Syria's population is 74% Sunni Muslim.

The courage of the Syrian protesters is remarkable, for they face prison, torture, or death every time they lift a banner.

Al Qaeda's message that violence, terrorism and extremism are the only answer for Arabs seeking dignity and hope is being rejected each day in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and throughout the Arab lands.

The fake republics are goners; the monarchies have a fighting chance. That's my conclusion after a short visit to the Middle East and discussions with officials and analysts there.

In Kuwait there is already a real, elected parliament with genuine power, but the prime minister is always a member of the ruling al-Sabah family. That must end.

In Jordan, where the prime minister is always a commoner, the king has announced some new reforms that would tend to move the country toward a more democratic system: Notably, the prime minister would emerge from the victorious political party, not from back room conversations in the royal palace.

Every Arab 'republic' has been a republic of fear, but only Saddam Hussein's Iraq surpassed the Assads' Syria in number of victims.

Gadhafi's vicious regime has left Libya far worse than he found it on the day of his coup in 1969.

Gadhafi has established no national institutions, not even allowing a fake parliament of the Mubarak or Ben Ali variety that could perhaps be turned into something real.

The United States treated Gaddafi as an enemy due to his support for terrorism against us, until a rapprochement of sorts began under Pres. George W. Bush at the very end of 2003.

Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,' should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government.

It's time to bury the unreal, failed 'realism' of those who have long thought that dictators brought stability.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

For decades, the Arab states have seemed exceptions to the laws of politics and human nature. While liberty expanded in many parts of the globe, these nations were left behind, their 'freedom deficit' signaling the political underdevelopment that accompanied many other economic and social maladies.

Obviously, every dictator pays a great deal of attention to who is running the army. There's always a base right outside the capitol to protect the head of government.

Tunisia was not for the United States an important country in the way, let's say, Algeria was because of its gas, because of its size, because of its struggle against terrorism that sometimes turned bloody.

Sari Nusseibeh is a man without a country.

Why are diplomatic cables secret at all?

Huge numbers of embassy cables are labeled 'unclassified' or 'limited official use' and deal with mundane matters.

In most cases, cables are marked secret not because the U.S. requires it but because those speaking to us - the foreign leaders across the table - do. They are not keeping secrets from us, but from two other groups: their enemies and their subjects.

Terrorism exploded after the Camp David talks broke down in 2000 because the Palestinians' leader at the time, Yasser Arafat, supported it.

Being an Arab leader has its rewards: the suite at the Waldorf-Astoria during the United Nations General Assembly, travel in your own plane, plenty of cash, even job security - whether kings, sheiks or presidents, with or without elections, most serve for life.

The Arab view that someone should bomb Iran and stop it from developing nuclear weapons is familiar to anyone who meets privately with Arab leaders, especially in the Gulf.

The Erdogan government's first major step outside of the U.S. alliance was during the Bush Administration, when it wouldn't let Washington use Turkey as a launching ground for U.S. troops entering Iraq in 2003.

Every Israeli government since 1967, of left or right, has asserted that Jerusalem is Israel's capital and has allowed Israeli Jews to build there.

At the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Soviets and their allies and satellites did not shirk human rights debates with the West. They had their arguments ready.

I first met Kim Dae Jung when he was a Korean dissident whose life was threatened by the military regime ruling in Seoul. I was Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and Kim was directed to me because the East Asia Bureau at the State Department had long shunned him.

U.S.-Israel relations are often depicted as an extended honeymoon, but that's a false image.

Harry Truman, who was a Bible-believing Christian Zionist, defied the secretary of state he so admired, George C. Marshall, and won a place in Israel's history by recognizing the new state 11 minutes after it declared its independence in 1948.

There are no Muslim ghettos in the U.S.

Grasping the realities of the Middle East is never easy. This is not primarily because they change quickly, but because so much time, effort, and money is spent to prevent reality from breaking through.

In the spring of 2007, Israeli intelligence brought to Washington proof that the Assad regime in Syria was building a nuclear reactor along the Euphrates - with North Korean help. This reactor was a copy of the Yongbyon reactor the North Koreans had built, and was part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program.

Pessimism is rife in Israel.

The debate over same sex 'marriage' has engaged the heartfelt feelings and convictions of millions of Americans.

Can you sue yourself for plagiarism? If so, then 'Old School' has presented Ivan Reitman with a case.

His work isn't all glower. Even though he hasn't smiled in a movie since the underrated 'Proof' in the early 1990s, Mr. Crowe is given to a hurt swallow when he's uncomfortable and to a look of suffering in his eyes.

Scene by scene, you can't help being impressed by 'Mean Girls;' it's like a group of sketches linked by a theme, with some playing much better than others.

It's true that as Mr. Chan makes more American movies - and gets older - we will never again see the kind of fistfight choreography that the star would devote four months to shoot.

LACMA has the imprimatur of art, and that's a big leg up.

What makes 'Pootie Tang' the motion picture enjoyable is its no-brow ambitions; it's a joke action film. It slides through enough African-American pop culture signifiers to raise laughs out of those who will appreciate the references; it revels in more cheese per square inch than a soul food diner.

The action comedy 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' raises one of the most overlooked and important cinematic questions of our time: Can a movie maintain the dramatic integrity of a theme park ride?

For years, Ono's work - musical and otherwise - was, in large part, dismissed and derided; at best, it was often misunderstood.

Political perspective and the Cannes festival are linked almost as inextricably as fast-food consumption and detrimental effects on health.

I've been cheered by the reaction to what I've done with Film Independent at LACMA and the organizational support I've received in pursuing it.

What we're most aware of in 'Eight-Legged Freaks' is how similar it is to other movies, a recombinant mutated species itself, the product of the crossbreeding of the suffering-from-gigantism movies of the 1950s and the 1990 B-picture classic 'Tremors.'

The idea of Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet so inflaming the fanboy community is amusing, since that group's 20/50 vision also had it tsking its disapproval about Michael Keaton as Batman and Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.

Before he became 'a working actor,' as he now proudly calls himself, Jamie Dornan initially caught the public's attention as a model - you may remember him from those greasy underwear ads with Eva Mendes, among many others.

I saw Berry in concert a couple of times in the late '70s - and like almost every North American male of a certain age, I went because a friend was hired by Berry that very day to be part of the legend's backup band.

Each country has its own way of communicating a narrative and, through that, expressing family experiences in emotional stories.

'Man is an endangered species,' announces one of the titles at the beginning of the sci-fi lump 'Battlefield Earth.' And after about 20 minutes of this amateurish picture, extinction doesn't seem like such a bad idea.