The most important weapon in the popular movement’s hands in its newest wave is understanding and comprehending the lessons learned by its previous wave, and benefitting from the major lessons enriching the collective human heritage of peoples’ movements towards extracting their rights.

Syria-related events and developments are moving fast inside Syria and in its surroundings, near and far. This is connected to several factors, the most important of which on the external level is the continued shift in the international balance of power against American and Zionist interests, in parallel with the approaching deadlines that Astana is working on and the increased coordination between Astana and major Arab countries. On the internal level, there is the continuation and gradual expansion of the new wave of popular movement.

The new wave of the popular movement in Syria is still in its infancy, and possibilities are still open before it – the positive and the negative ones. This is the nature of things. That the movement develops peacefully and with just and rational slogans that bring together the plundered who are 90% of the population, this does not serve extremists in either the regime or the opposition. It also does not serve them that the movement gets rid of the processes of copying and pasting forms and slogans dating back to 2011. As such, those extremists encourage the preservation of those slogans and forms and highlight them.

The share of wages in the national income is divided into two main items: the wages/salaries block and the subsidy block. Any talk of increasing wages should consider these two items together.

In recent days, an organized media-political and psychological campaign has been taking place, in which extremists in both the regime and the opposition alike are participating, as if one central button had been pushed.

The Syrian atmosphere is in a state of pent-up anger accompanied by cautious anticipation. People’s living conditions have reached unbearable limits. Additionally, the processes of lifting subsidies and the state’s withdrawal from playing any social role are in full swing, and even witnessed a new shift forward after what happened in the People’s Assembly recently, where the official price hikes witnessed a new and comprehensive wave, while the meager wages remained the same.

The tension and uproar that took place last week about the exchange rate, the living situation, the extraordinary session of the People’s Assembly, and the government’s behavior during it, reflect a deep crisis whose roots go back to 2005. That year implementation of liberal policies began under the name of the “social market economy”, in accordance with the recommendations and demands of the IMF and the World Bank. This continues to this day and with greater acceleration than ever before.

Sarouja’s tragedy (a fire that burned down a significant part of a neighborhood in Old Damascus on July 16) is being approached from several angles, all of which have in common attempts to overlook the essence of the issue, and even work to cover and hide it.

In July 2021, the minimum wage in Syria was increased to 71,000 Syrian pounds (SYP). Now, two years later, it has reached 93,000 SYP. Let’s look at this “increase” from the perspective of the SYP’s purchasing power and the exchange rate against the dollar.

Preparations continue for a long-discussed and long-awaited pivotal BRICS summit, the Johannesburg, South Africa Summit, in August 2023.