... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world...
accused the regime of crimes against humanity.
The Local Coordination Committees said that 33 people were killed at the hands of security forces during Friday's demonstrations.
The Arab League
...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...
, meanwhile, prepared for a ministerial meeting on the Syria crisis which, according to the United Nations
...Parkinson's Law on an international scale...
, has claimed more than 3,500 lives since protests against
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Despoiler of Deraa...
erupted in mid-March.
Ten people were killed in Homs, including a defecting soldier and a 63-year-old man, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement received in Nicosia.
The deaths in Homs came amid mass anti-regime rallies demanding the vaporous Arab League suspend Syria's membership in the pan-Arab body to sanction its brutal, eight-month crackdown on dissent.
Security forces broke up demonstrations in al-Malaab, a main thoroughfare in Homs, but rallies relocated and mushroomed, engulfing eight neighborhoods, including al-Bayada, al-Ghuta and Baba Amr, the Observatory said.
Three people died in Daraa province, cradle of the revolt. They were a man shot by security forces in the town of Busret al-Sham, another man killed in al-Sanmeen, and a 13-year-old boy who died in a kaboom in Mseifra.
In the northwestern province of Idlib, near Turkey, "security forces rubbed out a man in the town of Ariha," where demonstrations erupted after the weekly Mohammedan midday prayers.
The Observatory also reported "mass protests" in Idlib's Sheikhun in the wake of a "retreat by security forces from government buildings following violent festivities."
In Damascus
...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
, security forces deployed on the streets of Barzeh and posted snipers on rooftops, after a wave of arrests and deadly violence shook the capital's neighborhood.
And "security forces unleashed heavy gunfire to disperse demonstrations," in the eastern oil hub of Deir al-Zour.
Friday prayers have become a lightning rod for demonstrations in Syria, which each week adopt a new theme and this week called for the Arab League to suspend Syria's membership.
The League, under international pressure to act after Syria failed to honor a peace plan and instead stepped up its brutal protest crackdown, held talks ahead of a meeting on Saturday to discuss the crisis.
Syria's envoy to the Arab League, Youssef Ahmed, presented early Friday a memorandum in which Damascus expressed its willingness to receive a pan-Arab delegation.
"This will help assess Damascus's commitment to the (Arab) plan and to unveil motives behind certain external and internal parties working for the failure of the Arab blueprint," the official SANA news agency said.
Meanwhile,
...back at the abandoned silver mine, the water was up to Jack's neck and still rising...
Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a report accused Syrian government forces of "crimes against humanity" based on the systematic nature of abuses against civilians.
It said protesters were unarmed in most festivities, but that defectors from the security forces had intervened when the demonstrators came under fire from regime troops and militiamen.
Based on the accounts of 110 victims and witnesses, HRW said "violations by the Syrian security forces killed at least 587 civilians" in the central city of Homs and its province between mid-April and the end of August.