than I could ever express, and show the actions of the regime YOU consistently try to defend.

How you can say that the regime is the ‘representative body of the syrian people’ when all opposition in Syria has been banned for forty years beats me, and speaks volumes about your pro-regime bias!

A green thumb from me.

@B Lowe I salute your consistent naive defence of Bashir el-Assad and his murderous dynastic regime. Despite constantly criticising the western media as biased, you hold up media outlets with even greater twisted biases (some supported by regimes with dubious human rights records) as somehow wondrous beacons of truth. You are not the only one that thinks they are somehow gifted and enlightened and can see some greater truth that is denied to the rest of us mere mortals, however, as we can see by your posts you are actually blinded by your own self imposed ignorance. You are constantly manipulating a jigsaw of facts and ignoring those pieces that do not suit your world view, while exaggerating those that suit.
You have been challenged a number of times by myself and others on your views, and you have failed to enter into meaningful debate, you have constantly spewed out the same diatribe that holds a modicum of truth but is otherwise suspect. To claim you are setting some kind of standard in your posts is evidence of your own self delusion on the matter. You constantly ignore the fact that the Syrian regimes record (especially during the current crisis) on human rights is abysmal, and that is putting it mildly. Answer me this why has no real change happened in Syria for the past 40 odd years of the Assad regime? Why in your words will real change occur if Assad wins? Get real!
You are the one that has fallen for the propaganda my friend, you constantly spit it out though you display ignorance of the record of the Syrian Ba’athist regime and geo-political tensions in the region. If you are really honestly interested in the plight of the suffering Syrian people do them justice by doing some proper honest research on the subject, maybe you could start by talking to people who have lived and worked in Syria with the aid agencies or the UN, and take it from there. Until then, do the Syrian people a favour and stop commenting on what you obviously, know nothing about, or go talk to Ed Kavanagh about Manchester Unitead.

Again I say it. When the standard of journalism is nothing short of Propaganda with sources like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights being used constantly someone needs to offer an alternative account.
These so called ‘rebels’ are mainly of foreign nationality and are intent on causing sectarian strife.
I suppose Mattoid and Stephen and Declan and others that all of you believed the ‘uprising’ in Libya against Gadaffi was supported by the majority of the population? I suppose that some of your also believe that it was mainly genuine ordinary Libyans taking up arms against Gadaffi forces?
Hopefully the Syrian government can defeat these terrorists and then ordinary life for the hard pressed Syrian citizens can return to normal.

‘Normal’ being brutal repression by a dictatorial regime?

I have been following this conflict through uploaded citizen videos from the very early stages, before the west or anyone else took any interest, and I can tell you that some of what I have seen is absolutely shocking, and far from ‘normal’ by any stretch of the imagination.

This is what you are defending with your continued apologism for Assad.

Just hope (and pray if you’re religious) that you’re never caught in the same situation yourself, or that if you are you won’t be ignored by the outside world.

@B Lowe it is not a case of anyone believing or not believing something or offering alternative accounts, we are talking about real people’s suffering here, not alternate versions of reality. With news, like all sources of information the source should be evaluated carefully before any conclusion is drawn using previous knowledge and critical thinking skills to assess the information. Your posts have not shown any evidence that you have applied any sort of process, we do see repetition of a totally one sided view from you.
Truth is elusive at the best of times and in perfect conditions, in war truth is even harder to ascertain, especially in a country where free access was severely restricted in peacetime. We can only evaluate what is happening in Syria on the facts presented from all the sources. You have no better sources of information than anyone else and it is disingenuous to come on here and push the opinion that Assad and his cronies are some kind of misunderstood freedom loving secularist regime that are being victimised. That is someone else’s agenda. Of course, I could be mistaken and maybe you are pushing your own agenda, I don’t know. It is fine to have an opinion and express it I have no problem with that, however you are presenting your opinion as if they are the actual full facts of the situation, which they are not.
This is as real as it gets for the people suffering on the ground as they are used by Assad and FSA to score atrocity points. Show a bit of compassion for the people of Syria in future before you comment on their plight, Assad and his cronies’ only concern is clinging on to power and they are prepared to sacrifice as many of the Syrian people as it takes to achieve that aim.

If your point of entry in analysing any conflict is trying to identify ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ you’re unlikely to arrive at very interesting or accurate conclusions. This is, I think, particularly the case with Syria. We do not need to choose between uncritical support for Assad and uncritical support for the – diverse and fragmented – opposition. Truth is, both have committed atrocities no decent person could stand over.

Apologists for the Assad regime need to bear a number of things in mind:

1. Assad is an autocrat with no mandate to rule Syria. Power was handed to him on the death of his father. You would not tolerate undemocratic dynastic rule in Ireland, so why is it okay for Syrians? Assad, like his father, stays in power through extreme coercion and sectarian scare-mongering; control of the media, and so on. Assad is not a socialist or anti-imperialist but a violent neoliberal looter who deploys tanks and air strikes in heavily populated areas, with predictably bloody results.

2. While Assad does enjoy some support, the revolution began as a result of the brutal state crackdown on demonstrators who took to the streets, inspired by what was going on in Tunisia and Egypt. And of course there was the now famous incident in March 2011 in which young boys who wrote anti-government graffiti on their school wall were picked up by Assad’s secret service and had their finger nails pulled out for their ‘crime’. After this, demonstrations became widespread. It wasn’t a “foreign plot” as the regime claims. Incidentally, that’s what Mubarak and Ben Ali said too. They all say it, don’t believe the hype!

3. People are right to flag the very real meddling of external forces like the US, Saudi, NATO etc. However this is not an argument for supporting Assad. Nor is the presence of Islamists (for Syria or elsewhere) an argument for supporting Assad. Islamists are as entitled to fight the regime as other tendencies. It may create problems down the road, but again, it’s not an argument for supporting an oppressive, violent, illegitimate political dynasty that responds to street demonstrations with live rounds, arrests, and torture.

4. Assad has been the architect of what will eventually be his own downfall. As Stephen Starr writes in his new book, Revolt in Syria: Eye-Witness to the Uprising :

“The protests forced the regime’s hand. It had to choose between grasping a new future and reverting to the violent tactics that had worked so well under the previous president, albeit in a very different time. In a massive miscalculation, it chose the latter.” [p.5]

It is indeed now a very different time. Leaders of Assad’s ilk are rapidly becoming acquainted with the dustbin of history. Assad will too at some point; it’s just a question of when and in what circumstances.

Thanks for that Ed. I did not know about that.

You don’t know much about anything

Sorry Ed, but there’s no way in the world that’s a civilian airliner in the video – more like a light aircraft. No surprise to see Alex Jones spinning it as an attempt to bring down a passenger jet though…

I speak Arabic; the subtitles are a fraud.

Alex Jones is a fraud too, as it happens.

That has to be the worse attempt at a “joke” I have ever read on this site. Fair play.