From the Lede – New York Times Blog
According to the blog Syria News Wire, a demonstration in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday, caught on video posted on YouTube, was not part of a wave of antigovernment unrest sweeping the Arab world.
The blog, which is written from Damascus and London, explains the [...]

The Human Rights Watch report, “A Wasted Decade: Human Rights in Syria during Bashar al-Asad’s First Ten Years in Power.”
Syria’s Decade of Repression
By: Nadim Houry | The Guardian
What is clear from a review of Assad’s decade in power is that he has no true commitment to broadening public freedoms for Syria’s citizens, perhaps the most [...]

Specter and Assad meet, discuss peace broker role
By Sarah Freishtat · July 12, 2010
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Arlen Specter in a Damascus meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad discussed a role as a peace mediator between Syria and Israel. JTA confirmed last weekend’s meeting, which was reported this week in the Israeli and Turkish media, [...]

Radwan Ziadeh, who runs the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, has written a report published in Washington this month by the Transitional Justice in the Arab World Project, entitled, “Years of Fear.”  He argues that as many as 17,000 Syrians may have been “disappeared” during Hafez el-Assad’s rule; the 117-page document [...]

Ibrahim Hamidi writes from Damascus about recent business activities that according to him, “are amazing.” A top businessman and banker in Syria also reports that the mood is “upbeat in Damascus.” Evidently people are standing by for important economic indicators during the March investor conference.
Hamidi in al-Hayat covers the serge of businessmen visiting Damascus, the [...]

BBC World Service
Syria: the prospects for political change
Back in the 1950s, as a lawyer and a judge, Haitham Maleh began promoting human rights in Syria. Haitham Maleh was arrested after an interview with opposition TV. In the 1980s he was detained without trial for seven years. Since then he has been tried three times by [...]

Project on Middle East Democracy
The POMED Wire
POMED Notes: “Syria’s Democratic Past: Lessons for the Future”
Notes taken January 8th, 2010 by Josh [not Josh Landis]
The National Endowment for Democracy hosted a presentation by Dr. Radwan Ziadeh entitled “Syria’s Democratic Past: Lessons for the Future.” Dr. Ziadeh is the founding director of the Damascus Center for Human [...]

Book Review: A Memoir-Novel of Tadmur Military Prison
Mustafa Khalifa. Al-Qawqa’a [The Shell]. Beirut: Dar al-Adab (http://adabmag.com/books) , 2008. [This review is based on the Arabic original]
The book is also available in French: Moustafa Khalifé. La Coquille: Prisonnier politique en Syrie. Traduction Stéphanie Dujols. Arles: Actes Sud, 2007.
By Shareah Taleghani in Syrian Studies Association Newsletter 14.2 [...]

Khalid Oweis and Ibrahim Hamidi both take on the subject of Syria’s vicissitudes about signing the the Association Agreement. There is the indignity of the Dutch add-on language about human rights, but that is surely not the main cause of Syria’s anxiety. Syria is already facing a very tough environment for its industry with liberalization [...]

Syria is having second thoughts about signing the European Economic Agreement. Evidently,  Syrians worry that it will compromise their economic sovereignty.See the following article on “Syria Steps.”
قرروا إخضاعها لمزيد من الدراسة
السوريون لن يوقعوا الشراكة مع أوروبا يوم 26 الشهر الحالي
Turkey-Israel Row Could Signal Geopolitical Change In Region By Ron Synovitz, RFE/RL
“….Indeed, after Turkey announced Israel’s [...]