What’s Happy Yemens? Happy Yemen, Arabia Felix was the name Romans gave to Yemen. The organization is called Happy Yemens, promoting the interests of South and Central Yemen, two distinct parts of Yemen fighting with the Northern North for the past 800 years that the international community has been trying to silence. The international community is trying to hide our existence, and paint it as a Saudi-Houthi war. They only use voices from Sanaa & the Northern North who have never been to South & Central Yemen, nor do robbers and occupiers understand the reality of whom they have robbed and occupied. Most journalism is “Sanaa journalism” interviewing our occupiers about us. We aim for South and Central Yemenis to speak for themselves rather than our occupiers speak for us.
We are a media collective of South and Central Yemenis around the world. We feel that South ande Central Yemenis are persecuted by the Goebbels style defamation of the “Death to Jews” shouting Houthis who have adopted a neo Nazi ideology and many of its tactics. We want to give South and Central Yemen its own voice
In childhood, the kid with the chessboard chooses his opponent. Why not in adulthood? And what if you could not only control you opponent but make the same another rival’s opponent . . . how cool would that be?
That would be so far beyond cool as to have arrived at deliciously evil.
Bashar al-Assad’s best defense, for the realpolitik theatrical “Assad vs The Terrorists” becomes for the general opposition, including NATO opposition to the tyrant’s rule, “Assad or The Terrorists” (mirroring slogan: “Assad, Or We Burn The Country”).
Related to the previous, ISIS becomes the primary military war-on-terror focus for the west, which comes with diplomatic, human, and financial costs to the west.
Incubated by its own enemy, the Assad regime and its backers, ISIS has been positioned in time and space to destroy the revolution once pressed by the Free Syrian Army and serve as a foil to the combined forces of Assad, Khamenei, and Putin, all of whom today may at will attack the same even if preferring other non-ISIS (and still noncombatant) targets.
In ISIS, Khamenei (he may thank Assad and Putin) has chosen a familiar Sunni opposition for Iran’s purchase in Iraq’s Shiite militia community. Once again, Iranian Revolutionary Guard get to get their boots into battle with their old Baathist foes, now serving as generals in Baghdadi’s cause.
Related Teasers, Links, and Reference
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949, has 28 members devoted to the idea of collective security. Prediction: By the time President Obama leaves office in 2017, the NATO pledge of mutual defense in response to aggression will have been exposed as worthless. Objectively the alliance will have ceased to exist. The culprits? Vladimir Putin—and Barack Obama.
The long-term aim would be to defeat or demoralise the non-Isil opposition, so that Isil became the regime’s only enemy. That would force the West to back President Bashar al-Assad against it. “They want to clean the country of non-Isil rebels, and then the US will work with them as Isil will be the only enemy,” the Damascus source said.
Russia bombed Syria for a third day on Friday, mainly hitting areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting and drawing an increasingly angry response from the West.
The U.S.-led coalition that is waging its own air war against Islamic State called on the Russians to halt strikes on targets other than Islamic State.
Next came Russia’s move on Syria. The weapons that Russia is sending there are not an attempt to settle the conflict. They are there to protect the Assad regime, which is its cause. Moreover, ISIL does not have warplanes: Russia’s air defense missiles are in Syria for a different purpose.
This became clear on Wednesday, when America was given less than an hour’s warning that the Kremlin was imposing, in effect, a no-fly zone in Syria. With this the Russians not only mounted a direct challenge to American authority. They also ripped up the rulebook of military diplomacy. America was aghast, but had no response.
The Ba’ath regime was strongly anti-American, so it’s not surprising that–despite the unfortunate fate of the Iraqi Communist Party–it was primarily a client of the Soviet Union (not the US), and this relationship continued up until the moment when the Soviet Union collapsed.
That Baathists helped ISIS, before the declaration of the ‘Caliphate,’ to rush into Iraq last year, and assist in the battles for key nodes in Iraq, is indisputable. Even in the Second Battle of Tikrit, just fought in the past few weeks, Baathists were a prominent component of ISIS forces. The very fact that Saddam Hussein’s al-Tikriti tribe was tossed out of their tribal domain certainly bore the hallmarks of the ultimate revenge against the Baathist core.
Moscow’s action were in line with the strategy it had used to defeat the separatist movement in Chechnya, infiltrating the insurgency, driving it into extremism, and facilitating the arrival of al-Qaeda jihadists who displaced the Chechen nationalists. In Syria, Russia’s actions accord with the strategy adopted by the regime and its Iranian masters to present Assad as the last line of defence against a terrorist takeover of Syria and a genocide against the minorities. New evidence has emerged to underline these points.
Testimony from gendarmerie officers in court documents reviewed by Reuters allege that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells were carried in trucks accompanied by state intelligence agency (MIT) officials more than a year ago to parts of Syria under Islamist control.
Four trucks were searched in the southern province of Adana in raids by police and gendarmerie, one in November 2013 and the three others in January 2014, on the orders of prosecutors acting on tip-offs that they were carrying weapons, according to testimony from the prosecutors, who now themselves face trial.
While the first truck was seized, the three others were allowed to continue their journey after MIT officials accompanying the cargo threatened police and physically resisted the search, according to the testimony and prosecutor’s report.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/links-russia-in…/ I’ve been using some of these Back-Channels pieces as boilerplate. The the two powerful dictators — Putin and Khamenei — and the tyrant in the middle — Assad — may be making a statement about their natural right to exist as they do: colonel, president, emperor, ayatollah, or tyrant. As criminals do, they’re refusing the authority of powers other than themselves; they’re acting fully without compassion or empathy for others, except, perhaps those favored through their patronage; and, as the malignant among narcissists do, they’re putting on a show using a simple self-serving script, “Assad vs The Terrorists”.
In the time-honored ways of the tyrannical, each has “exceeded limits” by practically any standards (save those of ISIS, perhaps), plundered their own states, and reveled in their own glory surrounded by those who cooperate in their madness.
In business, feudal arrangements involving inner circles, private and proprietary methods, and profit seem a confirmed part of how we do things. With “state capitalists” — in Putin’s own words, “New Nobility” — why should the possession of power and wealth prove different?
I don’t think these kinds of guys stop until stopped. There are few avenues of appeal to humanity or sentiment (Putin was spending about $50 billion on Sochi while Assad was preferentially bombing his moderate opposition and large noncombatant communities: no funds were applied for the general relief of Syrians caught in this version of Hell).
The thread starter: a CBS This Morning video:
Posted to YouTube 9/29/2015.
Plainly, and even if representing a post-Soviet neo-feudal Russian, President Putin, as unkind as language may be to him, is himself a power with whom to be reckoned. How that has had to have been approached may speculative, but, certainly, caution has been a large part of it. In 1991, when the Soviet dissolved itself, NATO and the Russian People had had in mind a different kind of Russia. The Cold War then seemed over — and it should have been over.
Behind each state government and system, democratic or despotic, exists an array of winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, privileged and needy. Each government handles the business of life, justice, and fate differently. Where the democratic open societies cultivate the distribution of political power along with the cultivation of individual ability and private fiefdom (we call them “businesses”), the medieval leadership concentrate power in the Great Leader and related favored and privileged insiders (for whom a “loyal lie” most certainly trumps “an inconvenient truth” — the child’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, always applies). The transitioning of such societies seems to have to come from within (as much has played out in British history) and probably will, but with the Big Red Tantrum Button — the unspeakable in latent power — always close by, change may have to come about indirectly and slowly.
I don’t think we’re destroyed, (name withheld): our bombers cover the earth daily; our satellite and other security systems are up 24/7/365; our armed forces have taken some hits in the area of “largeness”, but at the same time they have reinvented themselves in “force-multiplying” technology; our security industry, which includes at least 17 major active institutions is probably better knit together today than at any other time in their turf-divided histories; and we seem to have the capability of operating out of the spotlight.
Some programs run in the background.
I believe that this material — http://www.stripes.com/…/cia-special-ops-cooperate-to… — would not have been released to the public unless the CIA and military had agreed to “leak it” — i.e., to inform ISIS fighters as to just how closely they have been infiltrated and monitored. This has taken place, albeit off the Big Media radar, throughout the course of the Obama Administration. As such, the data argues against the conservative arguments involving appeasement.
I think what has happened is that the west has met and adjusted its tactics to the medievalism represented by, sigh, “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and also distant rivals in Pakistan and elsewhere. We are the “Modern” at war with the “Medieval”. Time is the New Space, and we are fighting with these “emperors” and “new nobility” over the essential future models of governance. Colonel President Emperor Putin has found himself — and put himself — center stage in the defense of political “absolute power”. We, the west, remain and stand by “classical liberalism”: we believe in personhood for everyone: the despotic seem to believe that they — each — are the only persons who really matter.
I didn’t vote for Obama because of the Far (Out) Left connections and his experience with the Wright stuff . . . but I firmly believe that he is responsible to the major American institutions — DOD / NASA (that set the standards for the nation) and then the layers of bureaucracy that will survive him and other American Presidents to come. In that way, our democracy captures our elected leaders: they can talk all they want, and they can maneuver quite a bit, but once in the driver’s seat, the chief administrator’s chair, they’re cushioned or padded by all that has preceded them and constrained by other political forces. That despots don’t want that kind of position, and they’re fighting it all the way down.
Some Muslims — and Muslim to Judaism converts that I have encountered — believe that a “clash of civilizations” is taking form. I take a broader view: the medieval past has inconveniences a great part of humanity, and the Moderns (and the Progressives) have a problem with that. So do the clerics and dictators who counsel Obedience — or Else! The autocratic or despotic — malignant narcissists, all of them — fear their own dawning irrelevance.
The Syrian war and related conflict are about the persistence of feudal and medieval “absolute power” in the 21st Century. To maintain that illusion, but one bloody and miserable enough — I can’t imagine how it could be more miserable for Syrians — Colonel President Emperor Putin, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the Tyrant Assad have had to produce on the ground a play and strategy fit to their own grandiose and inhuman delusions: “Assad vs The Terrorists”.
So far, they have brought about what they wanted — and needed — to create.
In the post-Soviet but neo-feudal Russian period, Putin now has an enhanced military position in Syria, and that presumably suits his desire for empire. Handily enough, Ayatollah Khamenei has gotten out of the deal a foil — a kind of chess opponent for him — in the creation of ISIS against which he may now set loose more Revolutionary Guard and Iraqi Shiite militia (the two are together in this): as long as the Great Shiite vs Sunni Battle burns between himself and Baghdadi, he’s in business and may continuing his plundering of Iran. Of The Tyrant Assad, what may one say? How glorious that it turns out himself standing off (in view of the west) the butchery of the al-Qaeda types, who themselves have also a dreadful program.
From an ethical and moral standpoint — from Pharaoh, another tyrant, to this day — everything is wrong about Syria, and the only people who can really fix conditions and themselves are . . . Syrians.
In the 20th Century: Stalin-Hitler (before Hitler betrayed Stalin). In this one: Putin-Khamenei (Assad depends on both). These men need to be seen for what they are, what they represent, and what they have hauled with them into our century, and Syrians would be wise, perhaps, to understand their own complicity in the development of their power. It’s good to leave them with their egomania, their cowardly hate, and their sadism.
Visual coverage of the Syrian Tragedy: lurid.
Painful.
The cause of it: a medieval “will to power” accompanied in the people by insularity and culturally transmitted contempt for others matched to fear and hatred of the Jews and of the west. When trouble came and the same raised a cry and reached out for help, it appears the world most hated stood aside while the curtain rose on “Assad vs The Terrorists” and darkness came to their seared land.
One hopes that for those who reached across borders and those who have reached back that those mental conditions — habits of mind, learned social grammar, misperception, and fear of the condemnation of one’s own perverse society — will change.
“This is a racial issue, this is a religious discrimination issue, and now you have a poster child, literally, a poster child for your agenda, and I think that agenda is an agenda of intimidation. It think these Islamists want to intimidate people in our country from questioning the behavior and motives of people from their group, and I don’t think this is the first time they have tried this. Apparently, this group they work with, the Council on American Islamic Relationships or CAIR has done other things claiming “Islamophobia” and has sometimes been successful and sometimes unsuccessful, but this is a technique they have used before.” So what’s really unfortunate about that is western civilization, our nation, and many others are in a state of war with radical jihadism, and unfortunately, people who are Arab Americans like me and other people sometimes have parts of us that because of our appearance fit a stereotype, but sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason, and this was an exploitation of a stereotype, in my opinion, to advance a political agenda, and I think it’s wrong because we are still not completely safe in this country, and we have to watch out for our safety and the safety of our children. So my message to you is keep your eyes open. If you see something, say something. Suspicious behavior should be reported. You should not ever be afraid of to report a suspicion of something that looks amiss regardless of someone’s race or apparent religion.”
The case that the teen was deliberately trying to provoke a confrontation was strengthened as more was learned about his family. His older sister, Eyman, was once suspended from her school for threatening to blow it up. His uncle runs a trucking company called Twin Towers Transportation. And his father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, is a publicity hungry activist who calls himself a sheik, wears flowing white robes, and is a 9/11 Truther. The elder Mohamed routinely returns to Sudan to run as a presidential candidate, and he once debated Pastor Terry Jones of Koran-burning fame.
Update – December 11, 2015
There’s more to include, including a suit against Irving, Texas officialdom, but BackChannels saw this from PJ Media and has elected to run it as a bookend on this piece (posted to YouTube 12/3/2015).
Update – August 2, 2016
The Internet is his refuge — and his attacker. He reads every story and long, rambling conspiracy theory about him. Countless blogs and videos have been dedicated to proving Ahmed’s clock was just a Radio Shack clock he put in a new box. (It was partially made of Radio Shack parts, but the design was all his own, he says.) Others insist that this was all a stunt masterminded by Mohamed to get attention. (“He can’t plan the reaction. And why would he want me to get arrested?” Ahmed says.) Still more have proclaimed that the Mohameds are terrorist sympathizers because they once owned a company called Twin Towers Transportation. (They did own a company by that name, because their offices were housed in a Dallas office building called the Twin Towers.)
What the Soviet and Soviet-inspired did with mind — information and psychology — has to be addressed and reversed wherever it traveled.
I invite (name withheld) to watch this conversation and, at any point, join it.
The “loyal lie” — told or believed out of fear or want (because people lie primarily to get something or hide something) — has been pitted against “inconvenient truth”, and while the truth may not be favorable in a given instant, it is always more reliable than the lie.
The KGB program had been a program of mass mind control — control of the press; punishment of dissidents; for Stalin, the mass murder of critics — and it was sucked up into Baathist pan-Arabism: there is no mystery as to how and why Bashar al-Assad, with Putin and Khamenei’s blessing, chose to decimate the Syrian state (in area, half lost) and people (half the population displaced or refugee on top of countless thousands dead or maimed — and tens of thousands of those children) rather than cede the assumption of the right to absolute political control or power.
For the despotic, there is not a sucker in every crowd: the crowd is there to be suckered.
The ways of “secular humanism” are like a membrane surrounding religious aggregates, lol, but also from which the same more (apparently) satisfying beliefs about man and the universe may be hung. The helpfulness of the moderate outlook is to blunt the power of a narcissistic drive attached to any convenient existing “ism”, including humanism, and then muddle through in an uncomfortable (to all) but reliable (for all) equilibrium.
It’s okay in the boxing ring and for entertainment, but in public office, much less high and highest offices, it’s best to know that “God is greater” or “Master of the Universe” and humanity is just guessing, passionately, but guessing, in any case.
The Facebook chat veered toward refusing endorsement of any “fundamentalist” for office.
That’s fine.
I wouldn’t want a First Family handling rattlers to prove to itself on a recurring basis its own favor in the sight of God in exchange for its fervent beliefs.
However, how available is what is opposite the religious zealot, i.e., the irreligious “secular humanist”?
The quest for that right-for-president guy or gal may be impractical, especially if “secular humanism” is either positioned or seen as debunking all religious faith and thereby becoming a faith in itself. Intuition suggests that the better framework in which to place a “godless humanism” is as a method — not a faith — designed to manage the separateness of differing beliefs and drives: we want to be free, and to be free means to be as we believe God wanted us to be, or to be as we believe we were fashioned by fate or nature, and doing that means “being ourselves” while also keeping out of one another’s way as a matter devolving to custom and law.
That faith — any — which would fail to recognize political, religious, and social boundaries forged in both the forming processes of communal and personal identity, would seem here to doom itself to perpetual conflict and defeat.
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