Upbeat in Syria

Why President Bashar Assad is feeling cock-a-hoop

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Readers' comments


Palestine shall be free

Your style of writing is very repulsive as it reminds me of an 18th century english schoolmaster or a fossil of colonial officer from that era and creed. You seem unable to talk about Arabs without turning yourself up-side-down to make sure you are looking down at them.

I am amazed at your inability of reminding yourself that you, the british and the french, are responsible for dividing Syria and implanting the cancer in Palestine.

Canadian Thunder

It is amazing how a regime such as Syria's Kleptocracy continues to thrive in the 21st Century, where even the faintest requests for freedoms are curtailed by a brutal and thuggish intelligence service. The members of the Damascus Spring are all safely locked up in dark cells, and do not even earn a mere mention in respected journals such as The Economist.

At the time of independence from France, Syria was a middle economy, much like Spain and Greece. Today it stands at a GNP per capita of less than a $1000, with an educational system that graduates legions of poorly educated non-employable youth, its agriculture and industry decimated by years of socialism, and its merchants slaves to a corrupt and antiquated system.

Realpolitik has many fans but in the Middle East it merely serves to raise the stakes for frustrated expressions for reform in a region that so desparately needs a more peaceful and evolutionary path for change.



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