Assad cannot besiege Damascus, because he’s in it! The people of Damascus must besiege government buildings and Assad’s compound. And the people’s message to the regime should be: you end the siege on all Syrian cities, towns and villages, and we will end our siege of your homes and offices.

Once the siege is over, all Syrian people from every corner shall converge into Damascus, millions of them, and bring the regime down. Too late for compromises and deals with the fascist regime!

Yesterday, Bashar al-Assad declared amnesty to over a hundred political prisoners, two months after the protests had begun, and one day after the brutal torture and murder of thirteen-year-old martyr Hamza al-Khatib. It’s ironic that al-Assad, the biggest criminal of all, is the one giving amnesty to innocent citizens.

One thousand and two hundred killed so far, and some ten thousand thrown in jail for “illegal demonstrations.” al-Assad’s reply to the people for the past two months was: “oh, you want reforms? Are you saying I’m doing something wrong so that you demand reforms? I’ve been waiting long for this day, the day I finally get to massacre you!” And now when he saw the escalation of the protests, and how all his terror tactics backfired, now he’s audaciously calling for an open dialogue, while his tanks shelled Homs just this morning, killing 41 more people, Al-Jazeera reports.

Your days are numbered, you and your genocidal regime. It’s only a matter of time before the people of Damascus (especially those who support you) come to their senses and rise up against your war machine.

To my brothers and sisters in Syria I repeat what I said to the brave Egyptian revolutionaries: Now is the time to shut the f#@king economy down!

To Nasrallah: You need to sit this one out. You’re sounding dumber and more hypocritical every day you try to explain to us why dictators that support your cause (for their own interests) must be preserved! We don’t want a Syria that supports the Resistance. We want a Syria that is the Resistance! A Syria that frees the Golan like Hezbollah freed Lebanon! So I beg you, shut the f#@k up already!

As I write this, I’m given to understand that the Obama administration is considering increasing sanctions against Syria as punishment for President Bashar Assad’s government’s violent crackdown on protesters. The executive order will empower President Obama to freeze the assets of senior Syrian officials and bar them from engaging in any business dealings with the United States, the Wall Street Journal claims. While it is meant, it’s claimed, to encourage the US’s European allies to take similar measures (the Syrian government has few assets in the US and we already are under less rigorous sanctions), it’s clearly meant as a symbolic action to show US displeasure with the Syrian government’s recent actions.

Over the past few months, there’s been a growing cycle of protest and repression; this past weekend, at least 150 protesters were killed by government forces. Over night, tanks have rolled out onto the streets of Dera’a along with at least three thousand soldiers. All over the country, activists are being rounded up and taken off to prison. The Syrian government does not stint in using torture.

Some people in the US and elsewhere are calling for the US (and other powers) to take a more ‘active’ role in defending the protesters, even going so far as calling for a no-fly zone or even military intervention. There are rumors and reports already of American efforts in that direction. Wikileaks last week released documents detailing how the US State Department has been funding an opposition television station, Barada-TV, as well as funding some exile groups. The Syrian government, meanwhile, claims – with some grain of truth among the exaggerations – that groups in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Lebanon are actively supplying weapons and infiltrators. Arms shipments originating in American-occupied Iraq have been interdicted at the border.

It is a perilous time. For a decade, we have wondered whether President Bashar Asad’s oft-repeated ‘reforms’ would materialize. Might he be the ‘Gorbachev’ who would dismantle the one-party state and, when democracy comes, stand aside? Or would he have to be forced to leave?

Even a few days ago, it looked like this regime might yet choose to follow the ‘Gorbachev’ path followed by other nations (like Chile, Mexico, and Spain) and lead Syria out of dictatorship and into a bright and democratic future. That chance has now left.
Now, the choice is only whether this hated regime ends by revolution and leaves or if we descend into civil war. I pray that it is the first and that the revolution is soon, swift and without too much blood. In a land such as ours, civil war serves no one except the enemies of all Syrians.

As a Syrian-American dual national living in Damascus, I am deeply concerned over all of this. Now, before I give my reaction, let me state my bonafides: I have been involved in pro-democracy protests and activities here since February, I have personally witnessed government forces killing demonstrators, I have been tear-gassed, I have been batoned, I have been detained – and only a few hours ago, the Mukhabarat (secret police) visited me at home and, for the moment, they were persuaded not to arrest me. So, I am no friend of the regime!

I am though a believer in our struggle for democracy and, like many others of us inside Syria, I do not want foreign ‘help’ when it comes to bringing democracy to our beloved Syria. We do not seek and do not want the sort of ‘help’ that is offered from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, the USA, or France: we are not blind and we can see how that ‘help’ is only offered when it is seen as serving those interests. Why else would some of the same countries send troops to repress pro-democracy movements in Bahrain also send them to Libya? They are trying to steal the Arab revolution and subvert it into the old channels of colonial dominance.

That is not what we want. We want a Syria free of foreign control; just as our forerunners resisted the French, we will resist such attempts. We did not want Russians or Persians here any more than we wanted the French; that is a charge we lay at the feet of this corrupt regime. We do not want an American or a Saudi occupation either; we hold this corrupt regime guilty for allowing a part of our homeland to remain under enemy occupation and for abandoning the patriots who fell defending it. We will not be collaborators; that is the badge of dishonor this regime has earned and one that we scorn them for.

If, Mr. Obama, your fine words about democracy and freedom are to prove true, you will not offer us the poisoned cup of assistance; you will not send bombs to rain on our cities, nor kill our misguided brothers. You will let us find our own path to freedom and you will restrain your clients in Riyadh, Beirut and Tel Aviv from doing us harm. You will stand aside and let us choose for the first time in decades the kind of government that we, the Syrian people, want. Thanks for the sentiment, but no thanks for any ‘assistance’!

Now, I’m sure you might argue that graffiti isn’t awesome, but I totally disagree…I love it all. And done right, it’s an art form.

Oh, and the art’s not bad either:

At a recent house-warming party, a friend and I got into a discussion of how much we disliked middle-aged men in the Middle East—although the phenomenon is certainly found all over the world, I’ve had to politely listen to enough semi-sermons delivered by aging men here who welcomed neither a second opinion nor input on their thoughts—to last a lifetime. My friend told me that she envisioned all middle-aged men as wrinkly creatures with enormous potbellies, and if anyone younger than them tried to say anything intelligent they would use their paunches to belly-butt the interloper out of the way. Another classmate who was listening in agreed: “That happened to me in Turkey!” he said, explaining that a shopkeeper there who tried to pass off a blank CD as a DVD had belly-butted him when he tried to refuse to buy it. “It was very degrading,” he said. “I wished he had just tried to grope me or something.”

Ibn Sina, al-Husayn bin `abd-Allah, the doctor-philosopher, the scholar of logic, language, poetry and nature/botany(?), born 370 A.H. The most famous of his books is “Law in Medicine”. Died 428 A.H.
PS: There is most appropriately a signboard for a “specialist medical clinic” above the sign.

Badreddin el-Hassani: the biggest modernizer (tarboush tip: al-Fannaan) of the Levant, born in Damascus in 1851, was devoted to worship and teaching, helped the Greater Syrian revolutionaries with wise plans. Died in 1935.

So amongst the (probably very few) cool things the Syrian regime, or at least the Damascene municipality has done is to put smart-looking shiny blue captions under street signs named after historical figures, poets, or places that explain who or what they were and what their significance is. I have decided to photograph as many of these as I can and post each one on Kabob with a translation of the caption (for those who cannot read god’s language). What I’d really love is for commenters to add or correct me on the information provided about the person/place/event to see what the authorities here consider “fit to print”, so I will translate the captions exactly as they’re written even if my own information may be different. The first sign is the one above about…

…al-Mutanabbi, Ahmad ibn il-Husayn, a pride of arab poets, born in 303 A.H./915 A.D., grew up in the Levant, gained his fame at the court of Saif al-Daula al-Hamadani and was killed in 354 A.H./965 A.D

Shar`ia Ishbiliya (Seville St.) near my current apartment:

Seville, an Andalusian city conquered by the Arab Muslims in 712 A.H. whose fame became widespread during the reign of the Bani `Imad dynasty, and was famous for its fruit and olive trees.