A Pro-Assad Demonstration in AleppoI told the sheikh that the opposition said Alawites controlled the regime. "This is rejected," he said. "It's for justifying the attack against the regime." He listed ministers, governors, and director-generals and insisted very few were Alawites and most were Sunni.
"Our president is Alawite and we suffer from this," he said. "There are four million Alawites," he claimed with some exaggeration. "We don't have even one per cent of the positions in the government." He and his guests said they believed Syria was being pressured so it would make a deal with Israel.
Homs Protester: "Arrest Me"On August 19, a friend named Abu Salah drove me to a daytime funeral and demonstration in the eastern Homs slum of Bab Assiba.
Abu Salah was a businessman who lived in the western neighbourhood of Waer and helped the opposition. He drove a car with fake license plates and delivered aid from wealthy areas such as Ghota, Inshaat and Hamra to the poorer neighbourhoods across town - such as Bab Assiba. We stopped to pick up a friend of his, a man with a beard but no moustache, a sign of conservatism.
As we drove, he received a call letting him know that his cousin, Nawar Nawriz, had died from injuries received the previous night - when attackers had shot at the Fatima mosque while he was praying. After being wounded he was taken to a "field hospital" - a safe house used as a clinic.
Abu Salah told me that opposition supporters donated blood themselves, but they lacked the packs to hold the blood and they needed morphine and medicine to prevent infections and to meet medical needs.
Amidst expanding sanctions by the US and the European Union, the regime banned all imports except grain, raw materials, and 51 essential items, in an effort to preserve dwindling foreign reserves.
Traders in Damascus and Aleppo said average prices had risen by up to 30%. Some said they have begun to hide stocks in the hope of selling at still higher prices as shortages take hold.
Damascus residents have complained that the prices of biscuits and potato chips, which have already risen during the six months of unrest, have jumped by more than 20% since last week, while 100-gramme bags of coffee and flour have risen 50%.
Six years ago, Assad lifted the import ban implemented by his father Hafez.
1955 GMT: At the end of the day, there have been very significant developments in Syria.
Today there were three main stories in Syria. The first, a renewed assault by Syrian military against al Rastan, Douma, and even certain areas of Damascus, just to name a few. Though it is early, and video evidence is still trickling in, the violence of these assaults matches some of the most heavy handed tactics the regime has used yet. Though we never saw security opening fire on a large crowd, we saw evidence of widespread use of artillery and tank bombardment, sometimes near schools and mosques.
President Erdoğan at UN, 22 Sept 2011 No one is ready to declare a Pax Turkana in the Middle East, and indeed, its foreign policy is strewn this year with missteps, crises and gains that feel largely rhetorical. It even lacks enough diplomats. But in an Arab world where the United States seems in retreat, Europe ineffectual and powers like Israel and Iran unsettled and unsure, officials of an assertive, occasionally brash Turkey have offered a vision for what may emerge from turmoil across two continents that has upended decades of assumptions.
Another forum in New York for President Ahmadinejad to put out his talking points --- "Show me one dictatorship in the world that has not been supported by the United States government or some European governments" --- while knocking back any thought of violations of political, civil, and legal rights after his disputed 2009 re-election: "Don’t you distinguish between those protestors who have something to say and who have some demands, and those who set buildings on fire?"
Like NBC News' Ann Curry in Tehran a week ago, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos gets his prize in the opening exchange with the prospect of a release of the US hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer --- this time, it actually came true in the following 24 hours --- and then the rest of the interview is a broadcast wasteland.
Stephanopoulos is ill-prepared to follow up on some questions, such as the repression in Iran, and unable to to catch up with an evasive Ahmadinejad on others, such as Syria. While for once, this is an interview that doesn't put a priority on the nuclear issue, Stephanopoulos cannot even get the Iranian President to respond meaningfully on the US call for military communications with Tehran to avoid an accidental conflict --- Ahmadinejad shows his interviewer up, "You mean the US is in a Cold War with Iran? Is that what you mean?"
And there is even a gift tied with a bow for Ahmadinejad with Stephanopoulos' presentation of foreign-supported "regime change": "The Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said earlier this year that it’s just a matter of time before this revolution hits Iran. What did you make of that?"
THE INTERVIEW
STEPHANOPOULOS: Mr. President, thank you for joining us again. I want to begin with a topic that many Americans are interested [in], of course, the Americans, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer. Last week you raised a lot of hopes here in the United States saying they would be released in a couple of days as a humanitarian gesture. Many expected them to come back here with you. Yet they’re still imprisoned in Iran. Why?
Protesters in Homs last night give a satirical "welcome" to Syrian President Assad's birthday
2115 GMT: More criticism for the Syrian regime to consider tonight....
Three prominent Syrian clerics of the Alawite sect, to which President Assad belongs, have denounced the “atrocities” committed by the regime against protesters.
“We declare our innocence from these atrocities carried out by Bashar al-Assad and his aides who belong to all religious sects,” Mohib Nisafi, Yassin Hussein, and Mussa Mansour said in a joint statement from Homs.
The clerics continued, “The daily reports of kidnappings, killings and harassment of members of the Alawite sect are all untrue. They are designed and spread to cause divisions among people united against the regime....“The children of Homs, Sunnis, Alawite and Christians, have lived and will continue to live in coexistence and harmony.”
Then the clerics came out in opposition to the regime:
Six months have passed in this revolution and people have been killed or wounded. The climate is ripe for victory. There is no other way left to save the self except by joining the peaceful demonstrations.
This regime and its president will not rule you forever.
And then there are the nightly demonstrations --- the Kisweh section of Damascus:
2045 GMT: Another clip of the mass rally, organised by the opposition party Al Wefaq (see 1629 GMT), in Bahrain today:
2012 GMT: Protesters have removed most of the wall around the Israeli embassy in Cairo and a protester has once again scaled the 15-story building in order to remove the Israeli flag.
Days before Syrian forces launched a deadly offensive against street protesters in the western city of Baniyas, the colonel leading the attack gathered up six of his officers. The colonel, one of the officers later recounted, put his cellphone on the loudspeaker setting, for all to hear.
The voice of Syria's then-defense minister, Ali Habib, boomed out, providing chilling orders for a crackdown on Baniyas' civilian protesters:
"Any kind of gathering, you disperse it with sheer force. You shoot," the minister said that day in May, recalled a 21-year-old lieutenant in the quwat-al-khassat, or special forces, who said he was one of the six gathered around the colonel's phone.
"And the officer who cannot handle that and disagrees, we will deal with them directly."
Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 7:53
A Pro-Assad Demonstration in AleppoI told the sheikh that the opposition said Alawites controlled the regime. "This is rejected," he said. "It's for justifying the attack against the regime." He listed ministers, governors, and director-generals and insisted very few were Alawites and most were Sunni.
