Syria Today: Remembering a Mass Killing

2040 GMT: The Internet is Down.

Another watchdog, Umbrella Security Labs, reports:

At around 18:45 UTC OpenDNS resolvers saw a significant drop in traffic from Syria. On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet.

Brown Moses has checked Google, and this is the result:

However, the opposition still has plenty of ways to communicate. Satellite phones and other, more secret, methods have been established since the earliest days of the revolution. This blackout will have a significant impact on information coming out of Syria, but it's not a total blackout.

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Syria Today: Damascus Warns Israel of "All Possibilities"

2016 GMT: Massacre in Baniyas.

Though it was lost in the news of a massive Israeli airstrike in the capital, and lots of buzz about chemical weapons, this weekend there was a disturbing development on the coast of Syria, in Baniyas. The area is primarily populated by Alawites, however several some villages have a primarily Sunni population, and it appears that it is the Sunni villages that have been attacked. Perhaps more than 100 people have been killed in several villages. An activist has posted this summary, excerpted below, which has links to four graphic videos, though EA has not yet been able to verify the report:

The campaign of shelling and massacres in Banias and its villages stopped today; however, the fear of massacres still continues among the people. Security forces opened the road today to the neighborhood of Ras Al-Naba' and Batraya. The smell of the corpses of the martyrs has spread throughout the city. The Red Crescent accompanied some of the people to remove the bodies, which led to the discovery of more bodies of martyrs, who were field-executed and slaughtered with knives (especially children). There is a huge number of martyrs who have not yet been documented. Regime forces dug up a large hole on the outskirts of the city as a mass grave for the martyrs of Ras Al-Naba'.

The neighborhood of Ras Al-Naba'a and the village of Bayda are declared a disaster-zone and not suitable for further life whatsoever, after witnessing a campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis on the coast by Assad forces.

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Syria Audio Analysis: The Significance of the Israeli Airstrikes --- Scott Lucas with Monocle 24

I spoke this morning, along with correspondent Daniella Peled, on Monocle 24's The Globalist about the details and consequences of Israel's airstrikes inside Syria this weekend.

Listen from 7:09 mark --- with my contribution from 10:20 --- on The Globalist's homepage or in separate pop-out window

Take-away points:

1. A lot of the supposed information on the airstrikes --- such as Israel targeting weapons like Iranian-made Fateh 110 missiles or Israel acting without notifying the US --- is misleading or incorrect;

1. "Everyone --- the regime, the insurgency, regime supporters like Iran, opposition supporters like the US, Turkey, and Arab States --- has to re-calculate strategy in light of these attacks";

3. "But fundamentally, this does not change the calculus: is Assad going to help firm or step down? Are the opposition and insurgency going to be able to unify to help build internationa support?"

4. "The Israelis are trying to degrade Assad's military capabilities, which just happens to help the insurgents if they decide to make a push on Damascus."

I also talk about Sunday's curious report that a United Nations investigator has claimed "suspicions" of insurgent use of the nerve agent sarin.

Iran Today: The "Defending Shrines in Syria" Line

Saturday's Iran Today: "Supreme Leader is the Ultimate Decision-Maker"

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Foreign Affairs Watch (Syrian Front)

General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the head of Iran's ground forces, has restated Tehran's line on assistance to the Syrian regime.

Pourdastan said the Islamic Republic i"would help train" the Syrian army if Damascus seeks such assistance, "but [we] won't have any active involvement in the operations".

The General repeated the comment of the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, from last autumn, "The Syrian army has accumulated experience during years of conflict with the Zionist regime (Israel) and is able to defend itself and doesn't need foreign assistance."

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Syria Today: Israel Airstrikes "Hit Military Research Centre"

See also Syria Snap Analysis: What Did Israel Bomb, and Why?
Middle East Today: Iraq --- Results from Provincial Elections Inconclusive
Saturday's Syria Today: Obama Maintains Cautious Line on US Intervention

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1900 GMT: Erdogan Denounces "Butcher" Assad

Turkish Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has delivered his strongest denunciation of President Assad, "If God permits, we will see this butcher, this murderer receive his judgement in this world...and we will praise (God) for it."

Erdogan, speaking to lawmakers and party activists in a town near Ankara, addressed Assad, "You will pay a very, very heavy price for showing your courage to the babies in the cradle, the courage you cannot show others."

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Syria Today: Obama Maintains Cautious Line on US Intervention

Protest in Beza'a in Aleppo Province on Friday

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1205 GMT: Sanctions and Surveillance

Documents establish that large amounts of computer equipment from Dell have been sold to the Syrian government through a Dubai-based distributor despite strict trade sanctions, according to The New York Times.

The computer equipment was sold by BDL Gulf, which is based in Saudi Arabia and is an authorised distributor for Dell in the Middle East and Africa and a reseller for other computer brands, including Samsung and Acer.

BDL sold the equipment to Anas Hasoon Trading, a Damascus-based company with contracts to provide computers to the Syrian government, according to billings records and e-mail exchanges between the companies.

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Syria Today: Assad Appears --- Does It Matter?

President Assad looks at the wall of an electricity plant on Workers' Day on Wednesday

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2046 GMT: Mass Killing

Claimed photos are circulating of the mass killing in Bayada.

1956 GMT: Mass Killing

Activists are claiming that scores of people have been slain by regime forces in Bayada in Homs Province:

Another martyr, Wassim Uthman, from the #BaydaMassacre today in #Banias. Total martyred: 200-300 civilians. | #Syria twitter.com/yasmeenmobayed…

— yasmeen mobayed (@yasmeenmobayed) May 2, 2013

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Syria Today: "US Moving Towards Supply of Weapons to Insurgents"

Claimed footage of US "non-lethal" aid moving to insurgents inside Syria

See also Middle East Today: Palestine --- Assassination of "Bomb-Maker", Killing of Jewish Settler
Tuesday's Syria Today: A Chemical Weapons Attack in Idlib Province?

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1920 GMT: Chemical Weapons

Local Turkish officials say they testing blood samples taken from Syrian casualties, brought over the border this week, to determine whether they were victims of a chemical weapons attack.

The samples were sent to Turkey's forensic medicine institute after several Syrians with breathing difficulties were brought from Syria's Idlib Province to the Turkish town of Reyhanli in Hatay Province along the border..

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Syria Audio Analysis: The "No Secular Fighters" Myth --- Scott Lucas with Monocle 24

The media's sensationalised mangling of the Syrian conflict went from bad to worse last weekend with a New York Times article that asserted --- on the basis of little evidence and a distorted quote --- that there are "no secular fighters" left in Syria.

Listen from the 18-minute mark on the Midori House homepage or in a separate pop-out window.

This morning I dealt with questions from Monocle 24's Midori House about the article to deal with wider points: 1. The insurgency is a collection of many factions, some of which have "secular" outlooks and members. Asking "are there any secular rebels left?" --- from the New York Times' "reader-baiting" approach --- is just as ludicrous as asking "are there any Islamists" in the insurgency.

2. This article and others have been fed by the escalating myths that the Islamist faction Jabhat al-Nusra is "Al-Qa'eda linked" and is dominating the insurgency. To repeat: JAN is only one of many factions in the opposition and it is not tied to Al Qa'eda.

3. Nor does the myth of "radical Islamists" do us any good in appreciating the countries beyond Syria amid the "Arab Spring". The post-uprising Governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya do not fit that simplistic label.

Syria Analysis: Chemical Weapons Attack --- Is This Plastic Canister A Vital Clue?

Update: A new video (above) of the canister that allegedly carried a cehmical weapon in Saraqib.

Despite increasing reports that Assad's forces have used chemical weapons attacks against insurgents, so far there has been no concrete evidence. A video taken yesterday of a small piece of plastic, burned up deep inside Syria's warzone, may actually contain a vital clue as to whether forces loyal to Assad have deployed chemical agents.

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