23 Monday Sep 2013
Check this out at 1:52-60:
(laughter)
It’s just a boy.
(continued spraying of fire).
▶ FSA And Nusra Front In Heavy Clashes With The Syrian Army – YouTube Posted 9/22/2013
Access to other (YouTube lookup) “FSA fighting” recent footage seems blocked here.
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19 Thursday Sep 2013
Tags
The crossing itself, one of the few between Syria and Turkey that are still functional, remained in the hands of the more moderate Free Syrian Army on Wednesday night, despite reports that Islamic State was mounting an offensive to take it.
Al-Qaeda-linked fighters seize Syrian town of Azaz from more moderate rebels – The Washington Post 9/18/2013
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A beheaded little girl, a part of the reference here also earlier this afternoon, a victim denoted Christian, a perpetrator denoted “ISIL” — “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”.
Related: Al-Qaeda linked group takes over Syrian border town – Telegraph 9/19/2013
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Israeli scholar Phillippe Assouline, among my acquaintance on the social networks, asked in relation to this latest image of decapitation making the rounds, “Can we sit by and watch our enemies murder non enemies for their religion?? Is that not what happened to us? There is a budding genocide of Christians going on…”
War-related events in Syria have gone way beyond “blast and battle” and “NATO rounds” and the known suite of “insurgent methods”, as ugly as all those things may be: the “war” has slipped over into unadulterated and numbing barbarity.
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Source: Wikipedia Commons Address
One could list quite a few historic moments of complete cultural degradation, but that would be too easy.
Instead, I think I will close this post with an obituary from yesterday’s Boston Herald: Holocaust survivor, top German lit critic dies | Boston Herald. It seems to me as relevant a remark to make about the latest in barbarism associated with the too familiar clowns parading today, perhaps, in Azaz, Syria.
Al-Qaeda Allied Fighters Capture Rebel-Held Syrian Border Town | TIME.com 9/19/2013
BBC News – ISIS seizure of Syria’s Azaz exposes rebel rifts 9/19/2013: “As a measure of the grip the jihadis have in Azaz, one eyewitness inside the town said no-one was smoking on the streets – tobacco is forbidden according to strict Islamist doctrine.”
Syrian rebels, Qaeda group clash near Turkish border crossing | Reuters 9/19/2013
Residents of Syria’s Azaz enraged over Al-Qaeda takeover | GlobalPost 9/19/2013
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19 Thursday Sep 2013
Just when you think it couldn’t be any worse . . . .
Related (for 18+): LiveLeak.com – MUSLIM TROPHY IN SYRIA: LIFELESS BODY OF DECAPITATED CHRISTIAN CHILD
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18 Wednesday Sep 2013
Hindsight may not turn out 20/20 when it comes to Syria, as the true extent of the damage may not become apparent for years given the dimensions involved, from the destruction of cities to the less evident effects of the traumatizing of children and young adults — or their indoctrination or orientation to combat and the black hurricanes of war.
For this post: the briefest survey of how dismal and evil Syria’s civil war has been.
Today, there are Syrian children certain to grow up as the immigrants and refugees of war.
For tens upon tens of thousands of Syrians, were peace to arrive tomorrow (let’s not even go there today), there would be not only no homes to return to but no businesses or communities either. War has erased their past lives and the artifacts and furnishings attending them.
For Syria or portions of it, I think we’re short today on the environmental and natural history stories, but perhaps it’s not for the conservationists, as a rule, to throw themselves into still burning conflicts to sample air and water quality and note the health of overlooked habitats.
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Aleppo Tourism and Vacations: 18 Things to Do in Aleppo, Syria | TripAdvisor as viewed 9/18/2013.
While the search engine listed the page date of the above as 2007, the “Travel Alert: Security Concerns” notice proved right up to date. One could walk at leisure around ancient ruins in Aleppo just six years ago; some day, one hopes soon, one may do the same around the latest in modern ones.
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A senior U.N. diplomat in New York says details on scale of the attack, the rockets used and trajectory data cited in the report make it “abundantly clear” that the Syrian regime was behind the attack. The diplomat said: “There isn’t a shred of evidence in the other direction.”
AP top news headlines | Tampa Bay Times “UN report suggests regime behind sarin attack,” 9/18/2013
Perhaps the most besieged parties in Syria will turn out the forces that launched sarin-loaded warheads from sites on Mount Qasioun.
On the war crimes front, both UN reports and “western” diplomacy seems to be closing in on Damascus today and its specific higher elevation defenses.
The New York Times’ C.J. Chivers and Human Rights Watch’s Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery specialist, examined details buried in the U.N. report released Tuesday that concluded definitively chemical weapons were used in Syria without implicating either side. Both came to the same conclusion through separate, independent investigations: the rockets carrying sarin gas were fired from Syria’s Mount Qasioun . . . .
The U.N.’s Case Against Syria Is Hidden in the Details – Connor Simpson – The Atlantic Wire 9/18/2013
Rocket trajectory links Syrian military to attack 9/18/2013 AP
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BEIRUT — The prisoners are crammed together in small, dark rooms with no water or electricity and barely enough food to survive. Diseases such as scabies and tuberculosis are rampant among them. Every so often, the crash of artillery shells rocks their sprawling prison complex, a stark reminder of the civil war raging outside.
In the conventional war fighting realm, Syria’s prisoners have been made prisoners of the war as much as of the state. Theirs is truly a state of siege with state forces defending the prison and keeping them and rebel forces attacking the prison and claiming intentions to free them. While fate, God, nature, machinery, and politics squat like The Thinker on their stony lives, the war gets to them anyway, and according to the AP story, by way of shelling, lack of medicine, and possibly execution by guards (“opposition groups say”).
Also: Syria: Aleppo prisoners caught in deadly stalemate – Washington Times 9/18/2013
Pentagon proposes plan to equip and train ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels — RT USA 9/19/2013 (only on the web may I relay tomorrow’s early news). 🙂
Pentagon proposes training moderate Syrian rebels – CNN.com 9/19/2013
Related background: The Non-State Militant Landscape in Syria | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point 8/27/2013
The closure of factories, disrupted communications, rising unemployment, a growing shadow economy, prices increases, and a serious shortage of many vital goods and services have accompanied the upheaval in Syria. Since government resources are being depleted, the economic implications of the Syrian crisis work against Assad’s regime in the long run.
Asia Times Online :: Syria’s looming economic disaster 9/16/2013
Related: Insight: Syria’s economy goes underground as black market thrives | Reuters 9/5/2013
What we think of as “civilization” may not be all that fragile, as most places most of the time tolerate some low-level incidence of violence in crime, of urban decay, social pathology, the burdens of natural health-related issues across their populations, and outbreaks of flu and such, but political violence develops its own and often amplifying energies. While the military technician’s “low-intensity conflict” may be also continuous and survivable — as much seems to be true in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and other hosts within the Islamic Small Wars as well as distinctly different conflict-laden cultures, e.g.,Mexico with the cartels, Colombia with the FARC — the same smoldering heat with its incidental fires may break out into more virulent and much amplified form.
The Assad regime did itself, much less its subject people, no favors when it launched jets against suspect redoubts where a more temperate leadership may have dispatched detectives and spies. In essence, it put itself on the path to burning down its own house.
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This drought — combined with the mismanagement of natural resources by [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, who subsidized water-intensive crops like wheat and cotton farming and promoted bad irrigation techniques — led to significant devastation. According to updated numbers, the drought displaced 1.5 million people within Syria.
Drought helped cause Syria’s war. Will climate change bring more like it? 9/10/2013
Pictures: Syrian Cultural Sites Damaged by Conflict 8/2012
List of heritage sites damaged during Syrian civil war – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aleppo: Scenes from a City of Ruins | TIME.com 4/26/2013
One should not overlook the pervasive influence that environment and landscape exerts on human mentality (see, for example, Vine Deloria Jr.’s God is Red), and while in our modern age we really should tackle this earth-human “earth process” challenge (visit, for example, Thomas Berry’s legacy foundation page), we may wonder at the fragility of our works in the path of war.
No less than with the culture, infrastructure, and habitations of the American south of 1860 by the end of 1865, the Syria of 2007 would seem about as “gone with the wind”.
The sovereignty of the regime has disappeared from the Kurdish quarter of the state; the state’s ability to monopolize violence and secure the lives of its citizens seems contested everywhere outside of Damascus; with the chemical weapons imbroglio, it’s ability to operate with near impunity within its own boundaries has been deeply compromised as it has dragged both Putin and Obama more deeply into its political workings.
One may leave the sovereign to be a sovereign even while asking “sovereign of what?”
With Syria at the moment, the answer to that may be “whatever’s left”.
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Syria’s once sophisticated health system is “at breaking point” and parts of the country are completely cut off from any kind of medical service because of “deliberate and systematic attacks” on medical facilities and staff, senior doctors said on Monday.
Health care in Syria is ‘hell on earth,’ doctors say | Fox News 9/17/2013
Related: Open letter: let us treat patients in Syria : The Lancet 9/16/2013
Fox seems to have put up a conservative lead. That article goes on to note, among other similarly depressing factoids, that, “Of the 5,000 physicians in the city of Aleppo before the conflict started, only 36 remain . . . .”
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More than 2 million Syrians are hosted in the region, placing unprecedented strain on communities, infrastructure and services in host countries.
There has been a massive escalation of arrivals in 2013. Over one million Syrian refugees have registered as refugees since the beginning of 2013.
Women and children make up three-quarters of the refugee population.
The vast majority of refugees are dependent on aid, arriving with little more than the clothes on their backs.
Stories from Syrian Refugees, UNHCR, as viewed 9/18/2013.
Related: UNHCR – Syria Regional Response Plan (January – December 2013)
The combined burdens plus energies attending Syria’s displaced and refugee populations will change the world.
Or not.
Either way, the most vulnerable, hapless, youngest, peaceful, and innocent of humans involved in the war present the greater humanity, all of it, with the challenge of their survival, including their integration with what I’ll call the common humanity.
To date, with Somalia’s 1.7 million refugees, the trumped Palestinian numbers — in camps or somewhere between, all of those have been settled for years even if most unsatisfactorily across four states and two nominal territories — and yet some messes in Iraq and Pakistan, the greater humanity seems to have gotten used to keeping uprooted humans in circumscribed camps. However, the numbers involved in Syria’s political meltdown defy so pat, simple, or foreseen an approach to management and order.
With Syria’s refugees, not exactly friends of the Jews, Israel, “the west” — in part, it’s their own familiar claptrap that has both enabled and sustained the Assad dictatorship and invited to the archaic and decadent system the whirlwind now consuming it and themselves — the world will either harden its heart or open its doors (credit Sweden recently with responding to its part of the challenge with humanity).
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Detecting Looming Border Conflicts Using Satellites | United States Institute of Peace 9/10/2013
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17 Tuesday Sep 2013
Mahmoud al-Aboud, commander of the eastern front for the Free Syrian Army, told The Daily Beast on Sunday in a Skype interview that the fighting began Saturday with a car bomb. Killed in the attack, said Aboud, was the brother of Saddam al-Gamal, a local commander of Allahu Akbar Brigades, a group aligned with the FSA in al-Bukamal. After the bombing, Gamal’s men launched a counterattack with small arms fire that killed four fighters in the opposing rebel group.
Al Qaeda Clash With Free Syrian Army a New Stage of Opposition Split – The Daily Beast 9/17/2013 (Eli Lake)
Lake goes on to note, “The FSA, which has received some nonlethal aid from the United States as well as weapons from such American allies as Saudi Arabia, has never collaborated with al Qaeda–linked forces in Syria against the Assad regime, Abboud said.”
So there!
Kudos to Eli Lake for the quote-by-Skype, would that there were more breaking coverage of the fighting in Syria by equally vetted professional journalists, the kind who get around some, miraculously. Instead, what’s going on in there has to filter or sift, if anything, through military intelligence services, and then with those what does the public get that isn’t shaped to suit one national interest or another?
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He left Israel about three weeks ago, probably via Jordan, and reached Syrian rebels, with whom he began fighting, the family said. Muid left with two other companions, who have not been heard from either, the family said.
Report: Israeli Arab Killed in Syria Fighting – Middle East – News – Israel National News 9/17/2013
If Somalia’s Al Shabaab may serve for reference, volunteers to the fight may be treated as cannon fodder.
So goes the politics of small bands and newcomers to them.
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State-approved reporting, informally so, more or less:
“Across northern Syria, there has been an upsurge in crimes and abuses committed by extremist anti-government armed groups along with an influx of rebel foreign fighters,” Pinheiro said. His team was still investigating accounts of killings of captured government soldiers in Khan Al-Asal, he added.
State less-approved reportage, same UN study involved:
An incendiary bomb dropped from a government warplane on a school in the Aleppo countryside on August 26 killed at least eight students, and 50 more suffered horrific burns over up to 80 percent of their bodies, he said, citing survivor accounts.
Rebels, foreign fighters step up crimes in Syria: U.N. | Reuters 9/16/2013.
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Currently, China is Syria’s third largest importer and Russia’s largest at 15.5 percent of Russia’s total imports. As Russia continues to increase arms sales to a desperate Bashar al-Assad government, It has become increasingly clear that what’s good for Bashar al-Assad’s government is also good for Russia and, by extension, China too.
China’s Syria Strategy | Daniel Pena 9/16/2013 (Huffington Post, The Blog)
Verily, The Money has a life all its own.
And these guys at the Too Real Monopoly Table are not playing for Park Place.
As a matter of fact — move over, Mr. Bill — Leonid Bershidsky writing for Bloomberg has just announced “Vladimir Putin, the Richest Man on Earth” (not really, or not necessarily — Bershidsky reviews the sources of the claim).
What’s China’s position on Syria? Sometimes, the drag-and-drop URL headers just fall into place: China says military strike against Syria would hurt global economy – latimes.com 9/5/2013
One cannot help but feel that for either China and Russia, the suffering beneath the brutal Assad dictatorship, the appearance of chemical WMD in the battlespace, which in the news may be traveling slowly but certainly from loosely “alleged” use by the Syrian military toward toward more firm confirmation (e.g., “Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said that the facts of the report underscore that only the Assad regime could have carried out the sarin attack” – UN report confirms chemical weapons use in Syria – World News 9/17/2013), the bereavement associated with more than 100,000 dead, the trials of millions of displaced and refugee souls, and the destruction of entire cities simply don’t matter, at least not compared to The Money.
Perhaps if people mattered to dictators as other than resources for their own glorification and validation — sources of “narcissistic supply” — the same would not be dictators at all but resemble something closer to decent human beings.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for that epiphany to come to the major powers enjoying the good fight — from the perch of their own privilege — associated with Assad’s Syria.
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Moreover, we know the Assad regime was responsible. In the days leading up to Aug. 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area they where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighborhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces.
Text of President Obama’s speech on Syria – Las Vegas Sun News 9/17/2013
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Now let’s do China.
Frankly, anyone who spends much time in China knows about the oligarchic nature of the Chinese elite, but the extent and distribution of the Wen family wealth is eye-opening.
Wen Jiabao’s Riches and Political Reform in China | China Power | The Diplomat Elizabeth C. Economy, 10/30/2012.
As eye opening as an espresso double-shot, I’d say.
Gold may be God for some, for the concept of any ethical or moral view of social reality is a thing suspended in the cultural invention of language. Why not Pharaoh? Why not virgin sacrifice? Why not the Sun King? Or death cults? With the right poetry, anything may be rendered beautiful, desirable, sublime.
Now the Chinese wanted to set their own boundaries. They refused to discuss allegations they had looked the other way when Sudan’s army forced southerners from their homes in the oil regions, Odwar recalled. And when the delegation brought up new pollution laws, they told them not to set their sights so high. “I thought that was very offensive,” Odwar said.
Special Report: South Sudan’s Chinese oil puzzle | Reuters 11/14/2012
The farmers have moved away. Most of the small brick houses in Xinguang Sancun, huddling close to one another, are going to rack and ruin. In just 10 years the population has dropped from 2,000 to 300 people.
Rare-earth mining in China comes at a heavy cost for local villages | Environment | Guardian Weekly 8/7/2012
I wouldn’t dig up the dirt, pun not intended, just to produce a negative attitude toward China on this blog, but that these stories are available from recent years tells about the attitudes taken by authorities toward other humans and the earth.
During the course of the genocide in Sudan, China seems to have made its trade arrangements with Omar al-Bashir and otherwise kept its mouth shut. Again, relevant article URL headers just seem to fall into place: Oil interests tie China to Sudan leader Bashir, even as he faces genocide charges – Washington Post:
Oil has for years been the bedrock of China’s warm relations with Bashir, who was first indicted by the ICC in 2008, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to murder, rape, torture, ethnic cleansing and other actions in Darfur.
What may be at stake for China in relation to Syria is that this dismal retreat from concern for the humanity of others and the cause that is their own hideous glorification continues without challenge or question.
BBC News – China’s stake in the Syria stand-off 2/24/2012
Islamists dominate Syrian insurgency – Threat Matrix 9/16/2013
Syria’s al-Nusra Front – ruthless, organised and taking control | World news | The Guardian 7/10/2013
17 Tuesday Sep 2013
He doesn’t believe that Asad will give up his chemical weapons, and he will do any sort of trick in order to conceal them and hide what he has in his stockpiles of death. The Russians have won a big victory over the United States, and they are taking advantage of Europe’s lack of will to use force. And in general, what is all this business about giving up chemical weapons? Can a murderer’s punishment be mitigated by confiscating the pistol that he used to commit murder? What kind of ethical or legal standard is that? Why don’t they even issue an international arrest warrant against al-Assad to bring him to justice in the International Criminal Court? How is he different from Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and Milosevic of Yugoslavia?
The Jewish Press » » The Saudis are Trembling – Quietly 9/15/2013
I’ve added the citation to the previous post, but for those involved with strategic analysis in the middle east, it’s worth a careful reading.
My line has been consistent: Russia by way of Putin needs to clean up its Syrian client’s act, and it cannot do that today with deceits, RT cameras, and massive state-controlled media: it needs to become an authentic force, even if or especially if authoritarian and reactionary, for peace and social justice in Syria. The political cynicism brought to the brutal Assad regime’s state of affairs has steeped in blood and misery long enough for Russian foreign policy to either pivot about or become the familiar old criminal and domestically, internally much loathed state.
All by itself, of course.
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17 Tuesday Sep 2013
Putin is a master at having it both ways. Without acknowledging that more Syrians have been killed with Russian-supplied weapons than with poison gas, he could with a straight face insist that all countries stop feeding the flames in Syria so that his Geneva II peace process can flourish.
Putin Needs a Less Cynical Syria Policy – Sonni Efron – The Atlantic 9/14/2013
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“The diplomatic duel” between the Moscow and Washington over what to do with Syria’s chemical weapons had ended in “the great victory of Russia,” Kiselyov declared, while the Obama Administration had seen its “geopolitical amateurishness swept away, leaving only the ruins of narcissism.”
Russia Celebrates a Triumph for Putin After Clinching Syria Deal | TIME.com 9/16/2013
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Image isn’t everything.
However, now that our ironically lovely term “narcissism” has crept into the greater political conversation — soon, I expect to see “malignant narcissism” elsewhere (than here) plus, perhaps, an empty variant in “political narcissism” — we may be treated to the spectacle of the image hypersensitive vigorously denying interest in the management of their image while, in effect, desperately trying to maintain and improve their image.
🙂
It may be difficult leaving the center of one’s own universe and one’s own uniquely valued place in it, but the demand associated with Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and elsewhere along the contours of the Islamic Small Wars is exactly that in immediate service to ameliorating suffering brought about by political chaos, conflict, decay, excessive ambition, and the monstrous attitudes held by some with regard to the life and the lives of others.
Oh superpower leaders, whether or not image matters, act as if it doesn’t and — I am having a Kumbayah moment — show the love.
Selflessly.
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To understand Moscow’s policy toward Syria, it is important to understand that Russia sees Syria as part of its Mediterranean policy and not a part of the Middle East. The Arab Middle East has been a relatively low priority in Russia’s foreign policy. The Mediterranean, however, and especially the Eastern Mediterranean region, is a policy priority for Moscow.
For Russia, Syria is not in the Middle East | The Great Debate 5/20/2013
The “Arab Spring” (more like the “Arab Springboard” and pretty much out of control at that), Mubarak’s fall from grace in Egypt, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s pique with these suddenly shifting political sands, and Russia’s neglect of a post-Soviet Syria long due for an overhaul would seem to have made way for this Sumo match that has pitted Anglo-Sunni interests against Russo-Baathist ones in Damascus and overshadowed a nascent developing Russo-Saudi oil rivalry.
Plainly, Syria remains in Russia’s sphere of influence as a critical asset — more than a buffer, a block to political Islam in relation to the seventh dimension 😉 in which the Kavkaz Center worldview would apply; more than a client state and trading partner, the host of a strategic port; and more than an inconvenience, a base for New Russian Influence in the Region: how Putin has eluded taking public responsibility for all of this (not to mention returning Maher al-Assad to business in the battle space), I do not know.
Fix it, Mr. President.
The New Russian Sphere of Influence: Does Russia’s Eurasian Union Threaten U.S. Interests? 6/27/2013
The Syria crisis is keeping Jordan’s King Abdullah on his toes – Middle East Israel News | Haaretz 9/17/2013
The Jewish Press » » The Saudis are Trembling – Quietly 9/15/2013:
The Saudis were on the brink of victory, and Asad’s use of gas took it away from them. That’s why they are so angry with Asad, and with the West as well, which did not take the necessary steps immediately, to act without discussions, without votes, without Congress and without Parliament.
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13 Friday Sep 2013
Will the report by the UN inspectors, the conclusion of whose work Russia, at a minimum, proposes waiting for, help to resolve the dispute between Putin and that portion of the international community that supports him, on the one hand, and, on the other, the leaders of a number of Western countries, including several regional powers, who have been certain from the outset that the use of chemical weapons was the work of the Syrian president and that he therefore needs to be dealt a retaliatory strike?
The Alchemy of Syria’s Conflict For US, Russia – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East 9/12/2013
The whole world is watching, also judging, thinking, weighing, and a greater percentage of its citizens, from Riyadh to Islamabad, have today the intellectual tools for separating substance from bullshit.
In the above cited piece, Vitaly Naumkin pitches the Putin line — no surprise there — even while knowing that view also may be subject to dissection.
From whence came this:
Who held the camera, edited the recording, produced the music?
Who manufactured the projectile, the rocket engine, the launch platform?
If the production represented a rebel false flag, why is the launch team not in Syrian uniforms?
Would that not have been more authentic?
Or would it have been too much?
Also, who has the reputation for lying baldly?
How did that come about?
When is it going to stop?
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“We don’t know if Syria will accept the offer, but if imposing international control over chemical weapons stored in the country can help to avoid military strikes, we are immediately going to start working with Damascus,” explained Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday.
Russian Diplomacy Transforms Debate on Syria – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East 9/10/2012
So far, with the Russian navy at least temporarily absent from Tartus and several hundred Russian civilians evacuated from Syria, Bashar al-Assad appears to be driving for advantage with this latest (no pun intended) breathing space formed by the gap between the American and Russian ways of doing business.
American discredit in the region seems to relate primarily to Bush’s dumb lie over Iraq WMDs, but the removal of one of the world’s most vicious dictators and his army plus the restoration of the Marsh Arabs and the securing of the Kurdish Community against Saddam Hussein’s depredations, which included gassing, would seem to make for a bright side. Add in the possibility of modern open democracy (MOD, lol), access to international news, and modern education, global in breadth and concerns — perhaps those are worth something too.
While remnants of the still leftward Arab finger in Iraq often points to America for subsequent bloodletting, it really has to point back to itself for the internecine and sectarian bloodshed that continues by way of its own hands.
Russian discredit starts with the accusing and contemptuous language of the old propaganda and drifts off into the cesspool of known banditry, corruption, dictatorship, and culture-permeating mafia technique.
Even so, Russia has become a modern state.
Perhaps it faces a primarily medieval post-modern question: if “information is power” how much power may one (man, organization) have over information and its effects in influence, intimidation, and perception?
It’s the question of the day.
The post-KGB KGB-infused (at minimum by Putin) FSB and post-Soviet new oligarch Russia has still in place old business, intellectual, and state political architecture, and while it has demonstrated its power to transfer wealth to its own, perhaps, and drive a Far Out Left propaganda press, perhaps, Syria continues to come down, day by day, hour by hour, and within miles of Bashar al-Assad’s own feet, and there is no one, including Russia, who wants to fiddle with it other than to let it burn a little more safely — without chemical weapons, if Putin is sincere in this matter — and toward a secular path, as no one between NATO and Russia wants Al Qaeda or Chechnya II either, and the cultural results of apparent if superficial convergent evolution by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar toward the west — neither of those official Al Qaeda or Muslim Brotherhood buddies either — remain to be seen.
Direct link between Assad and gas attack elusive for U.S. | Reuters 9/7/2013
‘IDF intercepted Syrian regime chatter on chemical attack’ | The Times of Israel 8/26/2013
Listing Demands, Assad Uses Crisis to His Advantage – NYTimes.com 9/12/2013
Russian Diplomacy Transforms Debate on Syria – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East 9/10/2013
Bouthaina Shaaban, Senior Assad Spokeswoman, Blames Al Qaeda For Syria Chemical Attack (VIDEO) 9/4/2013
mafia state luke harding | Mafia State by Luke Harding | The Guardian
Why Saying No to Syria Matters (It’s Not About Syria) | Alternet 9/1/2/2013
13 Objectively True Statements From The Vladimir Putin Op-Ed – Business Insider 9/13/2013
Vladimir Putin’s New York Times op-ed, annotated and fact-checked 9/12/2013. Excerpt:
But what rankles many analysts about this paragraph is that it ignores Putin’s own role in enabling the already quite awful violence, as well as the extremism it’s inspired. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime has killed so freely and so wantonly in part because it knows Putin will protect it from international action. Putin has also been supplying Assad with heavy weapons. It’s a bit rich for him to decry violence or outside involvement at this point.
Conversations with John le Carré – FT.com 9/6/2013
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