EVEN by the standards of Syrian state television, the gap between fact and fiction yawned unusually wide on July 15th. With street battles rattling Damascus, the capital, for the first time in Syria’s 17-month uprising, a roaming camera crew struggled to find a picture of reassurance. “Nothing’s happening! Its completely quiet!” a trio of veiled women shouted at the microphone poked through their car window, as gunfire crackled in the background. They seemed anxious to speed off, as did a lone pedestrian waylaid on an eerily deserted boulevard, who briskly agreed that things were “normal—very, very normal”.
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