An interesting piece in today’s NOW Lebanon looks at how politics, sectarianism and religious fear have combined to silence many of Lebanon and Syria’s Christian clergy from denouncing the distinctly not peaceful, unforgiving, uncharitable and certainly non loving crackdown on Syria’s pro-democracy protestors.

On the streets of Homs, where three Syrians were killed yesterday just as soon as a visiting UN humanitarian delegation had left, the crowd sang out their joy at the imminent fall of another Arab dictator with the expectation their own would soon follow.

"Al Qadaffi tar tar! Isha dorak ya Bashar!" which roughly translates as "Qadaffi flew Away! Your turn is next Bashar!" As they marched through the street the crowd of hundreds chanted out, “God damn your soul Hafez!” referring to Syria’s former dictator, Hafez al-Assad.

Things just don’t seem to be going Bashar al-Assad’s way. No sooner had he gone on state-run Syria TV for a scripted interview, the exact content of which had been revealed earlier by Syrian journalist Sami Moubayed, see here, but Libya’s rebels had stormed Tripoli and the 42-year rule of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, one year longer than the Assad family’s rule over Syria, was coming to a swift end.

"As long as Qaddafi held on, the Syrian regime took comfort and felt it had a free hand to do as he wanted without fear of the international community, which had its plate full with Libya," said a pro-democracy dissident in Damascus, quoted in The National.

"Now that Qaddafi is finished, Syria will be the focus for the Arab Spring and international pressure," he continued. "That means those calculations [by the Syrian regime] will have to change; Assad has more reason to worry now than he did two days ago, the end is drawing closer."

Syria’s leading youth opposition network, which organizes and publicizes pro-democracy protests, has hailed coordinated statements by the US and EU demanding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down.

“The US and European position now is consistent with the explicit demand of the Syrian people to overthrow the president,” Omar Idlibi, spokesman for the opposition network Local Coordination Committees (LCC) told Global Post.

“Now we can say the international community started to take responsibility for the crimes committed by the regime. They have lost confidence in the man they gambled on for five months.”

In a written statement released by the White House, US President Barack Obama said Assad had failed to follow through on promises to reform and instead escalated a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists that rights groups say has killed over 2,000 civilians since mid-March. The regime argues it is battling an armed insurgency and that several hundred members of the security forces have died.

"His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people," Obama said. "We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside."