NewsTrust - Syria - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Obama slams GOP for casual war talk re Iran, stresses Costs

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama, in his Super Tuesday news conference, explained his thinking on Iran and tensions between it and Israel. The most impressive thing he said was, Now, what’s said on the campaign trail – those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities. They’re not Commander-in-Chief. And when I see the casualness with which some [...]

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Obama Limits Criticism of Ongoing Arab Spring Violent Crackdowns in Syria, Bahrain

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jun. 22 (Interview) - The Obama administration has issued minor criticism of human rights abuses against peaceful protests by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and the monarchy in Bahrain. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just recently said the conflict in Yemen would end only if President Ali Abdullah Saleh "steps down." We speak with University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole about why the United States has not been more vocal in supporting these pro-democracy movements in a region of strategic importance.

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Maher Arar: My Rendition & Torture in Syrian Prison Highlights U.S. Reliance on Syria As An Ally

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jun. 13 (Interview) - As Syria continues its brutal crackdown on demonstrators, we speak to a Canadian citizen who was repeatedly tortured by Syrian authorities after he was rendered to Syria by the United States in 2002. Maher Arar was seized at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 and sent to Syria, where he was tortured and interrogated in a tiny underground cell for nearly a year. He now works as a human rights advocate in Canada. “The cooperation with the Syrian government, as well as other dictatorships post-9/11, gave some legitimacy to those dictatorships,” says Arar. He calls on the United States and the United Nations to declare the Syrian regime illegitimate, and refer the matter to the International Criminal Court.

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"A Country of Dark Corners": Freed Journalist Dorothy Parvaz on Her Syrian Detention and the Assad Regime Crackdown

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Dorothy Parvaz - Jun. 02 (Interview) - Al Jazeera correspondent Dorothy Parvaz disappeared for 19 days when she flew to Damascus to cover the uprising there at the end of April. Parvaz was jailed in a Syrian prison, where she underwent interrogation and witnessed the abuse of pro-democracy protesters. She was ultimately deported to Iran, where she was detained again and then finally released. We speak with Parvaz about her ordeal and the unfolding human rights crisis in Syria.

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Hundreds of Thousands of Arabs Protest their Governments

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - On Friday, the US Congress endeavored to decide whether American democracy has irretrievably broken down because the representatives of the Billionaires refused to compromise with the representatives of the People (“cutting spending” while “cutting taxes

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The End Of History

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Jon Evans - Feb. 13 (Opinion) - The world is quaking. Egypt and Tunisia are overthrown; Algeria, Gabon, Jordan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are rocking. Some say this is thanks to Twitter and Facebook. Others, notably Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov, say that social media are politically irrelevant and/or dangerous. China has censored “Egypt”, Syria has legalized Facebook, and the president of Sudan has declared he will use social media to crush his enemies. You couldn’t make this stuff up. What’s going on? Who to believe? Fear not. I can explain. Everyone is right, and what’s going on is nothing more than the end of international politics and history as we know them. Welcome to our brave new world, and about time, too. The old one sure was miserable while it lasted.

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Jamal Dajani: The Russians Are Coming

Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - May. 14 (Opinion) - Israel expressed "deep disappointment" Thursday over a meeting the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held this week in Syria with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, saying the organization must play a role in peace efforts.

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Iraq: Elections But No Stability

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Mar. 19 (Opinion) - With close to 90% of the votes tallied in Iraq's parliamentary elections, the coalition headed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken a slim lead over the bloc led by his main challenger, Iyad Allawi. A day ago, it was the later. Since March

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No Peace Without Syria

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Commentary Magazine - By Michael J. Totten - Sep. 06 (Opinion) - No Arab government in the world is as stridently anti-Israel, in both action and rhetoric, as Assad’s. There is no better way for a detested Alawite regime to curry favor with Sunnis in Syria and the Arab world as a whole than by adopting the anti-Zionist cause as its own.

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Syria Reactor Story a Diversion, But From What?

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - This story seems to me fishy. Syria is a poor state. Where would it have gotten the money for a reactor? Why exactly are there doubts that North Korea was involved? How much of the intelligence is from US sources and how much from Israeli? The latter are highly politicized. The head of Mossad in 2002 expressed confidence that Saddam was close to getting nukes.

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What kind of democracy is this?

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Link TV - By Abu Rami - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - Abu Rami feels that America needs to treat the people of the Middle East as well as U.S. citizens -- and that President Bush is a "butcher."

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Damascus: The Destruction of The Old City

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Yazan Badran - Apr. 20 (Opinion) - Damascus prides itself on being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. The history of Damascus goes back well into 8000 BC. In every corner of its ancient alleys there's a taste of every historical era there was to be found. The city that had withstood everything from earthquakes to invasions for nearly 10 millennia, is now crumbling under the threat of... "Modernism"!

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Noam Chomsky, Terrorists Wanted the World Over

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt, Noam Chomsky - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - On February 13, Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hizbollah, was assassinated in Damascus. "The world is a better place without this man in it," State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said: "one way or the other he was brought to justice." Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell added that Moughniyeh has been "responsible for more deaths of Americans and Israelis than any other terrorist with the exception of Osama bin Laden." Joy was unconstrained in Israel too, as "one of the U.S. and Israel's most wanted men" was brought to justice, the London Financial Times reported. Under the heading, "A militant wanted the world over," an accompanying story reported that he was "superseded on the most-wanted list by Osama bin Laden" after 9/11 and so ranked only second among "the most wanted militants in the world." The terminology is accurate enough, according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse, which defines "the world" as the political class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with them on specific matters).

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Bloggers Without Borders...

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:10:00 -0700

Baghdad Burning - By River - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - Iraqis who entered Syria before the visa was implemented were getting a one month visitation visa at the border. As soon as that month was over, you could take your passport and visit the local immigration bureau. If you were lucky, they would give you an additional month or two. When talk about visas from the Syrian embassy began, they stopped giving an extension on the initial border visa. We, as a family, had a brilliant idea. Before the commotion of visas began, and before we started needing a renewal, we decided to go to one of the border crossings, cross into Iraq, and come back into Syria- everyone was doing it. It would buy us some time- at least 2 months.

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To Damascus with Nancy Pelosi

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 10:14:38 -0700

Salon - By Joe Conason - Apr. 06 (Opinion) - With her brief visit to Syria, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has provoked an outburst of flaming hysteria from the Bush administration, as well as from the neoconservatives who fashioned its ruinous war and failed foreign policies. The screaming critics of the speaker charge her with undermining presidential power, freelancing Mideast diplomacy, appeasing a terrorist regime and even surrendering to Islamist radicalism by donning a head scarf. By merely meeting with Bashar Assad, the Syrian president, Pelosi supposedly proved that she was eager to promote irresponsible partisanship at the cost of national unity and constitutional order.

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Road to Damascus

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 11:21:05 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - The Iraq Study Group recommended that Iraq's neighbors be engaged in a positive dialogue about the future of Iraq. In this process they stressed the need to start a dialogue with Iraq's two most potentially troublesome neighbors, Syria and Iran. The Bush White House mumbled positive words about the study group, but its conduct has had little to do with the group's recommendations.

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Speaker Pelosi Lambasted By Israel For Her Diplomatic Disaster

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 11:14:51 -0700

Gateway Pundit - Apr. 05 (Opinion) - It's time for Speaker Pelosi to hang up her hijab and come on home.

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