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send in the Canadians!

CHAAARRRGE!!!!
Oh wait……
I'm American :3

Oh wait, you wanted peacekeepers, right?
We can do that too. Not as fun, though.

Ok, Canada will send in the Navy.

Um, maybe the Air Force?

Ground forces….

We should stick just to peace keeping.

we peace'd the shit out of bosnia

now we peace the shit out of syria!

This is now a topic of "How should the Canadians keep the peace in Syria?"

Dude, they've been at civil war for months. It's been in the news since the summer, at least.

Canadians have more of the 2 most important resources than any other country: Water and Maple Syrup. The Syrians would trade anything to get their hands on both.

I wonder what X-singular might have to comment on this?

Well, they should send a bunch of guys to Syria, blow up the Syrian tanks and Planes while they're parked wherever the heck they store them, and then invite everyone to some negotiations.
Rebel and government officials alike shall be served tea and biscuits, and we shall wag our fingers at whoever threatens to kill everyone first.

Maple syrup bombs.

The US will follow by sending in Snookie.

The Syrian Army will then die of type 2.3 diabetes and every STD known to man.

You're right. He once told about some of the shit going on there. Hope he be alright.

Plan two is all we need. Start "Jersey Shore: Syria" and I promise you every institution in the country will collapse within a month.

Katie C. wrote:

Syrians may go to Civil War.

You don't say?

Now for the sake of my personal safety, I refrained from posting any comments against our great and benevolent government on a publicly accessible forum. (I face enough dangers when I'm out there, I'd rather not jeopardize the safe haven I call home).
Plus there wasn't enough interest in our news, I suspect that there isn't any still.

But for those of you curious here's the last major event:

Here the sound of bullets? that lasted from 11:00PM to 5:00AM
I live close to the Dorms, So I was shocked by how long the firefight was taking (I was talking to CitationNeeded at the time), as it turns out they were driving around the streets shooting dirt just to discourage (read:terrorize) anyone from getting out and filming the arson they are committing.
(Yes I slept to the lullaby of AK-47s and PKMs firing right in-front of my house. No I don't feel terrible about it. Yes I did wake up on 4:30 when I heard explosions. Yes I did enjoy our neighbor's "surprise" visit, we calmly sipped tea and discussed the finer points of sleeping under-fire.)

This was a retaliatory strike against students because they actually dared to protest on Wednesday of the same week, one day later the dormitories lie in ruins and 5 people dead (not 4 like the above video said), lost one friend and one acquaintance, one of them was thrown-off the fifth floor of his own dorm-building. official report? "fell".

Of course this raid had the exact opposite effect, many demonstrations followed in other parts of Aleppo, by now they -of course- have learned their lesson about how foolish it is to quell demonstrations with violence….
…
…
No they didn't, 25 dead by Friday.

Now some students slept on the sidewalks and on park-benches, but most of them holed-up in the Universities' classrooms.

So here's a question for you, make sure to put on your thinking-caps:
What do you call a College faculty that is used by students to sleep in?
…
"A makeshift bedroom established in a classroom"? Of course not silly!
It's called a Dorm.
And Dorm = Bad place !
So queue another raid in the morning, queue more people dying, queue the dean losing his shit and declaring all faculties closed "until further notice" for "maintenance".
Now it's been announced that the faculties will reopen on May 13th, would've the students' anger subsided by then?
Personally I don't think so…. those "maintenance works" always piss-off our sensitive and spoiled students….

Now, you can all feel free to ignore what I posted, and let this thread turn into another One-Sentence-Political-Discussion-Thread-by-Katie®.
Or if this actually managed to interest you, I'll make sure to drop-by every now and then with the latest insider views.
No hard feelings if it didn't though, I'll just leave you to post your luzly pics and discuss the merits of the Canadian Army (Oxymoron detected!)
What's it going to be?

@X

When I heard about the shooting at the Dorms I wondered you'd live anywhere near. Good you're safe (read "alive", but still).

It's actually a lot safer here than back in Hreitan, where F*CKING HELICOPTER GUNSHIPS were shooting at anything that moves. I think Verbose's jimmies remain rustled to this day from that scare I gave him.

EDIT: Woopie-Doo
I jinxed it. I'm hearing a lot of gunshots and some sirens…. Too sleepy to give a shit, let them waste their ammo, I'm going to sleep and it will take more then just a few AKs to stop me.

I'm Syrian and I had enough of this protest shit. And now a civil war?

X-singular wrote:
Canadian Army (Oxymoron detected!)
________________________________

:(

God, that sounds terrible.

Here I am sitting in Australia while being Syrian (I wasn't born there though) while you on the other hand has a nightly lullaby of bullets and explosions.

I support Bashar. Why? Because you touch yourself at night conspiracies.

@X

At least you aren't among those 5 casualties. For that I'm glad

Reports of the shit going down in Syria gets covered regularly here in New Zealand and each time I think "Dayum, X is right in the middle of that".

Other people here may joke about Canadians and post image macro's…but I'm sending you my best hopes.

Another revolution in the middle east? Better drink my own piss

EDIT: Wait…

X-Singular falls within the probability of getting killed.

That's unsettling.

There have been follow up to the situation I mentioned in my last post, yes the students were angry, I'm not sure if people follow this thread anymore so I'll just wait for feedback before posting any details, if none emerges I'll just let this thread die.
Sorry for the bump.

Tell us MOAR, you're more interesting than the news. :3

ANYTHING is better then the news my parents watch.
But the best news is to come from people who experienced the events first hand.
(But I think X didn't but at least seen it in person which is, I guess at first).

@X

Do go on…

As expected the students were still angry at what happened the Wednesday before the last, there were demonstrations daily last week, each bigger than the last, at Wednesday protesting students draped the college from head to toe with the green-white-black flag of independence (Also used as the flag of the revolution).

But it's during the Thursday demonstration that this photo was taken:

Here's a little explanation to put things in context:
This is the entrance of the university of Aleppo.
The guy on the left holding the independence flag is pointing to the mural in the back (if you zoom in you can see part of it), that mural depicts the Syrian independence, it shows unarmed civilians holding the very same green-white-black flag standing amidst their dead in the face of armed soldiers, fighting for (and eventually granting us) freedom.
I would like to mention that a Tank platoon was less than 120 meters away when this picture was taken.
In other words:
History repeating itself.

This is the faculty of Mechanical sciences.

This is the faculty of Electrical sciences:

Rest assured that each faculty had a similar demonstration.

Inside the buildings there wasn't a single wall that wasn't displaying anti-regime graffiti, every thing from "Freedom suits you Nour, Freedom suits you Zakaria…." (names of martyrs, those who are now truly free), to poems describing the migration of "ducks" to Russia in "spring".

Now you must be wondering what the regime's response was?

Well apart from the usual arrests and field-executions, mysteriously any neighborhood that protests gets targets by "unknown" terrorists, who set off huge explosions that are not near ANY security station or regime-affiliated tactical location, and those "terrorists" detonate the bombs at rush hour to… wound government officials? dunno, All we know is that those "terrorists" somehow always try to inflict the largest civilian casualty possible, in the same places that dared to protest.
In Banias a neighborhood was shelled with mortars by the Syrian army, only to be revealed later via the government sponsored TV channels that "terrorists" detonated a bomb there. the mortar shelling and terror-bombs are "completely unrelated" and according to other channels there was no shelling in the first place….yeah right.
Some channels claim that it's "Al-Qaeda".
Others claim it's the Free Syrian Army… killing the very same people that support them in the first place. Does that make sense?

So I'm pleased to announce that I've survived my third explosion!
This one was near Al-Daleh roundabout. I think I'm practically bomb-proof by now, if Role-Playing Games taught me anything.

Aleppo was long absent from the scene of the revolt, but now it actually became the center, all other cities took to the streets celebrating the fact that the largest Syrian city has finally joined the revolt.

You'd see protests going well into midnight yelling "Good morning Aleppo! Had a good sleep Aleppo?"
It miht be to late for this but if you check the wiki page for Aleppo University you'd see the name in Arabic was changed to "The Free University of Aleppo". ( It's the little Arabic writing above the logo.)
This Friday was called (and themed around) the Heroes of Aleppo University.
28 killed, thousands arrested.

International response? the UN committee stated that apart from the 4118 violations (counted Monday, so it doesn't include what happened these last three days), Anan's plan is going well…
Well with it's four thousand one hundred and eighteen violations…
It's a farce, the international community likes the way things are, and they won't do shit to help us.
Oh well, we weren't expecting anything in the first place so… no losses there.

In short those who talked to me regularly know that I always said : "I'm in the north, so I'm in relatively safe area."
Well no more, there are talks that we will be the new Homs…

For the three people that are reading this: thank you for bearing with this huge wall of text, I'm glad that at least some people still care.

If any of you have any questions about what I posted, or the situation in general post them here and I'll try my best to answer.

So what are you going to do if Aleppo really will become the the Homs?

I suppose you have a worst case scenario plan. Sounds like you expect one.

And you survived your third explosion? As in: three times, you've had explosives go off right next to you? Holy shit dude.

I guess we will have to migrate to Turkey…. or Egypt or something, but personally I'd rather stay, if all the people that care (like us) left, that means we lost.
Funny story, the first two explosions I survived were less than 48 hours apart, and they were among the first three explosions in Aleppo, talk about bad luck. I still remember the hood of the car that exploded, whirling near my head, close call…
Third time was Thursday, I was walking with my family and we were joking at how "mysterious explosions" are sure too follow the demonstrations we had at the university, when suddenly boom, I just got a little dizzy afterwards and it knocked the breath out of me. (not helped by the fact that I bruised a rib from being beaten during the protests.)
Lesson? Never tempt fate. I was asking for it with my jokes.

One other question.

I don't suppose you can fill me in on how this whole vicious cycle of revolts and retributions began in the first place? Was it triggered by the Libyan uprising?

Don't worry X, I'm very interested in first hand (well, close enough) thoughts and facts from oneself.

Also, be careful. Obvious but necessary; You've survived three close explosions.

I salute you man having to live through a revolution and telling the tale afterwards. Especially one of this magnitude. I hope you get to turkey safely, my advice is to go to somewhere near Istanbul or a suburb of Istanbul. Best of luck to you, Chuck Norris and I salute you.

i gotta say, i find it rather sad that there there are hundereds of innocent people getting killed in syria every week but all the human rights proterstors just go to israel instead when it's at a rather peaceful state… yay…

so really now, the atocoties commited there were far worse than in Egypt and Lybia combined, why the hell none of the advanced nations interfere?

Because they haven't recovered from the financial and diplomatic costs of interfering in Libya.

The Gulf states are too busy with Bahrain and Iran, Iraq is busy imploding, Egypt is busy with elections and Jordan is busy being Jordan.

Not to mention we're all tied down in Afghanistan, Pakistan is becoming very unfriendly, and seeing what our interference did to the region in the past we're extremely apprehensive.

I'm back with another week of updates….
Disaster struck…. This day will go down in Syrian history as the Al-Hawla Tragedy…..
80 Dead in the small city of Al-Hawla… 55 of them are children that were killed close-up in front of their mothers…
20 Dead children in the different locations in Homs, buried by the debris of their own houses…
I know that no one views this thread… I can't tell by the view count (which rests at a meager 400 during the writing of this thread)
But I still feel obliged to post these videos…. if someone told me 2 years ago that this is going to my world I wouldn't have believe him.
WARNING: THESE VIDEOS CONTAIN VERY VIOLENT MATERIAL AND ARE TO BE VIEWED BY +18 ADULTS ONLY, IF YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T HANDLE SCENES LIKE THESE THEN PLEASE TURN AWAY NOW.
I'm NOT EMBEDDING THEM and I'm SPOILERING the links

UN Observers are still in the country…surely there will be a huge international response right?

UN Secretary-General Ban state that " We must stop arming BOTH sides"… yes he said "BOTH", couldn't believe it myself.
Meanwhile a new Russian ship that's carrying arms is en route. they will reach Syria within this week to bring more weapons to those committing the massacres.

Thank you Russia, that way we can insure that the genocide continues.

Just thought I'd explicitly point out what those videos contain to further dissuade anyone from watching them. They contain dead children, and lots of them. It's not the first time I've seen material like this from the very same conflict, but it's disturbing nevertheless. Unless you really, really want to know what's going on in Syria right now, I highly suggest you don't watch them.

Stay safe, X.

I must put in a third warning. It's not just dead children. But children's bodies mangled in horrific ways.

If you don't have the stomach to see these things, then DO NOT view them please.

The problem is, any action in Syria needs to be approved by the security council. There are 5 nations on the council with veto power, that can effectively shut down any action. One of these is Russia, and they support Bashar.
Not to mention the Chinese will block it too, just to avoid setting a precedent for intervening in repressive regimes.
That's why instead of going through the UN, NATO should just intervene. It would be rather simple to prevent further entrance of arms for the government. What they did in Libya would work perfectly well in Syria, they just don't want to do it.

Honestly, I just want Bashar still president, but without all the violence. He was one of the best leaders of Syria and now he's chucking a fit.

Arab Presidents In A Nutshell

*protests start*

However…

His brother is said to have an aggresive and uncontrollable personality.

Not to mention that he is in control of the army forces. It's Maher Al-Assad. Just go to the 2011-12 uprising section of the article and you'll know what I mean.

I used to go to Syria with my family to see relatives every year. Now the protests ruined that experience for me.

It is doubtful that Bashar Al Assad was ever really in control of Syria.

Dr,Enzyme wrote:

I used to go to Syria with my family to see relatives every year. Now the protests ruined that experience for me.

Those damn protesters! HAVE THEY NO HEART?!

Wat.

By 'protests' I meant the uprising and government backlash in general. Nice job for exaggerating jackass.

Wow…reading these posts makes me feel guilty for not being able to do anything to help.

Hang in there, X. I can't imagine what it must be like living in Syria right now.

Syria made the news in New Zealand again. Confirming much of what X has already stated.

While these disasters in Syria are being labelled as terrorist attacks by the Syrian news agency, over here they are being described as "Syrian army goes in and rapes and pillages a local community again". I guess our news channels are not doing the Syrian government any favors

Some of the footage of the dead and buried were shown, but not the same gruesome stuff that X linked.

According to the news report, the UN isn't just sitting on their asses on this. They are pretty pissed off about it, though what they intend to do was not taken into detail. The report also mentioned something along the lines of 10,000 civilians dead so far

Can't believe we actually have a live reporter here at KYM to give us grisly details and videos on this uprising. Good work X-Singular, everyone here supports you as much as we can.

Syria made the news in New Zealand again. Confirming much of what X has already stated.

While these disasters in Syria are being labelled as terrorist attacks by the Syrian news agency, over here they are being described as “Syrian army goes in and rapes and pillages a local community again”. I guess our news channels are not doing the Syrian government any favors

On the BBC, it's all like: "They're protesting again, but it's worse and they're probably going to blow something up again in another hour…"

But they did mention a mass grave… >_>

I think its starting to become too commonplace for many. I think its starting to evolve to, "Oh, People are being oppresed and killed by dictators in x country?". The problem here is that there's a growth in appathy in what's going on. Its becoming a ticker in the news, and the Security Council won't do anything because there's corruption within two of their voting members. Somebody HAS to take action before we're delving into numbers that havn't seen since the holocaust.

Still Alive.
I'll post an update tomorrow if my connection is still cooperating with me.

The Russians strenuously denied they had sold Attack Helicopters to Syria

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/19/syria-arms-shipment-foiled

Turns out…they were "refurbishing" attack helicopters they had ALREADY sold to Syria.

Nice play on words Russia :/