SYRIAN PRESIDENT FACES INTERNATIONAL AND INTERNAL PRESSURE

A mention in News Hour Online:

“Bashar [Assad] is being asked to get rid of the old guard and create a new government,” Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian activist and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said at a press briefing. “This is what is expected of him. It’s the only way he can cooperate with the [Mehlis] investigation.”

The General & the Heretic!

Reading the name of my chief interrogator, AKA General Dashing, all over the “deleted” sections in the Mehlis Report, I find it hard to believe that such a figure found time to interrogate someone like me in the midst of all these developments. Was I really considered such a major threat? Or was he in the habit of interrogating everybody? Continue reading “The General & the Heretic!” →

A Conference in Venice – Part Three!

“Irak sotto nueva dittatura”

Well, well, Venice is still capable of boisterous pronouncements I see. This graffiti scribbled in bold red on a hapless wall in Old Venice is proof enough that no matter how old a city gets and not matter how senile, it is still capable of making such boisterous pronouncements. The words of defiance streaming out of Damascus then, should come as no surprise. Continue reading “A Conference in Venice – Part Three!” →

The Enigma of Damascus

By JAMES BENNET – New York Times

Ammar Abdulhamid, 39, runs the Tharwa Project, which tracks treatment of minorities in the region. He had a fellowship at the Brookings Institution in Washington last fall, and he has decorated his Damascus office with photographs from his walk to work along Connecticut Avenue. One shows the American flag through the bare limbs of trees. When I stopped by, he called the regime ”defunct” and the Baathists ”idiots” and ”morons” while we were still settling into our seats. He saw no alternative in civil society either. ”They all want a leader or a messiah,” he said. He did not advocate ”bloody revolution,” he said. But he also said that the civil strife accompanying regime change in Iraq might be the only way forward in the region. ”Stagnation is killing our souls and our minds,” he said. ”Hopefully, this baptism by blood and mayhem will teach us to cherish the liberties.”