Is anybody following what's happening in Syria?

Doesn't seem to be generating a lot of discussion here.

If interested, check this out:

Syria's defiant women risk all to protest against President Bashar al-Assad

They came for the men first, as the security forces of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad killed, beat and arrested people protesting against his regime.

Next, they came for the women of Syria's revolution. Despite the threats, however, they refuse to be silenced.

As the violence has become worse, women activists have organised a Friday protest of Free Women showing solidarity with those seized or killed. Women-only protests in towns across the country have led the effort to let the outside world know what is happening in Syria. But they are now being targeted as well, with the same lethal brutality.

Two weeks ago three women were shot dead at an all-women march near the besieged city of Banias. A week later human rights activist Catherine al-Talli, 32, was detained in the Barzeh district of Damascus after being forced off a minibus when it was stopped at a checkpoint by the secret police.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/21/syria-women-unrest-repression

There are also a plethora of articles on Al Jazeera's Middle East page.

but there is a Duer who likes this revolution stuff, maybe he can start a "Syrian revolution Day one" and so on series...

It reads a bit mean-spirited. Just a heads up.

I am an avid follower of the revolution threads series at DU, can't get enough of them...

I would certainly be interested in following it.

I don't know if there is as much "twitter chatter" in Syria as there was in Tunisia, Egypt, and even Libya.

I could be wrong though.

I haven't seen much on the MSM here though, especially considering the brutality with which the protestors have been treated.

Iraq also has been holding 'Arab Spring' demonstration, also greeted with brutal crackdowns by the Iraqi government.

Thank you for posting this thread.

I think Assad is toast, but it may (or may not) take a while yet. The Syrian ruling elites have not played their hand well, IMHO,

I confess that I don't really feel like I know enough to put forward any theories myself.

But modernizing for sure, the force behind all this is demographic change, and it's modernizing sort of demographic change, better education, literacy, womens rights, individual rights, lower birthrates, more exogamy. One would hope that the neighbors, or some of them, would play constructive roles.

The ones I have my eye on are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which have kept the lid on so far.

+!