Livestream out of Syria

digitalnirvana said:
Few more articles, thought provoking if nothing else.


INFORMATION WAR

- The Arabic media are furthering their own agenda in Syria
DIPLOMACY: K.P. Nayar

Just about a week in Syria can be an eye-opening experience. For the first time since I became a journalist 40 years ago, I was embarrassed to identify myself as belonging to the media before those who are outside the Fourth Estate.

One day during my stay in Damascus two weeks ago, I watched Al Jazeera announce the “breaking news” of demonstrations against the Syrian government in Duma on the outskirts of the capital. I jumped into a taxi and persuaded the reluctant driver, who had also heard on Al Jazeera about trouble in Duma, to take me there.

To my initial puzzlement and subsequent revulsion, I found that Duma was as peaceful and bustling as Calcutta’s Park Street on a normal day, its residents going about their business as usual. To be sure, I asked around, but no one knew anything about any protests in their midst that day although many had heard about it on Al Jazeera. There had been demonstrations against the government in Duma, but the last time its residents protested was almost two months ago, in the third week of January, according to residents there.

Journalists are human. They make mistakes. So I gave the benefit of doubt to the Doha-based television channel, which was hailed as a refreshing new start in the global media when it was first launched. Among the scores of journalists from Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, India and other non-Western news outlets who were in Syria at the same time that I was visiting, there were many who had hailed Al Jazeera on its dawn as a welcome alternative to the American and European media which now dominate international news coverage.

During the remainder of my stay in Syria, I realized that this was not a case of inadvertent misreporting. And Al Jazeera is not alone in making up news instead of reporting news. A new crop of Arabic news outlets, claiming to be free, have become active players in the Arab Spring as much as rebel movements and governments in West Asia, the latter with their specific agendas that are actually in collision with the spirit of a new democratic upsurge in the region.

Combined with an information revolution brought on by YouTube, Facebook and the rest of the social media, a wholly new style of news management is rewriting the rules and long-accepted crisis communication techniques in diplomacy in countries such as Syria.

I sympathized with a European diplomat in Damascus who confessed to having seriously bungled on account of these changes and learned a lesson that he will not easily forget for the rest of his career. This diplomat recently sent a cable to his headquarters in good faith that the Opposition “Free Syrian Army” had destroyed a two-storey building that housed an important defence establishment, a significant advance for the so-far motley crew of rebels.

The matter would have rested there. But a few days after the telegram was sent, another diplomat from the same embassy passed by the building that was supposed to have been destroyed and reported to his colleague what he saw. The building was still standing and intact. There was confusion and consternation at the embassy until a Syrian employee solved the mystery for her European bosses.

It is normal for diplomats to rely heavily on their local employees, especially when there is a dangerous environment in the host country. No doubt, the buck, in such cases, stops with the ambassador or his deputy chief of mission, who has cleared such reporting for transmission home. Many embassies around the world have local employees who are so reliable that they are sometimes more valuable for a country than the head of mission. In this case, the local employee confessed that she had only heard about the destruction of the defence building on Al Jazeera: she had not gone to the site to check the report for its veracity.

Even in the best of times, reliable and verifiable information has been hard to come by in countries such as Hafez al-Assad’s Syria, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. One year into the uprising against Bashar al-Assad, diplomats in Damascus have now got into the habit of recording newscasts and watching them over and over again to determine their authenticity like detectives going through potential evidence with a magnifying glass or a microscope.

Another European diplomat from a country that is solidly standing by President Assad had a bizarre experience. He was watching disturbingly violent and graphic images from Syria on an Arabic news channel. One clipping showed a burning building in Homs, which had already become the epicentre of the fight between the Syrian government and the rebels. Accompanying these images was the voice of a young girl who was wailing that her house had been set on fire by Assad’s thugs.

This diplomat happened to know the country much better than most of his European contemporaries and, as is the norm now in Damascus, he was recording this news footage. He played it again and again later only to realize that the burning property in question in Homs was actually the ruling Ba’ath Party‘s headquarters there, a building he knew well.

It was nobody’s home as the newscast alleged. Moreover, it was beyond comprehension why the Syrian government would firebomb the ruling party’s provincial headquarters. It is reasonable to assume that the building was set ablaze by the Opposition and then filmed for use as suitable propaganda.

It is not my argument that everything that one sees on television about Syria is concocted. A reasonable estimate is that about a third of the country has slipped out of the government’s control. A survey by the Qatar Foundation, which is not sympathetic to Assad, concluded in December that 55 per cent of the Syrians supported the president.

Syria has become a laboratory for experimenting with the power of the new media in changing the world order. The experiment began with the “colour revolutions” elsewhere in the last decade, but the results have been mixed. Attempts at permanent regime change failed after the initial success of the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan, much to the disappointment of those who promoted these revolutions from abroad.

Typical of this experiment is what one diplomat in Damascus showed me. These television images which he recorded show fire in buildings, but strangely enough, these buildings withstand the huge flames and smoke unlike the World Trade Centre in New York which collapsed after becoming a fireball on September 11, 2001.

In Syria, as recorded images from Arabic news channels convinced me, one trick to get the upper hand in an information war using the new media has been to place big truck tyres on top of buildings, douse them liberally with gasoline and then set the tyres on fire. With a sleight of hand in filming the fire, it is possible to make it appear that the entire property is ablaze.

In reality, however, the buildings are intact and are being used like a traditional film set. Yet when such clips are posted on social media websites, they acquire a kind of credibility that was once associated with genuine news pictures from a war or a disaster, natural or otherwise.

I put it to Syria’s minister for information, Adnan Mahmoud, that it is inevitable that any vacuum in information will be filled by whatever purports to be news and that such tricks using the new media have gained credibility only because Damascus has not allowed unrestricted or independent reporting by the Western media. It is not the Arabic media alone. The Opposition has cleverly used the social media and fed news outlets with disinformation that has left the Assad government far behind in this new type of smart media war.

I was left with the impression that the minister was not oblivious to this, but the problem with governments such as the one in Damascus is that even ministers can be helpless. Real power resides elsewhere and claims to know best.

I spent an hour with Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria. For seven years now, he is the top religious leader of Sunnis, who make up the majority in the country. It was disturbing, to put it mildly, to hear him bring up Kashmir at least six times during our conversation.

India ought to wisen up to the threat that the success of the current media experiment in Syria could pose for its own multi-religious, multi-ethnic, pluralistic society. When the problems in Palestine and the rest of the Muslim ummah are eventually resolved, the new crop of pretenders to freedom of information in the Arabic media could one day target India to further the agenda of some Arab states by rewriting the rules of news reporting and diplomacy as we have understood them for a long time.

As of now, India is ill-equipped to face such a threat to its very existence. The earlier the country wakes up to this danger, the better it will be for all Indians.
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Ok so I'll put some videos of Duma, Duma is 15 minutes away from my home by car, and I used to go there a lot when it was safe, so here's the videos:





I don't how the writer of the article can say that this is normal, and I'v been to Duma and I'm sure that this is Duma!
 
syrian_scholes said:
Ok so I'll put some videos of Duma, Duma is 15 minutes away from my home by car, and I used to go there a lot when it was safe, so here's the videos:





I don't how the writer of the article can say that this is normal, and I'v been to Duma and I'm sure that this is Duma!
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What percentage of the population are actually pro-Assad ?
 
Raoul said:
What percentage of the population are actually pro-Assad ?
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I really don't know, I'll post videos of biggest protests in each city of Syria later and you see for yourself, but I think something like 20% are pro-Assad, I know of some big pro-Assad rallies, some of them come by their own will, others are made to come just like any other dictator do.
 
Nice to see you back syrian scholes.
 
Syria consist of 14 Governorate: Damascus, Rif-Dimashq, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Idlib, Dara'a, Al-Hasakeh, Ar-Raqqah, Der Ez-zour, Lattakia, Tartus, As-Swaida, Al-Qunaitra(currently it's taken by Israel)
So the videos of protests I talked about:
Damascus:I have to put a lot of videos for Damascus as there's large protests in many places and they can't gather together:
Damascus, Al-Qadam:

Damascus, Al-Qaboun

Damascus, Barzeh(the place I go to)

Damascus, Al-Mazzeh:

Damascus, Kafarsouseh:

Damascus, Al-Midan:

Damascus, Ruken Al-Din:

There's also Jobar and others....
Rif-Dimashq:(Rif-Dimashq consists of a lot of cities, I'll put only 3 videos but more than 50 cities is protesting in Rif-Dimashq)
Duma:

Harasta:

Al-Zabadani:

Homs:
The Sit-in that took place in the New Clock Square(350 dead after gunfire shooting on this protest)

Homs, Al-Khaldia:

Homs, Baba Amr(the district that was shelled with rockets)

Homs, Der Ba'albeh:

Hama:
Around 800 thousands protestors in Al-Asi square:


Idlib:
Binnish:

Idlib the city(more than 300 thousand protestor):


Dara'a:


As-Sanamain:

Al-Hasakeh:
Kamshlo:

Ar-Raqqah:

Der Ez-Zour:

Aleppo:


Lattakia:



Slaibeh:

Tartus:
Banias:
 
syrian_scholes said:
Ok so I'll put some videos of Duma, Duma is 15 minutes away from my home by car, and I used to go there a lot when it was safe, so here's the videos:





I don't how the writer of the article can say that this is normal, and I'v been to Duma and I'm sure that this is Duma!
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SS I do not know if you read the article or not, it does say there have been protests in January - the videos posted confirm that - the article was from March when supposedly there were no protests "on that day" but AZ were reporting protests. It does not say there have not been protests or that everything is falsified - what it does say is that some media reports are agenda driven and not factually correct. For what it's worth, the report is from an Indian publication and India has one of the oldest links with Syria, worth noting that India has not voted pro regime in the UN.
 
syrian_scholes said:
I really don't know, I'll post videos of biggest protests in each city of Syria later and you see for yourself, but I think something like 20% are pro-Assad, I know of some big pro-Assad rallies, some of them come by their own will, others are made to come just like any other dictator do.
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Do you have anything to back that up or is that a complete guess?

The evidence suggests otherwise: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrians-support-assad-western-propaganda

Key extract:
Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war – a spectre that is not theoretical as it is for those who live outside Syria's borders.
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digitalnirvana said:
SS I do not know if you read the article or not, it does say there have been protests in January - the videos posted confirm that - the article was from March when supposedly there were no protests "on that day" but AZ were reporting protests. It does not say there have not been protests or that everything is falsified - what it does say is that some media reports are agenda driven and not factually correct. For what it's worth, the report is from an Indian publication and India has one of the oldest links with Syria, worth noting that India has not voted pro regime in the UN.
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Untrue, everday in Duma there's protests, and I posted a video of the biggest protest of more than 200 thousand people there, but in Duma there's a protest every night and on sometimes morning protests, that's why I thought that this article is so laughable as protests didn't stop in Duma for a single day mate.
 
RedKaos said:
Do you have anything to back that up or is that a complete guess?

The evidence suggests otherwise: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrians-support-assad-western-propaganda

Key extract:
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it's not just a guess, it's what I'm seeing around here+all the huge protests, the number 55% of Syrians are with Bashar suggest that anyone who didn't protest is with Bashar while most of the people who didn't protest are too scared they would die becuase of Security forces shooting gunfire at protestors, and anyone can write any article and state any stats they want it's not really hard, this article proves nothing.
 
RedKaos said:
Do you have anything to back that up or is that a complete guess?

The evidence suggests otherwise: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrians-support-assad-western-propaganda

Key extract:
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He pretty much said he's guessing, which given that he's in country and is eyeballing the situation every day, is probably better than a news site can muster. Also, as we saw in Libya, a lot of the pro-regime protests were of the rent a mob variety, and probably included loads of people who joined in, in order to not be perceived as part of the opposition.
 
VidaRed said:
Peaceful syrian "rebels" fighting for democracy and human rights

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Look at the comments to that, and what people think is happening. How can people be so stupid.

Edit - Good idea Raoul, I'll spoiler the other posts.
 
Peeps, since this thread is likely to turn into a showdown of youtube clips, please post spoiler tags around each of the videos. It makes the page easier to navigate and avoids the spectacle of gruesome footage as when people browse the page.
 
Raoul said:
He pretty much said he's guessing, which given that he's in country and is eyeballing the situation every day, is probably better than a news site can muster. Also, as we saw in Libya, a lot of the pro-regime protests were of the rent a mob variety, and probably included loads of people who joined in, in order to not be perceived as part of the opposition.
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Actually the news article was quoting a Qatari study researching Assad's support (and as we know Qatar is amongst the most anti-Assad nations who also covertly fund the FSA), so you could hardly label it as being biased.

And with all due respect to Syrian Scholes if he's involved with the FSA then he's hardly going to admit substantial support for Assad, nor is one Syrian's perspective representative of the entire population. My family in Aleppo and my Druze barber hold opposing stances to him though that hardly serves as compelling evidence does it?

As for your rent-a-mob accusations we're not talking a few dozen people in an ambigious location, we're talking thousands of pro-Assad supporters occupying the squares of major Syrian cities. Furthermore there are the many pro-Assad demonstrations occurring all over the middle east and Europe with attendances numbering hundreds to the thousands. Are you suggesting Assad has paid all of them? If anyone's getting paid its the foreign mercenaries and FSA fighters who are being bankrolled by the Qataris and Saudis to kill their own countrymen.
 
syrian_scholes said:
it's not just a guess, it's what I'm seeing around here+all the huge protests, the number 55% of Syrians are with Bashar suggest that anyone who didn't protest is with Bashar while most of the people who didn't protest are too scared they would die becuase of Security forces shooting gunfire at protestors, and anyone can write any article and state any stats they want it's not really hard, this article proves nothing.
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Thats not what the study says. The 55% represents Syrians who want Bashar to stay on. What was also mentioned was that 82% of those Syrians believe that Bashar should call elections within years. In other words most Syrians believe that there should be major reforms, but they should be peaceful and internal, which contradicts the violent solutions endorsed by the FSA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the West.
 
syrian_scholes said:
Untrue, everday in Duma there's protests, and I posted a video of the biggest protest of more than 200 thousand people there, but in Duma there's a protest every night and on sometimes morning protests, that's why I thought that this article is so laughable as protests didn't stop in Duma for a single day mate.
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What? :lol: There isn't even 200,000 people in Duma nevermind protests that big
 
RedKaos said:
Actually the news article was quoting a Qatari study researching Assad's support (and as we know Qatar is amongst the most anti-Assad nations who also covertly fund the FSA), so you could hardly label it as being biased.

And with all due respect to Syrian Scholes if he's involved with the FSA then he's hardly going to admit substantial support for Assad, nor is one Syrian's perspective representative of the entire population. My family in Aleppo and my Druze barber hold opposing stances to him though that hardly serves as compelling evidence does it?

As for your rent-a-mob accusations we're not talking a few dozen people in an ambigious location, we're talking thousands of pro-Assad supporters occupying the squares of major Syrian cities. Furthermore there are the many pro-Assad demonstrations occurring all over the middle east and Europe with attendances numbering hundreds to the thousands. Are you suggesting Assad has paid all of them? If anyone's getting paid its the foreign mercenaries and FSA fighters who are being bankrolled by the Qataris and Saudis to kill their own countrymen.
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What do I care if the study was Qatari or from Timbuktu ? Is he living in Syria ? If so, that would be a good start to spew out numbers. And second, SS is one Syrian, probably the only one, who is actually a CAF member, so let's not marginalize his opinions just because you know someone who disagrees with him.
 
Hectic said:
Look at the comments to that, and what people think is happening. How can people be so stupid.
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The thing is, the government have only like 3 videos of the so called terrorists, but the opposition have now more than 10 thousands videos that show all the crimes done by Assad regime, and all the protests, I can show you an English video about the revolution and the comments are completely different than those, so still this video proves nothing, and doesn't even prove that the opposition are the one who killed this guy, he might be a soldier trying to defect from the army.
 
RedKaos said:
What? :lol: There isn't even 200,000 people in Duma nevermind protests that big
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There are 500 thousand people in Duma mate.

Edit:
Districts Population
Markaz Rif Dimashq 902,216
Duma 433,719
al-Qutayfah 119,283
al-Tall 115,937
Yabrud 48,370
an-Nabk 80,001
az-Zabadan 105,342
Qatana 207,245
Darayya 260,961
Total Governorate 2,273,074
 
syrian_scholes said:
The thing is, the government have only like 3 videos of the so called terrorists, but the opposition have now more than 10 thousands videos that show all the crimes done by Assad regime, and all the protests, I can show you an English video about the revolution and the comments are completely different than those, so still this video proves nothing, and doesn't even prove that the opposition are the one who killed this guy, he might be a soldier trying to defect from the army.
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At the end of the video the cameraman says: "This is what happens to those who love Bashar"....I very much doubt that would be the words of a regime soldier.
 
RedKaos said:
Actually the news article was quoting a Qatari study researching Assad's support (and as we know Qatar is amongst the most anti-Assad nations who also covertly fund the FSA), so you could hardly label it as being biased.

And with all due respect to Syrian Scholes if he's involved with the FSA then he's hardly going to admit substantial support for Assad, nor is one Syrian's perspective representative of the entire population. My family in Aleppo and my Druze barber hold opposing stances to him though that hardly serves as compelling evidence does it?

As for your rent-a-mob accusations we're not talking a few dozen people in an ambigious location, we're talking thousands of pro-Assad supporters occupying the squares of major Syrian cities. Furthermore there are the many pro-Assad demonstrations occurring all over the middle east and Europe with attendances numbering hundreds to the thousands. Are you suggesting Assad has paid all of them? If anyone's getting paid its the foreign mercenaries and FSA fighters who are being bankrolled by the Qataris and Saudis to kill their own countrymen.
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Here's the thousands in Idlib(a major Syrian city) in pro-Assad Rally:lol:

and Here's a protest of hundreds in the same city against him:
 
RedKaos said:
[/B]

At the end of the video the cameraman says: "This is what happens to those who love Bashar"....I very much doubt that would be the words of a regime soldier.
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You know anyone can come take a video of a dead man and say thats what happens to those who love Bashar, plus having so little videos to prove your point is really weak, while protestors have thousands of videos pro-Assad regime have 3-4 videos, why?
 
syrian_scholes said:
The thing is, the government have only like 3 videos of the so called terrorists, but the opposition have now more than 10 thousands videos that show all the crimes done by Assad regime, and all the protests, I can show you an English video about the revolution and the comments are completely different than those, so still this video proves nothing, and doesn't even prove that the opposition are the one who killed this guy, he might be a soldier trying to defect from the army.
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I very much doubt he's a soldier trying to defect, but at the same time the comments are ridiculous, and a lot of people tend to think anyone anti Bashar is a terrorist. There was one particularly good comment about the context of what is happening and how the mentality of some protestors has changed in a sense to match or retaliate to the violence that has been used against them.
 
RedKaos said:
Actually the news article was quoting a Qatari study researching Assad's support (and as we know Qatar is amongst the most anti-Assad nations who also covertly fund the FSA), so you could hardly label it as being biased.

And with all due respect to Syrian Scholes if he's involved with the FSA then he's hardly going to admit substantial support for Assad, nor is one Syrian's perspective representative of the entire population. My family in Aleppo and my Druze barber hold opposing stances to him though that hardly serves as compelling evidence does it?

As for your rent-a-mob accusations we're not talking a few dozen people in an ambigious location, we're talking thousands of pro-Assad supporters occupying the squares of major Syrian cities. Furthermore there are the many pro-Assad demonstrations occurring all over the middle east and Europe with attendances numbering hundreds to the thousands. Are you suggesting Assad has paid all of them? If anyone's getting paid its the foreign mercenaries and FSA fighters who are being bankrolled by the Qataris and Saudis to kill their own countrymen.
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So did you come to Aleppo? or did you talk over the net/phone? You know that not many people have enough courage to speak on the internet, if someone asked me on the phone if I love Bashar, my answer will be yes because if not I'll be arrested.
 
Raoul said:
What do I care if the study was Qatari or from Timbuktu ? Is he living in Syria ? If so, that would be a good start to spew out numbers. And second, SS is one Syrian, probably the only one, who is actually a CAF member, so let's not marginalize his opinions just because you know someone who disagrees with him.
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I only felt the need to mention the fact it was a Qatari study in case you jumped to conclusions about it being state-sponsored by the Assad regime. Furthermore, the study actually asked Syrians living in Syrians.

I'm not marginalising his opinions at all, he's welcome to them but I happen to disagree with his stance, as do millions of other Syrians.
 
Hectic said:
I very much doubt he's a soldier trying to defect, but at the same time the comments are ridiculous, and a lot of people tend to think anyone anti Bashar is a terrorist. There was one particularly good comment about the context of what is happening and how the mentality of some protestors has changed in a sense to match or retaliate to the violence that has been used against them.
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The mentality right now is we are sick of protesting peacefully and dying everyday and some people are already bringing out their guns, but what can you expect from people who lost their moms? their sister got raped? would they still be peaceful? or would they defend themselves?
 
syrian_scholes said:
So did you come to Aleppo? or did you talk over the net/phone? You know that not many people have enough courage to speak on the internet, if someone asked me on the phone if I love Bashar, my answer will be yes because if not I'll be arrested.
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My other half speaks to them on the phone almost everyday, and their opinion aren't made out of fear. Even when they visit us in Beirut they still talk of their support for the regime.

You could also say that people are afraid to admit to supporting Bashar since they might end up being murdered by the FSA...and there have been many cases of that happening.
 
RedKaos said:
I only felt the need to mention the fact it was a Qatari study in case you jumped to conclusions about it being state-sponsored by the Assad regime. Furthermore, the study actually asked Syrians living in Syrians.

I'm not marginalising his opinions at all, he's welcome to them but I happen to disagree with his stance, as do millions of other Syrians.
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How can you be sure and you're not in Syria? You're not seeing things by your own eyes are you? I have to disagree with you about millions of Syrians support Assad, as none of my friends and it happens that I have a lot of friends from Idlib, Homs, Hama, and my family support him, plus I'm a university student, so I'm more capable to know what's really happening through the people I know in my university, plus my university had a protest once, we were about 500-700, and a pro-Assad protest around 75-100 they ran after us and attacked us with electric sticks and a security forces bus entered the college and arrested more than 120 guys all of them are of the protestors against Assad and who was hit viciously by pro-Assad monsters!
 
RedKaos said:
My other half speaks to them on the phone almost everyday, and their opinion aren't made out of fear. Even when they visit us in Beirut they still talk of their support for the regime.

You could also say that people are afraid to admit to supporting Bashar since they might end up being murdered by the FSA...and there have been many cases of that happening.
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So you're in Beirut? I'd be happy if you would come to Damascus and pay me a visit, and I'll show you what's really happening with your own eyes.
 
Syrian, I have a couple of questions:

1- Do you want the world to intervene and (help you) remove Al-Assad?

2- Do you think you can topple Al-Assad without international intervention?
 
Danny1982 said:
Syrian, I have a couple of questions:

1- Do you want the world to intervene and (help you) remove Al-Assad?

2- Do you think you can topple Al-Assad without international intervention?
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Depending on what kind of international invention there is, I don't want NATO to interfere, but I want more pressure on Al-Assad, maybe a no-fly zone, and I think we can topple the regime without international intervention.
 
SS have a few questions myself

- what sort of country/government does the anti-regime people want once Assad does go? given that democracy (in it's western sense) has never worked in the middle east, do you think people would want a military rule? or a sharia law like saudi?

- are there any anti-Assad supporters who are non sunni e.g. christians/alawaite community? is there a worry that when Assad does go (and he will), there will be violence against non-sunni people?

- how is the FSA/anti-regime able to convince non-sunnis to support them and not to fear? otherwise there will be sectarian civil war.
 
syrian_scholes said:
How can you be sure and you're not in Syria? You're not seeing things by your own eyes are you? I have to disagree with you about millions of Syrians support Assad, as none of my friends and it happens that I have a lot of friends from Idlib, Homs, Hama, and my family support him, plus I'm a university student, so I'm more capable to know what's really happening through the people I know in my university, plus my university had a protest once, we were about 500-700, and a pro-Assad protest around 75-100 they ran after us and attacked us with electric sticks and a security forces bus entered the college and arrested more than 120 guys all of them are of the protestors against Assad and who was hit viciously by pro-Assad monsters!
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Here are videos of the protests in my college and the attack of pro-Assad regime monsters on the second protest:
This is the first protest which wasn't attacked in this protest we were around 2000

Here's the other protest and pro-regime rally behind it:

[/media]



Here's the attack and if you look closely to the right you'll see the security forces bus, not the Unis security:

This is a video of the pro-regime students after they closed the doors on us inside the college building, some of us escaped before they trapped us, they are saying "they said they want freedom" "I'll **** the mother of that who asked for freedom" and other bad words:

This is a guy I know:

This is inside the building protestors escaping:
 
digitalnirvana said:
SS have a few questions myself

- what sort of country/government does the anti-regime people want once Assad does go? given that democracy (in it's western sense) has never worked in the middle east, do you think people would want a military rule? or a sharia law like saudi?

- are there any anti-Assad supporters who are non sunni e.g. christians/alawaite community? is there a worry that when Assad does go (and he will), there will be violence against non-sunni people?

- how is the FSA/anti-regime able to convince non-sunnis to support them and not to fear? otherwise there will be sectarian civil war.
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1-Both military rule and sharia law are not accepted among us, we have too many kinds of religions for sharia law to be applied, we just want to be equals with everyone else in the country, have you ever heard of a majority(sunnis) being slaves in their own country? We want right of free voting and basic human rights.

2-I go to protests with a Durzi girl and Jabbleh(an Alawaite city) had many protests before the army occupy it, I think there'll be a few cases of violence from both sides when/if Bashar go, that's why I think there should be an international intervention after Bashar goes so they can keep everyone safe.

3-The Durzi girl I go with to protests love the FSA, but she's the only non-sunni person I know, but as she say all Durz want to protest but their cities are occupied by the army and people are too scared to protest there.
 
digitalnirvana said:
SS have a few questions myself

- what sort of country/government does the anti-regime people want once Assad does go? given that democracy (in it's western sense) has never worked in the middle east, do you think people would want a military rule? or a sharia law like saudi?

- are there any anti-Assad supporters who are non sunni e.g. christians/alawaite community? is there a worry that when Assad does go (and he will), there will be violence against non-sunni people?

- how is the FSA/anti-regime able to convince non-sunnis to support them and not to fear? otherwise there will be sectarian civil war.
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Also worth to state, once a christian guy stopped me and my friend after a protest and we thought he is going to turn us in, but he told us the all Christians are with you and be sure to bring us freedom.
 
syrian_scholes said:
Depending on what kind of international invention there is, I don't want NATO to interfere, but I want more pressure on Al-Assad, maybe a no-fly zone, and I think we can topple the regime without international intervention.
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You know that a no-fly zone would necessitate NATO(UN) intervention to disable air defenses, etc, right? There aren't any other groups who could actually establish and maintain a NFZ over Syria because of the relatively advanced systems in place. There can't be a NFZ if there is a threat to patrolling jets enforcing it.

Also, would the NFZ be similar to the air-support role that NATO took in Libya or just a constant patrol over Syria, probably by Turkish planes?
 
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