UN General Assembly Vote Reflects Shift In Syrian Public Opinion

It’s not hard to find critics of the Assad government in the Governorate (Muhafazat) of Homs or for that matter, to varying degrees in Syria’s other thirteen Governorates according to Syrian analysts interviewed by this observer and reports from human rights groups including lawyers representing dissidents in Syria. However, after nearly 27 months of turmoil, the public opinion pendulum is markedly shifting back in support of the current regime. One international political result was registered at the United Nations... Read article

Professor Falk Graces Lebanon And Gets An Ear Full

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Professor Richard Falk, came to Lebanon last week on an unofficial visit to survey opinion while fact finding the condition in Palestinian refugee’s camps. It was the Professors first visit to Lebanon since the fateful summer of 1982. Back then, en route by sea to Beirut, which was under Israeli siege and blockade, Falk was Vice-Chair of the Sean McBride Commission of Inquiry into Israeli crimes against Lebanon. Mid –way between Cyprus and Lebanon, the Zionist navy,... Read article

Pushing Al Qaeda To Take On Hezbollah

Zionists and Gulf Monarchs Ponder… Beirut – “This is one damn fine idea, what took us so long to see a simple solution that was right in front of our eyes for Christ’s sake”, Senator John McCain of “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” and “no-fly zones for Syria” notoriety, reportedly demanded to know from Dennis Ross during a recent Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) brain storming session in Washington DC.  Ross, a founder of WINEP with Israeli government start up cash (presumably reimbursed unknowingly... Read article

Has The Arab League Mortally Wounded Itself By Declaring War On Syria?

Frankly, it never was much of a “League” of Arab states. And arguably it never really achieved  a whole lot but two dozen  lavish ‘summits’  offering inflated rhetoric, often calculated to assuage the Arab people about their central cause, Palestine. This, despite high hopes across Arabia when its founders promulgated a Charter on March 22, 1945 and took a solemn oath to prevent the theft of Palestine by European colonists. Yet, notions of fundamental fairness require that we all acknowledge, that to its credit,... Read article

A Draft-Dodging, Zionist Friendly, Right-wing Texan Islamist To Lead Syria?

Could the White House Have Dreamt for More? Damascus - For the past year, a plan C or D, depending on how one numbers the failed US-Israel projects in Syria was badly needed for those presuming to topple the Assad government. And this week, according  to Congressional staffers, both Tel Aviv and the White House are pinching themselves in disbelief over their good luck with  installing republican leaning conservative Dixie businessman, the congenial, Ghassan Hitto, as Syria’s new interim Prime Minister. Securing the... Read article

The Oft-Predicted Fickle Syrian ‘Tipping Point’ Has Tipped

Can Washington and Her Allies Stop Syria’s Reconciliation Efforts? Damascus - This observer lost count more than a year ago of the sheer number of predictions by analysts and lobbyists that the “tipping point” signaling the Assad government’s collapse was a sure thing and would happen any time now. “It’s just a matter of days, not weeks” President Obama declared back in 2011. Based on personal observations and interviews with a fair number of informed people who actually live in Syria, as opposed to the Zionist... Read article

Israel Instructs Obama: “Iranian And Syrian Sanctions Are Not Painful Enough!”

Damascus – Iran is expected to meet with other world powers in Astana, Kazakhstan to discuss its nuclear program. Discussions that the occupiers of Palestine fervently hope will not be successful. It is toward this end that their key demand this week to the US Congress, the White House and the European Union is “to cast responsibility on the Iranians by blaming them for the talks’ failure in the clearest terms possible.” According to the Al-Monitor of 3/19/13, Israel also demands that the countries meeting in... Read article

Will Washington Grasp The Hand Being Offered By The Iranian People?

Truth told, this American observer has attended his share of international conferences and has traveled in more than 70 countries. But never has he visited such  a complex country, evolving culture,  and striving  energized society, populated by idealistic people of great warmth, sense of humor and caring for those in need as he experiences in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Except when traveling in his own country. Being in Iran during these tense times is to experience an epiphany. Which is that Iranians and Americans... Read article

US Officials Confess To Targeting Iran’s Civilian Population

Condemned By Every Syllable They Utter… Tehran — Azadeh, a graduate law student from Tehran University, on the sidelines of Iran’s Third Annual Hollywoodism (www.hollywoodism.orghttp) reminded her interlocutors, of the obvious damming admissions last week by two US politicians: “It would be a defense lawyer’s worst nightmare wouldn’t it? I mean to have one’s clients, in this case the Vice-President of the United States and the outgoing Secretary of state confess so publicly to serial international... Read article

Syria’s First Line of Defense: Dial 133

Damascus – There are more than 9000 of them. Predominately young but of all ages. Volunteers everyone. Often risking their lives just to come for a twelve hour work-shift, as many as seven days a week at the Syrian Arab Republic Red Crescent Society (SARCS) Emergency Operation center. Located at The New Zahera (blooming flowers) Hospital in Damascus just to the south of Yarmouk refugee camp, SARCS has its main emergency response teams HQ.  It is here where Syrians, some Palestinians and even a few from the region... Read article

US-led Sanctions Contribute To The Destruction of Syria’s Millenary History

Barring Medicines In Syria… What a difference a week can make. The heaviest snow in Syria in a quarter-century, some claimed, last week’s storm closed for a time even the main highway from Damascus to Beirut. But that was then and now its spring in Damascus, or so it feels to those of us used to New England Januarys. It’s nearly downright balmy here. Spring flowers are bursting out all over and the city parks are crowded with mothers pushing baby carriages, kids playing and young lovers cooing softly on the park... Read article

Shedding Crocodile Tears While Collaborating With U.S.-Led Sanctions

DAMASCUS — One powerful image from Damascus that has become seared into this observers mind these days is when I walk by a Western Union office. Most of them remain open despite the brutal US-led sanctions which in their pervasive effects target almost entirely the civilian population. But all Western Union offices were closed last Thursday and Friday due to heavy snowfall, which some say is the deepest here for more than a quarter century. Still, some Syrians braved the extreme cold and could be seen huddled outside some... Read article

“Mr. Obama, Tear Down These Sanctions!”

A cri de coeur from a student at Damascus University… Damascus - This observer has learned from time in this region that if one wants to learn what is happening on the ground politically and socially it is fine to speak with government officials, journalists, long tenured academicians, NGO’s, and people on the street. But I have learned that one of the best sources of objective information comes from university students. As explained to one official the other day, if ones sit with half a dozen graduate students... Read article

Assad At The Opera House

Tipping Point or Turning Point? Damascus – Easy walking distance from this observer’s hotel near the city center, the Damascus Opera House, the site of yesterday’s Presidential  address, was inaugurated in May of 2004 by the President and his wife, 
completing a project of his late father, Hafez, who actually planned the 
opera house in detail, but which had been put on hold since the late 1970’s.  
Located off Umayyad Square, the multipurpose culture center complex, 
presented its most recent... Read article

Will Syria Go On Offense At The Hague?

Even before the historic 139 to 8 vote of the UN General Assembly on November 29 of this year which opened up a plethora of legal remedies for Palestinians, a “legal intifada” — to borrow a phrase from Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law and a longtime advocate of advancing resistance to the illegal occupation of Palestine through the rule of law — has been taking form in this region. The reasons include nearly seven decades of countless Zionist crimes against Muslims and Christians in occupied... Read article

Syria: Palestinian Camp Empties Pending Government Counter-Attack

A few thoughts rushed through this observers mind when he saw a distraught looking woman sitting alone, tightly holding two babies, at one corner of the vast parking lot of the central Damascus bus station known as Al-Soumariyeh. It is from here where inexpensive transportation can be had for those traveling west, east, north and south. One thought was about a character out of a Charles Dickens novel and the other was ‘waif, frail, malnourished, frightened’, so the lady, holding the babies appeared. She managed a polite... Read article

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