Al-Assad, despite his English education and modern tailored suits, has aligned himself with and actively supported the worst most anti-democratic, retrograde forces in the region.
Beijing is destabilizing its neighbors, supporting retrograde elements in Burma, implicitly threatening democratic India with its nuclear missile force, massing hundreds of missiles on the coast against Taiwan, and claiming and militarily occupying islands and reefs claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines in a bid to control the South China Sea.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: China has become a force for instability
Much of Poland's new establishment, particularly foreign and local bigwigs with money invested in economic reform, blanches at the prospect of such a chaotic and possibly retrograde force taking power in September.
Young Arabs want an end to corruption and tyranny, jobs, and freedoms enjoyed in the West rather than the retrograde imaginings of a stateless madman who thought that life for Muslims was perfect in the 13th Century.
Mr Elliott said his party had opposed the devolution of justice powers in 2010 but that "it would be a retrograde step" if the Department of Justice were not to remain in Northern Ireland.
In fact, Siri behaves much like a retrograde male fantasy of the ever-compliant secretary: discreet, understanding, willing to roll with any demand a man might come up with, teasingly accepting of dirty jokes.
It will tilt the balance of power in the region in favor of dictatorship, in favor of the use of force and fear as the instrument of power and in favor of a regime in Tehran whose aim is to export its brand of retrograde, anti-American, anti-women, anti-gay, freedom-suppressing revolution.
The danger in Europe today does not come from the last dredges of retrograde extreme right forces, it comes from the jihad friendly Left.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Nidra Poller on the Geert Wilders Trial
They are embedded in the political mainstream and dominate the Abe cabinet, but their retrograde views on history are not supported by public opinion.
So is Oracle's Larry Ellison, the second-richest man in the world, see ( FORBES GLOBAL, July 3), hopelessly retrograde because he likes to wear (Brioni) suits?
Some Filipinos - and not just those in Sulu - are uneasy about the US presence in the southern Philippines, questioning its necessity and even claiming it is a retrograde step, back to the US colonial past.
But even women in the group have given ammunition to critics' claims that the Brotherhood's policies are retrograde.
It was both "wrong and retrograde", he said, exhibiting a little of that talent for alliteration so admired by Professor Higgins in Alfred Doolittle.
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