Category Archives: Regions

Egypt – “All They Understand is Force” – Wrong!

27 Thursday Mar 2014

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

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Five-hundred-and-twenty-nine death sentences.

All at once.

That’s the guillotine, 18th Century.

That’s not America, not Egypt (God willing), not democracy, not compassion, not justice.

* * *

The mass sentencing underscored the severity of an ongoing campaign by Egypt’s military-backed leaders to silence opposition, eight months after a military coup ousted Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader.

Hauslohner, Abigail and Lara El Gibaly.  “Egyptian court sentences 529 people to death.”  The Washington Post, March 24, 2014.

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This blog is not about to promote the Muslim Brotherhood.

Moreover, given the violence attending Egypt’s post-Mubarak turmoil and the Brotherhood designs that have necessitated the initiation of military intervention in Egyptian politics on behalf of tens of millions of brotherhood-disappointed Egyptians, this is not to rail against strong measures.

However, the mass sentencing signals a backwardness similar to the Brotherhood’s, albeit one more suited to the Napoleonic Era than the Dark Ages, but still merciless and barbaric in concept.

Come forward, Egypt.

Arrest, charge, and try; perhaps imprison in the Guantanamo way until I / you / we know a little more than we do today about psycholinguistics, belief, self-concept, and both political and social pathology.

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Yesterday in Israel’s Arutz Sheva, a headline ran, “U.S. Warns Egypt Against Executing Brotherhood Supporters” and went on to quote State Department official Marie Hart as saying, “The imposition of the death penalty for 529 defendants after a two-day summary proceeding cannot be reconciled with Egypt’s obligations under international human rights law, and its implementation of these sentences, as I said, would be unconscionable.”

True.

It is understood here that criminality lives in the heart before it expresses itself in the streets, and that the political criminality promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood, which cloaked in religion deals itself such levers and sticks as it believes provided to them for acquiring wealth and sadistic power over others, calls for preventive measures (a Jew does not have to make such a case where modern Egyptians have so well stated their own position disfavoring the Brotherhood’s ugly agenda for all but itself).

As long as the United States maintains Guantanamo, it hasn’t much call for demanding Egypt afford decisive trials for all suspects; however, again, the same makes a case for long-term political detention involving those who indeed have been strongly associated with the harboring of murderous ambitions.

Nix the plus-500 death sentences, maintain the warrants, and perhaps as Jacob wrestled with God, wrestle with Islam until common decency, goodness, and conscience prevail — and if that fails, let’s just move on but have greater faith, greater investment, in ideals and virtues attending the better humanity of humanity.

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Sixteen Minutes, Seventeen Seconds Inside Syria – The Destruction of Zabadani

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

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

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War Damage Assessment Video: Damascus Countryside, Zabadani – Posted January 2, 2014.

“GHSR Syria Watch” has a Facebook page without a “Follow” button and a Twitter account with few followers.

“Global Studies & Research” appears to have no footprint online apart from its YouTube location.

“War Damages Assessment Damascus City Jobar Part 1” – Posted January 7, 2014.

Near history.

It could have happened yesterday.

It could have happened next door.

Anywhere.

Syrian attitudes toward Jews and Israel, also “the west” — all that hateful politics — may temper or discipline outsider reception, but that does not keep the spectacle of the aftermath — or in the second video around Jobar, the recording of combat footage — from being unutterably sad.

One may put a price on reconstruction — demolition, recovery of materials, regrading, pouring new platforms, setting in new infrastructure and roads, the redevelopment of some kind of society, and God please make it a better, more human, more modern one, even Jew-friendly — but one cannot account the lives that once animated every inch of space apparent in the above recordings.

Addendum

I don’t know who “SyrianResearch” is or may be, but as a search string, the same recovers this active organization: Syria Research and Evaluation Organization.

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Iran Smiles, Hamas Beats the Drum, and Kerry Wears a Pink Tie

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Political Psychology, Politics, United States of America

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According to the IDF caption beneath the above video:

Published on Mar 24, 2014 — Yesterday the Prime Minister of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, gave a feverish speech in front of thousands of supporters at Saraya Square in the Gaza Strip. The message: Palestinians should not and will not stop fighting through terrorist acts against the State of Israel. Haniyeh encourages Palestinians to attack innocent Israelis and he explicitly outlines a new plan to use tunnels on an offensive against Israel. His speech also refers to striking Tel Aviv as thousands of supporters cheer him on.

Never mind that.

Take another look at the crowd and the lime-vested crowd controllers.

Listen again to the voice of the “Great Leader” Ismail Haniyeh.

Attend also the beating of the drum.

* * *

Behind the scenes:

“Of course, the developments in the region have accelerated the return of relations between Hamas and Iran,” the source added. “Perhaps the most important [of those developments] is Hamas’ harsh break with Egypt after the coup and the tension between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The [tension] has helped warm the relationship between Doha and Tehran, and that has cast a shadow over Hamas in a positive way.”

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/iran-hamas-finance-economy-resistance-axis-gaza.html#ixzz2x4D3ns00

Yes, sir, Iran’s resumed doling out major moolah to Hamas and, ta da, Hamas is back in business!

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Last week, Washington Post conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin suggested the State Department’s Wendy Sherman do some institutional soul searching with a few questions foremost:

  • Has Iran made a single concrete concession since the interim deal?
  • Why, if Iran is still seeking contraband, are additional sanctions not warranted?
  • Why is the Iran economy recovering all of the sudden?”

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CNN: John Kerry Comments on Iran Deal – November 24, 2013.

You heard him, but just in case you prefer reading (0:00 –> 0:16):

This is only the first step, but it is a first step that guarantees that while you take the second step, and move towards a comprehensive agreement, Iran’s fundamentals of its program are not able to progress.”

Up top: Palestinian Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh rouses his controlled crowd to a murderous pitch.  “Hamas is the canon and we are the ammunition!”

Down below in the blue sport coat and the pink tie, Mr. Kerry on the deal with Iran, which statement his mouth turns out in gobbledygook: ” . . . while you take the second step . . . Iran’s fundamentals of its program are not able to progress.”

The hell you say!

Nice hair, Mr. Kerry.

Nice tie.

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Crimea’s Off-Kilter Presentation

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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The dueling narratives in Crimea appear to pit ethnic security against western freedom, i.e., Crimea’s Russians belong with Russia and Ukraine, so far, can go to hell.

— Russia for Russians and Russian Security in Crimea —

However, the apparent basis for Ukraine’s recent revolution appears to have been resistance to Russian domination associated with Putin’s kleptocracy, which was then signaled in the person of Viktor Yanukovych by way of his excessively self-aggrandizing spending — or, alternatively, by his setting the example of the “new nobility” assembled by “men of respect”, but, perhaps, for himself either rejecting what he might have had to do to hold his position or simply not having the power to hold it.

— Russia for Russians and Russian Security in Crimea —

vs

— Putin’s Russia and Piratical Government in Ukraine —

Discussion of the recent Russian annexing of Crimea often seem to revolve around the legality and propriety of Putin’s initiative and not around Putin’s character. However, the imbroglio, from the intimations of revolution forward, has been about the character projected by Russia’s president’s leadership.  From the new Russian Security State, one that features FSB staffing at a higher level per capita than ever achieved by the KGB to state-controlled media, from cooperation and support of the Assad-Khamenei axis, which support appears to have transformed legitimate “Arab Spring” challenge into a blood bath, to the $52 billion development effort to produce the Olympic Games at Sochi, the tone set has been that of piratical control.

If one has wished for Russia to attend to Syria as within its sphere of influence and to do so in the most aboveboard and humanitarian way, that wish may be dismissed with the chain of dictatorship having by now been made appallingly clear (and so I have made “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” a BackChannels trope).

In the Russian projection, Crimea has been made to look like its about simmering ethnic animus and divided loyalties across a large constituency.

Look again.

Look again at the mansions and hunting lands acquired by Viktor Yanukovych: Crimea, by extension, turns out an argument about the validity of dictatorship, and not necessarily Putin’s dictatorship alone.

Yesterday, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen noted of President Putin the following:

Russian nationalism is an indigenous force, and Russian grievance is somewhat the same. But another leader may not have fanned either one. A non-Putin, in fact, may not have felt either emotion so intensely. Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and now the prime minister, probably would not have seized Crimea. Nothing about him suggests otherwise. He is no Putin.

But Putin is. The tautology has become plain. The reformer has become the uber nationalist and expansionist.

Cohen, Richard.  “Why the Study of Vladimir Putin is so Important.”  The Washington Post, March 24, 2014.

If there’s a basis for arguing the assertion untrue, one wonders what it might me.  In fact, I’d go further and suggest that Cohen’s “uber nationalist and expansionist” is more than that: Putin would seem to be the dictators’ dictator, the standard bearer of a class.

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Conflict, Integrity, and Putin

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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With the annexing of Crimea, Great-Leader-for-Long-Time Putin has driven himself closer to the wall that stands beneath the banner, “No Farther.”  From Syria to Ukraine, the Statesman of Respect, the same that continued arms deliveries to the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, thereby sustaining also the projection of influence paid for by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, has enjoyed and employed power at egregious cost to the humanity of the states concerned.

What have Russians gotten out of Syria other than the identification of their state with a monster?

While Crimea’s Russian contingent has obtained some measure of Slavic assurance and validation, one might ask whether as much was at all needed, and then, given former President Yanukovych’s kleptocratic display, whether ethnic vanity has not been served much at the expense of an improved economic future and peninsula-wide political stability.

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The peninsula’s native population, the minority Crimean Tatars, boycotted the vote wholesale, as did many ethnic Ukrainians. Authorities have already begun asking Crimean Tatars to vacate their property; one Tatar man, who opposed the Russian takeover, has turned up dead, his body bearing marks of torture.

Sindelar, Daisy.  “Putin’s Crimea Address Rewrites History.”  Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, March 19, 2014.

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. . . the main thrust will be to attack Russia’s ambitions to be increasingly influential and respected in the world by freezing it out of bodies such as the G8, and projecting it as a gangster state. Russia longs for respectability and to become a super-power once more, but the Crimean adventure has scuppered that.

Mitchenson, Robin.  “Putin’s failed, criminal state won’t be a hyperpower.”  The Commentator, March 25, 2014

* * *

This bland description of what happened to the Tatars is appalling. In May 1944 the whole Tatar population of Crimea was rounded up in days and transported to gulag-style slave labour in the eastern USSR: ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by Stalin against fellow Soviet citizens.

Crawford, Charles.  “Vladimir Putin, Crimea and ‘Double Standards’.”  The Commentator, March 21, 2014.

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The conflicts I’ve looked over, so far, are loaded with disingenuous speech, for there is no other way to sustain a dictatorship that barrel bombs children except by lying about every facet of it, nor for that matter, is there any good way of maintaining one’s warm water naval station and kleptocracy with absolute certainty and control except by promoting and establishing the pretext for stealing it.

This blog has now a small assembly of nifty concept widgets addressing the mentality that abets and drives dictatorships.

Start with “malignant narcissism“.

It does not yet have an off button for them.

However, there is an “off button” in global political reality, and it is simply insistence on integrity in governance and related speech.

As much may be enforced by a free press, presuming the mass of it has some integrity itself, the many peccadillos of scribblers notwithstanding.

For various internal reasons — reasons known only to themselves — dictators fear honesty, starting with themselves.  In their own heads, they must be great beyond imagining, and then in their social surrounds, that greatness wants its equal in validation.

Remember: the (malignant) narcissist is never wrong.

While one may wonder what enables a man to deploy — or maintain the deployment of — snipers intent on crippling children, one may go on to question the ethics and humanity of any anomic enough to keep the same interminably propped.

Comrades in crime?

Yes.

But oh what crimes!

A little bribery, corruption, graft?

Piffle.

Those things: apologize to the public, perhaps; do some time, maybe; retire to the marina; hang out at the mansion; mix with the beautiful people until the sun sets.

To do what the Great Bad Boys do — start by making an unmistakable statement!

Arrest children at the local people’s protest; move on to murder and torture (see, for example, “Children of the Syrian Revolution” [2012]).

Initiate an indiscriminate bombing campaign against communities primarily up in arms about jobs and local services.

Set loose one’s hired thugs and laconic snipers, the kind who shoot to kill their “enemies” while still in the womb.

Take it up a notch: while claiming to be fighting “the terrorists”, drag in the real McCoy — and work with them!

Get to a place from which one cannot retreat or recover, the scope and viciousness of the criminal misjudgment — or criminal assertion of a sadistic bent — being too great.

And bond with like-minded others, the kind that like Yanukovych my write their reflections — also their blackmails, bribes, loans at high interest, perhaps — in diaries and memos.

The enormity of the crimes political and the blood spilled with them may be what bonds Putin-Assad-Khamenei and Putin-Yanukovych and Chinese political elites with Nicolas Maduro and his new hires who seem to know how to shoot while rolling on two wheels.

Thugocrats love Vesparados.

Once firmly on that track, the only “off switch” is what others may do to derail that black locomotive of a personality in its every facet.

And afterward, should the good prevail, God willing, the good may demand integrity from the next empowered politician arriving at “reset”.

Death on Wheels — Two Links

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2557696/3-killed-Venezuelan-protests-turn-violent.html; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2587944/French-official-shot-dead-car-motorbike-riding-assassins-shortly-backing-daughter-local-politician.html; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/25/venezuela-motorcycle-gangs-vidoes-colectivos_n_4855640.html.

Back to the Beginning with Putin – Still Recent Related Background

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/24/how-boris-berezovsky-made-vladimir-putin-and-putin-unmade-berezovsky.html

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FTAC – Guest Note – Elena Elena – On Crimean Identity and Self-Determination

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Politics, Regions, Russia, Ukraine

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I’ve been trying to locate a really good article I read about the subject without much luck… Putin is done with the Ukraine. I do not think Russia is going to do anything beyond annexation of the Crimea. The reason: Because the Crimea is a special case legally. (1) The Crimea was given illegally by Nakita Khruschev to the Ukraine in 1954, without any authorization by the Russians in Crimea or from the Duma. It’s worth noting that only 13 members of the Secretariat voted to this, the other 14 were simply absent. (2) As a compromise, the Crimea became an autonomous Russian Region within Ukraine and its constitution stated as such. The means the Crimea could, at any time, vote and rejoin Russia, which is what happened. (3) The propaganda from the EU and the USA and NATO trying to characterize Russian behavior as illegal is a lie. There are treaties between Russia and Ukraine in 1991, 1994, 2004, and 2007 which make everything that has happened perfectly legal within the law – and in 1999 the World Court in the Hague, responding to a question, stated that any people, exercizing self-determination, can quit one state and join another legally.

“FTAC” — “From the Awesome Conversation” (on Facebook).

“Elena Elena” — A Facebook friend and writer of the above quoted passage.

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With the arrival of common broadband, access to the English-language editions for foreign newspapers, blogging software, and social networks — basic ingredients — any English reading and writing Everyman lucky enough to have the lifestyle, technology, and time could travel by armchair around the world and through its war zones with unprecedented freedom.

So I, you, and we have done as much.

We have seen it all!

But, perhaps, we haven’t seen it at all at all.

As elsewhere, the devils in history are in the details of events, and while hopscotching from revolution to terror, from the diplomacy of the hour to the heart wrenching atrocity of the day, one may discover missing the clear, accurate, and complete intimacy with story that comes with specialization.

How difficult might such specialization be here in mid-flight?

Here’s the step-off for recent events by way of the Modern Broadbanded Everyman’s Wikipedia entry:

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine. Independence was supported by a referendum in all regions of Ukrainian SSR, including Crimea.[17] 54% of the Crimean voters supported independence with a 60% turnout (in Sevastopol 57% supported independence).[18] The percentage of the total Crimean electorate that had voted for Ukrainian independence in the referendum was 37%.[19] In 1994, the legal status of Crimea as part of Ukraine was backed up by Russia, who pledged to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in a memorandum signed in 1994, also signed by the US and UK.[20][21]

This new situation led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine. With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised. In August 1991, Yuriy Meshkov established the Republican Movement of Crimea which was registered on 19 November.[20]

On 2 September 1991, the National Movement of Crimean Tatars appealed to the V Extraordinary Congress of People’s Deputies in Russia demanding the program how to return the deported Tatar population back to Crimea. Based on the resolution of the Verkhovna Rada (the Crimean parliament) on 26 February 1992, the Crimean ASSR was renamed the Republic of Crimea.[22] The Crimean parliament proclaimed self-government on 5 May 1992.[23][22] (which was yet to be approved by a referendum to be held 2 August 1992[clarification needed Did the referendum happen, or was it cancelled?][24]) and passed the first Crimean constitution the same day.[24] On 6 May 1992 the same parliament inserted a new sentence into this constitution that declared that Crimea was part of Ukraine.[24]

Huh?

As a Wikipedia section note tells, the above passage might be too detailed.

Be that as it may, what it also tells is how time may be needed to read, sift, and reflect on descriptions of events, of the evidence of events, until they make sense, the rhetoric and actions of so many conflicted parties tumbling finally into place in an historian’s mind in a way less ambiguous than may be perceived in a hurry.

Add this commonplace too: nothing beats being there.

The armchair bobbing on the foam of the information deluge and short form Wikitype “learnin'” might not suffice for accurate and reliable comprehension.

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Revived Arcs of Dictatorship – Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Asia, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Politics, Regions, Russia, South America, Ukraine, Venezuela

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To Russian and Syrian officials and their supporters, the Syrian war and the standoff over the Crimean Peninsula are essentially part of a single, larger battle, against post-Cold War American unilateralism.

Unity Coalition for Israel.  “Russian Defiance Is Seen as a Confidence Builder for Syria’s Government.”  March 24, 2014.

When Putin’s Russia pledged $10 million to Syrian relief while spending $52 billion to host the winter games in Sochi, it told the world unmistakably what it was going to be about: the greatness of the Great Leader.

Why shouldn’t Bashar al-Assad continue what he’s doing while “encouraging” votes to reelect him as their Great Leader?

Why should Vladimir Putin halt the expansion of either mafia enterprise or Russian hegemony in Crimea?

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Six documents stamped with the seal of the Venezuelan army show that as far back as December 2001, agents of then president Hugo Chavez — Maduro’s mentor — sought to build a paramilitary. What is more, the recruitment efforts targeted military bases in order to incorporate army personnel into this non-uniformed militia. In other words, the Chavez government was looking for trained professionals who could handle weapons.

O’Grady, Mary Anastasia.  “Sanctioned killers make a mockery of ‘democracy’ claims.”  The Wall Street Journal, March 24/25, 2014.

I read the above in hard copy at the coffee shop an hour ago, so it has been out today, Monday, March 24.

Venezuela’s axis may be counterpoised to Russia, as I recall the note of a South American friend: “You can see the oil rigs of the Chinese from Miami.” [1]

The business would seem to come along with the way of doing business – or perhaps dictatorships simply understand one another in the way of crooked and sociopath elites:

The challenges facing most of the Caribbean nations are neither unique nor entirely isolated. They include high unemployment and migration levels, unsustainable levels of government debt and increasingly high costs of energy. In fact, the high costs of energy have led some small Caribbean island nations to join Hugo Chavez’s radical ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) in exchange for cheap Venezuelan petroleum. When a powerful nation such as China comes on the scene and offers loans, credits and investment, local actors take substantial notice, especially when the traditional hegemon, the United States, seems preoccupied elsewhere.

Menéndez, Fernando.  “China Comes to the Caribbean.”  China – U.S. Focus, January 25, 2014.

To spell in schematic, “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and “Putin-Yanukovych” (so sorry it didn’t last) seems to me perfectly sensible, and then to suggest a similar but Chinese-oriented path for Chavez seems not unreasonable.

The line may be missing a dot or two, but the dots are there and whether intentionally among the Bond-villain set — in the post-00s of the 21st Century, these already have their nukes — or unconsciously by way of the anomic lust for money that produces the policy that pipes out Sudanese oil while ignoring the Darfur Genocide, for example — hardly matters: free Europeans say “hello” to the new old bosses, the old familiars, the kind that talk kindly while select suspect associates are thrown off the roofs above their heads and the children of their constituents are barrel bombed into dead certain compliance with their will.

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Related on BackChannels: “Draw Near, the Next World Order — China and Russia Hang Together.”  March 3, 2014.

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Syria – Au Revoir, Barbarian (But Not Today, Not Yet)

23 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Syria

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For BackChannels readers, the hyphenated troika noun “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” should by now need no introduction: Trés Amigos Dictador.

My blogging has similarly pinned the Shiite-Sunni conflict within the Syrian Civil War as “two mad wasps in a bell jar”.

On the matter of post-Soviet linguistic hangovers and inherent anti-western cant and agitprop, one notes the same for the anachronism that, say, “imperialist Yankee scum” has become, especially now that that the old pro-Soviet useful have become by default useful to reinvigorated Russian Imperialism and deeply dependent on the vertical of power in Moscow for arms supply and trusty RT-supported anti-western propaganda.

The hangup for the west, the cause of somewhat covert arms resupply to “moderate” Syrian rebels: the “moderates” retain the facets of immoderate scripting when it comes to Jews, Israel, and the west, and (here we go), they seem not to have a strong script of their own, at least not one that competes with the zealot’s investment in Islamic jihad and sectarian legacy.  With some kind of fortitude and guts, the Free Syrian Army has yet a place on the field, God bless ’em, but in fighting against the criminal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad and the three amigos of political crime generally, they appear not to have “got it” yet when it comes to “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”.

Didn’t that come with colonialism?

Wasn’t that part of the oppression brought by western imperialists?

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My childhood friend arrived on my doorstep in Damascus, bottle of wine in hand and grinning ear to ear, and told me how he enjoyed hearing the “snap” of his victims’ bones.

When I first heard the rumours that he had become part of the shabiha, militia man who torture and rape at will in the name of saving President Bashar al-Assad, I didn’t believe them.

Syrian Freedom | News direct from the Syrian revolution – 3/23/2014.

It would seem the barbarians are all around: in Assad’s paid Shabiha, in al-Nusra’s zealots, in Khamenei’s sponsored Hezbollah, in nobody-owns-em ISIS.

Who are the modern?

Who are the moderate?

The “Free Syrian” (add the next “Noun”) define themselves out of their own mouths, and if they define themselves only by way of the contempt they harbor for others — start with the Jews of Israel — they haven’t yet in their heads what they need to leverage more enthused and open cooperation from “the west”: i.e., a modern attitude toward their fellow man and themselves.

It’s easy to criticize, and from an armchair, no less, so let’s get beyond that and on to the passions involved in denouncing a modern day Pharaoh and leaving all of that behind — and everything in complicity, fear, weakness, and passivity that may be associated with it — never to look back.

Additional Reference

Saudis and CIA agree to Arm Syrian “Moderates” with Advanced Weapons – Syria Comment – 2/15/2014.

Middle-East’s Sectarian Balance Shifts as Syrian Uprising Enters Fourth Year — by Jawad Anwar Qureshi – Syria Comment – 3/20/2014.

U.S. shifts Syria strategy to ‘southern front’ – latimes.com – 3/22/2014.

How Bashar al-Assad created the feared shabiha militia: an insider speaks – Telegraph

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