“Habits of mind”, which may include attitudes toward authority, beliefs about others, and customary worldviews may account for a significant portion of conflict in the world. Introspection, reason, and reconsideration may conversely account for greater peace.
Last Tuesday morning, I did something non-habitual.
Feldenkrais teachers often say that we help people to notice their habitual patterns of action, and then to explore non-habitual patterns to expand one’s choices for action in the future. This statement flies past most people, but it’s a really big deal. And it’s a big deal to notice when it’s happening. Usually, I facilitate this for my clients. Tuesday offered an opportunity to practice it for myself.
It was a tad before 8 a.m., and I had just had the first glance of the day at my Facebook feed. I can usually scroll past the annoying stuff, but Tuesday morning I got hooked by a pet peeve. In a flash, I typed a brief and brilliant slam of this type of post, and indirectly of those who post them. I was fully cranked and ready to give the world a piece of my mind. So…
هذه هي رؤية قصيرة للسياسة الخارجية الأميركية المقترحة على سوريا.
وكما نعلم جميعا أن الوضع في سوريا يزداد سوءا يوما بعد يوم. تم تشريد نصف السكان السوريين، وقد انحشر النصف الآخر بين الديكتاتور الأسد وISIS الإرهابي الذي لا يرحم.
اسمي الدكتور حسن الصواف، أميركي سوري اشعر بقلق شديد إزاء مستقبل سوريا، خاصة بعد الفشل الذريع لسياسة إدارة أوباما “القيادة من الخلف”.
الأولويات للتعامل مع الأزمة السورية هي كما يلي:
1- وقبل كل شيء، حماية المدنيين، والتي تتم من قبل القوات متعددة الجنسيات على أرض الواقع، وضمان سلامة جميع المدنيين، ومنع خروج أعداد كبيرة من اللاجئين إلى الدول المجاورة.
2- نزع سلاح جميع الميليشيات في سوريا، والتي قد تكون مهمة صعبة لإنجاز، ولكنها تصبح ممكنة مع إرادة المجتمع الدولي.
3- التخلص من جميع المقاتلين الاجانب والقوات الاجنبية غير الشرعية في سوريا.
4- عقد انتخابات وطنية ووضع البلاد على طريق الديمقراطية.
5- التأكد من أن سوريا المستقبل ستكون حكومة اتحادية وغير مركزية فيها جميع السوريين متساوون وحقوق جميع الأقليات مكفولة في الدستور الجديد.
ليس فقط واجب إنساني، ولكن أيضا واجب معنوي وأخلاقي ان يقف العالم معا لوقف سفك الدماء وتدمير البنى التحتية في سوريا ووقف التغير السريع للبنية الديموغرافية في ذلك الجزء من العالم.
ستكون سورية الجديدة دولة ديمقراطية حرة، تعيش في سلام مع جميع دول الجوار وتشارك بنشاط في المجتمع الدولي.
شكرا جزيلا ترجمة ومساعده في الرؤيه والانجاز الأخت الأم
Daad EssaMamary8
This is a short vision for proposed American foreign policy on Syria.
As we all know the situation in Syria is getting worse by the day. Half of the Syrian population has been displaced, and the other half has been squeezed between the dictator Assad and ruthless terrorist ISIS.
My name is Dr.Hasan Alsawaf, a Syrian American who is greatly concerned about the future of Syria, especially after the utter failure of the Obama administration policy “Leading from behind”.
The priorities to deal with the Syrian crisis are as the following:
1- First and foremost, protect the civilians, which is done by multi -international forces on the ground, ensure the safety of all civilians, and prevent the massive exodus of refugees to the neighboring countries.
2- Disarm all the militias in Syria, which might be a very hard task to accomplish, but is feasible with the will of the international community.
3- Get rid of all the foreign fighters and illegal foreign troops in Syria.
4- Hold a national election and put the country on the path of democracy.
5- Ensure that the future Syria will be a federated and non-centralized government where all Syrians are equal and all minorities’ rights are protected and guaranteed in the new Constitution.
It is not only a humanitarian obligation, but also a moral and ethical one for the world to stop the bloodshed and destruction of the infrastructure in Syria and to stop the rapid changing of the demographic in that part of the world.
The new Syria should be a free democratic country, at peace with all it’s neighboring countries and participating actively in the world community.
Thank you very much
Dr. Hasan Alsawaf
Former Senatorial Republican Endorsed Candidate for the State of Rhode Island
Rhode Island Republican Party Delegate.
Founder of the Syrian American Group.
Founder of American Muslims against Violence and Terrorism.
Thank you for hosting this event, and thank you America for giving us the platform to fight for freedom and denounce terror and tyranny.
Syrians want their freedom. Syrians are stuck between the Assad regime and ISIS. Syrians want to be free from their oppressors. They have given up so many lives for their freedom. They do not want to replace Assad with religious theocracy or other oppressors . There have been over 200,000 martyrs in Syria, with over three million refugees and five million citizens internally displaced. Syrians are still fighting for their freedom, but they will prevail. They will win over the tyrant Assad and over the tyrant ISIS.
To the world leaders behind me here at the U.N, I say loud and clear, save the Syrian children,..save the Syrian children from tyrant Assad and fascist ISIS, Syrian children deserve to live a safe and peaceful environment
Make no mistake about it, freedom will ring in Syria and Iran because we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. We are one people in two countries who are fighting for freedom.
The Syrian regime and the Iranian regime have been on the terrorist list since 1979. They are behind the barracks attack on the Marines in1982. They are behind the creation of the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon. They are behind undermining America’s mission in Iraq. They have created a new terrorist organization, ISIS. They are extending their evil and metastasizing their cancer.
The tripod of horror and terror that extends from the Iranian regime to ISIS to the Syrian regime must be dismantled. Destroying one axis would destroy the whole tripod and bring peace and prosperity to the greater Middle East. Whether they wear beards or berets makes no difference. A fascist is still a fascist. It is one enemy, the enemy of freedom, whether it is dressed as dictatorship or religious theocracy or fanatical fundamentalism; it is still the enemy of freedom. May God bless you and bless the United States of America and may Syria and Iran soon be free.
Taizz, Yemen. In the foreground, Aschrafiyya Mosque, September 1, 2004. By Bezur, and republished under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0, Wikipedia source address: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taizz.jpg.
For years “human rights” groups, aid organizations, other NGOs, and the United Nations have dishonestly claimed that almost every Israeli military action is a war crime. Beginning March 26, 2015, the Saudi-led Coalition fighting to defeat Ansar Allah—the Houthis—in Yemen has also been accused of war crimes. There’s absolutely no evidence that the Coalition is violating international humanitarian law. The reality is that Coalition air strikes are being carried out with nearly supernatural accuracy. But do you know who’s committing war crimes right out in the open? Russia. Where’s the outcry?
The term “war crime” has completely lost its impact through overuse by liars with agendas. Now nobody cares about genuine atrocities.
First, let me reiterate what I determined by adopting the same methodology as Action on Armed Violence (AOAV): I read English-language media reports about the fighting in Yemen. It’s absolutely clear that the Houthis are responsible for the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties. When the Coalition carries out major operations against the Houthis, civilian casualties go down.
Damascus, Syria – A delegation from the pro-Assad Syrian National Defense Army visited Yemen last week through Beirut International Airport, private sources told ARA News.
“Such visits are aimed to increase coordination between the Syrian regime and the Houthi group in Yemen and plan to bring the latter’s members to Syria in order to receive military training as well as to exchange security information between the two sides,” a regime-linked source told ARA News on condition of anonymity.
Perhaps there’s more to Yemen’s struggles today than covered by Big Media’s foreign press.
BackChannels hasn’t looked (yet) but while Iranian “war by proxy” appears of evident interest with the March instance of Syrian meddling noted, one may wonder how the middle temperament of the Yemeni people has been either overlooked or inadequately noted and remarked.
What’s Happy Yemens? Happy Yemen, Arabia Felix was the name Romans gave to Yemen. The organization is called Happy Yemens, promoting the interests of South and Central Yemen, two distinct parts of Yemen fighting with the Northern North for the past 800 years that the international community has been trying to silence. The international community is trying to hide our existence, and paint it as a Saudi-Houthi war. They only use voices from Sanaa & the Northern North who have never been to South & Central Yemen, nor do robbers and occupiers understand the reality of whom they have robbed and occupied. Most journalism is “Sanaa journalism” interviewing our occupiers about us. We aim for South and Central Yemenis to speak for themselves rather than our occupiers speak for us.
We are a media collective of South and Central Yemenis around the world. We feel that South ande Central Yemenis are persecuted by the Goebbels style defamation of the “Death to Jews” shouting Houthis who have adopted a neo Nazi ideology and many of its tactics. We want to give South and Central Yemen its own voice
In childhood, the kid with the chessboard chooses his opponent. Why not in adulthood? And what if you could not only control you opponent but make the same another rival’s opponent . . . how cool would that be?
That would be so far beyond cool as to have arrived at deliciously evil.
Bashar al-Assad’s best defense, for the realpolitik theatrical “Assad vs The Terrorists” becomes for the general opposition, including NATO opposition to the tyrant’s rule, “Assad or The Terrorists” (mirroring slogan: “Assad, Or We Burn The Country”).
Related to the previous, ISIS becomes the primary military war-on-terror focus for the west, which comes with diplomatic, human, and financial costs to the west.
Incubated by its own enemy, the Assad regime and its backers, ISIS has been positioned in time and space to destroy the revolution once pressed by the Free Syrian Army and serve as a foil to the combined forces of Assad, Khamenei, and Putin, all of whom today may at will attack the same even if preferring other non-ISIS (and still noncombatant) targets.
In ISIS, Khamenei (he may thank Assad and Putin) has chosen a familiar Sunni opposition for Iran’s purchase in Iraq’s Shiite militia community. Once again, Iranian Revolutionary Guard get to get their boots into battle with their old Baathist foes, now serving as generals in Baghdadi’s cause.
Related Teasers, Links, and Reference
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949, has 28 members devoted to the idea of collective security. Prediction: By the time President Obama leaves office in 2017, the NATO pledge of mutual defense in response to aggression will have been exposed as worthless. Objectively the alliance will have ceased to exist. The culprits? Vladimir Putin—and Barack Obama.
The long-term aim would be to defeat or demoralise the non-Isil opposition, so that Isil became the regime’s only enemy. That would force the West to back President Bashar al-Assad against it. “They want to clean the country of non-Isil rebels, and then the US will work with them as Isil will be the only enemy,” the Damascus source said.
Russia bombed Syria for a third day on Friday, mainly hitting areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting and drawing an increasingly angry response from the West.
The U.S.-led coalition that is waging its own air war against Islamic State called on the Russians to halt strikes on targets other than Islamic State.
Next came Russia’s move on Syria. The weapons that Russia is sending there are not an attempt to settle the conflict. They are there to protect the Assad regime, which is its cause. Moreover, ISIL does not have warplanes: Russia’s air defense missiles are in Syria for a different purpose.
This became clear on Wednesday, when America was given less than an hour’s warning that the Kremlin was imposing, in effect, a no-fly zone in Syria. With this the Russians not only mounted a direct challenge to American authority. They also ripped up the rulebook of military diplomacy. America was aghast, but had no response.
The Ba’ath regime was strongly anti-American, so it’s not surprising that–despite the unfortunate fate of the Iraqi Communist Party–it was primarily a client of the Soviet Union (not the US), and this relationship continued up until the moment when the Soviet Union collapsed.
That Baathists helped ISIS, before the declaration of the ‘Caliphate,’ to rush into Iraq last year, and assist in the battles for key nodes in Iraq, is indisputable. Even in the Second Battle of Tikrit, just fought in the past few weeks, Baathists were a prominent component of ISIS forces. The very fact that Saddam Hussein’s al-Tikriti tribe was tossed out of their tribal domain certainly bore the hallmarks of the ultimate revenge against the Baathist core.
Moscow’s action were in line with the strategy it had used to defeat the separatist movement in Chechnya, infiltrating the insurgency, driving it into extremism, and facilitating the arrival of al-Qaeda jihadists who displaced the Chechen nationalists. In Syria, Russia’s actions accord with the strategy adopted by the regime and its Iranian masters to present Assad as the last line of defence against a terrorist takeover of Syria and a genocide against the minorities. New evidence has emerged to underline these points.
Testimony from gendarmerie officers in court documents reviewed by Reuters allege that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells were carried in trucks accompanied by state intelligence agency (MIT) officials more than a year ago to parts of Syria under Islamist control.
Four trucks were searched in the southern province of Adana in raids by police and gendarmerie, one in November 2013 and the three others in January 2014, on the orders of prosecutors acting on tip-offs that they were carrying weapons, according to testimony from the prosecutors, who now themselves face trial.
While the first truck was seized, the three others were allowed to continue their journey after MIT officials accompanying the cargo threatened police and physically resisted the search, according to the testimony and prosecutor’s report.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/links-russia-in…/ I’ve been using some of these Back-Channels pieces as boilerplate. The the two powerful dictators — Putin and Khamenei — and the tyrant in the middle — Assad — may be making a statement about their natural right to exist as they do: colonel, president, emperor, ayatollah, or tyrant. As criminals do, they’re refusing the authority of powers other than themselves; they’re acting fully without compassion or empathy for others, except, perhaps those favored through their patronage; and, as the malignant among narcissists do, they’re putting on a show using a simple self-serving script, “Assad vs The Terrorists”.
In the time-honored ways of the tyrannical, each has “exceeded limits” by practically any standards (save those of ISIS, perhaps), plundered their own states, and reveled in their own glory surrounded by those who cooperate in their madness.
In business, feudal arrangements involving inner circles, private and proprietary methods, and profit seem a confirmed part of how we do things. With “state capitalists” — in Putin’s own words, “New Nobility” — why should the possession of power and wealth prove different?
I don’t think these kinds of guys stop until stopped. There are few avenues of appeal to humanity or sentiment (Putin was spending about $50 billion on Sochi while Assad was preferentially bombing his moderate opposition and large noncombatant communities: no funds were applied for the general relief of Syrians caught in this version of Hell).
The thread starter: a CBS This Morning video:
Posted to YouTube 9/29/2015.
Plainly, and even if representing a post-Soviet neo-feudal Russian, President Putin, as unkind as language may be to him, is himself a power with whom to be reckoned. How that has had to have been approached may speculative, but, certainly, caution has been a large part of it. In 1991, when the Soviet dissolved itself, NATO and the Russian People had had in mind a different kind of Russia. The Cold War then seemed over — and it should have been over.
Behind each state government and system, democratic or despotic, exists an array of winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, privileged and needy. Each government handles the business of life, justice, and fate differently. Where the democratic open societies cultivate the distribution of political power along with the cultivation of individual ability and private fiefdom (we call them “businesses”), the medieval leadership concentrate power in the Great Leader and related favored and privileged insiders (for whom a “loyal lie” most certainly trumps “an inconvenient truth” — the child’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, always applies). The transitioning of such societies seems to have to come from within (as much has played out in British history) and probably will, but with the Big Red Tantrum Button — the unspeakable in latent power — always close by, change may have to come about indirectly and slowly.
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