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| Syria Uprising |
 IN
an interview with The Wall Street Journal in January, Syria´s
president, Bashar al Assad, said that his main objective was
to address his people´s "closed-mindedness".
He made it clear that this alone impeded reform, and it might
be another generation before Syria is ready for real change.
Dictators (including Assad´s father, Hafez) have long
presented themselves as suppressors of extremism in the region
generally, and Syria in particular. They said democracy would
usher in fundamentalists inherently opposed to modernity, civil
dialogue, international community legitimacy and civilised human
political and economic relations. Perhaps because of this fear... |
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| THE POWER OF MOCKERY |
| THE juiciest story behind the Middle East
uprisings doesn´t concern Colonel Moamer Qadhafi´s
"voluptuous" Ukrainian nurse or CIA bags of cash.
Rather, it´s the tale of how a nonviolent revolutionary
strategy crafted by Serbian students and an octogenarian American
scholar came to challenge dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain
and many other countries. This "uprising in a bottle"
blueprint was developed by the Serbian youth movement, Otpor,
to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. One of Otpor´s
insights was that the most effective weapon against dictators
isn´t bombs or fiery speeches. It´s mockery. Otpor
activists once put Milosevic´s picture on a barrel that
they rolled down the street, inviting people to hit it with
a bat. Otpor´s strategy mirrors... |
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Rajapaksa begins 3-day Bangladesh visit
DPA
COLOMBO SRI LANKAN President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday left on a three-day official visit to Bangladesh aimed at boosting trade and bilateral relations, officials said.
Rajapaksa was due to sign agreements on export promotion, business, shipping, agriculture, fisheries, education and culture, they said.
He was due to meet with his counterpart Zillur Rahman and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday.
The visit came as the Sri Lankan government said it would launch an international campaign against a United Nations report on alleged war crimes committed during the final phase of a military operation against Tamil rebels two years ago.
Sri Lanka’s armed forces defeated the rebels in 2009 after a 26-year conflict.
Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president’s brother, told the Sunday Times newspaper in Colombo that the government would send teams to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and other nonaligned countries to explain why Sri Lanka had to use military force to defeat the rebels.
The Sri Lankan government has said the External Affairs Minister GL Peiris, who is accompanying the president to Bangladesh, would officially react Thursday to the UN report, handed over to the government last week.
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