Under Extreme Pressure, Assad's Opponents Retain Defiance and Sense of Humor

While the ongoing bombardment of the Syrian city of Homs continues — as a report from a CNN crew in the city showed in vivid detail — there is new evidence that opposition to the Assad family dynasty in rebel-held enclaves in the north of the country also remains strong.

Jonathan Rugman, a correspondent for Britain’s Channel 4 News, filed a video report on Thursday from the town of Saraqib, not far from the Turkish border in Idlib Province, that showed the Free Syrian Army patrolling the city.

After sneaking into Saraqib, Mr. Rugman reported, “The town is surrounded by dozens of tanks and snipers loyal to President Assad’s regime — many residents live in fear of being shot at by government snipers nearby.” He added that “spirits remain high,” even though “the ramshackle militia’s hold over the town is precarious.”

There were also signs in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that there is defiance toward President Bashar al-Assad there too. Activists uploaded video that appeared to show opposition activists rallying at a funeral in the residential neighborhood of Mezze on Thursday.

Video posted online by activists, said to show a funeral in Damascus on Thursday.

Hamza Shargabi, an activist and doctor who grew up in Mezze, confirmed to The Lede on Thursday that he recognized the neighborhood from another clip, apparently showing the same rally. Dr. Shargabi posted a link to the second clip on his @ichamza Twitter feed, with the comment: “my neighborhood in Damascus! That’s where I grew up … so proud of them!”

In a clip said to have been recorded on Thursday in Damascus, activists blurred out the faces of chanting protesters.

In another part of the capital, a raid by Syrian intelligence agents on the office of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression on Thursday led to the arrest of 12 activists. Among those detained, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, were the center’s director, Mazen Darwish, and the Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi. The foundation reported that the raid was carried out by members of the Syrian Air Force’s intelligence division in civilian dress, who took the detainees to an undisclosed location.

I chatted with Razan yesterday. I asked her: Are u being harassed? She said, “No, I told u I’m not that important.” #FreeRazan #syria

— BSyria (@BSyria) February 16, 2012

As Hisham Almiraat of Global Voices Advocacy explained, Ms. Ghazzawi was arrested just over two months ago:

She was first detained in December 2011 at the Syrian-Jordanian border when she was about to attend a conference on freedom of expression online. Her arrest sparked an online outcry and an international campaign called for her immediate release. Razan was eventually released after spending 15 days in jail.

Ghazzawi is a U.S.-born Syrian blogger who has contributed to Global Voices Online and Global Voices Advocacy. She is one of the few courageous bloggers in Syria who writes under her real name.

#FreeRazan #FreeHussein #FreeEveryone #FreeUsFromThisHell #Syria

— Shakeeb Al-Jabri (@LeShaque) February 16, 2012

One day earlier, in another part of northern Idlib Province, activists in the town of Hass showed that the conflict had not dulled their sense of humor. The activist comedians posted a video online that they mockingly called compelling evidence that the Free Syrian Army is being armed by the United States and Israel. The video is a comedy sketch featuring actors dressed as rebels showing off their new military hardware: donkeys and farm tools.

Shakeeb Al-Jabri, a Syrian activist in Lebanon, explained on Twitter that one of the actors “calls the donkeys advanced 4-by-4’s that work on biofuel and cannot be detected by Iranian and Russian radars.”

The video was uploaded to an activist YouTube channel that featured very graphic images of the bodies of men identified as “martyrs” on Thursday, but last month another darkly comic sketch was posted there. The earlier skit poked fun at the Arab League observer mission, by dramatizing a massacre in front of actors dressed in the brightly colored jackets worn by the monitors.

According to a version of that clip with English subtitles, the sketch ended with one of the monitors holding a wad of dollar bills and telling the camera, “The situation in Syria is very good,” before denouncing by name one Arab League monitor who spoke out against the Syrian government.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 17, 2012

An earlier version of this post mistakenly attributed a report about the situation in Saraqib to Jonathan Miller, a correspondent for Britain's Channel 4 News, instead of his colleague Jonathan Rugman.

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An L.A. school's sex-abuse scandal: The extreme fallout

The entire staff at a low-income, heavily Latino grade school is replaced so investigators can dig into deeply unsettling accusations

It all started when students at Los Angeles' Miramonte Elementary School and their parents learned last week that a longtime third-grade teacher, Mark Berndt, had been arrested for allegedly committing lewd acts on 23 kids in his classroom. A few days later, a second-grade teacher at the same school, Martin Springer, was arrested on charges of groping a 7-year-old girl. Then, late Monday, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy yanked every single one of the school's 128 teachers, janitors, administrators, and cafeteria workers, placed them in another school, and brought in an entirely new staff at Miramonte — all so investigators could find out who knew what, and when. Here, a look at this "sordid" scandal:

What exactly are the teachers accused of?
The charges "are both horrible and weird, in the least pleasant sense of that word," says KJ Dell'Antonia in The New York Times. Berndt, 61, allegedly played bizarre "tasting games" with some students in his classroom, where he would blindfold them, put cockroaches on their face, and feed them his semen on a spoon or cookie — then photograph the lewd ritual. He was actually removed from school a year ago, after a film-processor turned some of the disturbing photos over to the police. Springer, 49, was charged with inappropriately touching a 7-year-old girl in his classroom.

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How long did this go on?
That's a big focus of the school district's investigation. Berndt had been at the low-income, heavily Latino grade school for 32 years, and the Los Angeles Times says students and parents have come forward in recent days with complaints reaching back as far as 20 years. In announcing his "clean sweep" of Miramonte, Superintendent Deasy said investigators will dig to see if there was a "culture of silence" at the school. 

Is there any connection between Berndt and Springer?
Investigators say they know of no connection. But Brian Claypool, a lawyer for some alleged victims, tells the New York Daily News that his clients say Berndt and Springer were "best buds." Claypool also alleges that a third teacher, a female in a neighboring classroom, was involved in the abuse, handpicking pretty girls from her class for Berndt's sick games. "The conspiracy theories have to be going nuts in that community," says Jeanne Sager at The Stir. "And I don't blame those parents one bit."

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Is replacing the entire school's staff really necessary?
"We intend to interview every adult," from principal to playground helper, Superintendent Deasy told parents. "I mean every single solitary adult who works at Miramonte." But many students, and lots of their parents, say it's disruptive and unfair to yank all the teachers, since most or even all of them had no part in this scandal. I disagree, says Monica Bielanko at Babble. "Replacing the staff shows dedication to making it right and doing everything within their power to not let it happen again." Count me unimpressed, says The Times' Dell'Antonia. "The message I hear is, 'We don’t know how to know whom to trust.'" That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

Will the abused children be alright?
Let's hope so. Along with well-vetted replacement teachers, a psychiatric social worker is being placed in each Miramonte classroom. "There has to be someone in their life who can re-create a trusting relationship with the child to undo the idea that they can't trust anybody," says Ginger Clark at the University of Southern California.  Sadly, "I don't think they'll ever get over it," says UCLA's Paul Abramson. Predatory teachers do a lot of damage, and "you see people who are 50 and are still traumatized about events that happened to them when they were 10."

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Sources: AP, Babble, Los Angeles Times (2), New York Daily News, New York Times, The Stir, TIME, Washington Post

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