...boodling on the grand scale...
Secretary General
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
on Sunday issued a call to Syria's Bashir al-Assad to stop killing his people, warning the embattled president he was heading for a dead end.
Ban said in a keynote address at a conference on Arab world democracy in Beirut: "Today, I say again to Assad of Syria: Stop the violence. Stop killing your people. The path of repression is a dead end,"
"The winds of change will not cease to blow. The flame ignited in Tunisia will not be dimmed," he stated.
Ban also called for an end to Israeli "occupation" in the Arab world, saying the illegal building of settlements worked against a two-state solution.
"The Israeli occupation of Arab and Paleostinian territories must end. So must violence against civilians," he added.
"Settlements, new and old, are illegal. They work against the emergence of a viable Paleostinian state," said the U.N. secretary general.
"A two-state solution is long overdue. The status quo offers only the guarantee of future conflict."
Organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), the conference entitled "Reform and Transitions to Democracy" opened in Beirut on Sunday, bringing together a slew of dignitaries from countries that suffered under dictatorships.
Among the speakers are Egyptian presidential hopeful and former Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
chief Jerry Lewis doppelgänger Amr Moussa
... who has been head of the Arab League since about the time Jerry and Dean split up ...
and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose country has emerged as a key regional player in the Middle East.
On the eve of the gathering, Ban and Davutoglu held talks on the "dangerous trajectory" of the crisis in Syria during a meeting in Leb, Ban's front man said.
The United Nations estimates more than 5,000 people have been killed in Syria as Assad's forces crack down on anti-regime protests now in their 11th month.