A bad day for Sarkozy is a good day for the rest of the world.

Today is such a day.

The French Constitutional Council judged a recent law punishing negation of the Armenian genocide to be unconstitutional:

The Council said it wished "not to enter into the realm of responsibility that belongs to historians."

Sarkozy had pressed for the law to snap up more votes from the Armenian and the pro-Israel constituency in the upcoming presidential election.

A second defeat for Sarkozy came when he had to retract his earlier announcement today that the French journalist Edith Bouviers had been smuggled from Syria to Lebanon. We have looked into the somewhat murky circumstances of the allegedly wounded Edith Bouviers.

While Bouviers' current location is unknown one of the journalist who was with her, the British photographer Paul Conroy, was confirmed to have been smuggled to Lebanon.

Bouvier as well as Conroy had twice rejected to be evacuated by the Syrian Red Crescent which people took the risk to drive into the combat zone to rescue them as well as others.

Conroy and the Syrian opposition claim that several people were killed when the group smuggling him out came under fire.

I wonder what Conroy's conscience will tell him about putting them to this risk. By irresponsibly rejection the proven ability of the Syrian Red Crescent to get him out it is he who is responsible for their death.

As for Sarkozy we hope that he will, as looks increasingly likely, lose the presidential election. The world will be, in my view, better off without this farce of a would-be Napoleon.

An outline of the recent events in Afghanistan:

• Some U.S. officer, an idiot and/or evangelical nut, ordered a truckload of Qur'ans and other religious writings to be burned
• Some locals saw that and intervened, risking their health and their jobs to save their holy scriptures
• The event went public and was the catalyst for wide raging protests against the occupation forces over several days all over Afghanistan
• The outrage also triggered two green on blue events in which U.S. troops were killed by Afghan security personal
• One of these events was by a Tajik, not a Pashtun Taliban, against two U.S. officers within a high security environment
• This led to the shut down of all mentoring wherein western forces embed with Afghan forces to teach them how we do stuff in our, not their, culture
• The original plan to leave from the lost war in Afghanistan was to train a fig leaf of Afghan security and administrative structure before declaring victory and leaving through the backdoor
• The military also planned to keep forces in Afghanistan for continued U.S. control of the wider strategic area
• Without the mentoring those plans are mute – without it there is only one option – leave immediately in an orderly, planned way
• The U.S. election process does not allow for such an immediate retreat
• For lack of political feasible alternative the mentoring fig leaf plan will be reinstated
• Another trigger event like the Qur'an burning is inevitable
• A now still possible orderly retreat may then turn into a route where every leaving truck will come under fire by this or that incensed Afghan

As Kipling versed in The Young Britush Soldier

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

The French President Sarkozy is pressing for "humanitarian corridors" into Syria. These would of course have to guarded by foreign soldiers and would likel lead to an escalation.

The French journalist Edith Bouvier is in Homs, Syrian and is said to be injuried and in need of evacuation.

The role of one Khaled Abu Saleh in this gives reason to believe that she is probably not injuried at all and her case is made only to increase the pressure for Sarkozy's corridor towards regime destruction.

The nuggets for this post were found by commentator ZOO at Prof. Joshua Landis' blog Syria Comments.

The pic is out of a (90° rotated) screenshot at 0:13 into a 1:01 long video uploaded by live19820 to Youtube on February 6.

Cont. reading: What Is Edith Bouvier’s Role In Sarkozy’s “Humanitarian Corridors” Plans

On Friday the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud welcomed a delegation of female suffragists of the Wahhabi order. The king lauded their efforts to promote their modern dress code to their sisters in the Syria though he lightly scolded one of the women for appearing "practically naked".

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In a televised address the King also said that “unnamed hands” targeting Islam and the Arabs are behind recent events in the region. The address followed an earlier appearance by the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal who said that arming the rebels fighting the brutal regime of President Bashar Assad is “an excellent idea.”

Someone up in the U.S. intelligence services has ordered to stop the current nuclear Iran frenzy.

The LA Times headlined yesterday: U.S. does not believe Iran is trying to build nuclear bomb

As U.S. and Israeli officials talk publicly about the prospect of a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, one fact is often overlooked: U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb.

The NY Times repeats that today on page 1 and above the fold: U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb

Even as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.

The simple fact that the intelligence agencies do not believe that Iran wants to build nukes is of course nothing new. They said so repeatedly since the 2007 NIE. But it is interesting that in mid of the recent onslaught of pro-war anti-Iran reports and editorials someone decided to push the press into emphasizing the actual intelligence. I regard this as an attempt to pull gas prices back out of recession territory. But to really do that will require to lift sanctions on Iran. Otherwise this self inflicted wound will fester.

But the campaign has yet to reach the Washington Post where today Judith Miller Joby Warrick again spews pure propaganda: U.N. sees spike in Iran’s uranium production

Iran dramatically boosted its production of a purer form of nuclear fuel in recent months, with much of the increased output coming from a newly opened plant built inside a mountain bunker, U.N. officials said Friday, further exacerbating worries about Iran’s march toward nuclear-weapons capability.
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The shift to underground bunkers and a larger stockpile of the highly enriched uranium, however, could shorten the amount of time needed for Iran to develop a weapon, U.S. officials and nuclear experts say.

Iran would probably have to take additional steps, including kicking U.N. inspectors out of the country, before it is able to assemble a bomb.[emph. add.]

Mr. Warrick thinks that one would only probably need to put a motor on a bicycle to turn it into a motorcycle. Or that one would only probably need to take additional steps to turn shit into gold. Thereby Iran would only probably have to take additional steps to turn low enriched Uranium into nuclear bombs.

Sure. Who knows? Maybe the Mahdi will reappear in Iran and miraculously further enrich its Uranium, convert it into metal and form it into a working bomb. So probably additional steps are indeed not needed there.

But it is not only probable but certain that Jody Warrick would need to take additional steps before being able to produce actual journalism.

Professor Joshua Landis of Syria Comment just published a long essay in the journal of the Middle East Policy Council on Syria: The Syrian Uprising of 2011: Why the Asad Regime Is Likely to Survive to 2013.

It is a detailed analysis and, in my view, quit fair in its factual description of the situation. I find only one point that is missing, especially in the economic analysis, which is the one million or so Iraqi refugees who are still a burden for Syria.

Landis finds that:

• the Assad regime is militarily strong and will likely stay so
• the opposition is weak and divided
• an overt outside intervention is unlikely
• the economic situation is quite problematic and might become the decisive issue

In conclusion he writes:

Collapsing institutions and the state's inability to provide basic services should play into the hands of the opposition. The regime gave the business elites and middle class a piece of the pie and stability. Today, it can offer neither incentive. All the same, the Baathist regime will be a tough nut to crack. Alawis and religious minorities view the failure of the regime with great apprehension. So do Sunni Baathists and those who fear chaos.

Perhaps the biggest question mark is the opposition. Its lack of leadership was an asset during the first months of the revolution, but today it is a liability. Without it, the opposition will have difficulties inspiring more Syrians to take the sorts of risks and exhibit the courage of those already protesting.

So far, however, there is no force that has the might, unity or leadership to bring down the regime, at least none that is yet discernible. One must conclude that the Asad regime will remain in power until such a force emerges.

While I mostly agree with that analysis and the general conclusion I do not understand, and Landis does not explain, why Assad should only survive, as his headline claims, until 2013.

I do expect the insurgency to be mostly defeated within the next six month. By then Syria will also have a new elected multi-party and more diverse parliament which will calm the mood of many Syrian people. This or that event will by then divert western attention to some different country and issue. The Syrian economy will re-orientate from its more European fixture towards its immediate neighbors and the BRICS countries and will slowly heal.

Why then should the regime fall at all? Why wouldn't Assad then stay until the end of his term as president in 2014 or why should he not try, and probably even win, another term? In April 2011, when the situation first escalated and the first rebel attacks on Syrian military occurred, I assessed that the regime will survive. I continue to do so.

In a speech to nuclear scientists Ajatollah Ali Kahamenei today reconfirmed his Fatwa against nuclear weapons:

On numerous occasions, the Iranian people and government officials have announced that they do not seek to develop nuclear weapons and that nuclear weapons have no place among the needs of the nation and the military system of the country. We believe that using nuclear weapons is haraam and prohibited and that it is everybody’s duty to make efforts to protect humanity against this great disaster. We believe that besides nuclear weapons, other types of weapons of mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons also pose a serious threat to humanity. The Iranian nation which is itself a victim of chemical weapons feels more than any other nation the danger that is caused by the production and stockpiling of such weapons and is prepared to make use of all its facilities to counter such threats.

Reading the whole speech and understanding the logic of Kahmenei’s judgement may be worth your time.

After a year of bloody protests the people of Yemen could today enjoy the Saudi/US arranged elections for a new president.

Ballot for today's election in Yemen

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Despite the demand in the Yemeni constitution that there must be, at least formally, several candidates, the sole candidate is Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who has for 17 years served as vice-president under President Saleh. There isn't even a Yes and No vote to gauge his support. The only candidate is Hadi, the only vote is a Yes and there is no way that he will not win by a 100% majority.

Then again, is there really much difference for policy choices in presidential elections in the U.S.?

Cont. reading: The Fake Election In Yemen

In a Moon of Alabama post on April 6 2005 I wrote about Free Baluchistan, the independence fight of the resource rich south-western province of Pakistan:

Cont. reading: Six Years Late – The Free Baluchistan Act Arrives

IAEA inspectors are back in Tehran for talks about Iran’s nuclear program. The outcome will not really matter. The U.S., and the people who pull its strings, is not aiming for an Iran that has no nuclear capabilities but for an Iran that does what it says, especially with regards to Israel. To achieve that necessitates regime destruction by force.

The sanctions on Iranian oil and financial transfers by the U.S. and the EU stooges are preparations for that. The hope is that they will provoke Iran to attack first or to at least make Gulf of Tonkin like incident, probably involving the 40 year old USS Ponce, plausible.

But the sanctions create a big problem. They will tank the world economy. Back in December I wrote how the Iran sanctions will become a “self-inflicted wound”:

Cont. reading: Iran Sanctions Push Oil Prices Into Recession Territory

With regard to Syria the west has painted itself into a corner.

 A significant part of the lauded democratic and peaceful protester the west intensely promoted turned out to be brutal sectarian fighters who, if they win, are likely to turn around and fight against western interests.

Now China is offering its help. It has prepared the ground for finding a solution very well. If it really can pull this off we are witnessing a major change in international Middle East policies with the role of the west diminished and with China established there as a new significant, though for now only "soft", power.

Al-Qaeda's role in Syria is increasing with the founding of a new al-Bara’ ibn Malik Martyrs Brigade ready for suicide killings. It uses the al-Qaida flag and its historic name points to anti-Shia sectarianism:

Cont. reading: China Comes To Syria’s – And the West’s Rescue

News & views …
(Please note, some longer comments may currently not appear immediately due to a defect in the spam-filters. I will release those comments manually as soon as I log-on.)

Anthony Shadid died yesterday of asthma triggered by an allergy against horses while traveling on a smuggling route between Syria and Turkey. Shadid was one of the most objective reporter on the Middle East in the western media. I read every piece I stumbled upon that carried his byline.

Shadid was nearly killed some 10 years ago. But not by an allergy. The American Journalism Review wrote about it back in 2002 and the story captures Shadid’s human qualities quite well:

On a gray Sunday, Boston Globe reporter Anthony Shadid made his way to the epicenter of one of the world’s hottest stories–the Israeli assault on Yasser Arafat’s compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Shadid wore a white flak jacket emblazoned with “TV” in bold red letters, the universal symbol for the press in conflict zones.
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Around 5 p.m., Shadid tucked away his notebook and began the trek back to the hotel.
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Shadid felt pleased with his day’s work, particularly making it past Israeli Defense Forces troops dug in around Palestinian Authority headquarters. He was walking down the middle of a deserted street, talking with a colleague, as someone in the shadows took aim. The high-velocity bullet tore through his left shoulder, missing his spine by a centimeter.

The reporter crumpled into a heap, unable to move his arms or legs. “At first I thought I was hit by a stun grenade because my whole body locked up,” recalls Shadid, 33, a veteran Middle East reporter. Suddenly, the white flak jacket was soaked with blood. The bullet entered at the edge of the protective gear and exited through his right shoulder, leaving two gaping wounds.

Israeli medics administered morphine and stopped the bleeding. They put Shadid on a stretcher and wheeled him across the street to the Arab Care Hospital. His ordeal was far from over.
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Cont. reading: Anthony Shadid Was A Fine Reporter

Jeremy Scahill story on Yemen provides insight into the mechanisms that drives U.S. policies.

There is no moral aspect in it. The mechanism is solely driven by an ideology of profit for the few which gets implanted into its various clients with the intent to provide a motive for more of the same.

The privatization in prisons in the U.S. is one example. If you have a private prison you want to further indictments to get it filled to, in the end, make more profit.

If you are hired for fighting terrorism you want it to stay, or even to increase, to continue your income.

The United States “funds the Political Security and the National Security [forces], which spend money traveling here and there, in Sanaa or in the US, with their family. All the tribes get is airstrikes against us.” He adds that counterterrorism “has become like an investment” for the US-backed units. “If they fight seriously, the funds will stop. They prolonged the conflict with Al Qaeda to receive more funds” from the United States.

That, in a nutshell, is how many Yemenis see the US role in their country. The United States “should have never made counterterrorism a source of profit for the regime, because that increased terrorism,” asserts Iryani. “Their agenda was to keep terrorism alive, because it was their cash cow.”

If an analyst in Yemen can figure this out why can't the U.S. electorate?

UPDATED below

The sanctions against Iran are a self inflicted wound for the west as they increase economic pain on Europe.

The decision of the EU to no longer buy Iranian oil starting in July was ridiculous. Oil will become more expensive for those who sanction Iran and cheaper for those who do not, primarily India and China. Iran will not feel any significant pain over this.

But the U.S. is still pressing for even more sanctions. All banks in the word use the technical telecommunication provider SWIFT to exchange data between them. The U.S. now wants to cut Iran out of that. This is quite extreme economic warfare:

Representatives from SWIFT are scheduled to meet with European Union officials this week, according to US official familiar with the talks. The meeting is expected to result in the EU ordering SWIFT to expel at least some of its sanctioned banks. It is unclear, however, whether the order will extend to Iran’s Central Bank.

It would be crazy for the EU to allow such a precedent. SWIFT has never been used for sanctions as it is simply a technical exchange. What is next? Stopping all telephone lines to Iran or anyone the U.S. doesn’t like?

But two can play the game. Iran will not wait until July to stop oil delivery to Europe:

In response to the latest sanctions imposed by the EU against Iran’s energy and banking sectors, the Islamic Republic has cut oil exports to six European countries.

Iran on Wednesday cut oil exports to six European countries including Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Portugal.

The southern European countries, if they can get crude oil from other sources at all, will have to reconfigure their refineries significantly to be able to process other than Iranian crude. It is likely that this immediate stop of Iranian oil delivery will lead to shortages of gasoline in those countries. That will come on top of anti-austerity riots and high unemployment in the southern European countries and will certainly hurt their stability.

Iran also announced today that it put its first self-made 20% enriched fuel elements into the Tehran Research reactor and that it sent a letter to the EU “welcoming” the P5+1, the UN Security Council veto members plus Germany,  readiness to return to the negotiating table.

This three part message, pressure on Europe through Iran’s own sanction, success with its civil nuclear program despite sanctions from Europe and the readiness for new talks might soften the European position towards Iran.

This could be a chance for the EU to stop the stupid urge of some of its politicians to follow U.S. bellicosity against Iran. Publicly rejecting to push further sanctions on Iran through manipulating SWIFT would now be the right thing to do. But will the EU politicians understand that?

UPDATE: Iran oil ministry denies state media reports on EU oil stop

(Reuters) – Iran’s Oil Ministry denied state media reports on the Islamic state stopping its crude exports to six European countries on Wednesday.

“We deny this report … If such a decision is made, it will be announced by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council,” a spokesman for the ministry told Reuters.

Hmmm – and who told Press TV the opposite? Who is playing this psy war?

This polemic by David Rieff against liberal interventionism is spot on: Save Us from the Liberal Hawks

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of (humanitarian) war. That, at least, is what much of the U.S. policy elite seems to be pushing for these days in Syria.
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What is surprising, though, is that despite the disaster of Iraq, looming withdrawal in what will amount to defeat in Afghanistan, and, to put it charitably, the ambiguous result of the U.N.-sanctioned, NATO-led, and Qatari-financed intervention that brought down Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime, is how nearly complete the consensus for strong action has been even among less hawkish liberals, whether what is done takes the form of the United States and its NATO allies arming the Free Syrian Army, opening so-called humanitarian corridors, or encouraging Turkey and a coalition of the willing within the Arab League to do so.
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Nothing is wrong with intervention, it seems (just as there is nothing wrong with drone strikes), just as long as it is done by good U.N.-loving, multilateralism-oriented Democrats from the coasts, rather than by ignorant, war-worshipping, vulgarly nationalistic Republicans from flyover country.
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It is this religious quality to the support for R2P that helps account for the odd reaction among those who believe that something must be done to stop the Assad regime's war against much of its own people despite the Russian and Chinese vetoes.
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Safely out of government, Slaughter was able to go further, demanding that the United States and its allies do something to bring the carnage in Syria to an end. Otherwise, she wrote, R2P would be exposed as a "convenient fiction for power politics or oil politics."  […] Like the iconic U.S. officer in Vietnam who told a reporter that his troops had been obliged to burn the village in order to save it, Slaughter seems to be willing to undermine the structural foundations of international order, which, for better or worse, is based in large measure on the Security Council, in order to further it. Peace is war; war is peace. George Orwell, call your office.
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Meanwhile, despite the astonishing propaganda barrage in the media (for once, CNN, the BBC, and Al Jazeera were all on the same page!) that for all intents and purposes endorsed the claims about dead and wounded made by the anti-Assad insurgents (the disclaimers tended to come at paragraph three or four of a print piece, or the tail end of a video segment), the reality on the ground in Syria was far more complicated. […] These nightmare scenarios are anything but far-fetched. What is taking place in Syria may have begun in part as a democratic insurrection, but it has become a low-level (at least for the moment) interconfessional civil war.
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But in the brave new world of R2P, this does not seem to matter very much to a born-again liberal interventionism eager to flex its muscles.
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Rieff should have extended it to the western Europeans where many such liberal internventionist have their home in the green and the former social-democratic parties. Typically they have no experience in anything military, but call for bombing this or that country as soon as someone there kicks a cat around.

Humanitarians they are not.

Today someone put a bomb onto an Israeli embassy car in India which then wounded the wife of a diplomat and a driver. A simple handgrenade in a bag was found under an Israeli embassy car in Tbilisi, Georgia, and defused. A reported third bomb attempt in Amsterdam is unconfirmed.

Within less than an hour the Israeli prime minister Netanyahoo blamed Iran for these assassination attempts. Others blame Hizbullah who’s deputy chief Imad Mughniyah was killed by Israel about four years ago. One must also consider the possibility of an Israeli false flag operation.

Independent of who did this the Netanyahoo and his fascist side-kick Lieberman will feel the need to do something about it.

So will they again bomb Gaza as they did when Egyptian Bedouins, completely unrelated to Gaza, attacked a group of Israeli soldiers on its boarder to Egypt? Or will they start another war against Hizbullah in Lebanon? A Hail Mary attack on Iran?

Your guess is a good as mine.

But whatever might happen the temperature in the Middle East just increased another few degrees and that is not encouraging.

The western media are finally starting to report the fact that the uprising in Syria is sectarian and led by salafi forces.

This was obvious to independent observers at least since April 10 2011 when first attacks on the military were reliably reported. Then western media claimed that these were soldiers shot by the government which was not a convincing explanation.

Now a much clearer picture of the danger of this conflict evolves and it becomes clear that Assad's claims of foreign terrorist involvement are true.

Foreign fighters have been streaming into Syria for some time:

Iraqi officials told reporters on the weekend that for the past four months, there has been a stream of Iraqi fighters and weapons flowing into Syria from Iraq to support the anti-Assad movement.

The fighters and weapons “are being smuggled from Mosul through the Rabia crossing to Syria, as members of the same families live on both sides of the border,” said Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi.

“We have known about the jihadists’ role for months,” said Alastair Crooke, the Beirut-based director of Conflicts Forum. “People have just chosen to turn a blind eye to it.”

Jihadi forums claim that these are coming from all over the Middle East:

The page also referred to the death of Abu al-Buraa al-Sulti in Aleppo, saying he was the first fighter who came from Jordan to fight in Syria.

"The first (jihadist) who died was Abdullah Dulaimi," known by the nickname Abu Tabarik, in the area of Abu Kamal, a city in Syria near the Iraqi border, the page said. The Dulaim are a major Sunni tribe in western Iraq.

The page also referred to "the arrival of Abu Hudhaifa al-Kuwaiti in Al-Sham, where the ground was blessed with his soul, from his country (Kuwait)."
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Abu Abdullah al-Makhzumi said on the same page that "the fight has come and the doors of heaven are open. Let's go to jihad, let's go to jihad."

The Libyan AlQaeda leader Belhadj has met the expat Syrian National Council and some Libyan salafis were also killed in Syria.

Weapons are flowing freely:

The man said he was selling mortars, grenades and rifles, and that his contact in Syria was also an Iraqi.

The Jordan Muslim Brotherhood is openly calling for Jihad in Syria:

“Supporting the Syrian people and Free Syrian Army is a duty, as they are facing the injustice and oppression of the regime,” the group said on its Web site.

U.S. intelligence services believe that AlQaeda was responsible for the suicide attacks in Aleppo and other places. Al Qaeda's leader Zawahiri has released a video message titled “Onward Oh Lions of Syria”.

With all these data points finally coming out into the open one wonders what the reaction of the west will now be to this.

Will the Senator for Israel Joe Lieberman continue to argue for arming these jihadis? Will the neo-conservative Zionist mouthpiece Michael Weiss continue to call for a western military attack on the side of the salafis against the Syrian government?

The threat now is not regime change in Syria but regime destruction as has happened in Libya. A Syrian state crumbling under terror followed by large sectarian slaughter and refugee streams with certain spillover of fighting into all neighboring countries. That can not be in anyone's interest.

It is time for the west to not only step back from this cliff but to turn around and to help Assad to fight the terrorists that want to bring down his country.

There is A note from Ambassador Ford on recent events in Syria which shows a satellite picture of Homs, Syria, titled "Security Operations Escalate in Homs" and "Bab Amr Neighborhood". The picture was allegedly taken on February 6, 2012 though the copyright mark says "© 2011 Digital Globe".

A deeper look at the ambassador picture reveals that it does not show what its labels say. In fact the picture shows only ambiguous stuff from the very border edge of Bab Amr not from within the city.

There are additionally satellite pictures at the State Department's website allegedly showing "operational deployment" of Syrian artillery.

Analysis of the State Departments satellite pictures, which were promoted by news agencies and various papers, clearly shows that these pictures of artillery guns "operational deployed against XYZ" were all taken of guns training within military barracks or well known training areas and not in active deployment.

(A Google Earth KMZ file with the localities of the State Department pictures and the military areas marked is provided below.)

There is so far no proof that any artillery has been deployed at all though it is known that mortars have been used by the rebel side. The State Department obviously knows what the pictures really show but is trying to use the lie of artillery deployment against the rebels as a pressure argument for military intervention.

The ambassador's picture:

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Certain areas of the picture are marked as "Fires", "Military vehicles" and "Smoke". But when one compares the bigger version of the picture with older pictures of those places from Google map and Google Earth all marked areas seem to be outside of Bab Amr and depict nothing that is obviously of military nature.

Cont. reading: The State Department Lies With Its Satellite Pictures Of Syria – No Artillery “Deployed”

As the Angry Arab, Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, wrote:

Western media (of course you can add Saudi and Qatari media) are involved in the biggest propaganda spectacle that I have ever seen.
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Have you read one report in the Western press about the political orientations of the rebels and the Free Syrian Army? (I am sure that Nir Rosen would soon tell you that they are not really Salafites but that they are all Marxist-Leninists with deep feminist principles).

Shortly after that Nir Rosen, just back from Syria, publishes at the Qatari Al Jazeera: The battle for Homs – Government forces appear determined to regain control of opposition-held areas in restive Syrian city.

Well – in my view that is what government forces are supposed to do. Would the U.S. leave Denver in the hands of hostile armed religiously extreme revolutionaries?

In his report Nir say's nothing about the ideological background of the fighters among which he reports. Why not?

But there is an interesting detail in his generally pro revolutionaries tale:

Members of the Revolutionary Council said fighters in the Homs province had taken advantage of the presence of Arab League monitors in December and January to reinforce themselves and bring supplies in from Lebanon, knowing the regime would be limited in its ability to obstruct them at that time.

Fighters announced that they attacked security forces in Rastan, expelled them from Talbiseh, and took control of more territory in Homs city, launching two attacks on the State Security and Military Security headquarters.

The terrorists, after 28 dead and many more wounded in car bomb attacks in Aleppo today I am more willing to call them such, have used the visit of Arab League monitors to get more arms and salafi Libyan fighters into the country. That is of course a good argument for the Syrian regime to never again allow such an Arab League or similar mission. The report of that last mission was suppressed by the western and Arab media because it admitted that the terrorist gangs the Syrian government complained about did exits and killed people all around. Nir quotes some of those folks:

"Homs will not surrender. They are bombing us from a distance, they don't dare to enter the city. They think they will destroy our will and resistance.

"We are waiting for them and we will defeat them in our neighbourhoods. Finally they will enter the city. We are waiting for them."

Did they ever hear of Grozny?