Epstein Secrets

forces desecrating mosques, firing at EFTA_R1_00234074 EFTA01845128 worshipers, and ordering hapless captives to proclaim, "There is no God but Bashar," has written its own regional banishment. Hafez committed cruelties of his own, but he always managed to remain within the Arab fold. Bashar is di

t outgrew the Arabian Peninsula and before it slipped out of the hands of the Arabs into those of the Persians and the Turks. Yet decades earlier, Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez -- a man of supreme cunning and political skill -- had ridden the military and the Baath Party to absolute power, creating a regime i

ns a chance. The Egyptian rulers had said that their country was not Tunisia. Qaddafi said that his republic was not Tunisia or Egypt. Eventually, Assad was saying that Syria was not Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya. Assad was young, not old; his regime had more legitimacy because it had confronted Israel r

zi summoned his fellows to a new history, and across the region, millions have heeded his call. Last June, the Algerian author Boualem Sansal wrote Bouazizi an open letter. "Dear Brother," it said, I write these few lines to let you know we're doing well, on the whole, though it varies from day to day:

er Beinart May 16, 2011 -- Why did thousands of Palestinians yesterday converge upon Israel's borders? Partly because Syria's war-criminal leader, Bashar al-Assad, and his ally, Hezbollah, wanted them to. But there's more to it than that. Palestinians also marched from Jordan and Egypt, whose governments did

ere was violence at the Lebanese and Syrian borders. This fact alone makes it clear that what happened was mostly manufactured by Hezbollah and the Assad regime. The king of Jordan was opposed to trouble, so there were demonstrations but no border breaches or violence along the Jordan River and its

there was enough tension and discontent within the country—and in particular with Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali— that had it not been for the unfortunate Bouazizi, some other incident might well have caused the overthrow of the regime. Next, for a revolution to succeed, it needs a revolutionary movement capa

-- Article 2. The New York Post The storm in Syria Amir Taheri April 16, 2011 -- Yesterday was supposed to be the first day of what Syrian despot Ba shar al-Assad had dubbed "social calm"; he hoped his mixture of promises and repressive measures would silence the pro-democracy uprising that has shaken the Ba'at

t regime. Instead, the opposition mounted a "Friday of Resolution," with fresh nationwide marches against tyranny. In addition to other empty moves, Assad had ordered the release of protesters arrested in the past four weeks provided they had not done "anything that might undermine the interests of the

edly confiscated by the authorities. After Mohamed Bouazizi was slapped by a policewoman when he tried to complain, he reached the end of his tether. Bouazizi’s public suicide turned into a social movement because contemporary communications technologies facilitated the growth of a new social space where mi