Desperate Moves!

What’s happening these days in Syria?


According to the local media and such nationalist outlets as al- Jazeerah, which continues to undermine itself as a source of credible news coverage, the Mehlis investigation is in shambles and Syria’s economy is stronger than ever, with more signs of openness and more business deals getting signed on a daily basis and more luxury restaurants and hotels getting established.  Continue reading “Desperate Moves!” →

The Necessity of Leadership!

What is it that moves a people to action? What is that inspires them? That rejuvenates them? That gives them hope? That motivates them? That gets them off their asses and into the streets, regardless of the dangers they are about to face?

It can’t be desperation, for how can desperation ever inspire hope? Albeit you can despair of something/someone and decide to simply latch your hopes on something/someone else.  Continue reading “The Necessity of Leadership!” →

Heretical Democracy!

I was recently asked, both as “an activist and a thinker,” how I would choose to define certain basic terms such as democracy and civil society. Well, below is my attempt at defining democracy, comments and corrections are appreciated:

 

Democracy is a system of governance that is meant to facilitate continuous interplay and negotiations, both direct and indirect, between various interest groups, regardless of how they are defined, be it on the basis of ethnicity, religion, tribe, gender, profession, sexual orientation and/or age, within the framework of a specific entity, state and/or a region, with the aim of achieving: 1) a greater respect for the basic human rights and freedoms of all, 2) a periodic, peaceful and transparent transfer of power, 3) rule of law, and 4) public accountability.  Continue reading “Heretical Democracy!” →

Euphoria Turns to Panic!

For all the blows that the Mehlis investigation has supposedly received and for all those commentators so willing to declare that the French and Americans have backed off for now, leaving the door open for a potential deal with the regime, the popular mood in Syria has grown grim once again.

 

The stories propagated by the “recantant witness” seem like distant memories now. Their chief protagonist seems to have already sunk back into oblivion. The euphoria he inspired seems to have dissipated all too quickly, somehow. But then, it was never really a genuine expression of anything other than despair.  Continue reading “Euphoria Turns to Panic!” →