If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
With the horrors becoming a household story, at least in the west, it is useful to remind ourselves what prominent world figures said about Bashar Assad until very recently.
In democracies, voters know what the president's formal, constitutional powers are. And they know for certain. But in Egypt Egyptians will go to vote with no knowledge of what authorities will be vested in the president.
Iranian women soccer fans have set their hopes on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to return them to the terraces after having been banned from stadiums for years to prevent them from looking at men's bodies.
International attention should not only be focused on al Qaeda and its affiliates -- the need to hold human rights violators to account and a deepening humanitarian crisis should also be high on their agenda.
Tens of millions of Egyptians will head to the polls Wednesday to vote for the candidate they hope will move the country from a state of transition to one that is stable and ruled by a civilian government.
For once, the Syrian regime does not lie when claiming that the rebels in the country are being supplied from Lebanon. In that case, the chicken came back to roost, as the Lebanese do to the Syrians what they have done to them for so many years.
Women who seek and assume responsibility in their societies cannot relinquish it when the situation gets difficult by lapsing into the "I am just the spouse" role. Does Asma Assad want to be remembered as a second Elena Ceausescu of the Middle East?
The opera arias lent an upbeat note to the UN secretary-general's otherwise glum day: the UN secretary-general has Syria on his mind. In an exclusive interview, he met Metro to talk about Syria, energy and the future of humankind.
It took Egypt's military brass less than six months to first isolate street-battle hardened soccer fans, the country's most militant opponents of military rule, and then restore their waning popularity amid mushrooming protests.
Why are we not talking about Syria? How can we forget those who are suffering in this way? Have we learned to accept the unacceptable?
If our own American Secretary of State must "out-tough the guys" instead of saying all that she wishes she could, what hope have we for Asma? What right have we to blame her?
Syria is in a civil war, and there is no unified popular uprising as there was in Tunisia and Egypt. Instead, a divided country is at war with itself. The opposition could suddenly seize power with the assistance of foreign military forces and a slaughter of civilians by both sides could ensue.
The so-called "cease-fire" in Syria is unraveling even faster than what was anticipated. It is time for a process of transition from the current regime to a new one, monitored and supervised by Russia and the United States.
It is time to change the discussion about Syria. Blood is thicker than water, as they say in the Middle East, and too much has already been spilled. It should stop and quickly, but that will not happen through the Annan plan.
In other parts of the Arab world there was unity between classes and sects, at least for the duration of the protests in public squares, but this is not the case in Syria.
