Freedom Matter الحُرّيّة المسؤولة

E xactly 100 years ago, on November 23, 1917, the communist newspapers Izvestia and Pravda, published the secret agreement set by the British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, commonly known as “Sykes-Picot Agreement”, with the approval of the pre-Soviet Russian government.  Both men sat with a map of the Arab nation and drew the now existing borders between the Arab States to distribute the region among themselves. This was the origin of the present day puppet Arab States.  Gradually, we got used to these borders and started to identify ourselves saying I am Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian or Moroccan or Algerian or Sudanese. We all forget our single unifying identity; that we are Arabs ! We have become the only nation in this world that has the same language, the same culture, common history, religion, geographic unity and economic interests.  Yet, it is divided into 22 states.  The funny thing is that, unlike us, the West...

By Khaldun A. Alqaisi Today 20th January 2017, Donal J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. His Deputy Pence was also sworn in as Vice-president in Washington. I have heard and read about a lot of many people who dislike Trump's views with regard to a large host of issues.                                                               Courtesy CNN website image Today, I was also struck by Donald's speech at the inauguration ceremony , the one speech which sustained the same rhetoric and looked more as a propaganda of a presidential candidate than formal and sworn-in president. I think Donald was not fully aware yet that he became the president or he may not be smart enough. Donald's speech was very general, boring, and lacked essence, he broke with the tradition long-maintained...

Thoughts of someone The first thing I would like to say is that I do not follow news since I went into vacations late August up until today. The reason being is that I am most of the time busy with my own domestic business which consists of many small chores. It is a personal rather than public business. Months ago, I used to occasionally listen to the news of the war in Syria and decided to side with those opposed to the regime in Syria, not for sectarian reasons at all, and I also was very dismayed by Iran's interference and influence in the region. But eventually, we can say with absolute certainty that the Syrian regime is winning, on almost all fronts, militarily and politically both inside and outside the country. I have been trying very hard to grasp the motives that lead Russians to become that deeply involved in the civil war in Syria; Russia has never been so immersed in a war in the Middle East like this time. But of course, analysts and observer...