The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group based in the UK, says 194 people, including 52 children and 29 women, have been killed and hundreds more injured in three days of attacks on Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held suburb of Damascus.

The Syrian state news agency SANA reports that rebel forces have responded to the bombings with mortar attacks, killing eight people, including three children.

But the worst may still be to come: SOHR told the Associated Press that pro-government forces have brought in reinforcements in the past few days and that a larger offensive by the Assad regime may be coming. A video showing the commander of an elite Syrian military force threatening an attack has also been circulating on pro-Assad social media accounts in recent days, according to the New York Times.

“I promise I will teach them a lesson, in combat and in fire,” Gen. Suheil al-Hassan, commander of the elite Tiger Forces, says in the video. “You won’t find a rescuer. And if you do, you will be rescued with water like boiling oil. You’ll be rescued with blood.”

Closing off supply routes and repeatedly conducting bombing and missile attacks was a similar tactic used by the Russia-backed Assad regime during the retaking of Aleppo, one of the largest cities in Syria that was once under rebel control.

The Syrian government has denied that it is preventing humanitarian organizations from entering Eastern Ghouta. However, the Syrian government has complete control over who is allowed to enter and who is not. The United Nations has made only one delivery to the regions since November 2017, according to a UN official."

source-https://www.vox.com/world/2018/2/20/17032640/assad-syria-bombings -

Here’s how Mr. Xi has used the tried-and-true strategies of autocrats to present himself as a transformative figure.

Perhaps the most telling sign of Mr. Xi’s dominance came last month, when he was awarded a second five-year term as China’s leader.

The layouts of Communist Party newspapers are carefully designed to signal the relative power of top officials after leadership reshuffles every five years. For decades, the front page of People’s Daily embodied a “collective leadership” model as the party sought to spread power more evenly after Mao's death in 1976.

But Mr. Xi was awarded a different layout. His beaming face evoked the days of one-man rule and unmistakably placed him on a pedestal with Mao.

The faces of the other six members of China’s most powerful body are barely visible.

During his decades in power, Mao exerted virtually unchecked authority over the government. Even as Mao’s decisions led to violence across China during the Cultural Revolution, splitting families and engulfing the country in chaos, the media depicted him as a generous leader motivated only by his love of country.

This poster of Mao, circa 1968, calls for unity against “class enemies.”Chinese Posters Foundation

Mr. Xi is far from cultivating Mao’s sort of following. And historians said creating and maintaining the image of a cult figure is trickier than it was in the days of Mao, when the novelty of loudspeakers and television were able to reach a more receptive and captive audience

In the front-page version of Mr. Xi’s portrait, the color and saturation were adjusted, hiding gray hairs and skin imperfections and giving the photo the feel of a painting, said Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth College and an expert on photo forensics.

The processed image evokes the same visual style as portraits of Mao, said Jan Plamper, professor of history at Goldsmiths, University of London. “It’d be like depicting Trump more like George Washington.”

At the height of the Mao era, people displayed his image in their homes and wore it as a badge on their clothing. The ubiquity of the image in the most private spaces of Chinese life helped to give him a deified status, said Pang Laikwan, a professor of cultural studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“Loving Mao was in the air and part of people’s everyday life,” Ms. Pang said. “There was no alternative.”

Mr. Xi’s slogans are splashed across front pages, and his speeches dominate the evening news. His voice booms from giant television screens in busy plazas and his image hangs inside homes, restaurants and taxi cabs – often alongside Mao’s."
-source  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/09/world/asia/xi-propaganda.html?action=click&contentCollection=Asia%20Pacific&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article    -

‘Steamer!’ he yelled. ‘Look out, guv’nor! Bang over’ead! Lay down quick!’

‘Steamer’ was a nickname which, for some reason, the proles applied to rocket bombs. Winston promptly flung himself on his face. The proles were nearly always right when they gave you a warning of this kind. They seemed to possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance when a rocket was coming, although the rockets supposedly travelled faster than sound. Winston clasped his forearms above his head. There was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave; a shower of light objects pattered on to his back. When he stood up he found that he was covered with fragments of glass from the nearest window.

He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 metres up the street. A black plume of smoke hung in the sky, and below it a cloud of plaster dust in which a crowd was already forming around the ruins. There was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from the bloody stump, the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast.

He kicked the thing into the gutter, and then, to avoid the crowd, turned down a side-street to the right. Within three or four minutes he was out of the area which the bomb had affected, and the sordid swarming life of the streets was going on as though nothing had happened.''
Chapter 8