Category Archives: Middle East

Amok in Syria – Unearthly Crimes

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Syria

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Those hunting for war porn may find it on Live Leak.

The variety of insults to humanity evident in the Syrian theater have horrified and numbed this observer, albeit not in the action immediately — although throwing civilians into baking ovens would seem as bad as it gets: from there, the numbers subject to similarly depraved behavior may climb, God rest their souls, but the character of the crime could not be worse, well, perhaps with the exception of being boiled in exploding nuclear plasma — but in the consideration that this dive down into the criminal depths has been going on, and one may say this today with a straight face, for years.

While Putin and Obama may try to keep at their own arms length the depravity exhibited by the Assad regime (from the outset) and the Al Qaeda affiliates that have carried into the fray their own intellectual poisons as well as a demonstrated lack of self-restraint, the two remain visible at the outer boundary of the melee, would that either could untie themselves from what keeps them in an opposition fast losing its equilibrium.

The Syrian Civil War as a furnace, in the larger sense, continues drawing fuel from Islamist ranks worldwide.  In fact, as we head into the New Year, Syria would seem the go-to place for fighting to establish the global caliphate, to chat freely about offing the Jews, once and for all, and for throwing innocents into baking ovens.

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Syria today is a country of blurred facts and wild rumors, but the abduction and in some cases murder of Christian clerics is real enough.

Forced Exodus: Christians in the Middle East | World Affairs Journal – 12/17/2013.

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It is believed that more than 30 journalists are currently being detained in Syria.

Many kidnappings have been downplayed in the hope of aiding negotiations.

On Tuesday the Spanish newspaper El Mundo decided to publicise the abduction of two journalists in Syria in September after indirect communications with their captors led to “no result”.

BBC News – Media urge Syrian rebels to stop journalist kidnappings – 12/12/2013.

Related: 2 Spanish journalists kidnapped in Syria, newspaper says – CNN.com – 12/10/2013.

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Rise of Islamic Front a disaster for Syria – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 12/15/2013.

Growing strength of Syria’s Islamist groups undermines hopes of ousting Assad | World news | The Observer – 12/14/2013.

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BBC News – Briton Ifthekar Jaman ‘killed fighting in Syria’, family says – 12/17/2013.

BBC News – The Chechen Jihadists fighting in Syria – 12/16/2013.

Syria: Islamists Find a New Way to Behead – Middle East – News – Israel National News – 12/8/2013.

Assad’s crimes pale in comparison to atrocities by Syrian radical groups – Today’s Zaman, your gateway to Turkish daily news – 11/3/2013.

Testing a US ’empathy deficit’ in Syria – CSMonitor.com – 12/16/2013.

Syria: ‘Unparalleled human suffering’ – Inside Syria – Al Jazeera English – 12/1/2013.

BBC News – Syria conflict: Women ‘targets of abuse and torture’ – 11/26/2013.

Related PDF: “Violence against Women, Bleeding Wound in the Syrian Conflict.”  Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, November 2013.

Human rights at war in Syria – Opinion – Al Jazeera English – 8/8/2012.

Syria turning into ‘World War II scenario’ | World | DW.DE | 04.12.2013

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▶ Syria: Executions, Hostage Taking by Rebels – YouTube – Posted 10/11/2013.

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To the Ovens! The Latest Atrocities Involving Syria’s Civilians

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Syria

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“The worst crime they committed was that they toasted people in ovens used to bake bread when those people came to buy it. They kidnapped and beat up many.”

Government claims Islamic rebels executed civilians in Adra [UPDATE] – UPI.com – 12/16/2013.

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“Civilians told us that the workers of an Adra bakery were all executed and burned during the first hours of the attack. Whole families were massacred. We do not have an exact estimation of the number because we are unable to get into the town, but the number is high,” Kinda Shimat, Syria’s Social Affairs Minister, told RT.

‘Slaughtered like sheep’: Eyewitnesses recount massacre in Adra, Syria — RT News – 12/17/2013.

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Clearly, the evildoers have lost their minds and souls and have exceeded limits.

What are they going to do with themselves?

The only thing worse — actually, there is nothing worse: they have drilled down to hell — is what some of my fellow writers seem to be doing with the information, which is conflating the barbarity of al-Qaeda affiliates with American policy while doing the look-away on the state-borne “death from above” that has dumped tens of thousands of pounds of bombs on Syrian noncombatants, conveniently also conflated with “the terrorists”, a now convenient catch-all for all the Assad regime (shall I conflate that with Putin?) finds adverse to its outright ownership of its subjugated people.

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A man who appears to be their commander admonishes his men, “Come on guys, we are here to carry out our duties not to seek revenge on our own. This is unacceptable.”

One of the paramilitaries smilingly replies, “But we are killing them in God’s cause, only in God’s cause.”

Opinion: Syrian war’s brutality isn’t going away – CNN.com – 10/11/2013.

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“The horrific things that each side has done to the other now gives license to this kind of behavior . . . as the rest of the world tries to understand what it can do in Syria, who the bad guys are and who the good guys are, it’s becoming harder and harder to make that judgment.”

One Photographer’s Witness to a Brutal Execution in Syria – LightBox – 9/12/2013.

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Syria – Refugee Relief – Bitter Conditions Today – Bitter Memories In the Making

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syria

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Amnesty International slams EU for approach toward Syrian refugees – YouTube – 12/15/2013.

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▶ Snow Worsens Misery for Syrian Refugees – YouTube – 12/15/2013.

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BAALBEK, Lebanon — Shivering in the snow, Syrian Aisha Mohammad looked at the last-minute charity that saved her children from freezing during the smack of a particularly tough Lebanese winter: a wood-burning stove complete with twigs and garbage to ignite in hopes of warming her drafty tent in an icy eastern plain.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon face bitter winter – The Washington Post – 12/15/2013.

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How to help Syrian refugees – CNN.com — The article lists more than a dozen major organizations involved in assistance and relief activities serving Syria’s refugee.

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Refuge | The Washington Post – features 18 refugee stories ranging from “a birth and a wedding” to a family mourning their own in a cemetery on what was to them “foreign soil”.

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Many refugees in Lebanon are living in unofficial makeshift camps, with shelters built from scavenged materials. The Lebanese government has refused to establish refugee camps for fear that they will become permanent homes for Syrians who have fled the civil war.

Images from the area showed refugees scraping snow off the roofs of tents, icicles hanging from ropes and wooden posts, and laundry frozen on washing lines.

Syrian refugees facing extreme hardship as blizzards hit region | World news | theguardian.com – 12/12/2013.

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Bulgaria: Syrian Refugees Face Appalling Conditions | Doctors Without Borders – 11/21/2013.

Syria Refugee Camps Filled With Child Deaths And Winter’s Cold – 12/16/2013.

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. . . hopes for a negotiated end (always a long shot due to Moscow’s strategic interests in Syria) are now even less likely due to the growing bad blood between the U.S. and Russia.

Why Obama vs. Putin Spells Doom For the Syrian Refugees – PolicyMic – 8/19/2013.

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Revolution?

Civil war?

Jihad front?

Cold War Extended?

Political anarchy?

To those who have fled the fighting, what the conflict in Syria is about may not matter or mean very much, if anything: they have found themselves out in the cold in numbers almost too vast to contemplate and with a distribution impossible to administer centrally through other than interstate cooperation in the matter, and that appears about as non-existent as peace or, perhaps, blankets may to those who have none.

One wonders what memories Syria’s refugees will carry with them, those who survive, for the rest of their lives?

How will they come to feel about the world that helped them?  That failed them?

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In a briefing published today, An international failure: The Syrian refugee crisis, the organization details how European Union (EU) member states have only offered to open their doors to around 12,000 of the most vulnerable refugees from Syria: just 0.5 per cent of the 2.3 million people who have fled the country.

Fortress Europe: Syrian refugee shame exposed | Amnesty International – 12/13/2013.

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▶ Snow storm causes misery for Syrian refugees – YouTube – 12/11/2013.

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When she emerged from underneath her blanket, Ghusun, who is “more than 100 years old”, turned her deeply lined face from the wind and moaned in pain from the cold.

Her small group of seven included an 87-year-old woman, four other women and one man. Each clutching old blankets to shield themselves from the bitter wind, they explained they had left their homes in the Syrian city of Homs two months ago, making their slow way to Aleppo, then finally crossing the border into Turkey just before the snow fell.

Syrian refugees face new challenge – freezing weather – 12/13/2013.

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The Great Leader’s Grandiose Delusion

10 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, North America, Politics, Psychology, Regions, United States of America

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The event in the year 1358 was a counterattack. Our courageous and religious youth attacked the U.S. embassy and discovered the truth and identity of this embassy, which was the Den of Espionage, and presented this fact to people throughout the world.

In those days, our youth called the U.S. embassy the “Den of Espionage”. Today, after the passage of 30-plus years since that day, the name of U.S. embassies in countries which have the closest relationship with America – that is to say, European countries – has become the den of espionage. This means that our youth are 30 years ahead of the rest of the world. This event was related to America as well. These three events were related, in different ways, to the government of the United States of America and its relations with Iran. Therefore, the 13th of Aban – which is tomorrow – was named “Day of Fighting Against Arrogance”.

The Office of the Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei – 11/3/2013

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This same regime supplies its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with thousands of rockets, rockets that are aimed at Israeli civilians, rockets that are precision-guided munitions that are increasingly lethal and deadly. This is a regime committed to our destruction. And I believe there must be an unequivocal demand alongside the negotiations in Geneva for a change in Iranian policy. This must be part and parcel of the negotiations. In other words, I’m saying that what is required is not merely a shift and a diminution of Iran’s capability and elimination of its capability to produce nuclear weapons, but also a demand to change its genocidal policy. That is the minimal thing that the international community must do when it’s negotiating with Iran.

PM Netanyahu’s address to the Saban Forum 8 ec 2013

For once, the bold section is a part of the copy at the source — i.e., not mine.

This form in conflict isn’t about wealth or resources: it’s about the character of the next generation’s humanity.

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And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.

Exodus 12:38.

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The Jews and all who would travel with them have been defying the “malignant narcissist” from the first pages.

Even before Exodus, God himself in Genesis arranges for Eve to partake of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, share it with Adam, and become the two of them — this I regard as the most important part — aware, self-aware, and possessed of conscience.

Whatever animals may be left to do, the First Couple have ascended from that base existence, covered and signaled consideration for the other, and been prepared — read carefully: God himself sews the first protective clothing — to live like human beings.

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In contemporary political life there seem to be a thousand pharaohs holding captive and suffocating millions of souls.  In their own heads, the lives of others pale before their own, and the control of others in the cause of their own adoration takes precedence over every other consideration.

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▶ Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Khamenei : Israeli regime shaky, doomed to collapse – YouTube – Posted by PressTV 11/20/2013.

Related from this blog: Paranoid Delusional Narcissist Reflection of Motivation

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▶ Mordechai Kedar: Rouhani threat? Is Obama setting-up Israel to confront Iran on nukes? [46] – YouTube – Posted 10/3/2013.

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In the next breath, however, the ayatollah spoke harshly of France’s stand with the United States in opposition of much of the nuclear deal being forged in Geneva, vowing that Iran would “slap aggressors in the face in such a way they will never forget it,” Ynet News reported.

The militia members, in response, chanted “Death to America.”

 Iran’s ayatollah: Israel’s ‘doomed to extinction’ – Washington Times – 11/20/2013.

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“Iran’s policy of constructive interaction with the world states has forced the world to see the realities of Iran’s capabilities,” Rouhani said during a meeting with Bushehr’s MPs on Monday.

“You see that those powers which were thinking of destroying Iran’s enrichment capability, have now admitted that they cannot stop Iran’s industrial progress and enrichment due to the indigenization of this industry and its expansion,” he added.

President Rouhani: World powers admit failure in stopping Iran’s N. progress – 12/9/2013.

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“In our region there’s been a wound for years on the body of the Muslim world under the shadow of the occupation of the holy land of Palestine and the beloved al-Quds (Jerusalem),” Rouhani said, according to a translation by the Reuters news agency.

The earlier quote, which came from ISNA, was most notable for its inclusion of the call for the “wound” to be “removed”:

“The Zionist regime has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and the wound should be removed,” ISNA quoted Rouhani as saying.

New Iran president Hasan Rouhani calls Israel an “old wound” – CBS News – 8/2/2013.

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In the Iranian regime’s relationship with the greater world, the encouragement of trust by way of sweet words would seem matched by an idée fixe — Islamic succession, perhaps — accompanied by a reputation for treachery.

As with others of similar mien, what the public knows and is told leaves the swallowing black shadow of things less divulged or not divulged at all.

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Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth around $95 billion (£59 billion) – a sum exceeding the value of his oil-rich nation’s current annual petroleum exports, a six-month Reuters investigation shows.

The little-known organization, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader’s enduring power and now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and even ostrich farming.

Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei revealed to run £60 BILLION business empire covering everything from oil to ostrich farming | Mail Online – 11/11/2013; first source: Exclusive: Reuters investigates business empire of Iran’s supreme leader | Reuters – 11/11/2013.

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The 82-year-old Iranian woman keeps the documents that upended her life in an old suitcase near her bed. She removes them carefully and peers at the tiny Persian script.

There’s the court order authorizing the takeover of her children’s three Tehran apartments in a multi-story building the family had owned for years. There’s the letter announcing the sale of one of the units. And there’s the notice demanding she pay rent on her own apartment on the top floor

Reuters Investigates – Assets of the Ayatollah: “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures“:  – 11/11/2013.

There is an old saw regarding the mentality of the power behind a medieval narrative: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law!”

The malignant create laws to exclude, persecute, and thieve from others, and oh my the things that may be taken from any person subject to a monster: family, identity, labor, property, reputation, and wealth.

And life.

If Ayatollah Khamenei’s ambition and methods as an empire builder seem grandiose and rife with injustice to outsiders, there is nothing delusional about them: what you have read, what you have seen, what you have heard in relation to the aims of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, all of that is true as well.

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Iraq Returns (?) to Sectarian Violence

05 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Religion

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A wave of violence Friday killed 52 people in Iraq, most of whom were kidnapped and shot dead with their corpses abandoned, in scenes harking back to Iraq’s sectarian war . . .  More than 6,000 people have been killed this year, forcing Baghdad to appeal for international help in battling militancy just months before a general election, as official concern focuses on a resurgent Al-Qaeda emboldened by the war in neighbouring Syria.

52 dead in throwback to Iraq’s sectarian bloodshed | Bangkok Post: news – 11/30/2013.

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Oh my!

Will that do?  Or should we take it up a notch?

Those bastards!

Raise the volume all you like, talk is talk and that’s all it is: in coming days, so one may suspect with reason, it will become near impossible for the morally pissed off and remote to be heard over or through the bodies piling up as they do when the cause has become nothing short of madness itself.

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STERLING HEIGHTS, MICH. — The Iraqi government is negotiating with the US government and BAE Systems to purchase 200 Bradley Fighting Vehicles sometime during the next 15 months, according to BAE officials.

The potential deal is expected sometime in 2014 and could come just before another expected agreement is reached with Saudi Arabia to buy Bradleys in 2015. The Iraq contract would provide recently upgraded M2A2 ODS (Operation Desert Storm) variants to the Baghdad government, the same vehicles that the US Army National Guard uses.

Iraq Requests 200 Bradley Fighting Vehicles; Saudi Deal in the Works | Defense News | defensenews.com – 8/28/2013.

Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

Related: Iraq’s Months of Sectarian Violence May Lead to a Civil War | TIME.com – 10/1/2013; Iraq suffers ‘accelerated surge’ in sectarian violence – CNN.com 10/6/2013; from this place: Iraq – Back to the Dark Ages Today | BackChannels – 11/8/2013.

The search string “Iraq Sectarian Violence 2013” doesn’t produce news anymore: it produces a story line that starts with taking off the lid covering this simmering pot of scorpions, the seemingly unintended consequence of the 2003 invasion — ten years and eight months ago — and opens a long scene two or three (I don’t think three acts will do it for this part of the world) that is playing now and keeps cycling back to unconventional, sub-state, guerrilla style barbarism and sadism within the context of (yawn) Sunni-Shiite predispositions that have absolutely nothing to do — and they will have nothing to do — with tomorrow.

▶ Iraq 2013: Year of Carnage (Promo) – YouTube – 11/26/2013.

I’m sure my life in media’s fringe would be more exciting (and solvent) if I worked for RT!

However, it takes no genius to understand the astoundingly absurd structure of this portion of the Islamic Small Wars: Putin : cash / Assad : survival / Khamenei : ambition / Shiite : expansion and survival vs. Obama : Obama / Sunni Quasi-Democratic Kerfuffle (Syria) / Iraq : Sunni Reassertion with “gorious” Al Qaeda-type Edging.

Iraqis are suffering murder associated with or motivated by cultural and religious precepts that have absolutely nothing to do with the nature of God, humanity, or the universe — and for that, or just perhaps ignoring that, Iraq as a state is laying in large arms contracts.

Beware the next Gulf War.

All this other bloodletting: calisthenics.

Iraqis need an army of detectives, psychologists (cultural, ethnographic, linguistic, social), and wondrous poetic minds (preferably Jewish or, perhaps, Presbyterian — for the kindness thing), for every surprised and tortured corpse in this year’s Iraq body count, so far, of 6,000 (update that: 6010 or so as I type) was murdered by somebody else’s programming in the head, which programming always exists and persists as language foremost albeit molded by emotion best interpreted through the portal opened by the terms “civilizational narcissism” and “malignant narcissism”.

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Gun battles between Iraqi security forces and armed attackers have left at least ten dead and more than 40 injured in Kirkuk.

Suicide bombers and gunmen initially launched an assault on police intelligence headquarters in the northern Iraqi city.

A two-hour exchange of fire followed.

Co-ordinated attack in Kirkuk leaves several dead as violence in Iraq escalates | euronews, world news – with video – 12/5/2013

▶ Iraq violence producing a ‘damaged generation’ NewsNews – YouTube – Posted 12/5/2013; however: BBC News – Iraq violence producing a ‘damaged generation’ – 11/1/2013; related: BBC News – Iraq army asks tribe leaders to help end violence – 10/29/2013; US, Iraq agree more equipment needed to fight al Qaeda in Iraq – World News – 11/1/2013 (if a dateline is absent, the date posted here comes from the Google search engine).

At the state level, state forces consistently engage Al Qaeda when apparent, much to their credit, but the sub-state, transnational character of that insult to humanity knows its way around tanks and patrols.  What’s needed would seem an extraordinary upgrade in intelligence concepts and methodology, including HUMINT.

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It was the second month in a row that the overall death toll declined, but the U.N. envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said he was “profoundly disturbed” by an uptick in “execution-style” killings. In three places around Baghdad last week, Iraqi police found bodies of 31 men, women and children who had been shot in the head.

World news digest: In Iraq, attacks raise fears of Sunni-Shiite violence – The Washington Post – 12/1/2013.

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By April 2013, simmering sectarian tensions boiled over and the country experienced its deadliest month in half a decade. If a day goes by in Iraq without scores being maimed or killed in car bombings outside schools, mosques or crowded markets, that day is the exception rather than the rule. Hundreds continue to die each month in such grisly attacks. What follows is an account of the violence that has gripped the country over the past year. There are no coffins draped in Stars and Stripes, but the cameras are rolling and the world is watching.

Iraq 2013: a year of carnage — About – 2013 attack data, month-by-month, day by day, to the end of November.

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RT: Score!

CNN: ?

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Syria has emerged as the new “Jihadist cause célèbre” across the Arab world, energizing that movement and providing a melting pot for foreign fighters from across the region to create personal ties that will underpin future terrorist networks.

By the measures of manpower, weaponry and territory, it can now be argued that the broader al Qaeda network is stronger than at any time since the peak of the Iraq insurgency half a decade ago, and perhaps even than at any time since 9/11.

Resurgent al Qaeda: new concern about U.S. homeland – CNN Security Clearance – CNN.com Blogs – 12/2/2013.

Maybe CNN will focus on Iraq a little more tomorrow.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

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Gaza – No Justice – A Glimpse Into Kleptocracy

05 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Politics

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Ironically, throughout all of the alleged Israeli siege on Gaza, Israel has consistently been providing Gazans water and power supplies, which Israel threatened to cut in 2011 if Palestinian Authority pursued reunification with Hamas — a threat which Israel never carried out.

Moreover, numbers speak for themselves: in March 2012, the same month when 300 Hamas rockets were fired from Gaza at Israeli towns, 3,653 truckloads of goods were delivered from Israel to Gaza and 1,375 Gazan patients and companions entered or passed through Israel for medical treatments, followed by another 1,364 in April, 2012.

In August 2012, the Hamas prime minister’s brother in law was allowed to enter Israel for treatment in an Israeli hospital.

Who Is Really Besieging Gaza? :: Gatestone Institute – Mudar Zahran – 11/15/2012.

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“there are 1,200 millionaires in Gaza since Hamas took power… these people took advantage of the tunnels and the commerce of fuel to Gaza and took advantage of the people in Gaza.”

Gaza Strip full of corrupt millionaires, says Palestinian official – Middle East Israel News | Haaretz – 11/16/2013.

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WAFA reported that the wealth came from controlling the smuggling of good through the tunnels with Egypt, including “alcohol and drugs,” describing Hamas leaders as “Gaza’s drug lords”.

In addition, the prominent Egyptian newspaper, al-Mesryoon, quoted Egyptian writer and academic Abdul Munim Saeed as saying that Hamas was the main importer and exporter of drugs into Gaza.

The Jewish Press » » Hamas’ Drug Lords – 4/22/2013.

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A campaign against drugs was launched by Gaza’s interior ministry last month targeting tramadol tablets which are widely used by youth in the Sector.

Tramadol is a drug prescribed by doctors as a pain killer; however it is widely misused by drug addicts as a replacement drug. Opium, marijuana and various other kinds of drugs are in short supply in Gaza as a result of the strict anti-drug campaigns carried out by the ministry of interior.

Gaza government fights ‘tramadol’ smuggling – 7/8/2013.

The quotations having to do with narcotics proceeds and trafficking in Gaza rather seem to contradict one another but are not necessarily irreconcilable: the soul of corruption and crime resides in the opaque qualities of a governance that enables some to many to engage in illicit activities without consequence to themselves.  In such atmospheres, tightening laws and initiating crackdowns may as well serve to remove one’s own competitors or enemies from the market, which is not to say that’s what’s happening, but who is to know — and how would they know it?  Independent accounting and audit would see unknown to governments — this is not about Hamas only — that rely too heavily on their own opacity, privacy, and security in doing what they do.

Results nonetheless come out in one form or another of cash input and output comparisons, and if cash seems in short supply where in fact it has been signaled as abundant, than one knows it has been disappearing down into very dark and bottomless pockets.

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The tunnels that move goods into the Strip from Egypt have been linchpins of the economy, employing 12,000 to 15,000 and supplying as much as 75 percent of the products sold in the markets, according to Sameer Abumdallala, head of the economics department at Al Azhar University in Gaza. Now the smugglers say their importance is waning: Access to Israeli goods is improving, and the Gazan government has begun regulating the tunnels, sapping profits.

Twilight of Gaza’s Smuggling Tunnel Millionaires – Businessweek – 1/31/2013.

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Palestine – Gaza City.

Septemper 4, 2013

palestinian man who lost his right foot (disabled)he has 10 children in Gaza City ( Alzayton area) suffers poverty and the family lives in just two rooms.

Five of the children they don’t going to school because of the bad economic situation in the family. — family also thay don’t have an sewerage network

Gerechtigkeit für Gaza – justicia para Gaza – justice pour Gaza – justice for Gaza: Ezz Al Zanoon – brilliant photographer from Gaza – 9/4/2013.

Whose constituents are they?

Readers who click on the above link will arrive at an almost too beautiful picture of an equally ugly circumstance made more so by the point of this post: enormous sums have channeled through the Gaza Strip, but evidence of fair and responsible distribution through local governance has been weak and, in fact, both Israeli and Palestinian presses seem to have turned up stories indicating interests opposite accountable and responsive area-wide governance.

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Dictatorships and the “malignant narcissists” who manipulate and thieve from their areas of control often offer sweet words to their constituents but their wallets and their forces tend to serve mostly themselves.  For such, ideologies and religions would seem to serve mostly as cloaks and shields inscribed with the con artist’s favorite invocation: “Trust me.”

Addendum 12/5/2013

The streets of some Gaza neighborhoods are completely flooded with raw sewage, so that pedestrians have no way to go but through the muck. The Hamas government has been sinking Gaza into a quagmire of violence, blackouts, water shortages and now: a cholera epidemic waiting to happen.

The Jewish Press » » Israel Warns EU of Emerging Gaza Humanitarian Disaster – 12/3/2013.

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In the past few years, the war-torn Gaza Strip relied on Egyptian fuel at 3.5 Israeli shekels (one dollar) per litre. Then in July, Egypt closed down all supply tunnels to Gaza in an attempt to crush the Hamas Islamic movement for being an ally to overthrown Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (2012-2013). The municipality says that fuel coming through Israel is heavily taxed, forcing them to pay double, at 7.0 Israeli shekels per litre.

Gaza Returns to Donkey Days – Sabbah Report – 12/5/2013.

1. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sets out to establish a family dynasty in the last years of his tenure;

2. Egypt, en masse, decides to not let Mubarak get away with that, and he’s ousted from power;

3. The only political player on the block turns out the Muslim Brotherhood, which handily, ruthlessly, takes care of its competition, ascends to power, and sets about the business of consolidating everything, starting with the army, quickly advancing to the constitution, its way;

3b. Hamas, itself a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, cheers for the arrival of its new buddy;

4. Civil war breaks out in Syria, partially, initially, aligning Shiite against Sunni Islam, and Hamas, knowing what it’s really about (read the charter), knows what it’s about, which alienates the puppet master in Iran;

5. Meanwhile, in Egypt, President Morsi turns out so ham handed, venal, and on his economy just plain absent or stupid — you decide — Egyptian about half or three-quarters en masse demand his ouster and return to the comfort of the arms of the army;

6. Uh oh for Hamas — Egyptian, Israeli, and United States diplomatic and military interests discover common cause in heading off the fascist Brotherhood (while mouthing away for more genuine democratic process, one way or the other) — and it’s Hamas — the Hamas government and governance — that can no longer sustain an inscrutable presence in the lives of Gaza’s constituents;

6a. Hamas successfully stifles the launch of protests in its streets by way of pre-event arrests and detentions and the usual methods amounting to intimidation — and no one shows up: the by-Hamas-silenced continue suffering (related on this blog: “Hamas – Tamarod – 11/11 [You’re Going to Need a Cup of Coffee“]).

7. Israel, watching this meltdown in governance, the wholesale shirking of responsibility for basic services — keep in mind Gaza’s millionaires, their number, their sources of income, their comforts — alerts the European Union as regards the strips vulnerability to other human catastrophe, including the creation of conditions for cholera.

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A STRING of regional developments over the past two years has left the Islamist Hamas government in Gaza in dire straits and opened up new opportunities for Israel and Palestinian moderates.

In backing the Sunni rebels in the Syrian civil war, Hamas forfeited its special ties with its biggest arms supplier, Iran; the military ouster of its Muslim Brotherhood allies in Cairo put serious strains on its relations with Egypt; and a change of leadership in Qatar left a big question mark over the extent of financial aid from the oil-rich Gulf state it can continue to count on.

ICT – Commentaries > Hamas in disarray – 11/26/2013.

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“I can’t emphasise enough that Israel’s security in this negotiation (with Iran) is at the top of our agenda,” Kerry said at a joint news conference in Jerusalem.

“The United States will do everything in our power to make certain that Iran’s nuclear programme of weaponisation possibilities is terminated.”

Kerry stressed the two men had spent “a very significant amount of time” discussing the peace talks with the Palestinians.

“Israel’s security is fundamental to those negotiations,” he said.

Israel security key in talks on peace, Iran: Kerry – Yahoo!7 – 12/5/2013.

Hate may for a while drive the heart but it consumes it too and all it envelopes.

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The charter states that “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[1] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.[2][3] The charter also states that Hamas is humanistic, and tolerant of other religions as long as they do not block Hamas’s efforts.[4] The Charter adds that “renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion” of Islam.[5]

Hamas Covenant – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/5/2013.

Any who care to look ahead to how that story ends may well look beyond Gaza, Hamas, and Israel: a figure approaching 130,000 have died in neighboring Syria’s civil war, which effort to depose a dictators has been skewered by the forces of “Islamic Jihad” that would have it a war for Islam rather than for democracy, human rights, and inclusion in power; beside that figure stands the displacement of one-third of Syria’s population before the war.

I’ve seen no figure describing the suffering and trauma visited on Syrian innocents and noncombatants, but then I believe no such figure can ever exist.

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Iran’s Path – A Simple Juxtaposition

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics

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London: Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper has published satellite images that it says prove Iran is developing a second path to a nuclear weapons capability by operating a plant that could produce plutonium.
The images – commissioned by the Telegraph and taken as recently as February 9 – show steam rising at the heavily-guarded Arak heavy water production plant, about 240 kilometres south-west of the capital Tehran. International inspectors have been barred from the plant since August 2011.

New nuclear concern over Iran as satellite images expose plant – 2/28/2013

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Iran’s Mullahs, with the aid of the beguiled illiterate and religiously fanatic masses, strengthened their stranglehold as they blamed others for their incompetence and larcenous nature for the people’s intractable problems. The ever-machinating Mullahs had to find a scapegoat, preferably many scapegoats, to blame. True to form they turned and bit the hand that helped bring them to power — the United States. For good measure, the Mullahs included Israel. Jews have always been good scapegoats for Islamists, going back to the time of Muhammad in Medina. The prophet of Allah, as soon as he gathered enough power, found it expedient to plunder the Jews’ properties, kill the men and take the women and children as slaves to exploit or sell.

Archived-Articles: Mr. Obama: Don’t Betray My People – 7/3/2008

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Iran, once OPEC’s second-largest producer, is talking with European companies about future projects, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told reporters today in Vienna. The minister said he hopes Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM:US), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) Plc, BP (BP/) Plc, Eni SpA and Statoil ASA (STL) will invest in the country. Iranian officials will meet with international companies in London in March, he said, declining to identify them.

The Islamic republic agreed last month to restrict work on its nuclear program for six months in return for a loosening of sanctions that offers about $7 billion in relief and access to $4.2 billion in oil revenue frozen in foreign banks.

Iran Plans to Meet Foreign Oil Companies to Seek Investment (1) – Businessweek – 12/4/2013.

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What could go wrong?

Don’t answer.

The future will be here soon enough.

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Snapshot – Maaloula and Yabroud

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Syria

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Syria: Pope Francis Speaks Up for Maaloula Abducted Nuns – IBTimes UK – 12/4/2013

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The “fog of war” descended on Syria a long time ago.

That process began with a despotic and reactionary state eschewing talk with its challengers and leaping to air power to bomb the daylights out of its own constituents — city blocks, suburbs, towns, villages, schools — free of discrimination regarding noncombatants.

The same seems to have picked up with the fractured assembly of the Free Syrian Army and to have accelerated with the incursion of the Al Qaeda affiliates and their ability to steal The Revolution, redefine The Cause, and confuse the comparative loyalties and purposes of the patchwork of anti-Assad forces.

* * *

The fighting in Maaloula is part of a wider struggle between Al-Qaeda linked fighters of the Nusra Front and the Syrian army for control of the strategic Damascus-Homs highway, which passes close by the town.

Maaloula was the scene of heavy fighting in September. It is considered to be one of the birthplaces of Christianity and is home to a number of shrines and monasteries, which are listed as UNESCO world heritage sites.

Islamist fighters move 12 abducted Syrian nuns from Maaloula to rebel-held town — RT News – 12/3/2013.

* * *

Activists and residents say Syrian rebels have again taken control of parts of Maaloula, an ancient Christian town near Damascus.

A spokesman for the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a local resident said on Monday that rebels were steadily seizing swathes of the town which they have occupied on previous occasions as fighting has ebbed and flowed in the rugged Qalamoun region near Damascus.

Syrian rebels take control of Christian town Maaloula – Syria – FRANCE 24 – Google lists the posting date as 12/3/2013.  😦  I urge the majors — and everyone else — to return to datelining their stories!

* * *

In a statement relayed by the Lebanese National News Agency, Qabbani said that “kidnapping and physical abuse go contrary to the teachings of Islam, and are offensive to the essential teachings of tolerance especially at a time of conflict and war.”

It was not immediately clear whether the nuns had been kidnapped or merely evacuated for their own safety.

Pope, Lebanon mufti call for release of Maaloula nuns | Al Akhbar English – 12/4/2013.

Oh, please, oh sponsored press: the Islamist front has retaken a critical position in the Syrian theater, picked up in the weird way of the religious world a dozen useful assets that it may use to forestall the next Assad airstrike, or, if the jets fly anyway,  use as anti-regime PR (by way of their obliteration by the air force of the despot) even while a few of their own are dispatched to Paradise.

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Posted May 19, 2013 —

Syria – Crazy Freaking Assad Blasts Yabroud – YouTube – 5/19/2013.

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The Syrian terrorists abducted 12 nuns from Mar Takla monastery, which lies in the historic town of Maaloula in Damascus, and movedNuns them form to the nearby town of Yabroud.

Syria Terrorists Move Maaloula Nuns to Yabroud Northern Damascus – 12/3/2013.

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▶ ‫أصابة دبابة تابعة لعصابات الأسد بصاروخ السهم الأحمر بالقرب من قيادة اللواء١١٢ بالقرب من نوى‬‎ – YouTube – 12/4/2013.

#Syria #Daraa #Nawa Rebels hit a regime tank… | YALLA SOURIYA – 12/4/2013.

While America’s lopsided right-side conservatives excoriate President Obama for this mess, it may dawn on some to take a second look at the weight and singularity of the emerging rebel arsenal.  Neither the weapons launched in the above attack or very good zoom video used to record the attack arrived out of thin air.  As with all film and television productions, especially today the real ones, there would seem to be a lot of treasure involved.

Whose?

When?

Through what channels?

I don’t think I’m going to find the answers to those questions on the World Wide Web.

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