1- Foreign Policy publishes a number of Kafranbel banners, a city in Idleb that’s considered to draw and write the revolution’s most creative posters:

A town in northwestern Syria has become the creative center of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. Since the beginning of the uprising, the residents of Kafr Anbel have drawn signs that skewer the Assad regime and express outrage that the world has not done more to stop the killing in Syria.

The signs come in two basic varieties. Some are cartoons, often drawing their inspiration from Western movies or TV shows, which lampoon the Syrian government and its allies, notably Russian President Vladimir Putin. Others are straightforward, text-only banners that call for NATO intervention in Syria or arming the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). Many of the signs are written in English.

Raed Fares, an activist in Kafr Anbel, explained to FP that the town’s residents chose to draw in English, rather than Arabic, explicitly to reach an international audience. “It’s very important to send our message to all the world,” he said. “And English is the public language.”

Read the rest of the article and see some of Kafranbel banners here on FP.

2- Syria : debate and analysis on the popular armed opposition published on Syria Freedom Forever blog:

The people composing the armed opposition groups are socially issued from the biggest section of the Syrian revolutionary movement, which includes the economically disenfranchised rural and urban working, lower and middle classes who have experienced the accelerated imposition of neoliberal policies by Bashar Al Assad since his arrival to power ( see this article for more info: http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/syria-one-year-after-the-beginning-of-the-revolution-part-i/). In the armed opposition groups we found both defectors and civilians who took up arms, they are actually the far majority inside them. The armed opposition groups have real popular roots within the uprising and is simply too diverse for it to be easily turned into a unified proxy force acting in the interests of foreign powers.

3- The student movement in Syria and its role in the revolution by Khalil Habash:

student movements have a long history of resistance in the country. Since the French occupation and until the end of the last century, Syrian student movements were very often at the forefront of many activities against occupiers and authoritarian regimes. This role evolved in the first half of the 20th Century until the Baath Party came to power and the student movement was crushed. It was actually this student movement which triggered the revolt against military rule in 1954 before the Syrian army announced a coup against the regime from Aleppo. The movement also played a key role in confronting the Baghdad Alliance in the 1950s and demanded unification between Syria and Egypt.

The arrival of the Baath Party to power changed all that, and no immunity was granted to university campuses in any way. Security agencies could actually arrest students inside lecture halls and or on campus.

That’s all for today.