A seriously Syrian update

I haven't been monitoring the Syrian portal much lately mainly because not much is coming out of the region. But here are a few snippets of info that I did get on Sunday. It appears that many of Assads' forces have moved to the northern part of the country having left Homs in ruins and many dead. After Homs came Daara the next section over. (Not exactly sure how or what to call these sections towns / suburbs or what have you). At any rate, the next town is called Deir Ezzor in the northeastern part of Syria. Assads' forces were in the process of surrounding the town. You couldn't see much as it was a night time camera phone video but you could hear the sporadic sound of automatic gunfire. I suspect that either this is yet another area inhabited by minorities or it is a stopping place along the long journey to smuggle weapons and supplies from Turkey. All in all I would evaluate the situation in the country as yet another example of ethnic cleansing much like we've witnessed in the past complete with horrors. A national referendum was held yesterday on the acceptance of bringing democracy to the country. Seeing as how those in support of such a bill were busy running for their lives or at best hiding in their homes I see no hope of passage of this piece of legislation. Even Russian TV was calling for a boycott of the vote. What a surprise!

The images above were taken some time Saturday night (actually Sunday morning their time). You might say so what it's a couple of pictures of a street in rubble. The dangers aren't apparent in these shots. The top image shows a view down a dead end alley. Somewhere between the safety of the wall with the peer-a-boo hole and the end of the street is a sniper. Exactly why the photographer choose to continue to the end with the sniper at his back is a puzzlement to me. I can only assume that he was looking for injured or fallen comrades that litter the landscape. Can anyone conceive of the mindset of someone so evil? Even after the worst of battles of prior wars it was a permitted aftermath to be able to remove the dead and dying from the battlefield. Not so in Syria. All of daily life there has now become a risk of death at the hands of this dictator.

More updates as I get them.