Category Archives: Religion

Towards a Secular Islamic State

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

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politickerlondon's avatarPOLITICKER LONDON

Evolving ideologies, strategies & framing

This article underpins a public conversation hosted in conjunction with the Muslims Institute, British Muslims for Secular Democracy and Semiticart, entitled Towards a secular Islam State.  The ‘conversation’ shall seek to re-examine the notion of what the term ‘secular’ means to Arabs and the connotations it carries, but more importantly how Muslim Scholars and the legal practitioners of Fiqh (Islamic Law), interpret secularism in its current form, and the future of the notion, in light of events post Arab-Spring.  Does the word itself need to be re-contextualised, in order for it to be an ‘acceptable-equivalent’ for Muslims?  Thus, I have called such a play on words a ‘semantic-synonym’.  Furthermore, what are the psychological and sociological forces at work, with such framing dynamics?  Finally, do Arab Muslims need to overcome the ‘Western-colonial-cultural-baggage’, which is often associated with the word ‘secularism’ to mean anti-religion, in order for them…

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As Pearl Around a Grain of Sand

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

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

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Video on how pearls are formed Naturally – YouTube – 1/3/2012.

” . . . a tapestry of light and color.”

Keep that in mind.

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“With its actions and way of thinking, the ISIL proved to all Arabs and Muslims that it is just a collection of sick individuals who love murder and blood without thought or specific identity,” said political analyst Zuhair Abbas al-Anzi, professor at the University of Anbar in Ramadi.

Al-Qaeda brings suffering, hardship to Syrians and Iraqis: activists | Al-Shorfa – 1/14/2014.

Related: Fallujah residents set to return: Anbar governor | Al-Shorfa – 2/5/2014.

Today’s notice in al-Shorfa leaves much to be desired even if “clear, accurate, and complete”: it’s a little ahead of the story, perhaps as cocky as it may be encouraging.

Related: Al-Qaeda affiliate’s tactics in Syria reminiscent of Afghanistan’s Taliban | Al-Shorfa – 2/5/2014.

That last citation goes on to this contemporary sentiment:

The group’s statements distort Islam and alienate people from the religion, she said.

“With statements like these, ISIL is killing the revolution, for Islam is a religion of forgiveness, tolerance, amity, acceptance of others and respect for all religions,” Nawfal said. “It was never a religion of killing, intimidation or restriction of worshipers’ livelihoods and freedom, nor is it a religion of slaughter, hate or deception.

“It is a religion for all mankind, not a particular group,” she added.

I’ve chosen to respect the sentiment even though a host of anti-Jihad sites like Answering Muslims: The Islamoblog of Acts 17 Apologetics remain but a mouse-click distant in time.

The way one feels about a religion, especially one’s own, may differ from the expression in history of it, but the contemporary personal interpretation nonetheless would seem to express the attitude and beliefs possessed today and put to the test by Muslim security forces throughout the range of the Islamic Small Wars, essentially confirming the presence and strength of modern views.

Alternatively stated: the various flavors and strains of Islamic legacy have their sway if not in scripture and tradition as promoted or enforced by zealots then in the actual preferences in behavior and tastes embraced by greater Muslim societies according to other cultural legacies (like the Pashtunwali) or aesthetic or sentimental values (e.g., Sufism and the poetry of Persian theologian Rumi).

On this blog, I continue to endorse “shimmer“, the idea that the conflict table — the basis for moral entrepreneurship — may loom large, but the assembly developed on top of it is actually small, by comparison, and largely rejected, or most Muslim-majority states would be strict sharia states instead of confused amalgams of autocratic and archaic practices and contemporary make-do laws.  While the personifications of excessive pride and vanity in malignant leaders and their followers attempt to leverage the Qur’anic script (see this blogs comment on programming and scripting) for themselves, or, more accurately, use the template to deal themselves their own self-aggrandizing and glorious role in lives, those caught unluckily in their path struggle mightily to repulse or contain them.

Not the first time have I used this metaphor: as a grain of sand may be to an oyster, so “the terrorists”, so hard to define at times, so painfully present at times, may inspire their own worlds to work around them, envelope them, and vanish them in another more formidable, more beautiful, more radiant peace.

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Social Grammar – Syria Style

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

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

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My name is Abu Amr.  I am thirteen, from Bin Laden Front.  I studied the teachings in the book of Allah to defend the Muslims in Syria.  I pray to Allah that I am granted martyrdom (6:56)

Syria: Al-Qaeda’s New Home – YouTube – 21:56 – Vice News – 1/22/2014

“So many twisted minds . . . This leaves me speechless! :-/” said “SymbolX” in the comments section of the above video posted.

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Syria||Darya||Assad barrel bombs 29-1-2014 – YouTube – 1/29/2014.

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So many twisted minds, indeed!

Having to do with what you saw demonstrated (I can’t authenticate video without wider cooperation from media) in the above video:

Syrian government forces dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held districts of Aleppo Wednesday, killing 13 people as they pressed an assault southeast of the northern city, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported more than 20 barrel bombs had been dropped on the town of Daraya, southwest of the capital Damascus.

Barrel bombs kill 13 in Syria’s Aleppo, says NGO – Al Arabiya News – 1/29/2014.

The video preceding this section’s quotation features one explosion.

Imagine nineteen more battering the same area.

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In the romance of the west, aristocrat or pioneer, some grandfathers take their 13-year-old boys hunting, it’s true.  Age of Bar Mitzva, of passage into basic adulthood with some emotion and responsibility . . . it’s not bad.  You can still build model airplanes, go scouting, play Little League baseball, collect butterflies, snitch a smoke, and such; however, good or bad, we usually wait another four or five years before putting a boy in uniform, and then putting the boy in uniform in harm’s way.

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However, what I’ve just described is life beside the presence of western humanism, its institutions, and its laws

Out of school, on the street, in the field, things might be different.

You’re Not Taking Him – Stand by Me (7/8) Movie CLIP (1986) HD – YouTube – posted 10/5/2012.

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Syria – al-Qaeda – Putin – Obama – American Isolationism – Foreign Constituent Independence

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

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

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The United States has picked up where it left off more than a month ago and started shipping nonlethal aid to Syria in hopes that al Qaeda won’t seize it and keep it from reaching its intended rebel fighting recipients.

U.S. restarts aid to Syria, hoping al Qaeda won’t seize it again – Washington Times – 1/28/2014.

Officials may have strengthened the chain of custody by winnowing down the trustworthy to “Free Syrian Army Supreme Military Council members”.

Last night’s State of the Union Address by President Obama emphasized domestic economic progress and de-emphasized foreign policy, and that to the extent that American involvement in the Islamic Small Wars appears to have been pared back to the 12-year-presence in Afghanistan and the diminishing of Islamist strength in that theater with but a nod to the whack-a-mole games played with drones and special forces and familiar to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

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The number of al-Qaeda linked fighters active in Syria has mushroomed from 2,000 to more than 30,000 in just two years, a senior Israeli intelligence official has warned . . . .

Over 30,000 al-Qaeda linked fighters’ in Syria, Israeli official claims – Telegraph – 1/25/2014.

Syrians, ordinary Syrians, Syrians who bake bread or lay brick, Syrians who were hungry three years ago at the hands of their kleptocrat government and sought a better deal for themselves, have been suffering mightily between the malignancies of their regime and a now strong portion of the regime’s challengers.

Where’s Putin now?

Not a word.

Web search “Syria Putin al-Qaeda” and the top page list comes back with the mud slung in early September: it’s the Americans that have backed al-Qaeda.

We know it’s not true.

Americans have backed the above mentioned “Free Syrian Army” led, nominally, at least, by General Salim Idris.  That army has found itself forked between the brutal dictator — this is one who flew jets against large noncombatant populations — and the equally unconstrained primitives of the al-Qaeda affiliates.

Read the still recent headlines:

FSA chief: Free National Army is a pipe dream « ASHARQ AL-AWSAT – 1/16/2014.

‘We don’t have long,’ say Syrian rebels locked in battle with Al Qaeda, Assad | Fox News – 1/17/2014.

President Obama turned up the populist card last night with brags about progress in the American system within its borders, from energy independence to health care, and while he proffered continued support for nascent democracies in war torn space, he made clear that American troops were staying at home.

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“Dozens of Antonov 124s (Russian transport planes) have been bringing in armored vehicles, surveillance equipment, radars, electronic warfare systems, spare parts for helicopters, and various weapons including guided bombs for planes,” a Middle East security source said.

“Russian advisers and intelligence experts have been running observation UAVs around the clock to help Syrian forces track rebel positions, analyze their capabilities, and carry out precision artillery and air force strikes against them,” said the source, who declined to be identified.

Report: Russia stepping up military aid to Syria’s Assad | JPost | Israel News – 1/17/2014.

Perhaps in Putin’s cold political calculus, Syria will be held in The Bear’s paw at any price to Syria’s humanity.

President Bashar Assad’s military and the Free Syrian Army may wake up to realize that their enmity may be misdirected, for the true axis is not, has never been, Assad vs al-Qaeda but rather The People vs Assad.  Forget about that old rusty post-Soviet chain: Russia – Syria – Iran | Saudi Arabia – NATO – America.

Syria is.

Syria exists for Syrians.

Syrians internally displaced or made refugee by war — about nine million souls (6.5 million IDPs; 2.1 million refugees) —  need peace and home for themselves, and all they have for getting that are two armies, in body, and their differential in leaderships, that should be the last to be at their own throats.

As much hell comes from misguidance and propaganda helped along by a surrounding sea of greed.

Obama’s America with NATO returned to a defensive posture would seem to have zero interest in intervention in Syria apart from keep General Idris’s enterprise in sufficient weaponry for maintaining the three-way stalemate while talk-talk-talk fills time.

Putin’s Russia, which well may view Syria as part of its post-Soviet inheritance, seems immune to humanitarian overtures apart from bending, twisting, and spinning it some around Bashar al-Assad, who in state propaganda and RT has been made to look like a blameless angel.

So far as may be gleaned from the news online, Putin’s in it for the money and to maintain an anti-western post in a client buffer.

Compared to Putin’s glory — and how glorious that glory will be at the $50 billion Winter Olympics in Sochi — the depth and expanse of civilian Syrian suffering, in state and splayed out in the refugee camps of hosting neighbors, would seem by comparison invisible.

Here’s another cycle in headers:

Russia And China Provide Practically No Aid To Syrian Refugees | ThinkProgress – 9/3/2013.

Russia Provides $10M to Syrian Refugees | World | RIA Novosti – 10/1/2013.

Russia to Send Additional Humanitarian Aid for Syrian Refugees in Lebanon — Naharnet – 11/25/2013.

Donors Offer $2.4 Billion to Aid Syrian Civilians, but U.N. Says More Is Needed – NYTimes.com – 1/15/2014.

Get the picture?

Perhaps this will help: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s $50-billion Olympic Games | Toronto Star – 6/25/2014.

Disclaimer: I confess I now write with a “nice pen”, acknowledged as such by an expert.  It’s best feature is its 21 karat gold medium-fine nib, so I know a little bit about fine things too!  But my fine things would seem fit to living in a cabin, which is more or less how I live (but I can dream).

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I have seen the face of suffering and hate online in many faces.  Someone has been lied to or manipulated; someone has a mind confined to state media or a wallet meagerly fattened by the patronage of a despot, a shameful situation where conscience and ethics have not been entirely extinguished.  What may be done to repair that person?  Or, collectively, such people captive to closed information (remember: mouth – ear – mind – heart) systems?

I don’t know.

I do know the world online is larger than the space in which I live and the freedom to speak has its complement in the freedom to read, listen, or watch widely with great curiosity and with some ambition and discipline as regards discerning the nature of things.

Additional Reference

Syria talks face immediate hurdle of Assad’s refusal to step down | World news | The Guardian – 1/19/2014

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FTAC – Solving the Problems of the World at the Dinner Table

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Psychology, Religion

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For a global standard in values, I’ve been promoting just four virtues: compassion, humility, inclusion, integrity. With those four embraced, a lot of problems start to go away and more things can be done to get improvements in “qualities of living” for the living everywhere.

As regards Islamic Reformation, I sometimes want an Obi Wan moment to say to one proponent of one thing or another, “The goodness, K, is in you, not the Qur’an, the Torah, the Second Testament. God cannot be taken from the good, for such may be emergent within the humanity of humanity.

Referencing psychology, the keys on which I harp: bipolar and narcissistic personality disorders / “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (the psychology of dictators) / “civilizational narcissism” Mobarak Haider’s term; in cognitive psychology and language behavior, one may note that while we don’t always see things the same way (the truth is we seldom do), we can look into that together and together diminish an entire class or dimension in contemporary armed conflict.

Oh how we used to fight, my father and me.

Today, he’s gone, and I get to win some.

At least in my own head.

And the “dinner table” — the forum for “lively” (brutal) political discussion:  Facebook.

If any readers should be with me on all of this: let’s keep it simple.

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Netanyahu to Harper – “You Stood Up Unabashedly.”

20 Monday Jan 2014

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▶ Harper and Netanyahu deliver remarks in Israel – YouTube – 1/20/2014.

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The Jewish approach to ethics, culled from a rich heritage of over 3000 years of Jewish existence, has been tried and tested with an astonishing degree of continuity and coherence, enabling it to remain steadfast in the face of the transient whims of society. Judaism’s ascription to the commitments, obligations, and duties of each individual, rather than individual rights, and its lack of distinction between law and ethics, ensures that Jewish ethics does not deal with armchair philosophy, but with real, practical cases while proposing unyielding, yet realistic ethical standards. This comprehensive systematic approach of Jewish ethics has universal validity in the societal debate over public policy involving medical, legal and corporate issues.

Jewish Ethics Institute | Jewish Exponent

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In Wikipedia: Jewish ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Jewish medical ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Feminist Jewish ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Elsewhere: Jewish Ethics Institute; THE JEWISH ETHICIST; Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir, Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem; Judaism and Ethics.

Four seminal figures: Hillel the Elder – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Maimonides – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Felix Adler (professor) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; L. F. L. Oppenheim – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Not to be overlooked: Jesus is a Jew

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Judaism inspires two great conversations: man with God; man with man.

The conversation begins in a garden with God, a snake, a woman, and a man, and the outcome may be (we could argue about it) a statement about the onset of human awareness, self-awareness, and, most of all, conscience.

There’s commentary on language too in Genesis 2 and 3, but it’s subtle and left to the reader to catch two trees in one chapter and only one in the next (hiding something by omission, but rightly omitting from Eve’s human perception what has been hidden, i.e., the Tree of Life; Eve gets to taste of the fruit of the other tree).

And there’s also the comment on decency, which is not tied to shame (as Christians may have it): more likely than shame, our two humans cover what should be in deference to one another, out of consideration, but it’s God, actually, who sews skins for clothes — clothes strong and fit for living — as he sends them as much into human life as out of the garden.

It may be the development of an extensive and millenial ethical argument in language and language behavior that provides Stephan Harper today with motivation to stand with Israel in defense of western ethics, laws, and values.

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“There are more votes, a lot more, in being anti-israeli than taking a stand, but as long as I am Prime Minister, whether it is at the United Nations, the Francophone, or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand whatever the cost.”

▶ Canadian PM: I Will Defend Israel ‘whatever the cost’ – YouTube – 11/8/2010.

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FTAC – Brief Comment On Islamic Reform

10 Friday Jan 2014

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Argue the facts. She’s not making them up. They lend themselves to independent verification and reflection. And they lead to reasoned conclusions.

I argue — and I think she knows this (for a sliver of a second in FB-type chatyping) — for “Shimmer” — that the humanity of the humanity of Muslims writ large cannot today countenance Islam as Bin Laden, the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabi royalty (perhaps — some only nod and take), and Ayatollah Khamenei (or Hamas) would have it. That Islam is over, and while Muslims in its various paths, or the paths of zealots, may know it, they’re not well defended from it, either within themselves or externally.

Pakistani Usman Ali and I could probably title a piece “The Islamization of Pakistan in 2013” and as absurd as they may sound for a state with a constitutionally chartered investment in Islam, it might turn out just as full a report.

All at this point have heard or read the rule: “Qur’an 9:29—Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

In our still spunky United States of America, that ain’t gonna work.

Yet it stands.

It — and much else — need to be stood down.

The source of inspiration for the thread (one of mine): Pamela Geller’s “The Islamization of America in 2013“.

The source of inspiration for the comment was a bit of mud slinging: “Her book could be better titled The Protocols of the Elders of Islam.”

Perhaps I should have answered, “Not really — The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had to be fashioned out of hate and thin air.  Geller’s observations, as noted, may be independently verified for factual validity and challenged on the pedestal of reason.

I believe Geller’s conclusions and her position will stand up to criticism quite well.

Even so, “shimmer” coincides with the absolute position.

Islam is killing Muslims today en masse, often impersonally, and viciously in several states — Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria, at least — and that alone should signal the bankruptcy of the civilization hewing in absolute and literal terms (!) of the Qur’an or, equally so, the humanity of those struggling to channel or reform Islamic thought away from urgent supremacist ambitions and separated forever from the desire to deal death and subjugation to the whole world that is not within the post-Qur’an political concept that is Dur al-Islam.

Additional Reference

Wood, David.  “Quran in Context 1: ‘Fight Those Who Do Not Believe (Surah 9:29)'”. Answering Islam.  Up to this point, I have looked for a neutral scholarly resource in quoting scripture, but here, for once, I’ve drawn from the American analytical anti-Jihad.  Quite a few of the demands, injunctions, and warnings sustained in the Islamic cultural intellectual legacy have proven in invention and continuation infantilizing (“O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends: They are but friends to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust” – Surat 5:51), inflammatory, as with Surat 9:29, and deadly (e.g., “”They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of God; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper” – Surat 4:89).

Islam and Freedom of Religion – “Apostasy”.

Islam and blasphemy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From the news and on the monitor as I’ve type: “Blast in Pakistan Kills Senior Police Official” – NYT – 1/9/2014.

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▶ Qur’an in Context 1: “Fight Those Who Do Not Believe” (9:29) – YouTube – 28 minutes – David Wood – 5/20/2012.

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FTAC – A Bomb Explodes in the Heart of Beirut

27 Friday Dec 2013

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There’s nothing murky about it [the region] — just Human Language Programming (HLP!) in action PLUS a sub-state basis for relationship in private matters involving friendship and kinship, honor and greed. The evil deed doers, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia to Kenya to Syria to Lebanon are rolling out the programming (and scripts) in their heads. They really believe that theirs is the Kingdom of God and God has only asked them to fight for it. Probably, there’s other politics involving fear and greed, humiliation and honor, but the sectarian legends and lines serve for a cover.

The next reader on the thread wrote, “That’s a fanciful explanation.  This is about the rivalry between KSA and Iran for dominance of the ME.”

My response: “Dominance on behalf of what?  Topside and underside, please.”

Power and wealth on the underside — and power becomes the power to make people do your will and best demonstrated by their doing things they’ve no wish to do nor much reward for doing.  In that way, every “suicide bomber” becomes peon to the powerful, an exploding poem to their powerful will and accompanying political acumen, cruelty, and ruthlessness; and topside, well, the keys to Sunni or Shiite heaven, proven in glorious battle, just the same as it was 1,400 years ago.

If any such as those weep over the wars they have brought out of their dreams and to their doorsteps, they will weep again when the wake from them.

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Raw: Beirut Car Bomb Kills Politician, Others – YouTube – 12/27/2013.

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The motives behind the assassination of Mr Chatah, a moderate, remain a mystery. But there seems to be a general belief that he was killed for what he represented more than for his own profile.

Carine Torbey in her brief analysis next to BBC News – Beirut blast kills Sunni ex-minister Mohamad Chatah – 12/27/2013.

Incidental bombings may be liked to blasting caps next to dynamite: we don’t know which event will set off the larger explosion — for Beirut, a return to fighting in the streets — but we know the effect is to encourage sectarian animosity and force action on the side of the aggrieved — and all sides become aggrieved.

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“The first thing I saw was half of a woman in the garden next to the trees, and then a man who had a piece of metal in his head, dead on the ground” . . . .

Powerful explosion rocks downtown Beirut; former ambassador to U.S., 4 others killed – The Washington Post – 12/27/2013.

Downtown Beirut.

Rebuilt, commercial, bustlin’ and hustlin’ — and boom!

While we’re aware of the Hariri facet, shocked by the attack taking place in the heart of Beirut’s central business district, and tuned to sectarian Sunni vs. Shiite animosity region-wide, we have yet to experience the wrath of the Beirut Landlordians but may expect that the same, their insurers, and their army have been enraged at this affront to their security powers.

Unleash the investigators! says I, for this latest version of warfare in which the evildoers, the aggressors, the transgressors, disappear with their actions and keep their mouths shut afterward.

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Chatah was known as a staunch critic of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom he accused of meddling in Lebanon’s internal affairs. Hezbollah has sent fighters to help al-Assad’s forces in the Syrian civil war.

Lebanon’s Mohamad Chatah, a Hezbollah foe, killed in blast – CNN.com – 12/27/2013.

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Related: Special Tribunal for Lebanon

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