This post is probably overdue, but for the short-term I will not be publishing anything on Dissected News.  I write almost every single day for EA WorldView, and as you can tell I am too busy to repost that content here. Stay tuned, however, as there are developments in the pipe, and Dissected News will become useful once again.

READ THE LATEST NEWS AND ANALYSIS FROM IRAN AND THE MIDDLE EAST

And, as always, thanks for reading!

And for the second night in a row, we have posted videos from the night.

We start with live-streaming audio from Hama, where the Syrian military shells the city with tanks. Just moments before the stream drops out, a loud explosion can be heard nearby and intense chanting can also be heard:

See our liveblog for August 2nd, Syria, Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Hello to Ramadan, Hello to Turmoil

See also Syria Video Essay: 1st Day of Ramadan was a Day of Chaos

This VERY GRAPHIC video, claiming to have been taken earlier today in Hama, shows a civilian vehicle that was destroyed, while driving, by a Syrian tank shell. All inside were killed:

At dusk, protesters duck sniper fire in AL Qusoor, Hama

Protesters dodge gunfire in Sham, Midan, the heart of Damascus

Protesters run from gunfire tonight in Homs

Hama marches in protest, despite the shelling:

Hama, Al Amein St

Protesters run from gunfire in Medmah Sham, to the west of Daria, a Damascus Suburb

Massive protest in Msayfra, Daraa

Kafar Shams, Daraa

Damascus, behind the Al Razi Hospital, south east of the center of the city

Damascus:

The city of Idlib

Ma’arrat Numan, Idlib Province, between Aleppo and Hama

The People of Al Korah chant their support for Deir Ez Zor after Taraweeh Prayer

Barzeh, Damascus:

Lattakia, on the coast

Protesters chant and sing in Al Khalidiya, Homs

Binsh (Idlib Province)

LATEST UPDATES: 

08-02-2011

• Syria, Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Hello to Ramadan, Hello to Turmoil - UN closer to condemning Syria, funerals for protesters held, Assad tries to voer up atrocities.
• The Latest from Iran (2 August): Khamenei’s Balancing Act on “Hooligan” MPs and Ahmadinejad - Iran’s Supreme Leader tries to save the hardliners from themselves

08-01-2011

• Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Regime’s Deadly Gamble - Massacre in Syria, Violence erupts in Egypt, Libyan Freedom Fighters advance.
• The Latest from Iran (1 August): Brain Drain and a “Brain Tumour” - Iran bleeds expertise, and Ahmadinejad’s aids bleed support

07-29-2011

• Libya, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Opposition’s Military Commander is Assassinated - Assassination in Benghazi, unprecedented protests in Damascus.
• The Latest from Iran (28 July): An Opposition Move on the Elections? - Reformists look to elections, Ahmadinejad looks to Khomeini

07-27-2011

• Libya, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: “No Talks” - Gaddafi won’t negotiate, Syrian raid near Damascus kills 11, Libyan rebels free prisoners in raid.
• The Latest from Iran (27 July): Foreign Manoeuvres - The opposition makes new demands, Russia debates Iran’s nuclear program.

07-25-2011

07-23-2011

07-22-2011

• Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Meanwhile in Bahrain… - Massive crowds in Syria, despite violence? National dialogue in Bahrain? Protests banned in Saudi Arabia?

• The Latest from Iran (22 July): Ahmadinejad Ready for Nuclear Talks? - Splits among the hardliners growing?

07-21-2011

• Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Can the Regime “Lose” Homs? - The Syrian army attacks civilians in Homs, the clock ticks for Gaddafi’s reign.

• The Latest from Iran (21 July): Stand By Your (Supreme) Man - A Former President meets with the families of reformists under house arrest.

07-20-2011

• Syria, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: “Death Squads”? - Syrian security kills mourners at a funeral in Homs as troops close in on Damascus.
• Syria, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: “Death Squads”? - The regime Watches the Reformists/Greens, Stands by the Supreme Leader

• Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Competition of Rallies - Syria inching towards sectarian civil war? Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria seeking national dialog? Libyan rebels close to capturing Brega?
• The Latest from Iran (18 July): Remembering Protest, Remembering the Victims - Oil problems, political posturing, and clashes with the Kurds

07-08-2011

• Syria, Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Protest Friday - Hundreds of thousands in the streets of Hama, Syria, while Egypt and Yemen rage.
• Latest Syria Videos: The “No Dialogue” Protests – Set 1 and Set 2
• The Latest from Iran (8 July): Manoeuvring for the Elections - The regime continues to spin as internal division threatens the conservatives.

07-07-2011

• Libya, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Insurgents Advance, Resistance Continues - The Libyan rebels plan the next move after making several unexpected advances yesterday, and tensions rise in the region as another Friday approaches.

• Latest Syria Video: The Hama Resistance - Our vlog starts off with night protests in Syria.

• The Latest from Iran (7 July): A Model for Others? - The Revolutionary Guard Corps debates whether it should play politics.

07-06-2011

•  Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Regime’s Dilemma in Hama - Arrests in Syria, gunfire in Yemen, and the rebels advance in Libya.
• The Latest from Iran (6 July): Revolutionary Guards Do Politics - Ahmadinejad backing down from his attacks on the Revolutionary Guard?

07-05-2011

• Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Regime v. People with Rocks - At least 13 are killed in Syria as the regime closes in on Hama.
• The Latest from Iran (5 July): The Supreme Leader’s Message “Everyone Back Off” - The Supreme Leader asks for calm as parliament asks for answers from President Ahmadinejad.

At the start of Monday, all eyes were on Hama, a city which had been shelled and raided by Syrian military and security forces on Sunday (see our live-blog, Sunday’s Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Battle for the Cities and our separate video entry, Syria Video Special: The Military Assault on Hama).

New video from Sunday’s massacre. This is a GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING VIDEO. The video claims to show pro-Assad “thugs” throwing the dead bodies of protesters into a river near Hama. It raises obvious questions – who is videotaping this, and why are they taking the video? If this description is accurate, it is not the first time, however, we’ve seen up-close video of alleged human rights violations on the part of Assad’s supporters or his security forces.

As Monday went on, we received reports that Hama was under attack, but it was not until later in the day that we would see the video:

Smoke and explosions fill the air over Hama:

Once night fell, however, the entire scene changed. We had reports of protests in almost every city, in the country.

See also Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Regime’s Deadly Gamble

And once again, Hama was under bombardment. These videos were live-streamed during the shelling. Intense videos, posted by a man who claims to be a resident of Hama. We have no way of verifying this report, but we do know that NPR’s Andy Carvin believes it is genuine. Gunshots, chanting, and loud noises can be heard in the distance, and sometimes the violence is too close to call. In several points of the audio, a bullet snap can be heard, as if the bullets are passing very closely.

The narrator prays, speaks about his disdain for the Assad regime, and the Assad’s disregard for human rights. The narrator is both defiant and scared, mournful and hopeful, prayerful and weak. It’s a moving narrative, and regardless of one’s understanding of Arabic, it is worth the listen.

In Hama, in the Bab al-Tribaal area, protesters chant “Yalla irhal ya Bashar” (Get out of here, Bashar):

But as night closed on the first day of Ramadan, the protests, and the violence, spread further than Hama.

Protesters march near the Hamdania Stadium in Aleppo, a key city:

This chaotic video shows protesters from the University of Khaldiyah pouring out of a mosque in Aleppo and clashing with security outside:

Protests in Midan, near the heart if Damascus, where a very large protest seems to be taking place as we speak.

Protests in the Ma’adhmiah area of Damascus, where the army was deployed to keep the peace.

In Homs, anti-government protesters run once gunfire is aimed in their direction:

In Hauran, outside of Daraa, casualties were reported. Heavy gunfire and possibly explosions can be heard in this video:

In Jableh, on the coast of Syria, protesters stage a sit-in:

Protests in a mosque in Lattakia, also on the coast.

After Taraweeh prayers, however, the bullets and shells ring out. Casualties are reported:

In Idlib Province, protesters chant victory chants:

Elsewhere in Idlib province, a defiant funeral for a protester killed Monday night:

Al Jazeera describes what happened early on Monday, as the Egyptian military cleared Tahrir Square, Cairo, of all protesters, breaking the long-standing sit-in protest there:

The Army arrives outside the square

As the army arrived, some groups tried to form a human chain to stop them from entering the Tahrir Square:

The army moves in

The attack:

The tents are torn down:

Some bystanders chanted against the army, and some chanted for it. In this video, some of the people are chanting in support of the army:

The aftermath:

Boehner represents the newest version of the philosophy that trickle-down economics creates jobs and taxes should not be raised on the “job creators” of corporations and those making more than $250,000 a year. Obama embodies the attempts to reverse tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of the population, since those tax cuts have expanded the deficit, have not created jobs, and have widened the wealth disparities.

At the end of the day, while liberals will push back against deep cuts in “entitlements” and conservatives will complain that cuts are not deep enough, these issues are not the reason why we have not seen compromise. The debate on taxes is the singular issue that is almost solely responsible for the stalemate that could lead the US to default on its debt.

The first question: “Can we afford to pay off this debt without raising the debt ceiling, the maximum amount of debt that the US Government can borrow?” The debate has already almost assured that ourcredit rating will be reduced, as Doug Holtz-Eakin, former economic adviser  to John McCain and currently President of the right-wing American Action Forum, explains why the debt ceiling needs to be raised:

So why hasn’t the debt ceiling been raised already? The Republicans in Congress have refused to raise the debt ceiling without making substantial cuts to government spending. The Democrats refuse to make substantial cuts without also increasing revenues — by closing tax loopholes, by ending subsidies to certain industries like the big oil companies, by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, or by a combination of those options. The President refuses to pass a short-term bill that puts off the debate, and he refused to invoke the 14th Amendment (“the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law …shall not be questioned”) or make a move that would raise the debt ceiling without also making the cuts.

In other words, for better or for worse, this debate has come down to the wire because of taxes.

Let’s crunch some simple math to find out how we got here. The chart below depicts the result of new-initiatives under both George W. Bush and Obama. It is not designed to be partisan (it was created by the Congressional Budget Office), but to show that Washington’s accounting has been deeply flawed for many years:

So, the chart shows that the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as expensive as all of Obama’s spending (even if we ignore the report from the Eisenhower Research Project that calculated that the true cost of the wars is over $4 trillion, not $1.5 trillion).  However, the further distinction is that George W. Bush is the first president in the history of the United States who went to war without passing a special tax to pay for it. The Bush tax cuts are even more expensive than the war.

Obama’s contribution to the debt is limited by comparison. On his watch, the stimulus was the single biggest line-item, and that is not a continuing program.  Health reform is a tiny line on this graph, is smaller than the prescription drug plan passed under Bush, and is almost entirely paid for by cuts in defence. And Bush’s stimulus spending, passed by many Republican members of the current Congress, accounts for more than 50% of the expenditure since 2001.

These facts are not to blame Bush or pass the buck but rather to learn from his record and to advance the discussion. Combine these factors with the loss of revenue due to the recession and the interest payments on the debt, and we get our current budget reality.

The Atlantic features a chart that clearly shows that if we could erase the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush-era tax cuts, the economic downturn, the TARP-Fannie-Freddie bailouts of the financial sector, and the recovery measures, then the current deficit — and most of the deficit projection for the next 8 years — would be zero or close to zero. In other words, the deficit does not have much to do with some sort of socialist-spending binge, but is the result of bad ideas (two unfunded wars, tax cuts for the wealthy) and bad times (the economic collapse and the efforts to stabilise the economy).

So, the question now is what to do with this information. The first step in this process is to ask whether the tax cuts actually created jobs:

There is no real evidence that the tax cuts for those making over $250,000 has increased the amount of money in the US economy or created jobs at home.

On the other hand, emergency government spending, in the form of short-term stimulus money, did create jobs, preventing the further slide of the economy. In fact, by March, Obama had presided over 13 months of private-secotr job creation (chart), completely reversing the direction of the economy that Obama inherited. The stimulus took approximately 6 months to really take effect, but once it did the private sector began its recovery. However, since the stimulus spending has stopped, public sector jobs have steadily declined and are now the anchor to the economic recovery. This trend will be intensified if the budget is significantly cut without adding additional revenue.

Not only did tax cuts fail to create jobs, but from 1980-2011, the tax burden has shifted, the middle class has paid more, the rich have paid less, and wealth disparities have increased dramatically. And still, no job creation as a result.

The next important thing to realize is that no matter who you blame (Bush, Obama, Clinton, Reagan, terrorists, bankers, or aliens from space) there is only one realistic path towards getting rid of the deficit: decrease costs and spending, and increase revenue:

A few lessons can be drawn from the numbers. First, the Bush tax cuts have had a huge damaging effect. If all of them expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels. Second, a healthy budget requires a healthy economy; recessions wreak havoc by reducing tax revenue. Government has to spur demand and create jobs in a deep downturn, even though doing so worsens the deficit in the short run. Third, spending cuts alone will not close the gap. The chronic revenue shortfalls from serial tax cuts are simply too deep to fill with spending cuts alone. Taxes have to go up.

It is important to note that, while taxes are the current dividing line, these two political parties have been on a collision course for quite some time, and this debate is unlikely to end this problem.  Philip Balboni of the Global Post sums it up concisely:

There is a growing realization here in the United States that as a result of all of the above factors (a near-recession economy, unfunded wars, an aging population, and a revenue drought) the United States has failed for too long to invest in the country’s infrastructure — both physical and intellectual. As a result, America is losing much of its future competitiveness in the global economy. Is something fundamentally wrong with America? Yes. Will a resolution of the current debt ceiling crisis resolve the real problems facing the country? No, it will not. America has a deep political malaise. Seldom before in the nation’s history have the two main parties been so bitterly divided and so unable to find common ground in the national interest. Average Americans are worried and deeply frustrated. Many are angry.

The bottom line is that the US needs to cut debt, raise revenue, and increase jobs.

To take this a step further: the US economy has undergone a fundamental shift from manufacturing to technological development. However, amidst tax cuts, war, and recessions, funding for science has been cut significantly. This in turns the US position as a developer of new technology, one important factor for the future American economy, as teachers are laid off and the costs of higher education rise.

The private sector has failed to pick up the slack. The rest of the developed world has moved towards increased subsidies for innovation — not oil wells but green tech, not tax breaks but funding for science — and higher education. It has invested in government-supervised health care to control costs because the private sector has failed to limited rising health care expendtiures, and it has increased investment in “infrastructure”, broadly described as systems that benefit the entire country (bridges that don’t collapse, internet and cell phone networks).

These programmes work. In the 1950s, ancestors of these programmes built the United States into the leading power in the world. But these programmes require money, and that money needs to come from the people who can most afford it.

This, however, is logic, and right now the American conversation is being driven by fear, creating a further crisis in the attempt to solve the initial one.  That fear is embodied in the idea that Obama is driving a far-left social agenda and a tax-and-spend socialism, and in the belief that taxes cannot be raised without killing the American economy. But President Reagan raised taxes 11 times, including during a recession, and Obama has cut taxes. Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times, and Obama is trying to pass a plan that will only require him to do it once. President Eisenhower stimulated the economy by subsidizing higher education and by building infrastructure, but today he would be considered a socialist for his initiatives. Fifty years later, taxes are at an unrealistic historic low, much lower than they were under all Republican administrations.

The fear is unfounded. The taxes are too low, the debate has gone on too long, and it is time that the Republicans compromise on revenue so that the nation is brought into line with what all of the facts are telling us.

In Syria, July 22nd may be remembered as a turning point. There were massive demonstrations in every major region, and in every major city, in the country. At least 11 people died, in the latest chapter of Arab Spring. I liveblog the developments of Arab Spring almost every weekday, and today ranks in my memory as one of the most impressive days of defiance I’ve seen yet.

In EA Worldview’s first video live-blog, Scott Lucas documented protests in Idlib in the northwest, Artouz (Damascus province), Binnish (northwest), a truly massive protest in Hama (claims of 650,000+ protesters in the streets), Aleppo, Saraqab (Idlib province), Qamishili (northeast), Horan (south), Kobanî (Ain Arab) and Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ain) in the Kurdish area of Syria, Kafr Nabl in the northwest, and the Midan section at the heart of Damascus.

In our second video special, we see more massive protests in the Midan and Al-Qadam districts of Damascus, the suburbs of Damascus (Tal Rifaat, Harasta), huge crowds in Deir Ez Zor, northeast Syria, where as many as 550,000 gathered, Zabadani (north of Damascus), Idlib (northwest), Halfaya (Hama province), Jableh on the coast, Al-Raqqa, Lattakia, Homs, and the largest protest in Hama we’ve seen yet.

In one of the most important videos from Friday, Syrian security bashes into the Amne Mosque in Aleppo, beating protesters. Perhaps even more important, the video posted below shows that military cadets joined the protesters in Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, a city that has been unable to foster a sustained protest movement, but a city that erupted in protest today.

While concerns have been mounting that Syria is approaching a sectarian civil war, the Local Coordinating Committees rejected this idea this week, and the youth of Latakia released a statement stating that the Assad regime wanted sectarian violence, but the the opposition in Syria needed to respect minorities and remain united.

Friday, the Syrian regime may have been counting on divisions between the Kurds and the Arabs to hinder protests in northeastern Syria, but they have miscalculated. Security forces have attempted to disrupt protests in both Qawalishi and Hassake. An eyewitness tells Al Jazeera English:

“There were rumours that the Kurds would not protest today because of disagreements with other opposition groups on the issue of naming a future Syria, the Syrian Arab Republic…The regime was betting on cracks emerging between Arabs and Kurds, but today’s demonstrations in the Kurdish areas prove that the Kurds still share the same united goals of the revolution.”

The security forces have fled Hama and Deir Ez Zor, they are trying to quell the protests in Homs and around Damascus and Aleppo, but they are not succeeding. It is hard to imagine that the regime has any strongholds of significance left. Through crackdowns, and threats of sectarian violence, the protests have only grown in both scale, scope, and reach. To repeat the rhetorical questions I asked earlier on Friday; Where AREN’T they protesting in Syria?

Perhaps an even more pressing rhetorical question; How can the Assad regime possibly expect to survive this level of democratic upheaval?