SYRIAN MADNESS – AT 10:33 A.M. ET:  Our media is not paying nearly enough attention to the rapidly deteroriating situation in Syria.  The death toll mounts in this, one of the most important Arab countries, and Iran's best Arab ally:

(Reuters) - Syrian tanks stormed the mostly Sunni Muslim city of Banias on Saturday, a rights campaigner said, raising sectarian tension in a country swept by protests against the rule of authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad.

The attack came hours after the United States, reacting to the death of 27 protesters on Friday, threatened to take new steps against Syria's rulers, from the Alawite sect, unless they stopped killing and harassing their people.

I wonder what those new steps might happen to be.  The old ones have certainly been effective.

Rights group Sawasiah said in statement that the number of civilians killed since pro-democracy demonstrations broke out seven weeks ago has reached 800. It added that there were cuts in landline, Internet and cellphone lines with Banias as army units backed by tanks swept into its districts.

Please note, for the record, the deep concern expressed by the American and European left, and by the profound scholars in so-called "Middle Eastern studies" departments of our universities.  A truly distinguished professor wrote to Urgent Agenda earlier and said that the first thing he'd do to improve the quality of higher education in America would be to abolish all college departments with the name "studies" at the end.  I'm inclined to agree. 

Assad has asserted that the protesters are part of a foreign conspiracy to cause sectarian strife, something they deny too.

His father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled for 30 years until his death in 2000, brutally suppressed an armed Islamist uprising in 1982 in which around 30,000 people were killed.

COMMENT:  When those 30,000 were killed, there was almost no reaction from "human rights" or "anti-war" activists in Europe or America.  When will we finally learn that many of these people don't care at all for human rights or human beings, but only for their ideological agenda.

A government collapse in Syria would be a major convulsion in the Mideast, with unknown consequences.  We need to shine a bigger spotlight on what's happening.

May 7, 2011