...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
to seek U.N. intervention in the face of growing frustration that the bloc's hard-won observer mission in Syria has failed to staunch 10 months of killing.
Meanwhile,
...back at the Council of Boskone, Helmuth had turned a paler shade of blue. Star-A-Star had struck again...
thousands of people poured out of mosques after Friday prayers to call for the ouster of
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad's
The Scourge of Hama...
regime, after choosing "Prisoners of the Revolution" as the slogan for this week's main protests.
They are demanding that the government deliver on its promise to the vaporous Arab League to release tens of thousands of people tossed in the calaboose since protests first erupted in March.
The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces rubbed out six people in the northwestern province of Idlib, three in the eastern protest hub of Deir al-Zour, two in the central opposition bastion Homs, one in the southern province of Daraa and another in the restive central province of Hama.
As protests began in Aleppo
...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
in the north, the coastal Latakia and Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces were out in force.
The Britannia-based group said there were festivities in Aleppo between security forces and dissidents and that demonstrators in Idlib had been fired on.
The widely criticized League mission hangs in the balance as its head, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, prepares to report to Arab foreign ministers, who will decide on Sunday whether to extend it for a second month.
Human Rights Watch
... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world...
said there was no sign of any let-up in the regime's crackdown despite the observers' presence, with activists reporting 506 civilians killed and another 490 jugged since the monitors deployed on December 26.
The head of the opposition Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, headed to Cairo to lobby the Arab ministers to refer the observer mission's findings to the U.N. Security Council for tough action.
Ghalioun planned to "ask the head of the Arab League and Arab foreign ministers to transfer the file on Syria to the U.N. Security Council with a view to securing a decision to establish a buffer zone and a no-fly zone" in Syria, an SNC statement said.
The group, which has been strongly critical of the observer mission, said it would demand that Dabi pull no punches in his findings on the Damascus
...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
regime's compliance with the Arab League agreement.
"The SNC delegation will insist that the report contain a clear text concerning the 'genocide' and 'war crimes' carried out by the (Syrian) regime against unarmed civilians," the statement said.
And HRW said "the Arab League should publicly recognize that Syria has not respected the League's plan and work with the Security Council to increase pressure on the authorities and effectively curtail the use of fire power."
The League's panel on Syria is to meet on Saturday ahead of the foreign ministers' meeting.
Its chair, Qatar, has called for Arab peacekeeping troops to be deployed in Syria, drawing a furious rejection from the Syrian government.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the Qatari proposal was not feasible.
"In the present regional context we are not working towards such a scenario," he said in an interview published on Friday by the regional daily Ouest-La Belle France.
"On the contrary, we are talking to the opposition," he added.
But President Nicolas Sarkozy
...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit...
insisted that La Belle France -- the former colonial power in Syria -- would not stand silently by in the face of a crackdown that the United Nations
...an organization whose definition of
human rightsis interesting, to say the least...
estimates has killed more than 5,400 people since last March, 400 of them since the observers deployed.
"We cannot accept the ferocious repression by the Syrian leadership of its people, a repression that has led the entire country into chaos, and a chaos that will help gunnies of all kinds," he said.
Ahmad el-Tayyeb, the grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar, the highest seat of Sunni Moslem learning urged "Arab rulers to take the necessary measures to halt bloodshed in Syria," the state news agency MENA quoted him as saying on Friday.
A tough Security Council resolution on Syria has been blocked by veto-wielding permanent members China and Russia. Moscow insists the opposition is as much to blame for the violence as the regime.
Syria's Oil Minister Sufian Allaw acknowledged on Thursday that unilateral sanctions imposed on his government by the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
and the United States were having a significant economic impact.
"We have suffered important losses as a result of our inability to export crude oil and petroleum products," Allaw told a Damascus news conference, putting the losses from September 1 at more than $2 billion.
Sanctions have also pushed the Syrian pound to record lows, and central bank governor Adib Malayeh has said Damascus will introduce a managed float of the currency next week, effectively devaluing it, the Financial Times reported.