Syria Feature: Assad's Useful Apologists (Hill)

Sharmine Narwani of Al-Akhbar and Oxford University speaks with Russia Today in August about the Syrian conflict and "so-called massacres"

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Here's what we know. The Assad family has ruled Syria like its own personal colony for decades. Just like the foreigners that ruled Syria before them, they have been a distant elite, treating Syrians not as citizens but as tools of the state. Many of those Syrians have risked everything to reject the Assad regime, and since the very beginning Assad has responded with bullets and bombs. His promises of "democratic reform" have been a fiction, just like they always were.

Whatever is to become of Syria, those genuinely engaged in trying to "halt the descent into darkness" will only be hindered by those whose ideological agenda is more important than seeking and presenting the truth.

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EA Flashback: Christopher Hitchens and the Policing of Dissent

After seeing Hitchens at this debate, I fear his thoughtful moments will be rare. "The Hitch" is no longer an activist, no longer a participant in the real debates about power and who wields it, no more a source for thought. No, he is an industry, posing in trench coat with a cigarette dangling from his top lip, hailed as "one of the few remaining practitioners of the five-hour, two-bottle lunch". And, naturally, the most profitable industry is a monopoly. So he packages himself, surreally, not just as a policeman but the only policeman of "a radical left that no longer exists".

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