Syria uses red tape, threats to control U.N. aid agencies

Insight: Syria uses red tape, threats to control U.N. aid agencies | Reuters.

More Syrian children could die of cold and starvation in the early months of 2014 than during all the period of violence and mayhem that has been unleashed by Assad since early 2011. The genocide continues by other means. The international community’s dithering on stopping Assad, on lending support to moderate rebels and on rising up to the humanitarian challenges posed by refugee flows have paved the way to this moment: the international community is equally culpable in this genocide.

Refuge: 18 Stories from the Syrian Exodus

Refuge | The Washington Post.

Stories of Syrian Refugees encapsulate the Arab World’s new Nakba – While some societies evolve, we stumble on from one Nakba to the next. We can blame the world as much as we want, and we will have a point, but change will not come until we acknowledge our part in our repeated victimization. “Canned” responses and ideologies will not produce the needed change.

News Outlets Urge Syria Rebels to Halt Abductions

News Outlets Urge Syria Rebels to Halt Abductions – ABC News.

If these news outlets took a serious look at the reports their journalists have been producing since the beginning of the Revolution they would know that there are two parties involved in kidnapping journalists in Syria: the regime and Al-Qaeda. They would also know that moderate rebels have consistently been involved in protecting journalists or trying to secure their release from their captors by offering prisoner exchange deals when the regime was involved, with the regime always rejecting such offers, or, on occasions, by attacking Al-Qaeda hideouts and securing the release of kidnapped journalists by force.

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Advancing Freedom and Fundamental Rights Demands a Global Effort

Advancing Freedom and Fundamental Rights Demands a Global Effort | The George W. Bush Institute.

Amanda Schnetzer is director of Human Freedom at the George W. Bush Institute co-authored this op-ed commemorating the International Human Rights Day and calling for a global push to advance human rights. The op-ed includes a reference to my interview in the Freedom Collection: … By the same token, a lack of international outcry can do serious damage to nonviolent dissident efforts. In his contribution to the Freedom Collection, Syrian activist Ammar Abdulhamid lamented the “international indifference” to dictator Bashar Al-Assad’s attacks against his own citizens. “[H]e used tanks, and no one said anything. Then he used heavy artillery, and no one said anything. Then he used helicopter gunships, and no one said anything . . . In these kinds of conditions, you cannot sustain a nonviolent momentum.”