Syria

Atrocity: What a mass murder is called when the world is too blind or timid or divided to prosecute it as a war crime. Synonym (mainly Syr.): Treimseh. CEO sabbatical: The practice of chief executive officers of a company to absent themselves for several years from actually making decisions, even while they are the only […]

The fresh Baath massacre of non-combatants, in Qubair on Wednesday, is being assiduously covered up by the government of dictator Bashar al-Assad, who is preventing UN observers from visiting the scene of the crime. Observers trying to reach it have even been shot at. Under the almost defunct Kofi Annan plan, the whole point of […]

The UN is debating whether to withdraw its observers from Syria, given that there is no point in deploying observers if they are just going to witness the violence. The point of the observers was to enforce a cease-fire by moral suasion, but there is no ceasefire. Meanwhile, the UN has found evidence of a […]

The largest demonstrations held in Syria’s second city, Aleppo, since the beginning over a year ago of the revolutionary movement in that country, were held on Friday. In part, they were provoked by the brutality of regime troops toward student protesters at the university in Aleppo on Thursday. The Baathist regime of President Bashar al-Assad […]

On the first day since the Baathist regime of Bashar al-Assad maintained that it had accepted a ceasefire with its opposition, tens of thousands of Syrians came out into the streets to protest. The regime did not, as promised, pull tanks from the streets, so that the crowds were thinner than they might have been. […]