Category Archives: Regions

West Papua – Indonesian Child Trafficking for Islam – Mass Graves

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Papua New Guinea, Politics, Regions, Religion, South Pacific

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Their story is more evidence that Christian children are being taken from West Papua and converted to Islam – a practice officially denied after being revealed in Fairfax Media’s Good Weekend magazine last year. It also makes clear for the first time that knowledge of the practice reaches high into the upper echelons of Indonesia’s political elite.

The religious conversion of any young child is illegal in Indonesia, and the United Nations deems any transfer of a minor, even for education, as trafficking.

Papuan children taken to Jakarta to be converted to Islam – 3/2/2014.

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West_Papua_Mass_Grave

Posted on Facebook by the Free West Papua Campaign, March 3, 2014: “Indonesian police and plainclothes police can be seen taking sickening “trophy photos” of the corpses of West Papuan people they have just stripped and murdered and thrown into a drainage ditch used as a makeshift mass grave in the middle of a highlands village.
According to sources, this is in the Central Highlands of West Papua, possibly the Puncak Jaya region and was taken relatively recently.
What appears to be the National flag of West Papua, the Morning Star can be seen raised behind the horror. The raising of this flag has been made illegal by Indonesia and carries a 15 year jail sentence.
As this photo has just emerged, we are currently finding out as much as possible about the details and cannot yet verify the exact date and location but what is for sure is that this photo, taken in the highlands of West Papua is 100% real and genuine, hard evidence of Indonesia’s 21st century apartheid and genocide in West Papua.”

I have yet to download a conflict photo loaded with EXIF/IPTC verbal data identifying the camera used, the photographer, and photographer’s title and caption.  Most often too, these incendiary images come out of the special interest press representing religious denominations and organizations that repeat their use or transpose images taken in one place to captions representing another event.  The Free West Papua Campaign, however, insists itself on locating the specific photographer who took it, when, and where.  It believes in the veracity of the image enough to question its exact provenance, and therefore I believe in its accuracy too.

UPDATE, OCTOBER 16, 2017: for those coming off third-party sites using the above photograph — one has actually disinformed its public by putting “Rohingya Muslims” in place of West Papuans in its headline — I’m no longer certain of the forensic quality of the photograph: the bodies look related in hands-behind-head security postures; the police could just be checking ID in a most humiliating manner; or there could be some mix of dead and living.  One had to be there, of course, and the one who was there to take the picture has not apparently distributed the same with captioning data intact. 

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How BackChannels views the West Papua Conflict: on the border between the Muslim and Christian worlds, the indigenous of West Papua struggle to keep their culture and land intact, refusing forced conversion and assimilation to the Muslim-majority state whose international boundary has overrun their property.

As is common and familiar to Muslim-majority states worldwide, the tack pursued with regard to West Papuans has been than of cultural annihilation and political suppression.

Coming from an American of European descent, this layout of the story would seem hypocritical, for as West Papuans may be to Indonesia, so Native Americans would seem to have been to European colonizing forces.  However, these days, the Native Americans of the United States have title to reservation as well private properties, the freedom to arrange themselves and worship as they see fit, and in all other aspects to own businesses and enjoy or hate the American tapestry as they see fit within the bounds of the common law, which codes revolve most around the freedom and security of all persons.

America’s Native Americans are not getting their continent back, of course, but they are supported in their endeavors related to the defense of culture, family, property, and religion, the same as any, and every, American.

Coming from a Jewish background that includes lending attention to Israel as the unique cultural, political, and religious homeland of the Jews, the bond between the true indigenous of a land and indigenous elsewhere might apply, albeit in the progressive Jewish manner with adaptation toward modernity — some things will stay with the people forever in freedom, and some (like cannibalism) may recede into history.

In the larger scheme, our planet supports 6,900+ living languages, and it loses a few each month: it should be sustaining those few and perhaps working to encourage separable language evolution or new language development although natural language behavior is not like biology: we’re just not going to ship a healthy population of humans to an island, cut them off from social commerce, and visit them again in a thousand years (if they have survived their own company).

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JONAH WENDA (voiceover): They were picked from different places like school, gardens, on the road and even taken from their home and kill them and throw them in the bush.

PM – More details emerge on West Papua massacre allegation 28/05/2013

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In May, Indonesia’s human rights record was assessed under the UN Universal Periodic Review. The government rejected key recommendations to review specific laws and decrees which restrict the rights to freedom of expression and thought, conscience and religion. In July, Indonesia reported to the CEDAW Committee. In November, Indonesia adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, despite serious concerns that it fell short of international standards.

Amnesty International | Working to Protect Human Rights, n.d.

Additional Reference

Alleged mass killings in West Papua – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/24/2013: “Shootings have become so frequent that locals have taken to calling it the ‘Gaza Strip’.” / Indonesian counter-terrorist unit accused of mass killing in disputed Papua province – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/24/2013.

Indonesia rejects Papua mass killing accusations – Australia Network News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/27/2014.

PM – More details emerge on West Papua massacre allegation 28/05/2013: “The Indonesian Embassy in Canberra has issued a blanket denial, describing the reported violence as rumours and lies. / But the ABC has been provided further information that tells a different story, as Peter Lloyd reports.”

Related to the history of the West Papua Conflict: Searching for the truth about a massacre in West Papua – 16/12/2013

(3) Free West Papua Campaign (Facebook).

Free West Papua – Campaign for a free and independent West Papua

Wamena – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Communal conflict in Wamena kills four | The Jakarta Post – 5/31/2014 / Mako Tabuni – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Approach on Papua slammed – 6/16/2012: “Meanwhile, Tabuni’s family collected the activist’s body from the Bhayangkara Police Hospital, ahead of the burial planned for Saturday in Wamena.” / Police urged to publicise the photo of Mako Tabuni’s bag | West Papua Media Alerts – 6/26/2012 /

A Message To The United Nations From The Family Of Opinus Tabuni – YouTube – 12/29/2012: “An estimated 100,000 Papuans having died since the Indonesian government took control of the disputed province in what is widely considered a sham 1969 United Nations observed referendum.”

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From Another Land of Information Control – China, Uyghurs, and Terrorism (or False Flag)

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Asia, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Regions

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Knife-wielding attackers, dressed in black clothes, stormed the railway station of provincial capital Kunming shortly after 9 p.m. on March 1, slaughtering those who could not flee fast enough.

China: Deadly Terrorist Attack in Kunming Blamed on Uighurs | TIME.com – 3/1/2014.

Related: Chinese Communist System Rules! – Video – TIME.com — Narrator in regard to China’s political system: ” . . . notoriously opaque and mired, so far as we can tell, by corruption and a whole vast untold story of political intrigues . . . .”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkQH6UasUNQ – 10/8/2013.

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As an editor and writer, one might say of my own node on the web that it is itself a vast territory devoted to information control.

That would be true.

However, I don’t gate what others may have to say and, in fact, invite a fairly broad (but must be civil by my own mysterious standards) conversation.

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The “Islamists” are ruining Islam as may be Muslim apologists and others who bend and twist to make it come out okey dokey no matter what murders and persecution may take place in its name, but we have also intimations of “false flag” operations and thoroughly evil impression-making pacts, such as appears to exist between Assad and ISIS in Syria, that also are destroying those who have bought into them: they think they are getting away with something — they are not: all comes out in the sun when finally the sun again comes out.

China is dark.

Beijing glitters some today, and magnificent-dangerous projects like the Three Rivers Dam astonish those with more modest ambitions (I’ve no ambition myself to make the earth wobble on its axis), but at the top sit another national elite — another cloaked dictatorship defended by The Party and beyond the influence and reach of the common worker and starving child entrusted to the care of the monster that runs North Korea.

China will be dark — and so will Islam — if it cannot turn up all of its cards, leaving to the truly aberrant within its districts a much reduced channel for criminal pursuits, for in the information dark, one cannot separate sophisticated thieves from perhaps even the most compassionate and earnest of politicians.

One more thing in loose regard to some tribal societies and precepts: 90 percent charitable and 10 percent murderous and piratical does not work where the surrounding world desires, promotes, and demands from itself  a good ethics and morality.

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FNS – Ukraine – Get Ready

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Fast News Share, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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NATO calls on Russia to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine – YouTube

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Note: undated references are current within 24 hours.

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PEREVALNE, Ukraine (AP) — Warning that it was “on the brink of disaster,” Ukraine put its military on high alert Sunday and appealed for international help to avoid what it feared was the possibility of a wider invasion by Russia.

Outrage over Russia’s military moves mounted in world capitals, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry calling on President Vladimir Putin to pull back from “an incredible act of aggression.”

Associated Press

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“This is not a threat: this is actually the declaration of war to my country,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said in English. Yatsenuik heads a pro-Western government that took power when the country’s Russia-backed president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted last week.

Ukraine mobilizes after Putin’s ‘declaration of war’ | Reuters

Related: Ukraine mobilizes troops after Russia’s ‘declaration of war’ – CNN.com

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Of potentially even greater concern are eastern swathes of the country, where most of the ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian as a native language. Those areas saw violent protests on Saturday, with pro-Moscow demonstrators hoisting flags at government buildings and calling for Russia to defend them.

Ukraine mobilizes for war, calls up reserves

Related (2/28/2014): Crimean crisis: Russia holds most of the power against Ukraine

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Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a press conference that Russia should pull back its forces and refrain from interfering elsewhere in Ukraine, according to Reuters. NATO is urging the two countries to seek a peaceful resolution through dialogue.

Secretary of State John Kerry — who is heading to Kiev on March 4 to meet with representatives of Ukraine’s new government — has called Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine “an incredible act of aggression” and said Putin has made “a stunning, willful” choice to invade another country.

Putin defends Russia’s response to Ukraine crisis as gunmen surround military bases | Fox News

Related: Secretary of State John Kerry vows visit to Kiev as Russian forces surround Ukraine military base in Crimea – NY Daily News: “A second administration official indicated that the U.S. was not weighing military action to counter Russia’s advances, saying the Obama administration’s efforts were focused on political, economic and diplomatic options. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss the situation and insisted on anonymity.”

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Ukraine, as a whole, is going to move fast.

The Bear regards the old system of buffers as its own, but it has a remarkable failure going in Syria.  That President Vladimir Putin pumped $52 billion into the Winter Olympics at Sochi while pledging $10 million for humanitarian relief in Syria has not gone unnoticed — nor have election shenanigans, the Night Wolves, allegations about “mafia state” and “fragile empire” — and all will reflect poorly on his sense of responsibility to Russians and to others.

However, Ukraine is also a borderland naturally spanning a cultural divide between Europe and Eurasia, between the politics of the now open democracies and their common currency and shared values and a stalwart attempting to build some kind of new Slavic society out of the 19th Century manners of aristocracy, now an energy-fueled oligarchy committed not only to its survival but the survival of Bashar al-Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei, a veritable arc of despotic displays of power.

While Syria has become a battleground squeezing out Syrians as casualties and refugees between despots, Ukraine’s democratic revolutionary opposition to despotism has its feet and spirit planted against the “vertical of power” in Moscow.

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As Russian forces seize key objects in Crimea, their objective is not just to create chaos in Ukraine but also to protect kleptocratic rule in Russia itself.

Russia and Ukraine under Yanukovych shared a single form of government – rule by a criminal oligarchy. This is why the anti-criminal revolution that overthrew Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych is a precedent that is perfectly applicable to Putin’s Russia. It is also the reason why, from the Russian regime’s point of view, the Ukrainian revolution must be stopped at all costs.

Ukraine’s Revolutionary Lesson for Russia – The Daily Beast

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Perhaps the last time the Russian intelligentsia watched the internal struggle in another country this intently was in 1968 during the Prague Spring, when they hoped the Czechs would succeed in building what they called “socialism with a human face”. They also believed it would hold out the promise of something better for life in the Soviet Union. In August 1968, the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, quashing the Prague Spring. In Moscow, seven people came out to protest against the invasion; they were arrested and the modern dissident movement was born.

Most Russians believe the Crimea is theirs – Putin has acted on his belief | Masha Gessen | Comment is free | The Observer – 2/1/2014.

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“Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as ‘an extremely far-fetched scenario’ by the ‘high-brow’ Foreign Policy magazine,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. Palin was resoundingly mocked by comedians like Tina Fey and eggheads for saying in 2008 that Alaska’s proximity to Russia forced her to deal with foreign policy issues just like George W. Bush said thatTexas’s proximity to Mexico compelled him to deal with Mexico when he was governor of Texas.

Sarah Palin on Ukraine: I Told You So – 2/28/2014.

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On Russian propaganda: StopFake | Fighting untruthful information regarding the events in Ukraine

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FTAC – Israel – Response to Remarks Delegitmizing Israel

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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“Arabs were made to pay for the crimes of the Europeans by the creation of Israel.”

I know that is what has been heard and the fiction constructed around it total, but Zionism predates WWII, and thousands of Arabs were drawn before it to the agricultural fields of the nascent Jewish state.

If you believe statehood in the name of religion must go, then Rome must go, as must Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — well, actually all Islamic kingdoms and dictatorships — as the same have become “real headaches for the entire civilized world, completely engulfed in injustice and violence.”

The only “inescapable issue” in the reconstruction that is the modern State of Israel is the 5,000+ year existence of Jews and Jewish culture — beliefs, calendar, customs, language, religion — on the land and continuously. Ancient Israel, the Roman “Palestine”, and modern Israel have never been “Judenrein” (as some might wish).

Jews don’t “deserve a homeland” — Jews have a homeland.

Regarding terrorism, have a look independently into war and low-intensity conflict across 2,000 years.

Regarding genocide, let’s keep these two buddies in mind: http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/…/2-mufti2_jpg… (Hussaini-Hitler handshake).

Also, you may want to look into how Ben Gurion crushed the terrorist Irgun at the earliest opportunity.

Your emphasis tells where you want to go (anti-Semitic / anti- Ziionist, actually, anti-justice) but the deeply poisonous programming and scripting that got you there has to this hour stayed out of the picture.

I beg you for patient new introspection and scholarship, for fresh ears and eyes, for skepticism in regard to a destructive loyalty.

I ask no less of myself and do read, say, Ma’an and look into issues having to do with the refugees of 1948 and their humanity, which one may believe better than that of their leaders who build and disseminate libels for a living.

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The response was to a writer in India who ran through the common anti-Semites screen, from declaring the State of Israel a colonial project directly and only corresponding to the destruction of the Jews of Europe in the Holocaust of World War II to suggesting the entire state should have been constructed elsewhere.

What a load of fictional crapola one wakes to if participating the “middle east conflict”, which has weirdly become the signifier for Israel’s conflict with the Arab world while the same Arab world melts down in conflicts within its portion of the Islamic Small Wars (e.g., signaled by political violence in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria).

Nowhere is the “Religion of Peace”, nor the states founded on it, at peace, and not even within themselves, the Muslim Brotherhood gangs ever threatening established state power, the same state power incompletely in control of powerful families willing to back al-Qaeda and its affiliates and likenesses.

Additional Reference

Amin Al Husseini: Nazi Father of Jihad, Al Qaeda, Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the Muslim Brotherhood – Tell The Children The Truth – Homepage

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FTAC – Comment on Sochi and Syria

28 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in Eurasia, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Russia

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“If costs are the benchmark for a ‘successful’ Games,” says Janice Forsyth, Director of the International Center for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada, “Sochi is the most unsuccessful games in history, bar none.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2014/02/23/sochis-long-term-economic-impact-good-or-bad/

Countries invested in the Olympics — an amateur affair where sports are to enjoy contests to the side of politics with national pride second to pride in individual athletic striving and accomplishing.

The international press excoriated Sochi in regard to its encounter with substandard facilities; such as myself have tried keep Sochi and Syria in the same frame with the money front and center — i.e., a Russian pledge of $10 million for Syrian humanitarian aid while Sochi went forward with a $51 billion price tag.

Humanity is not what the Syrian civil war is about. It’s not about God either. It’s about despotism. Humanity would probably (that’s a validated probably, considering the numbers in casualties and refugees) not be in the middle of it. The obscenity of the treatment meted by both sides to the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp underscores the inhumanity displayed between contesting forces.

The world’s getting the message between Chinese and Russian Security Council complicity in relation to the Syrian Civil War.

Neither has interest in voting against a dynastic dictatorship; both have interest in containing or rebuffing Islam, which in the weird way described by Aboud Dandachi in the previous post, has both emphasizing and tacitly supporting the presence of al-Qaeda-type fighters as a demonstration of who is just as bad and promises to be far worse — and would be if they themselves were not there to block them.  In essence, these undemocratic political elite are attempting to curry favor with the global war watching public by keeping before their eyes the atrocious barbaric excesses of a foe that make themselves look the little bit better choice.

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From Syria – _The Doctor, the Eye Doctor, and Me_ – A Damning Statement

28 Friday Feb 2014

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

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In the months that followed, it became very clear that the Eye Doctor was counting on attitudes like mine. His airforce bombed every part of the country, except those towns occupied by ISIS. His army fought every opposition brigade, but made sure to leave ISIS units well alone. ISIS in turn abducted even more opposition activists, murdered the commanders of other brigades, and generally left the regime’s forces to do as they liked.

The Eye Doctor and ISIS feed off one another; the existence of one legitimized the continued existence of the other.

Amazon.com: The Doctor,The Eye Doctor and Me: Analogies and Parallels Between The World of Doctor Who and the Syrian Conflict.  eBook: Aboud Dandachi: Kindle Store – Kindle Edition, 94-101, 2/17/2014.

Also: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/409862 (free).

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This wry and lived history must surely become one of the classics of political science.

“The Doctor” is “Doctor Who” of perpetuated BBC legend, a doctor who in earthly television series years also happens to be 50 years old.

“The Eye Doctor” is, of course, ophthalmologist and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Dandachi, trapped in a hotel room in Tartus, Syria for 18 months becomes a Netizen hooked on the BBC program and able to apply his mad software skilz to watching it and helplessly drawing parallels between The Doctor’s and The Eye Doctor’s differing ways.

Should you be cursed with an ounce of sentiment for either al-Assad or the Islamist “armies” hanging off the stinging Medusa jellyfish that is al-Nusra and companions, Aboud Dandachi’s book will cure you of that.

Note: the author of this blog is an independent writer beholden to none, but I have had contact with Aboud Dandachi and learned about his book through him.  I risked my own $0.99 on obtaining it.

Dandachi sells his work quite well too:

Now, a word on politics. There will be political opinions expressed in this book . And they will be expressed strongly. They will be anti-Assad, and very much for the idea of his removal and that of his regime.

And if any reader should find that objectionable, then I’m sorry.

Actually, I’m not. Because nothing can come close to matching the offensiveness of hearing a murderous dictator who made refugees out of millions of Syrians, be described and pitied as a “victim of Zionist/ Wahabi/ CIA Imperialist Empire Building Neo-Con conspiracies. Now let’s go Occupy Wallstreet or something”.

This book is not meant to be an exhaustive review of either Doctor Who or the Syrian revolution-turned -conflict.

So, inadvertently, the reader will have in Kindle hand a thorough, if perhaps not exhaustive, overview of how things got to be so thoroughly stupid in Syria.

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If the pro-regime areas in Homs felt under threat and under siege, fearful of retaliations for crimes committed by the regime they had become associated with, then with any luck, they would instinctively look to the regime for protection.

Dandachi, Aboud (2014-02-17). The Doctor,The Eye Doctor and Me: Analogies and Parallels Between The World of Doctor Who and the Syrian Conflict (Kindle Locations 1198-1199). Aboud Dandachi. Kindle Edition.

Assad’s “overreaction” to schoolkid heckling?

Knee jerk, possibly (my call after reading), for as Dandachi makes clear and with forceful argument, the proven more than ruthless dictator deliberately turned up the barbarism dial at the outset to inspire the armed insurrection for which his army had been built!

No wonder so many military officers and state officials have jumped ship across the years.

With no greater force majeure to intervene and all facets seemingly anti-western (not to mention deeply anti-Semitic, at least at face value), what has become an Assad vs Islamist war continues to burn through the productive center of Syrian society.

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. . . what was needed was for a way for the very people the regime depended on to suppress the demonstrations, to feel that they weren’t so much defending the regime, as defending their very lives, the lives of their communities and families. The men who made up the armed forces and security agencies had to be made to believe that the revolution posed an existential threat to them and all they held dear.

Going on and on about “foreign conspiracies” involving everyone from Zionist-Salafis to the NATO-Wicked Witch of the West could only be effective for a limited amount of time . . . .

Dandachi, Aboud (2014-02-17). The Doctor,The Eye Doctor and Me: Analogies and Parallels Between The World of Doctor Who and the Syrian Conflict (Kindle Locations 1145-1149). Aboud Dandachi. Kindle Edition.

Every sentence, paragraph bloc, page, and chapter read as well, much fulfilling Aristotle’s dictum “to educate, entertain, and delight.”

The Doctor (sort of) – Vid’ and URL to the Doctor Who Share List (YouTube)

Sonic Screwdriver (Trock Parody of Telephone by Lady Gaga) – YouTube

The Eye Doctor

Bashar al-Assad Interview with Fox News Part 4Syria: Syrian President Bashar al Assad Charlie Rose – YouTube – 2/26/2014:

“It doesn’t matter what they say, whether he is a dictator or a reformer.  Today you have propaganda.  Do they say the same word about their allies in the Gulf states?  Do they talk about dictatorship in the Gulf states? — We’re talking about Syria now — I know, but I have the right to answer about the other regimes, er, states, that they are much far from democracy than the Syrian state.”

Dandachi talks about the private money funding al-Nusra and ISIS and here in the above clip, Assad himself draws the convenient and logical comparison between his absolute rule and the same astonishingly narcissistic construct working through the wallets and minds of the forces arrayed against him.

Why should the President of Syria rollover to democracy when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and others retain equal interest in the similarly despotic accretion and expression of wealth?

No wonder there has been no intervening force of magnificent Doctor Who-like scale in Syria.

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FTAC – The Middle East Conflict Will Drive Me Mad

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions

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Israel isn’t doing anything TO the Palestinians but trying to help them with economic development (Israel is an employer and trading partner), education (Israel’s universities accept Palestinians), health care (the system frequently steps in to provide services unavailable in Palestinian hospitals), legal assistance and advocacy — amazingly, Israelis are more free to advocate on behalf of the refugees than are the refugees under the the watch of Fatah and Hamas.

Check out Israel’s own far left.

The thematic “get the Jews” / “get Israel” is a part of language behavior and not corresponding with any political reality — it’s a reality in the head, rule based, and perception fixing. Some part flows down from Soviet cant about “American imperialist ambitions” and some about Muhammad’s statements promoting the superiority (by divine edict) of Islam along with the division and subjugation (to dhimmi) of Jews and Christians, as bogus a play as Soviet imperialist ambitions in Afghanistan.

Israel (and the Jews) keep getting in the way of barbarians, dictators, and fanatics.

The truth is the refugees of 1948 wouldn’t be so had the Arabs accepted Palestinian statehood at the time, but the thought of a Jewish state ( on purchased land sparsely populated) would seem to have been perceived as an affront to Islamic ambition, and there proceeded from that three wars (or more) of annihilation against the “Zionist entity”, which won each, claimed territory, enfranchised its immediate Arab Christian and Muslim population, and struggled on to maintain the possibility of a Palestinian state responsibly governed. For its troubles, which includes the evacuation of Jews from Gaza in a “Land for Peace” deal, it primarily provided Hamas and Company a rocket base (8,000 received before “Cast Lead”).

Islam’s best demonstration project today is burning itself up in Syria between fighting a brutal dictatorship, a cause with which only Putin and the Ayatollah would disagree — and possibly only for so long as fewer than 7 percent of his constituency can get around RT and read English freely — and fighting one another, and that to the extent that al-Qaeda as an organization seems to have repudiated ISIL as an affiliate — and there’s more nonsense and betrayal going on back there with money and arms today.

Anti-Semitism founded in the glorious dream of magical Islamic secession just doesn’t work, and governance in Islam — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Algeria (has had problems this past year as well) is a mess.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood discovered intolerance toward itself inside of a single year’s foray into power.

Should Egyptians be or feel trapped between authoritarian personalities and systems?

Of course not.

Nor should Syrians, who in essence have no army defending their reasonable interests — rather Syria’s malignant narcissists (different talk, same walk on both sides) continue taking the country down brick by brick, and whether by barrel bomb or truck bomb hardly matters.

Perhaps I should think about it before hitting the WordPress “Publish” button.

Okay — a few additional comments . . . .

Egyptians with modern businesses, interests, and investments needs must have a security system guarantying their freedom to sustain their efforts in relation to them.

Syrians perhaps need an army that is not all about itself and its immediate lines of affiliation and alliance, but rather about the interests of the constituents of the land.

A great religion or a strong one affords hope, faith, and solace inclusively, not exclusively.  The continuous perception of division — and take that further: trivial division! — drives the Islamic Small Wars.

The want of exclusive favor may do that.

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