The biggest news from the past two days is an attack by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on several military installations just outside Damascus, the most significant sign to date of the FSA becoming a serious rebel group. Walter Russell Mead thinks this is great news:
[S]igns that the unorganized, popular unrest is mutating from political actions directed against the government into sectarian violence is going to make a lot of rich and powerful Syrians extremely nervous. The Assad family is accepted because it brings stability; if it is driving the country into anarchy and meltdown, many powerful Syrian interests who have stuck with the Assads this long will begin to think about change.
Michael Weiss sees Syria's Kurds as a key lever point. The NYT hosts an in-depth discussion as to why Turkey, who's sheltering some FSA soldiers, has broken so hard against Assad of late. Assad's people, for their part, are attacking the embassies of Arab League states in Damascus. Speaking of embassies, Damascene protestors gather behind the Iranian one:
Here, Fadwa Sulaiman, a prominent Syrian actress and one of the Guardian's four Syrian "bloggers to follow," leads a demonstration in chants of "no Salafis, no Brotherhood, the Syrians want freedom:"
Finally, a difficult video of how torture works – a group of activists are beaten and whipped with belts (a common regime form of torture) until they chant slogans against an "enemy" of Assad:
The Dish 