We know for a while that the protests in Syria are far smaller than reported:
That same night on July 15, I received news feeds from the AFP announcing a million protestors all over Syria, of which 500,000 in Hama alone.
In Hama however, they could not have been more than 10,000.
This ‘information’ was even more absurd due to the fact that the city of Hama counts only 370,000 inhabitants.
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So what sources does AgenceFrancePresse (AFP) cite?The same which crops up systematically throughout the media and has now become a monopoly in its own right, regarding the Syrian protests: the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Behind this superficial veneer of respectability and professionalism, hides a political organisation based in London, its president none other than Rami Abdel Raman, a man who has consistently sided against the Baath regime, who is loosely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Therefore, for many months now, the Western media have diffused an edited reality, corrected by a single source which nobody has deemed it necessary, it seems, to question.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, often cited, is one that feeds the "western" image of the protests. Another source are videos uploaded to Youtube.
Today we learn of a big demonstration in Homs arranged for the sole purpose of video making:
On a recent Sunday, 200 protesters marched in front of the Safir Hotel, the city’s most famous, carrying signs calling for the fall of the government and showing solidarity with Hama, a city to the north that was stormed on July 31.
The demonstrators walked slowly, led in the chants by a man whose face was concealed with a scarf. “Hama, we are with you until death,” they cried, with a few of the protesters in back filming the crowd with their cellphones.
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“We’re not worried about the security,” said one of the protesters. “We will be done anyway in half an hour.” Since it was a small protest, he said, they would disperse by the time the buses carrying members of the security forces arrived. The protesters had lookouts near security stations, and they sent signals when the buses left. The main purpose of this protest was symbolic, he explained: they wanted to upload new videos on YouTube.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and AlJazeerah will very likely point to that video and claim it shows a big demonstration of 20,000+ with 20+ killed by the marauding forces of the Syrian army.
But video from huge demonstrations do not make them true. Homs seems to be rather quiet now and the few Syrian cities where armed troublemakers are still roaming around will likely be cleared in a short while.
Some people hope for the Turks to get involved in Syria. Forget about it. Syria, Iraq and Iran have, like Turkey, partly Kurdish population. If they want to pressure Turkey to stay away from an intervention in Syria they only need to unleash some of the Kurdish rebels into east Turkey. Indeed they may have already done so. Erdogan understands that and will stay out of Syria.