Bashar Assad is truly caught in a ‘no-win’ situation…! As Col. Lang wrote recently…

Assad’s options

…Throughout the Bush ’43 era and into the BHO period the neocons pushed the idea that Westernised “liberals”: and ethno-religious minorities should be brought to power in the region believing that as minorities they were willing to make nice with Israel. An unending search for “good” Islamists took place over the last five years. Discreet contacts were made to encourage them against the “old bulls” like Mubarak. The Arab spring was a direct product of this neocon and academic fathead meddling in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The Syrian Sunni Islamist revolt is a direct result of that effort. What you have in Syria is a civil war between the forces of semi-westernization on the government’s side and the forces of Sunni Islamism backed by Saudi Arabia on the other. In this struggle. the lefty media (and Fox) have never seen or heard Rebel BS that they did not really love.

What options does Assad have. 1- He can fight through to a total defeat of the rebels, 2- He can surrender to US demands for the end of his government. Arrest, trial and death will surely follow for him and his. 3- He can flee into exile where he can brood until brought back for trial and death.

Which course of action do you think he will choose?

To further punctuate the point on finding ‘friendly’ forces, the Times of Israel reports…

Syrian opposition leader, in unprecedented interview with Israel Radio, says Syrians want peace with Israel

Speaking from Paris, Nofal Al-Dawalibi, son of a former Syrian PM, calls Assad a ‘mafia bacteria’ and says opposition will not negotiate with him

In an unprecedented interview with Israel Radio, Nofal Al-Dawalibi, a Syrian opposition leader and son of former two-time Syrian prime minister Maarouf Al-Dawalibi, said that the Syrian people want peace, including with Israel, and seek stability after the ongoing bloodshed.

The interview comes against a background of decades of overt Syrian hostility to Israel, and shatters a taboo of Syrian representatives in any forum talking openly with Israelis. At international events, Syrian leaders have always sought to ensure that Israeli journalists are kept out of their press conferences, and ignored questions from Israeli reporters on the rare occasions when Israelis did manage to address them directly. Israeli journalists are never granted visas to enter Syria…

Not withstanding the obvious hasbara, such as; “a background of decades of overt Syrian hostility to Israel,” in which Israel has instigated much of those hostilities and currently occupy the Syrian Golan Heights, you can certainly discern the palpable pandering of the Paris-based Syrian ‘Opposition’…!

Now, speaking of the Lame Stream Western ‘Spin’ on Syria, Al-Akhbar featured a great Op-Ed…

Covering Israel/Covering Syria

It has been quite a show for students in journalism schools. Western media and Al Jazeera compromised the traditional standards of journalism in order to promote the Syria story from the standpoint of Western governments (the traditional enemies of the Syrian people and their interests who have taken to referring to themselves as the “friends of Syria”).

When Arabs complained at the extent to which Western media go out of their way to use neutral language regarding the pattern of Israeli massacres and war crimes, they were always told that Western media are unlike Arab media: they can’t report emotionally about conflict and they stay objective out of a firm commitment of the standards of free press. Western media would often decide to not cover Israeli crimes under the pretext of lack of substantial evidence, or because Palestinian accounts have been treated with suspicion all along. But if Western media were to adhere to the same standards that they have adhered to in covering Syria, the Arab-Israeli conflict would be covered quite differently from the hitherto standard coverage.

Firstly, if Israel were to be covered as Syria has been covered in the last year, Western journalists would violate the press restrictions that Israel imposes whenever it perpetrates massacres and war crimes. Israel imposed a tight siege on Gaza during its assault in 2008, and Western journalists obeyed Israeli orders and only moved with Israeli minders and military chaperones.

Secondly, Western media would station reporters in Cairo or Nairobi to “monitor” developments in occupied Palestine.

Thirdly, all accounts of Palestinians under occupation would be believed without any scrutiny and without the need for the standard corroboration of accounts. The word of any and every Palestinian opposed to Israeli occupation would be treated as definitive truth….

It is a rather lengthy list, folks…!

Now, about that ‘Rebel BS’, b at Moon of Alabama, has done an awesome job in debunking many of the YouTube clips coming out of the main ‘hotbed’ of hostilities in Homs…

Insurgency Created Flames, Smoke And Mirrors In Homs

…Typically mortars are filled with high explosives. They explode on impact with a slight flash and the visible result in a city is usually a cloud of grey dust and lots of small shrapnel impacts on the walls of buildings. Mortars create damage and kill through the pressure wave and the shrapnel. This older video seems to show several such typical mortar impacts in Homs and none of them has “flames and black smoke”.

But where would “flames and intense black smoke” come from if not from mortar fire? Dark black smoke usually comes from burning hydrocarbons like tar, oil or from burning the coom in rubber tires. I am not aware of any mortar ammunition type that could cause such by itself.

But mortars can cause fire. Could the burning on the roofs be caused by mortars? Most roofs in Homs are flat and, unlike in northern Europe, those flat roofs in Syria are not covered by tar paper as the arid climate makes covering the concrete from daily rain unnecessary. From my travels in Turkey near the Syrian border I remember sitting on several such naked concrete roofs for the usual evening chat and tea…

Having lobbed a few Mortar rounds down range myself, I also question why all the satellite dishes seem to be intact…!

Ironically, even the Turks and Erdogan are seemingly colluding…

Syria, Turkey and the camp cover-up

It’s like a well-choreographed play that Turkish officials have spent countless hours rehearsing. First, they helped form “committees” inside every camp to speak on behalf of the refugees. Now, they carefully scrub down the facilities only before admitting visitors, deny access to most media outlets, and even handpick refugees to speak with the press and outside organizations.

The story they’ve crafted is a simple narrative of suffering Syrian refugees, fleeing the bloody crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad, finding relief, commendable conditions and the chance for a new life. The trouble is, the situation often isn’t that clear-cut. The government of Turkey is “hiding something”, according to a prominent Turkish human-rights lawyer – a sentiment shared by many Syrian refugees inside the camps.

While reporting from refugee camps on the Turkish-Syrian border, we spoke to several people who said that they were encountering “absolutely no problems”. Many other refugees, however, describe a vastly different reality – inadequate tents, unsanitary bathrooms, lack of food, preferential treatment of soldiers, and unnecessary detention practices.

It is common, though, for refugees to be paid off by the Turkish government to refrain from denouncing its wrongdoings, according to several witnesses in the camps. The Turkish government is also denying most of those in the camps legal status as refugees, allying itself with Islamist factions and marginalizing liberal elements, locking away “problematic” Syrians in off-the-books prison facilities,and obstructing media access, while local religious and political enmities are interfering with the humanitarian response.

All of these underreported issues have conspired to place already vulnerable people in an increasingly untenable situation….

God Help the Syrians…!

*gah*