2137 GMT: Syria. Today, protests may have been the largest and most widespread that Syria has seen since the beginning of the uprising last March:
A group of activists have collected over 900 videos of today's protests in a database. Obviously, we have not had time to review all 901 videos that have been put into the spreadsheet, but a spot check of a few indicates that the spreadsheet is credible.
Beyond the sheer number of protests (a record, we believe), spread over a large number of protest locations, today's protests were held during a period of escalation in violence, a factor that should have suppressed the size and scope of demonstrations. It did not. Furthermore, there have been extremely large and impressive demonstrations in Aleppo, in particular, and in Damascus.
The trend is now established and clear. The protest movement has been consistently growing in strength, and if it continues at this pace it poses a serious risk to the Assad regime. Beyond the protests, the amount of labor strikes, closed shops, sit ins, traffic disruptions, and general chaos across Syria threatens to erode the economy at an increasingly rapid pace.
The people of Syria have spoken yet again, in the clearest terms possible. Popular support for Assad is rapidly shrinking, and an ever-growing throng of voices are calling for the fall of the regime.
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Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 20:10
