Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Heavy Fighting in Damascus?

Workers in front of a building in Aleppo, Syria, damaged by a Sunday car bomb --- three people reportedly died

See also Syria 1st-Hand Video: Secretly Meeting the Activists
Turkey Live Coverage (19 March): New Year Celebrations, Clashes, and the Syria Crisis
Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: After the Damascus Explosions

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2056 GMT: An energetic evening demonstration in Qosour in Homs has a message for President Assad, "We're coming, curse your soul, we're coming!":

2006 GMT: I've been discussing this video with several sources. According to the description, the video shows Free Syrian Army soldiers destroying a tank in Deir Ez Zor. We never see the tank, but we do see the RPG launch at an unknown target.

I showed this video to Ahmed al Omran, from NPR, who says that the videographer appears to say today's date. Also, another source says that this video shows a battle in the Ghassan Abboud roundabout, an area where we have received reports of heavy fighting today:

Video said to show clashes between FSA fighters and gov security forces in Deir ez-Zour youtube.com/watch?v=RTMY4i… #SYRIA (via @JMiller_EA)

— Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) March 19, 2012

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Syria 1st-Hand Video: Secretly Meeting the Activists (Al Jazeera English)

An Al Jazeera journalist, who cannot be identified because of the risk of identifying his contacts, moved within Syria for weeks to gather testimony and images about the uprising. This is his video, filmed with an iPhone:

US Politics Feature: Forget Gay Marriage --- The Threat is From Left-Handed People

The Associated Press reports:

A state lawmaker opposed to repealing New Hampshire's gay marriage law plans to offer a tongue-in-cheek amendment to the repeal bill when it comes up for a vote next week that would bar a left-handed person from marrying another left-handed person.

State Rep. Seth Cohn, a Canterbury Republican, plans to offer that amendment Wednesday when a bill sponsored by Rep. David Bates is debated. Bates, a Windham Republican, proposes to repeal the gay marriage law in effect since 2010 and replace it with civil unions for same-sex couples.

Cohn was a co-sponsor last year on a bill that would have replaced marriage for heterosexual and same-sex couples with domestic unions. The House killed the bill which would have established marriage as a cultural and individual right apart from governmental definition.

US Politics Opinion: PACs, SuperPACs, and the Best Elections Money Can Buy

Years ago, an American friend told me that the US had the best police forces that money could buy. He did not appreciate the irony in his statement. I wonder if he would do so, if the statement was applied to politicians and "freedom of speech".

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The Latest from Iran (18 March): Relying on India

See also Iran Feature: Pushing Back with "Intelligence" Against the Drumbeats of War
The Latest from Iran (17 March): Ahmadinejad All-is-Well Alert

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1755 GMT: Currency Watch. In an effective admission that it can no longer control the exchange rate, the Central Bank has said it will allow official vendors to buy and sell foreign currency at open-market rates.

In January, after the Iranian rial almost halved in value in four months, the Bank tried to imposed a single rate of 12260:1 for the Iranian Rial vs. the US dollar. Vendors were threatened with suspension and unofficial traders with arrest if they did not observed the official rate, while websites posting currency information were blocked.

The steps were ineffective, however, as vendors simply refused to trade US dollars and other currencies. The street-market rate soon reached 19000:1, around its current level.

“Licensed exchange houses are given permission to buy and sell foreign currencies and answer customers’ needs based on the mechanism of the market’s supply and demand,” the Bank said in a statement posted on its website this weekend.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: After the Damascus Explosions

Claimed footage of Syrian security forces firing on men in Raqqa on Saturday

See also Bahrain Opinion: Letting Torturers Go Free?
Bahrain Exclusive: Reliving the Clashes and Rallies on the Anniversary of the Regime Crackdown
Saturday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Explosions in Damascus

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1933 GMT: An evening demonstration in the Qosour section of Homs in Syria:

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Bahrain Opinion: Letting Torturers Go Free? (Owen Jones)

Ali Mushaimaa, killed 14 Feb 2011Some hoped that after the release of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry’s report,  state officials who were complicit in torture against civilians would be brought to justice. This has failed to happen. Furthermore, the highest rank of those even put before the courts appears to be a lieutenant, and that case doesn’t even relate to "torture". Naturally this has done nothing to appease those in Bahrain who want justice, as many believe that government officials are either directly responsible for issuing the torture order, or at least complicit through negligence.

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Iran Feature: Pushing Back with "Intelligence" Against the Drumbeats of War (Risen)

James Risen, the intelligence correspondent of The New York Times, posts an interesting intervention in the spin and counter-spin over "war" and Iran's nuclear programme.

Risen's colleagues David Sanger and William Broad have been fed by other US officials in the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA to push the spectre of Iran threat. Risen's contacts in the intelligence community, however, do not believe that the information --- as opposed to the spinning of that information --- point to an imminent Iranian Bomb. 

With the brake on military action applied by President Obama last week and the likely resumption of nuclear talks with Tehran, Risen gets the space in The Times to present that line muting the drumbeats of war. Note that --- as in the pieces pushing the Iranian spectre --- the actual information given is sparse; the significance here is the presentation of that supposed material:

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U.S. Faces a Tricky Task in Assessment of Data on Iran
James Risen

While American spy agencies have believed that the Iranians halted efforts to build a nuclear bomb back in 2003, the difficulty in assessing the government’s ambitions was evident two years ago, when what appeared to be alarming new intelligence emerged, according to current and former United States officials.<

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Bahrain Exclusive: Reliving the Clashes and Rallies on the Anniversary of the Regime Crackdown

Police arrest youth in Sitra on Thursday, before clashes and an evening rally for martyrs of the March 2011 crackdown

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This week Bahraini protesters have been commemorating the anniversary of the regime's crackdown, backed by military forces from the Gulf States, on the demonstrations. Attacks across the kingdom would end with the clearing of Pearl Roundabout, the symbolic centre of the protests.

An EA correspondent in Bahrain sends this report of Thursday's events in Sitra:

On 13 March 2011, the assault began on the island of Sitra. A day after the declaration of martial law in Bahrain, regime forces, with  the help of the Saudi army, surrounded the island and started the attack on civilians. Two men were killed --- one of them was Ahmed Farhan, executed by a shotgun blast to the head after he was wounded --- and hundreds were injured, even as the medical center was attacked.

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The Latest from Iran (17 March): Ahmadinejad All-is-Well Alert

2004 GMT: Oil Watch. The Indian Governmennt has exempted payment in rupees for oil imports from Iran from 40% withholding tax, easing the way for refiners to use the local currency for purchases.

In Jnauary, India and Iran agreed to settle 45% of oil trade in rupees, but Indian refiners and the National Iranian Oil Company had refused to pay the tax.

1959 GMT: Tough Talk of the Day. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has declared that Israel will not launch a military assault: “They make a lot of fuss about it but don’t dare to attack Iran. They are like dogs that keep barking but are not for attacks.”

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