No. They would have been left to starve through Syria’s drought. No need to go on to global warming: the protests were motivated by economic suffering as much as or more than democratic sentiments.
Assad the Tyrant, using snipers to make his statement — and arresting school children to make it clear — turned a modest popular protest into possibly the most sadistic “civil war” on earth and in history. Unrivaled in its abuses of noncombatant Syrians, he managed to destroy his state, for all intents, and have it serve as a platform for Hezbollah, the Russian Army, and sundry attempts (impeded by Israel) at the manufacturing and delivery of advanced missiles for launching in southern Lebanon.
The Soviet Union collapsed in bankruptcy 26 years ago this December 25.
It turns out that Soviet / Post-Soviet Russia has become truly the “Mafia State” — Luke Harding’s term — and not the least reformed as an aggressive and barbarous monstrosity.
Prompt: the claim that had the west stayed out of Syria, Syrians would be happily alive and domiciled.
Bunk.
Screen capture, LiveUAMap, December 23, 2018 at 10:30 a.m. EST.
Corruption and hypocrisy are part of the evil of the world, doubtless every nation, every religious institution . . . .
F.,
I am much a secular and “sex positive” American — I appreciate the body, nature, sensuality and considerate and moderate indulgence in the everyday palette of western vice — wine, women, and song (although I haven’t seen much of women lately and don’t care for men).
Not only are corrupt generals monsters but the more criminal of the nouveau riche have become so — and I have been naive as regards the interface between good and evil. Lately, I’ve gotten curious about Genesis 3 and that “Tree of the Knowledge of Good AND Evil”.
I had thought God had in mind for his children thorns (and “lions and tigers and bears, oh my”) — not Adam and Eve themselves . . . and all their generations universally.
A rabbi I spoke to on Sunday noted that there was no good without evil, but then I asked him in what proportion?
Maybe I didn’t ask him, but whatever the answer, where is the balance, the equilibrium?
We’re part of the good.
Regarding porn and prostitution in general, I would counsel the approach of some European states to vice where emphasis has been place on “Harm Reduction”. The truth, however, may be that the customers and consumers — and most purveyors — need changing.
They need conscience.
And the economies need to account for the lost, the thrown away, the wandering, the sad, and, perhaps with the young (18+ young), the brave.
The generals who have done and continue to do as they please without boundaries, without limits: bastards!
Inspiration for the above comments and republished here with permission: Waseem Altaf’s observations regarding the general of “East Pakistan” (today’s Bangladesh). Altaf initially published the piece in “viewpointsonline.net” in 2011. BackChannels has only very lightly edited the old piece for ease of reading (via paragraph separation) and for easy copy catches. The first paragraph sets the atmosphere and the point of the argument:
Brigade Major Munawar Khan testified before the Hamood-ur -Rahman Commission (The Commission) that the Commander Brigadier Hayatullah had brought some girls for entertainment in his bunker on the night of 11 & 12 December 1971 in Maqbulpur sector while enemy shells were falling on his troops.
The Nights of the Generals By Waseem Altaf
Brigade Major Munawar Khan testified before the Hamood-ur -Rahman Commission (The Commission) that the Commander Brigadier Hayatullah had brought some girls for entertainment in his bunker on the night of 11 & 12 December 1971 in Maqbulpur sector while enemy shells were falling on his troops.
Brigadier Jahanzeb Arbab (later Lieut. General) as SMLA Multan had demanded 100,000 as bribery from a PCS officer who was chairman of Multan Municipal Committee. The PCS officer committed suicide while leaving a note behind which read that he had only earned rupees 15000 while the SMLA was asking for rupees 100,000, informed Brigadier Abbas Beg to the Commission.
The same Jahanzeb Arbab as Commander 57 brigade in former East Pakistan had looted rupees 13.5 million from the National bank treasury in Siraj Ganj.
The Commission concluded that Major General Khudadad Khan Adjutant General Pakistan Army had illicit relations with General Aqleem Akhter Rani whom he helped in suppressing some martial law cases.
He also minted money in a number of business deals during martial law.
General A.A K Niazi had amorous relations with Ms Saeeda Bukhari of Gulberg Lahore who used to run a brothel house by the name of Sinorita Home. She also worked as a tout for “Tiger” Niazi for receiving money and getting things done when he was GOC and later Corps Commander at Lahore.
Saeeda Bukhari also colluded with Niazi in the smuggling of paan from East Pakistan.
Shamim Firdaus was another notorious character from Sialkot who did the same job as Saeeda Bukhari but at a different location.
Major Sajjad-ul-Haq of 604 field intelligence unit told the Commission that dancing girls were frequently brought to a house in Dacca where they would entertain the generals. He further informed that ‘Tiger’ Niazi would even visit some dancing girls in his staff car bearing three stars and the corps flag.
Lt. Colonel Aziz Ahmad Khan told the Commission that the troops said “When the commander himself was a rapist, how could they be stopped”?
General Niazi also shamelessly defended the rapists by declaring that: ‘You cannot expect a man to live, fight and die in East Pakistan and [not] go to Jhelum for sex; would you?’
Yahiya Khan was extremely fond of women and wine. Some of his girl friends were wife of an IG Police, Begum Shamim K.N Hussain, Begum Junagadh, Madam Noor Jehan, Aqleem Akhtar Rani, wife of a Karachi-based businessman Mansoor Heerji, wife of a junior police officer, Nazli Begum, ex wife of Major General (retd) Latif Khan Mst Zainub, ex-wife of Sir Khizar Hayat Tiwana with the same name i.e. Zainub, Anwara Begum, an industrialist from Dacca, Lilly khan and Laila Muzammil from Dacca. In addition, there were actors Shabnam, Shagufta, Naghma, Tarana and countless others. A number of generals and other army officers would accompany their wives and other female relations to presidency and then leave while the ladies would remain behind.
The report contains names of more than 500 women who spent time with the most licentious ruler of this country and in return extracted countless material benefits at the expense of the State. The wives of Generals Naseem, Hameed, Latif, khudad, Shahid, Yaqoob, Riaz, Peerzada, Mian and several others were Yahiya’s regular visitors.
Even when the situation in East Pakistan was degenerating Yahiya Khan used to visit Lahore and stay at the Governor House where the aphrodisiac Madam Noor Jehan used to meet him at least twice or thrice a day- in different dresses, makeover, and hairdo. At night, she made sure that she was there. General Rani told ex-IG Prison’s Hafiz Qasim that once she herself saw General Yahiya pouring liquor over the body of Malika-e -Tarannum Noor Jehan and then licking it, while both were sitting naked on the bed.
This was happening when East Pakistan was burning.
Begum Shamim K N Hussain would come to see Yahiya at night and would leave early morning.
Later, Shamim was appointed ambassador to Austria while her husband was sent as Pakistan’s ambassador to Switzerland. Both husband and wife were not from Foreign Service with no experience of diplomacy.
The father of Shamim, Justice (retd) Amin Ahmad was appointed Director National Shipping Corporation when he was 70 years of age.
Similarly, when Noor Jehan went to Tokyo to take part in a music festival, she got hefty allowances in foreign exchange in violation of rules while many of her family members were sent to Japan on state expense. When Nazli Begum, one of Yahiya’s mistresses was not sanctioned loan by the MD PICIC, Yahiya dismissed the officer.
The address 61 Harley Street, Rawalpindi, a house owned by Yahiya was built and decorated with funds obtained from Standard Bank.
Yahiya and his Chief of staff General Abdul Hamid Khan used to have fun with their mistresses in the guarded premises of this house. General Rani in one of her rare interviews described Yahiya’s idiosyncratic behavior ‘One night Agha Jani came to visit me and was somewhat agitated. The moment he entered, he inquired if I had heard the song ‘cheeche da chala’ from the film ‘Dhee Rani’. ‘I smiled and stated that I had no time to listen to songs’. He then called the military secretary and ordered him to have a copy of the song delivered to my house at once. It was two o’ clock in the morning and the MS had to specially have an audio shop opened up in order to obtain the album. Nevertheless, the command was obeyed and within an hour, Agha Jani was blissfully listening to the song, informed Noor Jehan.
Another widely circulated anecdote during the regime of the philanderer General Yahiya Khan was about actor Tarana.
One evening a woman arrived at the presidential palace and demanded admission, ‘I am actor Tarana,’ she told the security guards. ‘I don’t care what Tarana you are, ’replied the guard, ‘you have to have a pass to go in.’
The woman was incensed and demanded to speak to the ADC to the President.
The guard rang up the ADC and was told to let the woman in. Two hours later when she was leaving, the same guard sprang to attention and saluted her. ‘What change in your behavior!’ remarked the woman very sarcastically.
’Honorable ma’am, when you came, you were the actor Tarana; now you are leaving you are Qaumi Tarana (national anthem), and so I must salute you.’ replied the guard.
General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan continued to live a peaceful and happy life at 61 Harley Street, Rawalpindi while drawing full retirement benefits including pensions as Army Chief and as President. When he died on August 10, 1980, he was honored with a full military burial. Sources:
Supplementary Hamood-ur-Rahman Commission Report completed in 1974
General Aqleem Akhtar Rani’s interview published in the Newsline of May 2002
# # #
1971 Indo Pak War – RARE VIDEO – Bangladesh Liberation
While the now Honorable Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appears on the American scene as a “democratic socialist”, one may hope that the nation indeed produces grassroots politicians, the kind that like Lyndon B. Johnson got mud on their boots and knocked on doors. Times have changed, and a Go-Fund-Me account seems to work, but the politician has still to knock on doors, something the Congressional freshman has apparently mastered.
The complaints may be guessed from the comment: socialist; knows nothing, and who would educate her — Bernie?
Response:
Why not you? Us? Moderates (if there are any left)? She has to listen to her district and seek reelection like any other representative; she has also to know how Washington works; and she is going to have to revisit or visit anew the basics tenets of our democracy. In the meantime, she has seen a lot of misery on her streets. Ours is a modern Judeo-Christian Greco-Roman democracy. We address our issues. Always have. And we try to find what works in the best ways. She has a right to her voice (and her voice will change with time); her district has a right to its voice, and one should hope that it will do better with time and with better public policy.
Back in the 1960s, which formed our impressions, the Soviet Union put money behind Angela Davis and the Communist Party here in the United States. We know how that worked out. It’s better by far having a grassroots and young politician representing her part of our nation.
I don’t endorse those she admires, but if a bigot like Farrakhan is popular where she lives, that may tell about the failure of America to bring those people closer to our Revolutionary and Constitutional ideals, laws, values, and principles. Our democracy has been designed to make course corrections and, very early in that writing, with interest in domestic tranquility.
As this blog frequently references “Soviet / post-Soviet” politics, one may recall the suite of dictatorships from Cuba to Venezuela and all over the middle east that were within or close to the Soviet sphere of influence. Most were awful in relation to greater internal economic development in their heyday and most have failed.
Comment:
Socialism as known has been the premier sales pitch of dictatorship.
The social political element in modern democracies more effectively produces basic systems supporting common business interests that then through revenue and expansion feed back into working economies. They allow people in freedom to invent new ideas and produce wonderful things, essentially heightening domestic and foreign exchange. All good things. Where there are abuses, only the democracies prove responsive to needed adjustments and amelioration.
Liveuamap, Ukraine, Luhansk and Azov Sea regions, November 20, 2018 @ 5:35 a.m.
Russian “Active Measures” and “dezinformatsiya” frame Moscow’s targets with multiple libels, the most infamous its depiction of Ukraine as a hotbed of neo-Nazi hotheads. In the false flag fashion of the “Moscow Apartment Bombings“, Russia has produced an image of Ukraine suited to its ambitions as an invader.
From The Guardian, March 20, 2014 (Luke Harding, “Ukraine nationalist attacks on Russia supporters – fact or Kremlin fairy tale?”):
According to civil rights groups, however, the Kremlin’s account of anti-Russian persecution is a dark fairytale – “entirely fictional”, as one put it. It is, they say, a made-up scenario scripted in Moscow for state TV, and now played out on the ground by pro-Russian activists and bussed-in professionals. Russian propaganda has been extremely effective, they add. Many trust Russian state TV rather than what they see on the streets, which are strikingly bereft of fascists.
“There’s no discrimination against Russian-speakers actually,” Yevgeny Zakharov, from Kharkiv’s human rights protection group, said earlier this week. Zakharov said support for the idea of Kharkiv following Crimea and joining Russia was low – 15% according to the latest survey. He believes last week’s bloody shoot-out was deliberately provoked. “This [Kremlin] campaign is being conducted very aggressively. The idea is to give the false impression that Russians are being humiliated and Kharkiv wants union with Russia,” he said.
— In President Vladimir Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet way, that which best serves the dictator’s political ambitions and ends becomes “pravda” — “truth”. —
Tomorrow the Dutch government will be inviting all EU member states to The Hague to propose an EU wide Magnitsky Act. In advance of that, the Russian government today has accused me of murdering Sergei Magnitsky. Kafkaeske to say the least https://t.co/oHjfUJlFTR
If a Kremlin officer is allowed to run Interpol, it will have no credibility at all. Russia already abuses it to persecute political enemies. It's putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department. https://t.co/7OEBL308tq
It appears Moscow would dispute even the existence — even the possibility — of integrity in information.
In the world’s “Totalitarian Information Spaces (TIS)”, 🙂 , all expression — all thought — is political, malleable, and manipulative.
All of a sudden, RT inverts Browder’s claims regarding his friend and motivation for the Magnitsky Act, and assigns the murder to Browder himself.
Russian accountant Sergey Magnitsky may have been poisoned and his former employer, financier Bill Browder, was possibly behind the murder, prosecutors have found. Now, Moscow will place Browder on the international wanted list.
UK businessman Browder had much interest in the death of Sergey Magnitsky after receiving what he wanted from the accountant, an adviser to the Russian prosecutor general told the briefing.
“Based on the documents that were shown, an obvious conclusion can be made that, having received a false statement from Magnitsky that was used for provocation, Browder was interested in Sergey Magnitsky’s death more than anyone else in order to avoid exposure,” Nikolai Atmonyev said.
Given enough time and manpower, Moscow may turn night into day — and day and light into night and darkness.
Mission accomplished.
In President Vladimir Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet way, that which best serves the dictator’s political ambitions and ends becomes “pravda” — “truth”.
British officials expect Alexander Prokopchuk, a former major-general at the Russian Interior Ministry, to be elected as Interpol president as soon as Wednesday, The Times reported, without saying where it got the information.
Earlier this morning, BackChannels updated a compilation of references associated with Romanian KGB defector Ion Mihai Pacepa, which activity recalled in part how difficult the battle for empiricism, integrity (most of all), and reason may be before a veritable disinformation army devoted to the preservation of despotism and tyranny on behalf of the limitless needs (for “narcissistic supply”) of a single damaged, ruthless, sadistic, and vacant soul.
After his murder, the Russian authorities covered up the crime, exonerated and promoted the people involved, and put Magnitsky on trial three years after he died, in the first trial of a dead man in Russian history.
#SergeiMagnitsky died following his work exposing corruption in Russia. After his death, the U.S. enacted human rights laws bearing his name. To date 49 people sanctioned under #RussiaMagnitsky Act and 101 for corruption or human rights abuse under #GlobalMagnitsky Act.
Inspiration: invoking of the phrase”They are my people”.
Okay.
Every person on the planet has some ethnic, family, and religious identification.
I was thinking about the Druze — I think they are their own people, not yours, Mohammad Muneer Dandan. I know the ancient Samaritans are on the land too, but . . . they’re not your people either, are they? I don’t know the ethnography of the Palestinian Territories — in Israel for its citizens, it just doesn’t matter so much as the state maintains its Jewish ethnic majority (as North American and Europe maintain their Christian majority and atmosphere).
The idea that you would find the Jews at once mixed in Israel as well as reprehensible as a group sounds awfully, well, racist these days. You seem to be promoting some version of ethnic Palestinian purity as the standard for residence on land conquered and administered by many distinct parties over . . . centuries.
Were the Canaanites your people? The Phoenicians? Romans? The Crusaders from the west?
The history of Palestine is the study of the past in the region of Palestine, generally defined as a geographic region in the Southern Levant between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (where Israel and Palestine are today), and various adjoining lands. Situated at a strategic point between Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity,[1] the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The Palestine region or parts of it have been controlled by numerous different peoples and regional powers, including the Canaanites, Amorites,[2] Ancient Egyptians, Israelites, Moabites, Ammonites, Tjeker, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, different dynasties of the Early Muslim period (Umayads, Abbasids, Seljuqs, Fatimids), Crusaders, Late Muslim dynasties (Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottoman Turks), the British, Jordanians (1948–1967, on the “West Bank”) and Egyptians (in Gaza), and modern Israelis and Palestinians. Other terms for approximate geographic area include Canaan, Zion, the Land of Israel, Southern Syria, Outremer and the Holy Land.
Jews are Hebrews and the Hebrews are of the Land of Israel.
Any question about that should seem to the whole world — and the entire Muslim world that relates to the Moses mentioned by the Qur’an — surreal.
As regards Palestinian purity, go over the listings. Your people — which ones from which period?
For the record, BackChannels believes the refugee generations of Gaza and the West Bank may well comprise a “Palestinian People” on the basis of more than 70 years of separation in the Arab Apartheid Palestinian camps of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. For administration, the camps — they’re built these days — need to be integrated into the states that host them, and the refugees accepted and free to learn, live, and work like any other Arab citizen. The more restive of Gaza and the West Bank are welcomed here to know their true history and their being a part of the world fought, traded, and traveled across the land from every other corner of the world. Now THAT would be something to be — multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-national.
Moscow has long had hold of two immensely manipulative levers in its often malign and narcissistic vying for the control of political circumstance and their image as perceived: anti-Semitism most of all: Okhrana | Protocols –> Germany via White Russian fleeing the Bolsheviks, especially contributing to the Holocaust: Max Erwin Von Scheubner-Richter. The other lever: socialist | nationalist totalitarianism. Revival of the Russian Orthodox Church as a sop for Russian disgruntlement, and, of course, revival of the military as a power need little explication. The effect intended, imho: weaken democracy in EU / NATO and revive what Russia has known best: a paternal and authoritarian feudalism that is itself also absolute in power.
“Indeed, it would appear Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, flight, or murder has become a matter most delicate, most intriguing, most opaque.”
Epistemological Khashoggi
Things we know.
Things we don’t know.
Things we don’t know we don’t know.
Things we don’t want to know.
Things we will never know.
Thing we know but don’t know that we know.
Things we don’t know but fervently believe.
Finally
Things we would like to find out.
One of the 15 suspects in the death of dissident Jamal Khashoggi dressed up in his clothes and was caught on surveillance cameras walking around Istanbul on the day Khashoggi went missing.
Footage being used as part of the Turkish government’s investigation into Khashoggi’s death was shared with CNN, and shows the man, identified as Mustafa al-Madani, leaving Saudi Arabia’s consulate through the back door wearing Khashoggi’s clothes, a fake beard, and glasses, a senior Turkish official told CNN.
Even so, what has happened to other potential evidence of murder?
Above all: where is the body?
A man in a foreign land leaves his fiancee (of another nationalist) parked by the curb, walks into his nation’s embassy to obtain a permit for marriage and fails to walk back out to drive off into the sunset with his presumed beloved.
Missing: the body.
Also missing: blood spatter; the odor of disinfectant; the appearance of discarded . . . anything: clothing; a table or parts of one involved in a murder; not even a shoelace, much less a pair of shoes, has been shown to the public.
Also for public notice: embassies are considered a part of the sovereign territory of the state represented: what have the Turks been doing (directly) in the Saudi’s building?
Everyone knows the answer to that question — one good reason for the invention of the “Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF)” within buildings intent on defending the most private and sensitive of conversations.
Bold added:
Erdogan called on the perpetrators to be brought to justice in Istanbul and questioned whether the Vienna Conventions, which give immunity to diplomatic staff, applied in this case.
It was the first time that any official in Turkey has publicly outlined the Turkish contention that Khashoggi was killed by a hit squad sent from Saudi Arabia. But while Erdogan had promised the “naked truth,” he offered few details beyond those revealed by Turkish officials speaking privately.
But officials are skeptical of Saudi’s explanation for the Khashoggi’s death. Turkish officials have repeatedly touted claims that Khashoggi was brutally tortured and dismembered by what appeared to be a 15-person kill squad flown in from Saudi Arabia.
Where are the bones? The clothes? The “body bag”? Was there a sink? A plastic or porcelain tub? Where are the clothes of the killers? Where was the fire and smoke needed to burn things that burn? Where are his shoelaces and their plastic tips (if of common construction)? No nails? No hair follicles?
After his transforming Turkey into a family enterprise, what motive has anyone from the post-Enlightenment west for believing the presentations of President Erdogan?
In Sum
Where is the body?
Where, in fact, is the story?
BackChannels may suggest that the Saudi confession to murder should have been accompanied immediately by its evidence. Today, the lag in time between the confession and the turning up of evidence — so late as to make fabrication possible — may make the confession suspect.
The time may be running out for even the telling of an untimely untruth.
Indeed, it would appear Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, flight, or murder has become a matter most delicate, most intriguing, most opaque.
Multiple sources suggested Khashoggi had been cut up and his face “disfigured,” Sky News reported.
Sources in the Istanbul Prosecutor’s office denied that Khashoggi’s remains were found at the consul general’s home, adding that a picture on social media purportedly showing the corpse is fake.
BackChannels will try to stop at this point: where is the body? Is a body found really the body? If a man wished to leave his body, loosely speaking, would he also not leave behind his old clothes?
There is no way to address such questions from an armchair or by watching television.
That may not be the problem — so the man is dead or, perhaps, on his way to early skiing vacation in the Swiss Alps (never let it be said the editor of this blog has not been a foolish romantic); what is the problem is that “the public” — or respective national publics or statistical clumps of national or party identity — may lose its basis for believing anything from any source.
Gruesome, brazen and barbaric were some of the terms that were thrown around in response to learning his fingers were cut off first, then his head and finally his body was chopped into small pieces in order to “disappear” it from the crime scene.
Images of such a sadistic act were the linchpin in inciting the political debacle. Yet, since the remains of Khashoggi’s body had not been found yet, it also served to precipitate a war over who controlled the narrative. With this “memory” destroyed, who owned the truth?
BackChannels 