Posted on July 18, 2012 Leave a Comment
Democracy is an illusive thing. A pure form of it has not existed since the glory days of ancient Athens – and even then women and slaves were excluded from the metaphorical electoral roll. The modern world’s democratic bastion – America – does not elect its President via direct universal suffrage, but a complicated electoral […]
Posted on June 4, 2012 Leave a Comment
All sorts has been going on. In the forefront of my mind recently has been the calamity in Houla, Syria, where dozensĀ children were murdered by the army. The world is duly horrified and I believe The Times was right when it headlined the story ‘the tipping point’. The UN managed to get itself together enough […]
Posted on August 14, 2011 Leave a Comment
We first watched unrest on the streets of Syria in March, five months ago. By that time Egypt and Tunisia had toppled their dictators – and the whole Arab world seemed to be ablaze with possibility. As observers in the West, we naively expected Libya and Syria to go the same way, prehaps so did […]