Category Archives: Middle East

Syria – A Bloody Long Goodbye to Yesterday

13 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Russian President Vladimir Putin may yet turn out the bad boy who knows more about good than so many goody two shoes arching up on their hind legs over the seemingly endless tragedy in Syria.

What Putin knows, I am sure, is from where has come from, the ingredients of his own frame, from poverty to KGB, from Soviet Russia to the post-Soviet FSB of his own making, from Russian heroic sports culture to the more measured testing of waters to, perhaps, restore Russian pride in empire.

Take the Tale of the Pocketed Superbowl Ring and a fast denial plus offer of complete restitution as signal of a different kind of explorer, albeit a shrewd autocrat on the make for a good deal, cash to swell out a country, a new energy industry with clout, and a little respect even from his critics.

This month’s imbroglio over anti-Gay legislation hasn’t helped Putin with either western or progressive audiences — I am certain of that — but it too may symbolize the difficulty of parting with yesterday’s story.

And Syria is all about the entire host of interests parting with yesterday’s story.

Putin first.

* * *

Throughout the Cold War, third world actors could and did manipulate Eastern and Western patrons to further their own parochial objectives or regional ambitions, and Baathist Iraq was no different in this respect.

Hughes, Geraint.  “Who used whom?  Baathist Iraq and the Cold War, 1968-1990.” The Cold War, History in Focus.  Spring, 2006.

Currently, the Syrian Communist Party officially supports the Baathist regime, although it follows the Soviet line on certain key political issues.  The party, for example, recently urged Arab terrorists to be “more responsible” in their political activities, and its delegation to the recent  international Communist conference went along in supporting the Security Council resolution of 1967 for a political solution to the Arab-Israeli crisis.  The party’s 3,000 members make it the third largest Communist Party in the Arab world, and a Communist now holds a cabinet post as minister of communications and foreign trade.

CIA Directorate of Intelligence.  “Soviet Relations with the Baathists in Iraq and Syria.”  Special Report, Weekly Review, June 27, 1969.  Approved for Release: May 2002.

1969!

What a yesteryear.

Call it a reunion: “You haven’t changed a bit” one always says, but with these –Russia and Syria, Great Britain and Saudi Arabia, Israel and God (maybe) — time has changed them some or altered their surrounds, and the bulwarks in power and sustained relationships have been eroded, and no more so than in long neglected Syria where forty-four years of competition, cultural evolution, and diplomacy on its flanks have turned a family’s military dictatorship into a merely and deeply selfish anachronism.

While RT screams bloody murder over Islamists murdering Kurds (recently) and CNN continues hammering on Syrian jets crushing targets of uncertain military validity, few, it seems, wish to take this step away from the traps laid so many decades ago (or fourteen centuries ago for Shiite and Sunni fighters motivated by what they believe about their respective labels).

* * *

I’ve no friends for whom the end of a marriage or other long-lived relationship has been not only traumatic but life changing.

Such events are not about the one thing.

Everything comes under review, and while most don’t beat themselves up with “should have done this” and “should have done that” — and they shouldn’t — they may change some principles in what I’ve come to call “social grammar”, i.e., inevitably frozen in language, the most deeply ingrained ideas and rules by which they have maintained their own program.

Even so civil a split — cloaked in mystery and, beneath the Al Jazeera clip on YouTube, accompanied by a relatively gentle public humor — would seem to support this view.

Something has changed and done so in some unalterable way.

One floats free of the past after a while, but perhaps it takes a while to do that.

* * *

Syria’s civil war, already irreversible in its effects — more than 106,000 Syrians dead because of it; more than 1.7 million refugee in surrounding states; add some more millions for displaced and homeless; cities like Aleppo and Homs ravaged or razed — should close a chapter that in retrospect may be seen as having been about several forms of intellectual poison, an aspect of conflict I suspect Putin recognizes, being himself so public, so accustomed to the development of information and the projection of image.

This too comes from the 1969 CIA report released in 2002:

“Moscow has never had much political influence in Syria, a xenophobic country that has known little other than periodic power struggles over the past 20 years.  Moscow’s virtual inability to moderate Damascus’ hard-line posture has been, in fact, the only constant factor in the shifting Soviet-Syrian relationship” (page 7).

Fourty-four years of that same old same old.

Time for a change?

* * *

No longer completely opposite the Russian course and sensibility, Cameron and Obama may have to tell Qatar that it may not always get what it wants.  That too would depart from yesterday, but as much Qatar may already know, having rushed an heir to the throne.

That too may depart from yesterday’s story, one of several that have been run to ground and drowned in blood and suffering for years to come.

The World Wide Web has changed how the world experiences its one separable experiences: now we can see what we are doing in light of what we have done, and we cannot but help see all of that laid out in the sun together.

Reference – Odds and Ends

Curry, Ann.  “Putin’s marriage to end after nearly 30 years.” NBC Nightly News, June 6, 2013.

Malpas, Anna.  “First Gagarin film turns Soviet idol into new Russian hero.”  The Daily Star, June 19, 2013.

RT.  “Russia won’t supply outstanding S-300s to Syria until mid-2014 – report.”  August 9, 2013.

RT.  “Syrian split a real danger due to wars within war.”  Interview with Phyllis Bennis.  August 9, 2013.

RT Russiapedia.  “Prominent Russians: Vasily Zaitsev”.

Sargsyan, Irena L.  “How to End the War in Syria.”  The Daily Beast, August 13, 2013.

Wikipedia.  “Heroic realism”.

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Syria – Putin’s Blind Spot – Obama’s Misstep

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

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

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The conflict in Syria is not complicated.

It is twisted.

It draws on an anti-human egotism and irrationality to divide its national community and set each at the other’s throat, and not only those quick to fight but families too.

As it is, Syria remains unsolvable as one would wish to promote neither a brutal dictatorship, which if Assad’s wasn’t, it has certainly become, nor the fascist vision of a humanity subjugated to men who would portray themselves as the appointees of God and would become themselves absolute powers.

Although I’ve collected below a few leads and quotes from recent news, each seeming to balance out the other, one might fault Putin a little more than Obama over Syria for having taken a deeply anomic stance that set aside the conflict’s developing human toll in death, suffering, and, not to be overlooked, social disorganization and anarchy in favor of reducing overt policy to revenues tied to military contracts.

Is that a stance worthy of an empire?

An emperor?

* * *

I suppose if I were somehow working under contract with, say, RAND, I’d feel better about not knowing the answers with regard to Syria.

In that way, of course, it’s okay if idling over a blog one fails to outfox two of the world’s most powerful politicians, their advisers, and their nation’s think-tanks.

One might also consider such a “cop out” at any level of intellectual endeavor.

Clearly, Syria is a collapsing house on fire, and sooner or later, the neighborhood will have to account for the homeless and the maimed, the destruction of economic assets, including trade relationships, the diminishment of the efficacy of state, regional, and local powers, and the dangers posed by continuing and related political anarchy and its spillovers.

Obama’s bid to approach Iran’s looming nuclear threat by way of Qatar and through Syria would seem of equal positive interest to post-Soviet Russia, and it may be and may be working out that way (remember: Russia has largely ferried away its civilian and military presence in Syria), but it has no interest in the promotion of Sunni Islam over Shiite (nor should the world at large, Sunnis and Shiites included, have that interest — perhaps that’s to be saved for another post), and it knows — and Obama should know — that attempting to develop and validate an Islamic democracy today affords a look at the span from the chartering of Pakistan to the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

It does not work.

Or it does not work sensibly or well without direct challenge.

And it does not do so because the language of Islam in its totality has not been updated (not with “invention” on lock-out) or reformed, so that good sentiment borrowed from a Jew, say, Hillel’s “whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world” (source: Wikipedia) cannot offset the grandiose, pandering, and placating slips that disservice mankind in the name of human aggrandizement: “Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low” (Quraan 9:29 — I chose to lift from a skeptic’s web page).

Eventually, resettling Syria, not alone in this predicament, will mean introducing and strengthening other thought in the environment and that extensively and potently enough to bring Syria’s displaced back to their homes or known lands or landscapes with their heads held high but in them a different outlook on their humanity and their evaluation of political leadership.

I don’t see that happening today.

In fact, what one sees may be opposite: further exposure and subjection to criminality and humiliation for those in camps or lost on the new landscape and otherwise squeezed between these other and most evil forces come to fight within the state to sustain war without end and with an intellectual basis that proves altogether and repeatedly incoherent as regards decency in purpose.

What follows is what I’ve snagged off the web while constructing these thoughts.

* * *

BEIRUT — Human Rights Watch says the Syrian military is firing ballistic missiles into populated areas where it is battling rebels, killing hundreds of civilians.

The U.S.-based group said in a report released Monday that it has investigated nine apparent missile attacks that killed at least 215 people, half of them children, between February and July.

AP.  “Syria Conflict: Military Firing Ballistic Missiles Into Populated Areas, Killing Hundreds of Civilians: Watchdog.”  Huffington Post, August 5, 2013.

Comment on Qusayr:

“The devastation is evident everywhere. According to the government telecoms chiefMtanios al-Shaer, “The terrorists destroyed everything 24 hours before the town was liberated, and caused damage of a billion Syrian pounds ($57 million).”

Hafiz, Yasmine.  “Syria Conflict Destroys Churches & Mosques, Desecrates Icons (PHOTOS).”  Religion, Huffington Post, August 6, 2013.

Activists and local opposition groups in Syria accused regime forces for using poisonous form of gas in the city of Douma and Adra, outskirts of Damascus.

According to the local media offices, Syrian army has launched a series of attacks on these two big cities on Monday. More than 400 people have been hospitalised showing symptoms of convulsion, shortness of breath, profuse sweating and frothy sputum, activists said.

Al Jazeera.  “Activists in Syria claim poisonous form of gas was used by regime forces in an attack on Douma and Adra.”  Video included, not vetted.  August 5, 2013.

“No solution can be reached with terror except by striking it with an iron fist,” Assad said.

. . . .

He accused the Syrian National Coalition of “being on the payroll of more than one Gulf country,” and of “blaming the (Syrian) state for terrorism rather than blaming the armed men,” or rebels.

Al Aribya.  “Assad’s solution to Syrian conflict: striking ‘terror with iron fist’.”  August 5, 2013.

* * *

Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center, has said that “There is no doubt that as a distinct single entity, Syria has ceased to exist… Considering the sheer scale of its territorial losses in some areas of the country, Syria no longer functions as a single all-encompassing unitarily-governed state.”

Rieser, Bennett.  “War in Syria: Nation Suffers 3-Way Divide.” WebProNews, August 5, 2013.

President Bashir Assad will be winning until he loses; alternatively, he may hold out and win on that level, but his Syria won’t be that which he inherited.

Additional Reference

Amnesty International.  “Aleppo satellite images show devastation, mass displacement one year on.”  August 7, 2013.

Blake, Matt.  “The wasteland: Horrifying aerial pictures show full scale of destruction of Syrian city of Homs.”  Mail Online, July 31, 2013.

Borri, Francesca.  “I want to talk about Syria, not just my role as a freelance journalist.”  The Guardian, July 26, 2013.  As long as I’m updating reference, I thought I would include this as mere mention (plus a comment) of the journalist has brought me some recent traffic.  One day, perhaps starting with Margaret Bourke-White, I will have to write about peripatetic women journalists in war zones.  They are great people!

Defense World.  “Syria Buying Russian Weapons With American Dollars.”  August 6, 2013.

Dreyfuss, Bob.  “Russia’s Stake in Syria’s War.”  The Nation, August 6, 2013.

Kroth, Olivia.  “Syria’s optimism for 2013.”  Pravda (English), January 25, 2013.

Mackey, Robert.  “Stunning Images of Destroyed Syrian City.” Blog.   The New York Times, July 31, 2013.

Skelton, Charlie.  “The Syrian opposition: who’s doing the talking?”  The Guardian, July 12, 2013:

“The sand is running out of the hour glass,” said Hillary Clinton on Sunday. So, as the fighting in Syria intensifies, and Russian warships set sail for Tartus, it’s high time to take a closer look at those who are speaking out on behalf of the Syrian people.”

Sky News.  “Syria: Dramatic Images of Destruction in Homs.”  July 30, 2013.

Star Tribune.  “Senators press Pentagon to end helicopter contract with Russian arms exporter tied to Syria.”  August 5, 2013:

WASHINGTON — Twelve Republican and Democratic senators are calling on the Pentagon to cancel all contracts to buy helicopters for Afghan security forces from a state-run Russian arms exporter that is a top weapons supplier to the Syrian government.

Ya Libnan.  “Russian ships transferring Hezbollah fighters to Syria: Idris.”  July 25, 2013 (bold italics mine):

General Salim Idris, the head of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) accused Russia of using its ships in the Mediterranean to transfer Hezbollah fighters from Beirut , Lebanon directly to the mostly Alawite province of Tartus in western Syria.

In an interview with the Turkish Anadolu News Agency he also accused Russia and Iran of supplying the Syrian army with 400 tons of ammunition every ten days.

Wikipedia.  “List of heritage sites damaged during Syrian civil war”.

Each Name Opens To A Universe

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Free Speech, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, North America, Politics, Qatar, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Hours before his arrest, Abdelke had signed a petition that averred (here’s where Chrome’s translate option comes in handy) “support to the forces of the revolution who advocate the establishment of a pluralistic democracy” and “desire for a peaceful solution to stop the bloodshed and to preserve national unity and territorial integrity, which involves the departure of Bashar al-Assad and pillars of his regime.

http://artfcity.com/2013/08/01/the-web-petitions-to-free-syrian-artist-youssef-abdelke/

Youssef Abdelke — never hard of him before two minutes ago — but as one who has learned the ways of the World Wide Web, the third minute opens on eternity.

(Reuters) – Syrian government forces have detained a dissident left-wing painter in a new wave of arrests of non-violent critics of President Bashar al-Assad, opposition groups said on Friday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/19/us-syria-crisis-arrests-idUSBRE96I0LP20130719

“A place to share art, uninhibited without a bunch of stupid ass rules. A place to help your fellow page owners grow and succeed. A group to have fun with no dictator shoving shit down your throat and bowing down. A group to be FREE to help as you see fit. A group to rock the fuck on!”

https://www.facebook.com/groups/639798962716250/

It’s a closed Facebook group, one to which I would apply if I were shooting the local downtrodden as opposed, say, to the leisured, business, and community development classes.

Nonetheless, “Art and FREEDOM”, my soul is with you and your author, Youssef Abdelke.

* * *

I really don’t know why Putin darkens his role in history by keeping in his hand with  the Ayatollah’s Iran and the Assad’s Syria.

* * *

Novelist Daniel Silva has a great deal of fun with the “Russian President” — in fiction, merely a character, never named, nothing more than coincidental with anything or anyone in reality, in his latest best seller The English Girl.

As a fiction writer, Silva’s actually, probably, one of the very best political analysts on the international stage, and while playing that role through his characters and plots, the Russian President looms large and rightly so for the behind-the-curtain strategy pursued by the post-Soviet oligarchs  of the Latest and Greatest in Russian States.

As we know about narcissists and narcissistic hunger and supply, they are ultimately about themselves, and whatever their charms, political and social, may be.  Not that Bashir Assad has enjoyed abundance in dimension, but it’s the Russian President who has been most quiet on the obscenity of a state that deploys jets to suppress, at first, a small challenge to its authority.

While the Syria of 2010 has been destroyed, culturally, socially, structurally, one might note that Russia, in her defense, has ferried both the larger part of its civilian and military presence out of the country — not exactly a show of confidence, that, but not exactly either a show of humanist resolve.

The world wonders at the conundrum that has pit a brutal dictatorship against partially but deeply virulent Islamist forces.  There is in that aspect of Syria’s agony the “no good dog in the fight” and the “black hole” of the Islamic Small Wars constructed of a contempt, hatred, and self-contempt in the inhumanity that draws in military energy and burns without end.

Nearly one hundred thousand dead and four million displaced in Syria’s furnace and neither of two of the most powerful statesmen of our era either cares to or knows how to shut it down.

Instead of the kumbaya “reset” between the states and the federation (how young is Obama?), Putin appears to be draining the former plus NATO by keeping the oven hot while avoiding, rightly, the imposition of another Chechnya in its sphere of influence.  And yet . . . the Assad regime was the Soviet’s monster, and one would think that after 1991 the state would have been concerned with other than filling its pockets in collusion with it for another 22 years.

But that perhaps would have been too caring, too ethical.

Too English.

* * *

While the superpowers dick around with trivial issues like Snowden, Syria, in part, draws to it the “worst of the worst” — or just the most spirited — of fighters representing Shiite and Sunni Islam, those two angry wasps someone left in a bell jar separating their concerns from the much, much greater world surrounding.

On a portion of that, I would blame the west.

We’ve done business, haven’t we, for how many years?

And barely a word, most certainly few, if any, of outrage in regard to humanity and human rights in the contained but also dark medieval quarters of the globe.

So why not leave them — today in Syria, tomorrow perhaps in Egypt or somewhere else — in their own mess?

Whether the President of the Free World or that of the Russian Empire, is it incumbent on either to reorganize a middle east state as a pet humanitarian project?

There are, of course, other ambitions in the mix, much including Iran’s and Qatar’s, but one may one wonder between them whether either will wake up from their dream or with history pass away into it.

* * *

Prestige matters.

As a Jew, I may wonder how global memory will treat of today’s powerful in the days beyond their reclamation by the earth.

Additional Reference

Kasparov, Garry.  “Putin Toys with Obama as Syria Burns and Snowden Runs Free.” The Daily Beast.  July 2, 2013.

Official Site of the Bureau International des Expositions.

RT.  “At least 600 Russians and Europeans fighting alongside Syrian opposition – Putin.”  June 21, 2013.

World Bulletin News Desk.  “Erdogan, Putin discuss Syria and Egypt.”  August 5, 2013.

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Egypt – Losing Two Ways

02 Friday Aug 2013

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

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* * *

If the mind finds itself trapped between military and theocratic fascism, the body will too.

* * *

Reuters quotes U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as saying, “Egypt needs to get back to a new normal . . . .”

First of all, if it’s new behavior, it’s not normal, at least not right away.

🙂

Then too, be careful what you wish for, and one may do that by first asking Mr. Kerry, “What would be the old normal?”

* * *

Published online earlier this month:

The overthrow of elected president Mohamed Morsi has placed the Obama administration in a no-win situation. It does not want to call the military intervention a coup, because current U.S. law would require the suspension of aid to Egypt, including the $1.3 billion going to military. But it cannot avoid calling it a coup without undermining the credibility of its commitment to democracy.

Ottaway, Marina.  “Egypt’s Battle of Legitimacy.”  The National Interest, July 18, 2013.

If it could have been done with compromise and reason, it would have been done: Morsi and company would have both set a conservative Islamic tone for Egypt — my noting that is not to endorse it — and otherwise gone about working the levers of a modern society on behalf of a broad Egyptian constituency.

Instead, the same chose to pursue narrow interests and in the usual way: clumsily, with heavy hands, and contemptuously and with an anti-Semitic and ever and ultimately self-defeating spirit.

Instead of winning the high regard of Egypt’s sprawling constituency, it brought the country out in force against its president and, so I call it, the “Muslim Botherhood”.

On the other hand, what’s a vote to mean if a military with its own interest can intervene to depose a standing president, however undemocratic and self-defeating his policies and ambitions?

I could say, “You was robbed!”

I just don’t know to whom I would say it: the modern Egyptians elbowed aside in the considerations of the Muslim Botherhood or old souls depending on faith and an innocent alliance with evil — there really are those who may not know what they do — to secure a better life for themselves.

Marina Ottaway, a former senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, goes on to note in her article, “The military and the Islamists won the first round of the struggle. In the current round, the military and the old elite are prevailing. The so-called revolutionaries, together with a small number of people who appear to truly uphold liberal principles, have been instrumental in the turnovers of power in February 2011 and July 2013. However, they appear unable to influence subsequent developments.”

That may be because the main forces in Egyptian politics operate today by, well, main force.

Compromise: unknown.

Elections: unfamiliar.

Competitive Political Parties: who is on the field?  Who can fund and run a decent campaign?  How are things going with “free speech” and “right to assembly” or plain old and yet stimulating common political speech?  Does the answer depend on to whom one speaks?

Maybe.

* * *

Posted today (8/2/2013), not vetted (not that I can do that.  Yet).

“Tahrir Square Fighting from Austin Mackell in Cairo Part 2”, posted by “Yul West”.

It looks authentic.

* * *

Note:

The US embassy in Cairo has announced that it will be closed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in a statement published on its official website.

Supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi plan to hold 33 marches around Cairo and Giza on Friday under the slogan ‘Egypt against the coup.’

Ahram Online.  “US embassy in Cairo to shut for three days.”  August 2, 2013.

Reference

BBC.  “Egypt protesters defy cabinet threat to end sit-ins.”  August 1, 2013.

Burke, Jacob.  “Egypt at Risk of Civil War.”  The National Interest, August 2, 2013.

Perry, Tom and Michael Georgy.  “U.S. declares new push to defuse Egyptian crisis.”  Reuters, August 2, 2013.

Sky News.  “Egypt: Fresh Clashes as US Clarifies Comments.”  August 2, 2013.

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Two Recent Comments on the Middle East Conflict

02 Friday Aug 2013

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

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If it only took 11 minutes for President Truman to recognize the State of Israel, why it requires not 11 years but decades to give Palestinians their independence and to bring back the borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Taking the unilateral role in this conflict U.S. should also be impartial.

Margaryan, Ashot.  “How The System Really Works: American “Matryoshka.” Strategic Outlook, August 2, 2013.

In every pro-Palestinian effort, the right-of-return is always Number 1 on the agenda. You will never bear witness to a pro-Palestinian group that is divorced from this pipe-dream.

Pinto, Cliff.  “The Palestinian Wrong of Return: Demystifying the Legal Basis of the “Right of Return” and Exaggerated “Refugee” Numbers.  Blog, Times of Israel, August 2, 2013.

So virulent has been middle east peace talking that it seems only closed Facebook forums might qualify as “collegial and scholarly” in the area, an observation made when I started looking for a place to channel liberal Turkish interest in the conflict.

I didn’t want to hustle anyone into the rah-rah Zionist camp nor leave any to the wolves roaming the cyber corridors of any open proto-Nazi “hate-peace” peace groups.

As the group I found is a closed one, I won’t make mention of it here.

🙂

Still, it strikes me as remarkable how even persons of good intent may be misled into believing that Israel came into existence as compensation for the Holocaust, an event that in the twisted minds of some didn’t happen (oh yes it did) and in others for which there is no compensation although there has been that for a range of crimes — start with the theft of property — and it is good that apology, consideration, fairness, and forgiveness persist in this world and that some have yet the courage to prove it.

Of course, it may be less good that anti-Semitism provoked by ambitions related to religious succession and woven into the politics of the middle east also persist, and the poisoned politics coming of that have made the Arab refugees of 1948 first among its victims.

* * *

Yet despite the uproar, Fox is already a popular brand in the Palestinian territories. Store owners stock Fox products even in Hamas-controlled Gaza, where the government is far more hostile to Israel.

‘‘People in Gaza know that these items are made in Israel, but they buy them because they’re good quality,’’ said shopkeeper Raji Isaac, who has offered Fox products in his Gaza City store for the past four years. ‘‘Customers always look for good products and reasonable prices, and Fox is offering that.’’

Daraghmeh, Mohammed and Max J. Rosenthal.  “Israeli store opening focuses West Bank anger.”  Boston.com, July 26, 2013.

As conflicts go, problems with the one known as the “middle east conflict” — today, probably the most peaceful conflict extant in the region — include the intransigent anti-Zionist / anti-Semitic ambitions of those in political power in the West Bank and in Gaza and the fact that The Preoccupation with Israel includes Israeli services in such municipal basics as electricity and water, significant contributions in the transport of goods, encouragement of trade and employment,  and provisions for refugees in the areas of advanced education and health.

You would think that living and working in close proximity would encourage peace but never so much so if one party or the other believes itself mistreated or robbed, and that even if through nothing more than repeated libels.

Additional Reference

Karsh, Efraim.  Palestine Betrayed.  New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Kassam, Raheem.  “Palestinian negotiator’s Facebook page betrays true anti-Israel aspirations.”  Trending Central, July 29, 2013.

Meir-levi, David.  History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression.  New York: Brief Encounters, 2007.

Morris, Benny.  1948: The First Arab-Israeli War.  New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008.

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Somebody Help This Fellow Out – Raif Badawai – On a Kingdom’s Bad Side

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Free Speech, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Journalism, Middle East, Politics, Regions, Saudi Arabia

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Abu al-Khair said that the judge sentenced Badawi to five years in prison for insulting Islam and violating provisions of Saudi Arabia’s 2007 anti-cybercrime law through his liberal website, affirming that liberalism is akin to unbelief.

————–

From today’s start of the awesome conversation:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Raif-Badawi/397956733638642 — Okay, Facebookers: do your thing! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raif_Badawi ;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/495854/20130731/raif-badawi-saudi-arabia-lashes-islam-editor.htm ;http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE23/021/2013/en

I have to wonder what Raif Badawi wrote or otherwise said that may have been so egregious in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as to have the kingdom throw him in jail and the court sentence him to seven years in prison plus 600 lashes.

While the kingdom modernizes — “Related Stories” dredged up on the New York Daily News page include such titles as “Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah grants women seats on the nation’s top advisory council” and “King Abdullah: Saudi Arabia women can vote, hold elected office” — the persistent throttling of expression, the disproportionate sentencing, and the medieval cruelty of lashing to boot (imagine having that to look forward to each week for, say, 30 weeks) tell of a willful egomania thundering atop a fragile surface of faith.

Every tyrants first concern in power has to do with making a convincing case for authority and maintaining it.

Perhaps with that in mind, we say in the United States with regard to the famous Freedom of Speech principle, “Without the First Amendment, all of the others are worthless.”

The Mellow Jihadi reports, “Raif’s site discussed the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, and he has been held since June 2012 on charges of cyber crime and disobeying his father – a crime in the conservative kingdom.“

About eight months ago, Reuters reporting on the Raif Badawi case noted, “Judges base their decisions on their own interpretation of religious law rather than on a written legal code or on precedent.”  That is, if I may interpret, responsibility for this ethical and moral confusion may not rest so much with King Abdullah as with an archaic clerical class, but also, alas, that which doubtlessly supports his authority.

Following Reuter’s latest on the case (published two hours ago) back to Human Rights Watch, this wrap may sum the Saudi state of mind:

Abu al-Khair said that the judge sentenced Badawi to five years in prison for insulting Islam and violating provisions of Saudi Arabia’s 2007 anti-cybercrime law through his liberal website, affirming that liberalism is akin to unbelief. The judge ordered the closure of the website and added two years to Badawi’s sentence for insulting both Islam and Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or religious police, in comments during television interviews.

Human Rights Watch.  “Saudi Arabia: 600 Lashes, 7 Years for Activist.”  July 31, 2013.

Even while King Abdullah presses for reforms and aspects of modernity course through or make their way into the cultures of the Arabian Peninsula, the Anachronisms cling to a power today deeply mocked and reviled among the educated worldwide, and whether by way of “listening posts” or the perhaps guilty indulgence of going solo online, one by one, logged on and searching the world’s largest information mirror, that is how they will see themselves.

By way of the design in human nature, for which one might credit God, God being God, what Saudi Arabia’s most dogmatic clerics and judges had wished to avoid for want of pride has become precisely that which they must encounter in the feedback supplied by the World Wide Web.

Additional Reference

Malone, Noreen.  “How Many Lashes Can One Man Take?”  Slate, November 14, 2008.

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Egypt – Restive at Tahrir Square – Dancing Elsewhere

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Politics, Regions

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Maya Sarsa Dance Troupe, Cairo, 2010:

* * *

Whether from the Muslim Brotherhood perspective or the latest in secular democratic fashion, Egypt has not been “squared away” merely by its military’s recovery of unwanted administrative power.

Morsi during his authority was not able to ensure security and order on the Sinai Peninsula which the gas pipeline pass from Egypt to Jordan and Israel. As a result, militants systematically arranged explosion on the gas pipeline that deathly affected on country economy.

Today Egypt is dragging into a civil war day by day. The Statements made by General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi directed to the ousted president gives a hope for some citizens towards a brighter future.

Sahbazov, Fuad T.  “Overthrown Morsi: Civil War or Solidarity.”  Strategic Outlook, July 22, 2013.

* * *

Fuad Sahbazov appears to be an undergraduate studying international relations at Baku Slavic University in Azerbaijan, and his note in Strategic Outlook may remind that practically any view of political drama will be one among many in the open conversation of a vastly enlarged multi-state intelligentsia.

I may be alone at my desktop, but “we” are not alone at all, and some portion of political polarity falls away with a crowd of talkers too large and too mixed to sustain it.

There’s no going back to what was, this possibly a recurring theme with today’s inputs from Russia perhaps still dragging the chains of the Soviet empire.

* * *

With Mubarak’s exit, which may be far less about an American arrangement with a military than the forestalling of the establishment of a Mubarak Dynasty (mission accomplished on that), Egypt has been shaken up, and with the Muslim Brothers the first to foam  and bubble away from the surface, the state has now to establish its themes as a democracy IF its people in cooperation with the military, rather than subordination by it, prove capable of compromise, practicality, and realism across a broad spectrum in the invention of a truly contemporary Egypt.

* * *

Maya Sarsa & Troupe, July 3, 2013:

– A song that TALKS OPENLY about MARIJUANA breaks SOCIAL TABOOS
– The BREAKING of SOCIAL TABOOS is a CHALLENGE to a ‘HIDING’ society
– The song promotes SECULARISM and undermines RELIGOUS FUNDEMENTALISM
– The song promotes INDIVIDUALITY and TRYING NEW THINGS
– ‘SIGARA BUNI’ pulls the MASK OFF Egyptian Society

* * *

When Tahrir Square quiets down and that preceding becomes safe again, tourism and expanded trade will return — and perhaps a few progressives too may attend to more difficult and pressing combined economic, ecological, and social issues.

For authentic people — good people; prudent, responsible, and responsive politicians; professionals of high integrity, start with journalists and teachers, but much including dancers and other artists who engage their work with beautiful, lively, and soulful connection — a whole society is a “big tent”, a “great salad”, a circus and a fair with room for everyone, some perhaps a little easier to take and to work with than others, but even so, everyone.

* * *

Still recent: CNN.  “Fighting reported in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.”  July 22, 2013.

Additional Reference

Maya Sarsa Dance Troupe (web site in French)

Bloody Syria May Turn Out Putin’s Problem After All

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Displaced: six million.

You know I didn’t want to see that number.

Dead: 93,000 estimated

Not that I’m happy with that one either.

For the time being, Obama and NATO may be taking the heat in relation to the assembly of Syria’s civil war and its mix of ends, including the neutralization of Iran, and interests, including expansion of Sunni influence in the middle east.

However, the old Soviet relationship with the Assad regime and whatever updates or transformations have attended Vladimir Putin’s time at the helm of the Russian Ship of State will most certainly haul Putin back to the hot lights on the world stage.

At this time, he has gotten the Russian Navy out of Tartus and enabled Russian civilian citizens in Syria to leave en masse over time.

If Putin wishes to promote Russian influence with the Syria to come, if he wishes to one day leave a good record of his accomplishments for Russia (that as opposed to having the phantoms of his enemies emerge to steal that light from him), he’s going to have to intercede soon on behalf of the humanity affected, and this especially in light of measures taken to equip the Assad regime to remain at war to this point.

This is not to ascribe to Putin responsibility for Assad excesses or rebel barbarism, which latter he has used well to embarrass Obama; it is to suggest he take some measures in concert with others to damp the Syrian furnace or, alternatively, involve Russia immediately in broad humanitarian amelioration of the effects of the war.

This next I’ve copied from “The Embassy of the Russian Federation to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”:

15.07.2013

On supply of Russian humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees in the territory of Syria

 On July 11, two aircrafts of the Emergencies Ministry of Russia delivered 70 tons of urgent humanitarian aid to Latakia for Palestinian refugees in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, including food and other essentials.

The government of Palestine, as well as the Palestinian refugees with deep gratitude perceived this Russian humanitarian action effected with proper level of security on behalf of Syrian authorities.

The Russian Federation will continue providing required humanitarian aid to the friendly Palestinian people both in the bilateral format and in the line of specialised international organisation.

Has this movie not been shown before?

I thought it had ended about 21 years and seven months ago even though to some it would seem like only last week — or as if it didn’t happen at all.

Be that as it may, while the world, much less “the government of Palestine” (which one?) most certainly appreciates the shipment to Syria of other than shore-to-ship missiles, one might expect a little more effort on general terms from the modern Putin-guided (one way to put it) democracy.

Reference

AP.  “Activists: 75 Syria rebels dead in Damascus.”  USA Today, July 22, 2013.

BBC.  “Syrian conflict: ‘Troops kills [STET] 13 family members’.”  July 21, 2013.

Bright, Arthur.  “Syria death toll climbs as West label civil war a stalemate.”  The Christian Science Monitor, July 22, 2013.

Solomon, Erika.  “Syrian opposition forces fighting each other.”  World News / Reuters, July 21, 2013.

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