I also wonder what the Russkis could offer the Greeks in exchange for port access. Perhaps cheap oil, but probably not hard cash. The problem for the Greeks would be that they'd be in the same situation as Cuba when the Wall fell, left in the lurch.

Considering Russia provides much of western Europe's energy (mostly natural gas from Gazprom, if I remember correctly), it could probably subsidise gas shipments to Greece.

Should secular reformers have been satisfied with Bashir's "reforms"?

Not necessarily, as I don't know what exactly those reforms were, nor how important to ordinary Syrians either. (As to personal contacts who travelled to Syria: sorry, but no anecdotes here (wasn't Damascus the hot new place to learn Arab only a few years ago?). But I can point you to some data: Foreign Investment in Syria Grows (Forbes Mag, 2009), Syria To Open Its Economy (WaPo, 2009), Syria Aims To Attract $55 Billion In Foreign Investment over Five Years (Bloomberg, 2010), and finally, Syria Crackdown Stamps on Economic Dream (Reuters, 2011).)

To those who claim that "democracy" should be pushed hard, if necessary with military means, the old advice should be sufficient: chuck away the Rambo vids (or anything else Hollywoodian from that period for that matter), and ponder the history of the Peloponnesian War first. (And while you're in the mood, read through Caroline Finkel's Osman's Dream to help you appreciate what kind of powder keg is going to be ignited if Russia and Europe can't stop this madness.

Finally, to end with a question mark too: should we advocate to the Chinese people, that they should come out and protest too and, for good measure, round-off the whole action with a couple of boatloads of M-16s and grenades to a friendly neighbor, purely for training purposes ofcourse?

Remember, the enemy of my enemy cannot be anyone else but my very, very, best friend.

You might be one of four or five people on this site that I would have counted on to substantively address my questions. I'll answer them for myself, just for practice, and then come back to my original purpose in posing them to you.

I don't think Bashir's opponents could have accepted his reforms, because they were merely window-dressing for continued dictatorship. One could argue that they should have engaged exclusively in non-violent resistance, but given reactions from countries like Russia and China to Syria's revolution, such resistance might well have been met by wholesale slaughter of innocents, something Bashir's dad knew all about.

Syria's efforts to reform its economy were tentative at best, and it would have taken someone with personal ties to Syria or other Eastern Mediterranean lands to have been impressed by opportunities to make money in Bashir's "new Syria". [Also, please note that your 2009 article suggests that Syria WILL open its economy at some future point, while your 2011 article suggests that that ostensible opening had already failed. How long was Syria's economy "open"? One year? Months? Weeks?]

I certainly oppose military intervention in Syria, just as I opposed it in Libya, and I have opposed it from day one. I feel for oppressed Syrians, and I cheer their victories over their oppressors, but I don't endorse Western military intervention. I recognise that without such intervention, tens of thousands more people may die, but similar numbers might die anyway if such intervention went forward. Most Arabs don't want Western Christians messing with their affairs, and I don't blame them.

I also oppose any sort of intervention in China or Russia. They can work out their own fate. I like western-style democracy better than other forms of government currently available on this planet, but imposing democracy on any country strikes me as inherently self-contradictory.

Now, back to my original purpose. It sounded like you were responding to what you thought I meant rather than what I was actually trying to say. I think you figure I was gloating over Syria's travails, as perhaps many Westerners have been, and you wanted to impress upon me that anarchy and civil war in Syria could come back to bite Westerners as well. Yeah, I know that. No, I don't welcome that.

But what should have happened there? Could anything useful have been done, when it all started or now? Intervention would have sucked. Non-intervention has sucked. UN resolutions haven't saved any lives. Russia won't be able to save Assad's regime without risking another Afghanistan of its own. And Syria's streets gush blood every day.

If anyone around here might have had any interesting or innovative suggestions on these points, it could have been you. That was why I asked, not to try to trip you up with rhetorical questions. And so I ask again, was there anything that could have been done, then or now, to move Syria toward genuine peace and internal harmony? We can all see what doesn't work, now perhaps it may finally be time to think about what might work.

Alright then, but let's move the goalposts even a bit further. Instead of asking what should be done now [in Syria], let's ask the question -- what should be done here, in the western world, now.

The answer, to my mind, should start from a few realisations. I'll start with this post with the foremost realisation, to my mind. This realisation is that, when it comes to the outside world, apparently nobody in the media is (a) very much interested in things that don't go ka-boom or (b) actively works to prevent reporting about the side-effects and origins of those very same ka-boom thingies.

The second, closer-to-home, realisation is that said media apparently also aren't very much interested in the true lives of ordinary beings who aren't in the habit of tits dropping out of designer gownies. Instead it's always the same faces appearing on talkshows, or experts with or without degree blattering on and on about what is considered to be the issue du jour: wouldn't simple brain-washing feel like a relief?

The more I walk around among the news stands of the world, the more I get the impression that the concerted aim is to make us all lose a whole bunch of neurons a day, instead of growing a couple.

So, that's the first realisation: we don't have a press that's worth more than the paper their articles are printed on, unless you're prepared to pay quite handsomely, and even then: how come the average newspaper/journal, which is supposed to be about humanity and the various shits and marvels it creates, can be such a lifeless thing to read?

That should change, if we want to prevent any future Iraq's and Syria's: slavery absconded from society under pressure from press and thinkers; and so too, should a healthy foreign policy start with proper reporting and story telling: a wide-ranging education.

It would be tempting to see your answer as elaborate acknowledgment that there may be nothing good left to do, either by westerners or perhaps even by Syrians.

Let's face it, North American "news" generally has become another entertainment medium, and tragedy/ death draws viewers (or readers) and thus ad money. If someone kills 12 people in Denver, everything (including politics) stops and all eyes become glued to media outlets. (Ka-ching.) Similarly, if someone kills countless thousands of people in Syria (yes, for North American TV purposes, 12 local deaths = 10,000 foreign deaths), viewers might actually start to care. "Should we go save them?" they might start to ask themselves. (Ka-ching.) They have no idea what led to those thousands of deaths, they know next to nothing about Arab culture, and they probably couldn't locate Syria on their world map, but they feel impelled to do something for those sorry people on their  screens, and they watch future reports with greater interest. (Ka-ching.)

No conspiracies have ever been involved in this process of turning world news into fodder for entertainment programming. Sure, Fox and MSNBC openly slant news for political purposes, but they (mostly) do that for entertainment purposes also.

In countries proclaiming that political power grows from adherence to popular will, media may have some inherent responsibility to help educate their public on certain issues. Hence, CBC or BBC or NPR. But most Americans will continue to prefer their news mixed with entertainment or even jollity (e.g., "The Daily Show"), will continue to avoid educating themselves about most key political and foreign policy issues, and will thus continue to have their political system hijacked by plutocrats (and sometimes even by affected foreign nations directly).

But let's move on and consider what responsibility America bears for what has already happened in Syria or what may end up happening there. When Syria's troubles began, it looked like just another "Arab Spring" uprising against entrenched dictatorship. Was America responsible for instigating Arab Spring protests that destroyed regimes across North Africa (some to America's benefit, some to its apparent detriment)? I guess it could be claimed that Obama's speech set things in motion, but that sure credits him with immense personal power and influence vis-a-vis Arabs, which influence seems unlikely. Now, I figure both Bashir and Putin think Americans or Europeans or somebody put Syrians up to all this, but I rather doubt it. For Syria's majority, Bashir's regime sucked for as long as anyone could remember, and when they thought they could overthrow him (because other dictators across their regime were getting their just desserts) they took their shot. Things haven't worked out as well as they might have liked? Not really America's fault, eh?  

How old must you be? Said media is irrelevant.

I HAD HAD SEX WITH HUNTER S THOMPSON. HE CAME IN MY MOUTH AND I SWALLOWED IT. I SHOULD HAVE HAD HIS BABY. WE WOULD BE BALLIN' LIKE KOBE'S SON!!