As the Red Cross reports that the humanitarian situation is getting steadily worse, David Kenner reports on how the impoverishment of Syria's own baby boom generation precipitated the revolt:
As Bashar strengthened his ties with the nouveaux riches in Damascus and Aleppo, the children of the countryside found themselves left out in the cold. The International Statistical Institute's World Fertility Survey's report on Syria shows that rural women birthed roughly three more children, on average, than their urban counterparts during the peak of the country's demographic boom. Many of these youths looked to make it good in Syria's rapidly swelling urban centers, straining the capacity of these cities to the limit.
But whether these Syrians stayed in the country or made their way to the cities, they found it nearly impossible to pull themselves up from the bootstraps.
Stephanie Saldaña examines [NYT] how Assad's crackdown is starting to engulf Syrian Christians. Justin Vela embeds with the Free Syrian Army. Aryn Baker and Walter Russell Mead look at how Hezbollah's support for Assad's brutality is damaging its standing amongst Arab publics. Egyptian blogger Zeinobia unveils a massive collection of videos from Syria. Below is an extraordinary video (via James Miller) of a protest in Homs carrying on with gunfire clearly audible in the background:
This video of a protest comes from Tartus, a Mediterranean port where documentation of protests has been comparatively rare:
Finally, listen to a group of protestors yell for an ambulance after discovering this badly bloodied man has a heartbeat:
The Dish 