Asked if Syria would renounce its alliance with Iran and its support for Hezbollah and Hamas in exchange for peace with Israel, Assad said that “It would be an absurd demand and there would be no more peace. How would Israel react if we demanded it breaks its relations with the United States? Negotiations must develop with regard to full reciprocity. Syria remains firmly persuaded that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. For the simple reason that they do not kill civilians. They are movements that defend their own land. As for Iran, the answer is even more obvious. It is our old ally, there is no reason to turn our back to them”.

What does the crisis in Lebanon teach us about Hezbollah? It teaches us the same lesson we learned from Hamas when it took Gaza: Islamic supremacist groups, despite their claims to the contrary, cannot be integrated into states or democratic political systems. We have heard for many years from an array of journalists, scholars, and pundits that Hamas and Hezbollah are complicated social movements that employ violence in the service of their political goals, and that they are therefore susceptible to diplomatic engagement. Such tropes about Hamas have become standard — that there should be a Fatah-Hamas unity government, that Israel should diplomatically engage Hamas, that Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections make the group a legitimate political player, etc. — and likewise, similar claims are made about Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon: that it is a legitimate representative of the Shia, that it can be negotiated with, that, like Hamas, …

A new study suggesting a possible lull in manmade global warming has raised fears of a reduced urgency to battle climate change. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists, last year said global warming was “unequivocal” and that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were “very likely” part of the problem. And while the study published in the journal Nature last week did not dispute manmade global warming, it did predict a cooling from recent average temperatures through 2015, as a result of a natural and temporary shift in ocean currents. So the Nature paper has sparked worries that briefly cooler temperatures may take the heat out of action to fight the threat of more droughts and floods, while a debate about the article’s findings has also underlined uncertainty about such forecasting.

While countless US, European and Israeli policymakers, analysts and journalists counseled that diplomacy would manage to “wedge” Syria away from Iran, there was really only wedge issue between them: Iran wanted to avoid sectarian warfare while the Syrians were willing, eager, to set fire to Lebanon – again. If this crisis is different, as David Wurmser says, different from the rest of the various crises that have plagued Lebanon the last three years, ever since the April 2005 withdrawal of Syrian troops, it is because there no longer is any difference between Tehran and Damascus’ Beirut strategy.

"Iran is responsible for what is happening in Lebanon. The subject now is the Iranian attack on Lebanon. They want us to surrender totally without any compensation,” Lebanese Sports Minister Ahmed Fatfat said Friday during an interview with the Al-Arabiya television network Friday amid reports that Hizbullah gunmen seized control of large parts of Beirut. “Hizbullah has turned from an opposition party into a militia attempting to impose its control. I think Hizbullah believes that the way to Tel Aviv passes through Beirut,” he said. According to the minister, regardless of whether a “Gaza-like” revolt occurs in Lebanon, “the government will remain legitimate.”

The cyclone that hit Burma is a “consequence” of global warming? Al Gore should die of shame to peddle such self-serving deceptions. What’s worse is that Gore’s blundering attempts to blame global warming for Burma’s agony distracts attention from the real causes of this catastrophe - despicable causes we may at least hope to do something about. If Cyclone Nargis had struck not Rangoon, but Melbourne or Tokyo, it is unlikely more than a few dozen people, if that, would have died. And that’s because we are free, and rich - as free people tend to be with capitalism. But in Burma as many as 100,000 are now feared dead - victims not of global warming, but of a tyranny that has left them poor and defenceless. Let us not be sidetracked. These are people killed not by Gore’s global warming, or even by Friday’s Cyclone Nargis - but by …

A Swiss government ethics committee has issued guidelines on the thorny issue of the “dignity of plants” in relation to biotech research after the country’s 2004 Gene Technology Law declared that “the dignity of creatures” should be considered in any grant-funded research. According to Nature, while this phrase attracted plenty of flak for its “general woolliness”, it certainly includes plants. The powers that be therefore mandated the committee two years ago to clarify the matter. Member Markus Schefer, a constitution lawyer at the University of Basel, said: “My first reaction was - what the heck are we doing considering the dignity of plants. But this very broad provision exists, and we have to help to prevent a legal mire.” He added: “At the moment not even authorities who decide on grants know what the ‘dignity of plants’ really means. That’s why we were asked to deliberate.” The upshot of the …

Wer aus der Vergangenheit nicht lernt, ist verdammt, sie zu wiederholen: Shiite opposition gunmen seized control of large areas of Beirut’s Muslim sector from Sunni foes loyal to the U.S.-backed government on Friday, in street battles that left 11 dead, security officials said. With top leaders Saad Hariri of the Sunnis and Walid Jumblatt of the Druse besieged in their residences in Muslim western Beirut, officials of the pro-government majority called an emergency meeting of legislators in a mountain town in the Christian heartland northeast of Beirut, said LBC TV, a pro-government Christian station.

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora is believed to be holed up at his office in downtown Beirut, which is heavily protected by troops and police. A Hezbollah protest encampment that has been there for 17 months near his office has not made any move against the complex. In a sign of the collapse of the …