Al Jazeera is flawed but this is good reporting:

Rumors of Al-Qaeda infiltrators in Syria prompted me to believe this may be a Islamist uprising, until I saw this, and I know that is a Syrian Military ID. A small professional army can hold it's own against an army overwhelmingly large by ratio.

People power, not State power.

The Affluent Society

There are people who can stand by and talk about how certain people have no business talking about inequality or Occupy or the Arab Spring (which are all the same thing by the way*) because of their upbringing or their background, which I admit I come from a somewhat affluent family and how that has any affect on the accreditation to merely passing on information I have no idea. Discrediting information because of someones background amounts to a level of bigotry that needs to be addressed as well, especially when that person only has the desire to inform.

What I've seen happening in the past year in America regarding suppression of information and the past couple days in Syria are the same thing. It is people trying to express themselves and then being shut out from the mainstream source of information either violently or via censorship. I'll admit I don't know any Syrians, but I know people and to see people indiscriminately mutilated and murdered by Assad's artillery makes me want to talk. If you can turn a blind eye and silent but in essence tell others to "mind their own business" than that says something about your character, not mine.

History can attest to ignoring problems being just as bad as pulling the trigger which I'll accompany with this reminder: just because one has an opinion doesn't mean one is passing judgement (the final say) and just because I'm passing information doesn't mean I have an opinion, however I will side with basic human rights every time and if you can't see the clarity in that morality than it is time to reassess how you obtain information and what you do with it.

These are people who just want to live their lives like you & me, fighting for their lives, and this is the tame mainstream version:

Beyond this I've seen mutilation of all kinds, executions, indiscriminate sniper attacks and torture on men, women and children. On the other side of the coin I've seen people fighting for their lives which is encouraging. I can understand if all this is psychologically disturbing to someone and they can't understand the background of all this and why it's happening, but be assured that indiscriminate shelling of civilians to suppress is evil in the most basic form.

So here I am, formerly a rich kid from the suburbs merely passing on what I've witnessed of the world.

-The End for now.

*I do not support Occupy in any way except on the issue of freedom of speech and police brutality. The simple stupidity within Occupy is it is disorganized and leaderless which means it has no direct way of disseminating its message to a media outlet and without mainstream media you can't affect policy. I cannot side with Occupy until it has a press organization or leadership and until it starts addressing the issue of growth in economics. There can be adherence to human rights in a growth economy.