I was out driving when I received the first phone call from journalists today, informing me about Saddam's guilty verdict and asking me about my reaction.

Naharnet writes “Syria Panics as Tribunal for Hariri's Assassins Takes Shape." Panic? You don't even need to be in Syria, as I am now, to realize that this is at most wishful thinking.

In the past few years, Ramadan television serials have been quite the rage as a topic in various media; read all about it, they say, this is what Arabs (and sometimes even the more generic Muslims) are watching. Serial babble, basically.

I had admired Fallaci since I was a teenager, as she seemed to embody all the fantastic traits of the journalist and writer I wanted to become …

Some people at the Swedish state alcohol retail monopoly, bless them, realized that "Made in Israel" could not really apply to wine from the Golan Heights …

The first American "assistance" for political change in Syria dates back to 1949, when the first democratically-elected president of Syria, Shukri Al Quwatli, was overthrown by a CIA-backed military coup.

I really, really hate it when the Syrian regime is given credit for religious tolerance in Syria. As if different sects were busy massacring each other before the Baath or the Assads came to put a stop to it - and as if the massacres would automatically start "again" should the latter depart.

The Syrian regime has been boasting about supposed reforms it has undertaken and having nothing but a few, scattered, colored Band-Aids (which don't even stick very well) to show for it while Syrians get worse.

Yassin Al Haj Saleh was robbed of the right to be an ordinary human being.

Numerous achievements must still be attributed to this regime, including the downgrading of education, the destruction of a liberal economy, the decline in productivity, the suppression of civil society and the suffocation of free speech.

Yesterday, Michel Kilo was arrested by the Syrian regime, apparently for having dared to sign the Damascus-Beirut/Beirut Damascus Declaration, published in Assafir a few days ago.

I went to Lebanon a couple of weeks ago, using the normal route from Damascus - the Jdeideh post. We finished the formalities in minutes because so few people were there, and proceeded to drive through one ghost town after another.

We may be accustomed to the phenomenon that turns seemingly neutral people into regime apologists when they accept a governmental position …

Here's a short update from Damascus. People here are fed up; prices are high, business is slow, and all other things are remaining equal or getting worse. Yes, you can find almost anything in the shops, but disposable income has become more limited than ever for most Syrian families.

Apparently, what Syrians really, desperately need (and the entire Arab world with them) is Arabism. More Arabism. True Arabism. New and improved Arabism.

It seems perfectly clear now that America is not bothered with regime change in Syria, for the moment at least; had it been even remotely interested, it would have disbursed more than those peanuts.

By the time we get to the Executive Instructions (imposed by the Syrian regime to render the already pathetically incomprehensible laws even more confusing), …

You also learn from gems like Tishreen that "Syria is targetted for specific purposes," which is good to know for those who thought it was just a random thing.

Most of the 12 Danish cartoons are certainly offensive in that they insult the Prophet Muhammad, and in that they imply that Islam is by nature a violent religion. Some are also typically orientalist and incredibly crude …

It is unthinkable that some 1,000 people could die so anonymously as an amorphous mass, after having spent years toiling abroad (probably like slaves) because their own country could not provide a chance for dignified employment.