Hail Friends and Supporters

One wonders whether more recent photographs of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria would continue to portray him with the same happily smiling countenance.  He has been extremely busy of late.  Ordering intensified shelling of Sunni Muslim districts in Homs.  Mournfully declaring himself to be quite saddened by the departure of the UN monitors.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Mexico.  It isn't anticipated that the deadlock in opinions will undergo any kind of meaningful change.  Russia has dug in her heels, China is supporting Russia, and there the matter stands.  Except that as matters continue to heat up Russia is becoming a little nervous about the security of its citizens and ships at the Tartus naval base.

The amphibious assault vessels Nikolai Filchenkov and Caesar Kunikov are scheduled to head from their home port in Sevastopol on the Black Sea to the Syrian port of Tartus, carrying additional Russian troops.  Ostensibly to protect and secure the safety of Russians, but to be present for another purpose, the possibility of evacuating al-Assad and family from Syria should the need arise in the near future; perhaps the very near future.

"Around 85% of Homs is now under shelling or bombardment with mortar rounds and heavy machine guns.  Dozens of wounded are without treatment because all the hospitals have fallen under the control of shabiha.  The dead are the lucky ones", reported an opposition campaigner by cellphone from the city north of Damascus.

Another opposition member claims that "Since the [UN] observers stopped working yesterday we have seen a clear escalation" of violence from the regime.  Chief UN monitor General Robert Mood cited that increased violence in his decision to withdraw his observers.  He blamed both President al-Assad's forces and the rebels for threatening and forcing the observers to leave their posts.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled Homs in the past year.  And the regime's opponents charge that the regime is intent on effecting an ethnic cleansing of Homs, to force Sunni Syrians to vacate the country.  The Arab Spring uprising that concluded so differently in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia has met up against an irresistible force of denial. 

With Syria's president deriding the presence of 'terrorists' in his country, insisting on the defence of Syria against al-Qaeda.

And at the present time, back of mind of the Western powers there is agreement that among other elements, that al-Qaeda presence most certainly is there, along with the Muslim Brotherhood and on the other side, Hezbollah and Iran.  All of them ready for a final confrontation, because they all consider the stakes to be high enough.

And Russia, despite insistence to the contrary, is still supplying the Syrian regime with arms.  While preparing to defend its citizens and its presence in the country, fiercely shielding the Alawite regime from international sanctions.