Thousands gather in support of the Syrian regime

Thousands have taken to the streets of the Syrian capital Damascus to support the country’s embattled leader Bashar al-Assad. The demonstration comes on the year anniversary of the anti-Assad uprising that has left scores dead and injured.

The pro-Assad rally is taking place under the slogan of protesting a ‘one-year conspiracy’ to overthrow the regime. The opposition said that Assad has forced people to attend the Damascus demonstration in order to overshadow the opposition rallies marking the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria a year ago, AP reports.

Video footage, however, shows people of different ages, including children, dancing and waving Syrian flags. Others had the national flag painted on their faces.

With opposition rallies planned all over Syria and abroad, local activists report the increased presence of the Syrian army in opposition strongholds.

Assad still has enough support not only in Damascus but in the rest of the country as well, and that will allow him to stay in power, at least for some time, political analyst Ahmed Badawi told RT.

“Assad seems to still have considerable support everywhere, except of course in the places that have come under heavy fire from his military,” he said. “The whole legitimacy question of course is a big dilemma for the regime, but it seems so far that the regime has managed to keep a lot of its legitimacy intact.”

The Popular uprising in Syria against the current regime started in mid-March last year. According to the UN, 7,500 people have been killed in the conflict.

While western states urge President Assad to leave his post, he claims the foreign-directed opposition is filled with terrorists and gangsters seeking to destroy Syria.

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killadoob said:

I wonder how many western sites will be running this story. Not really the picture they want painted.

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wily me said:

I really cannot understand how you can support and paint in good light a tyrant regime that killed and shelled his own population with tanks and snipers. Yet oppose what Israel is doing to protect their own citizens. There must be some personal agenda, for this hatred of the "west". WTF

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killadoob said:

I'm sorry if this does not fit into the way you see syria but there are two sides to a coin and you guys are dismissing this as if it is not the truth.

Ghoti explain why this is a disgusting thread? Please watch the video i forgot to add the link in my OP but more importantly why is this a disgusting thread ghoti?

How am i painting anything? I don't limit myself to believe one side of a story like you guys. You guys are more than happy believing stories that have not even been checked for credibility yet a credible story with actual footage you dismiss. LOL typical i must admit.

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1. a prolonged outburst of bitter, outspoken denunciation: a tirade against the "West" Israel and USA.
2. a long, vehement speech: a tirade about Israel and the USA.

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wily me said:

Hitler, Idi Amin, Qaddafi

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killadoob said:

I'm sorry if this does not fit into the way you see syria but there are two sides to a coin and you guys are dismissing this as if it is not the truth.

Ghoti explain why this is a disgusting thread? Please watch the video i forgot to add the link in my OP but more importantly why is this a disgusting thread ghoti?

How am i painting anything? I don't limit myself to believing one side of a story like you guys. You guys are more than happy believing stories that have not even been checked for credibility yet a credible story with actual footage you dismiss. LOL typical i must admit.

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Television channels have turned into political parties, pushing the agenda for some outside forces, former Al Jazeera correspondent in Beirut, Ali Hashem, told RT. Hashem has come in spotlight after resigning from the television citing its bias.
In emails leaked by Syrian hackers, Ali Hashem vented his anger over Al Jazeera's one-sided coverage of Syria and its refusal to cover the events in Bahrain. In an exclusive interview with RT, the former Beirut correspondent Hashem refrained from discussing his resignation, but stressed that these days, independent media is a myth.
“There is no independent media anymore. It is whose agenda is paying the money for the media outlet,” he said. “Politicization of media means that media outlets are today like political parties. Everyone is adopting a point of view, fight for it and bring all the tools and all the means they have in order to make it reach the biggest amount of viewers.”
It is now the job of the viewer to compare the news from several different sources and then make his own conclusions, the journalist believes. “Today we are in the era of open source information and everyone can reach whatever information he wants.”
Hashem said the problem with this picture is that some news outlets can reach bigger audiences than others. “What they say will [seem] to be a fact while it might not be the fact,” he said.
Mass media should be “immune” when it comes to war and conflict, as this guarantees freedom of speech, Ali Hashem believes.
“In the year 2006, Israel bombarded Al-Manar television because they said Al- Manar was doing propaganda war against Israel,” he said. “Al-Manar was on one side of this war and they were supporting the Hezbollah and the resistance and the war against Israel. But does this give Israel the excuse to bombard Al-Manar? Certainly not.”
“We should as journalists, whatever our point of view is, (because it is clear there is no independent journalism anymore) have the right to say whatever he wants safely, without being threatened to be bombarded or killed or executed or arrested,” Hashem concluded.
Al Jazeera has recently suffered an exodus of key staff members from its Beirut Bureau: correspondent Ali Hashem, managing director Hassan Shaaban and producer Mousa Ahmad.
The professionals cited bias in the channel’s coverage of the Arab Spring, especially the events in Syria and Bahrain, as the reason for their departures.

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DAMASCUS — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responded Tuesday to UN-Arab League proposals for an end to the bloodshed in Syria even as monitors said nearly 50 more people were killed and a pro-regime daily reported the capture of a rebel city.

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who met with Assad in Damascus over the weekend, said he had made "concrete" proposals to the Syrian leader on ways to halt the attacks and secure humanitarian access to cities where the United Nations says thousands have been killed in the past year.

"Their responses are being considered," Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for the envoy, told AFP, declining to comment on the substance of the Syrian response. Annan is expected to make a statement on Wednesday in Geneva.

Despite international pressure and growing clamour for foreign intervention, Assad's regime has pushed on with a brutal crackdown on a year-long revolt that has killed more than 8,500 people, mostly civilians, according to activists.

Annan also said he had a "useful meeting" with six representatives of the opposition Syrian National Council headed by Burhan Ghalioun, whom he said had "promised their full cooperation."

Meanwhile, the United States dismissed Assad's announcement of elections May 7 under a new constitution passed in February.

"Parliamentary elections for a rubber-stamp parliament in the middle of the kind of violence that we're seeing across the country -- it's ridiculous," US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.

They would be the third such polls since Assad came to power in 2000, but the first under a multi-party system as authorised under the new charter.

In the latest clashes, 22 members of the security forces were killed in two separate ambushes in the southern region of Daraa and in Idlib province of northwest Syria, another hotspot of rebel operations, monitors said.

But as the regime battles to mop up resistance, Al-Watan daily said government forces had recaptured the rebel stronghold of Idlib city, following what activists said were three days of heavy shelling.

"A major operation launched three days ago in Idlib... ended in record time with army units wrapping up search operations during which dozens of armed men and fugitives were killed," the daily said.

Activists acknowledged the army had deployed in the city, but were facing pockets of resistance by rebel fighters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that elsewhere in Idlib province, located near the Turkish border, security forces killed at least seven civilians.

The group, whose reports cannot be verified due to government curbs on foreign media, also said eight civilians were killed in and around the central city of Homs, including a woman in Tal Kalakh, near the Lebanese border.

Another four civilians were killed in the Damascus region, said the Britain-based monitoring group, while a civilian, three members of the security forces and three deserters were killed in the northern province of Aleppo.

Against that backdrop, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said around 30,000 Syrians had fled to neighbouring countries and another 200,000 had been displaced inside the country, quoting Syrian Red Crescent data.

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that Syria has planted landmines near its borders with both countries, along routes used by refugees fleeing the country.

Russia, accused of having shielded its ally Syria, said it will press Damascus to accept international monitors who could observe the implementation of a "simultaneous" ceasefire.

"The objective is for both sides to understand that there is an independent observer watching how they meet demands," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow.

"We must not have a situation in which the government is required to leave the cities and villages while the armed groups are not made to do the same," he said.

Russia and China vetoed two past UN Security Council draft resolutions condemning Assad for the violence and have expressed reservations about a new US-backed version.

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nivek said:

What about the thousands that are fleeing Syria into Turkey as refugees?
Giving up their lives, homes, friends and family - are they doing it for an imaginary crisis?

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nivek said:

What about the thousands that are fleeing Syria into Turkey as refugees?
Giving up their lives, homes, friends and family - are they doing it for an imaginary crisis?

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Linoman said:

Disgusting blaming the west for the murder of Syria's people by the Syrian leader! What an insult to the people fighting for freedom!

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killadoob said:

. All i kept hearing was the enemy is hiding in the population that is why so many innocents got killed but i don't hear it now.

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