Mother Jones obtains Syrian government hit list containing thousands of names
From Mother Jones:
A 718-page digital document obtained by Mother Jones contains names, phone numbers, neighborhoods, and alleged activities of thousands of dissidents apparently targeted by the Syrian government. Three experts asked separately by Mother Jones to examine the document—essentially a massive spreadsheet, whose contents are in Arabic—say they believe that it is authentic. As Bashar Al-Assad’s military continues a deadly crackdown on dissent inside the country, the list appears to confirm in explicit detail the scale of the regime’s domestic surveillance and its methodical efforts to destroy widespread opposition.
In Syria, a boy lies dead in his home - CNN - WARNING: Graphic content.
From a distance, he appears to be taking a nap. His long, delicate eyelashes are closed as his head rests on a blanket.
The 10-year-old boy, however, is not asleep.
The turn of his gauze-wrapped head reveals a mass of blood. Maher al-Husseini is dead, reportedly from a sniper bullet.
He bled to death.
In his own home.
“What is the fault of this child?” asks a man, whose voice rises in anger on a video posted Friday on YouTube. He kneels down and gestures to the boy, whose hands and ankles are tied.
“What did this child do that they hit him inside his house? This is unacceptable.”
Friday was a day of protest, pain and sorrow in Homs, a center of demonstrations and death in Syria. At least 17 people were reported slain in the city, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an activist group.
Women, children and dissident soldiers were among those killed Friday in Syria, the group said.
The United Nations said last week that more than 4,000 people have died in Syria since a brutal government crackdown against protesters erupted in mid-March.
The unidentified narrator of the video starts the tour of the home upstairs, pointing to a bullet hole on a window frame, then blood on the chair beneath it.
He leads the cameraman down blood-spattered stairs to the body of Maher, lying in the family sitting room.
The boy wears a maroon sweatshirt featuring a comic character.
“We could not aid the child, we did not know where to take him because of the firing in the neighborhood,” the agitated man said. “He kept bleeding for half an hour and we could not aid him.”
The speaker blamed Maher’s death on “thugs” who fired upon the home in the Mreiji neighborhood.
Another man sits in a chair, his head in his hands.
“We are not safe, this government is murderous,” the narrator says. “It is killing people, it is killing its own people.”
Near the end of the video, the man leans down and kisses the boy.
9 P.M. (PBS) SYRIA UNDERCOVER
As the death toll from the revolution in Syria nears 3,000, Ramita Navai, a reporter for “Frontline,” travels incognito to meet with members of the opposition movement and experiences life as a fugitive when she is trapped in a safe house with three coordinators on the government’s most-wanted list. Also, Anthony Shadid, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, talks about how President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has managed to hold on amid the Arab unrest.
INSIDE THE SECRET REVOLUTION a documentary by the BBC on Syria
The dark force in Syria is not the Alawi religion. It’s not exactly the cult of Hafez Al Assad, either. Only the aged and the infirm refuse to acknowledge his death. But love for the sacred sanctuary he invented, the one protected by the blue-eyed family of pilots and horsemen, has not died. The dark force in Syria is excessive belief in this realm of unreality. All those people who served in its police force, killed on its behalf, and kept the silence while the killing was going on carry its banner. This species of belief is a non-denominational phenomenon. It is enforced by the Alawis but Sunnis—and Kurds and Christians—are most welcome. For the time being, it is holding fast.
“The Cult: The Twisted, Terrifying Last Days of Assad’s Syria.” — Theo Padnos, The New Republic
“Well, he’s got his priorities skewed, really, Greta — and I take it literally that he was getting ready for, packing for vacation, while here it was Secretary Clinton asking on behalf of the United States of America for another president of another country to step down — that is our president’s role,” the former Alaska governor told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren.
“This is another example of President Obama leading from behind — makes you scratch your head and wonder what really does he do?”
…he’s stepping back and allowing Hillary Clinton to basically carry the water for our entire nation.
“And I’ll bet you, Greta, going out on a limb … but I just think that after a day like this, where you saw that kind of presidential aura of Hillary Clinton as she made that announcement today, while Barack Obama was packing to head out for 10 days on vacation again to go golf and tickle his feet in the sand — I’ll bet you people, if they had to do it over again, who had that choice at that time in the Democrat primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — I bet you today, they are saying: ‘We should have gone with Hillary Clinton.’”
Obama Calls For Assad To Step Down Amid New Sanctions Order - Corruption Currents - WSJ
The U.S., for the first time, called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down from power Thursday as it announced a new executive order imposing harsher sanctions on his regime.
President Barack Obama said in a statement that the Syrian people, thousands of whom have been killed while protesting for months for reforms, “have braved ferocious brutality at the hands of their government,” which “responded with a sustained onslaught.”
“For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside,” said Obama in the statement.
The sanctions announced Thursday freeze any assets of the Syrian government under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit any U.S. person from operating or investing in Syria.
