i predict... jailtime

There was a little noticed AFP report that went out yesterday detailing the fact that the Jamal al-Atassi Forum for National Dialogue was ordered to shut down by security services this past week in Damascus.

The board of the Atassi Forum has declared this ban to be invalid, citing the irregular source of the authority. They plan to meet tomorrow, July 2, to continue with their program of reform and opposition.

Who wants to bet they get arrested? Only back on May 24th eight members, including Suhair al-Attasi, daughter of Jamal, were rounded up at dawn and thrown into prison for six days without charges, finally being released on the 30th. This was just three days before President Bashar al-Assad convened the 10th Ba'ath Party National Congress, where he declared that there would be a loosening of the emergency laws and that the Ba'ath party would reduce it's role as the ultimate arbitrer of politics in Syria.

Guess he wasn't serious. Who'da thunk it?

It appears as though Bashar, in addition to merely appeasing his base, timed his Congress to coincide with an increase of American pressure on the country, and his proclamations were timed to hit the newswires and spread the gospel of Syrian freedom. After all, arrests of dissidents get far less attention than promises of human rights.

I'm not sure that it's working however- if you'll notice, Ghazi Kanaan, the interior minister, and Rustum Ghazali, chief of military intelligence in Lebanon, just had their assets frozen by the US Department of the Treasury. What does this mean for them? That they can't do business in American banks or with American entities, which they weren't really doing anyway. The actual effects of the freeze are political and psychological- a further escalation of the tension between Syria and the US.

The NY Times rounds it up here.