Syrian Blogsphere in a Week · Global Voices
Yazan Badran

To start off this week, we have Brian Anthony‘s testimonial of what his reflections were exactly five years ago, September 11, 2001.
But as I was watching the towers explode over and over again, I couldn't really muster a sense of shock and amazement. And while I felt sickened and saddened for those who were in the towers and those affected by the attacks, I didn't feel any kind of patriotic rage. I felt kind of like one would feel when you hear that life-long party-animal two-pack a day smoker got hit with lung cancer. It's a terrible situation, but an altogether predictable one.
On to more Syrian-like politics, with Ammar Abdulhamid trying to answer The Question…
Can we really have both modernization and democratization as simultaneous processes that can reach an acceptable level of fulfillment in the span of a single lifetime to appeal to all those impatient souls out there?
Burhan Ghalioun, The well known Syrian intellectual, gives his feelings from Paris about the Crisis of Lebanon and the Middle East.
Israel may feel that it is besieged because of the hostility of the greatest number of the Arab States. But this feeling hides a fundamental inferiority complex and does not reveal the reality. The Israelis themselves say – and they are true – that they are able to crush all the arab armies gathered together. Thus, in fact, it is Israel that besieges the Arab countries, thanks to its unmatched military superiority and to the international unrelenting support that it is granted from the USA and Europe…Thanks also to the Arab situation breaking apart and to the collapsing of the Arab front.
Away from politics, to a more interesting subject, with Abu Fares describing how to give a real Bull-Head Tartoussi Feast.
It was my turn to host. I was asked to make it memorable. Some of them I will not see in years, leaving country and kin and heading out to Martinique, to the China Sea, to the Persian Gulf, to Italy, to unknown wharfs and beyond. What we all had in common, in addition to a life binding friendship, is our eternal love for Tartous.
“Something they shall never forget, that’s what they asked for, when I proposed the invitation.”