Tag Archives: Assad

FTAC – Approaching Anti-Semitism and the Medieval Revanch

22 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syria

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1. Anti-Semitism serves feudal power. It is a tool for the manipulation and direction of mobs. Note: Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal are billionaires today, which begs the question: who has really occupied what? The PLO and PFLP have been Moscow projects from the beginning and the encouragement of an anti-Semitic middle east a major part of the Soviet program, which medieval / oligarchal phantoms we are fighting today.

2. Nationalism tends toward fascism (ask any of the more western-oriented opposition in Hungary about that). In Israel, the Hebrews, +5,000 years together, are back in the Land of the Hebrews, and they have been taught a long lesson by way of the leaders and fans of the “International Solidarity” and “Palestinian Solidarity” garbage (that’s the word for them): the complaint about Israel has never been about Israel — it has been always about Jewish existence itself, not only in Israel but anywhere on the planet.

3. Go back to Moses the Lawgiver and go forward to Hillel the Elder who to accommodate the restive of a decaying Rome made Judaism more about principle than ritual and more accessible to converts. Then: Jesus, Paul, Constantine; then: Muhammad. Those who really hate the Jews hate the law and humanity. The may hate themselves. Boco Haram, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah: call them the “God Mob” because intimidation, theft, and murder on one side and pandering and patronage on the other appears to be what each has best demonstrated in organizational lives short and long.

As much verbiage as BackChannels spools onto the threads of The Awesome Conversation, the social network chatyping fest, it wonders who compressed it may make a packet of thought.

Anti-Semitism : Feudal Mentality

Perhaps that should be enough.

It has been deeply disappointing watching some Syrians (for the most part, not friends, but others the “friends of friends”) refuse to struggle with the anti-Semitic expression that not only accompanies their suffering but plays directly into hands of the medieval troika, Putin – Assad – Khamenei, each of whom have pegged their survival on irrational mob behavior and, indeed, feudal wars that for being so intellectually bereft that they cannot resolve through violence.

Some prefer the engines of war to the machinery of peace.

A moderate Syrian opposition site had played a cartoon showing Putin, Khamenei, and Netanyahu in bed together while Assad lay on the floor.  Never mind the nonsense in which the leader of an open democracy shares the same mattress as the two despots, the intent to harm Israel absent of reason stands signal of the too familiar sickness and the fascism to which it connects.

Anti-Semitic hate contributes directly to the medieval worldview promoted by Putin, Assad, and Khamenei. Israel’s arrangements with Russia over Syria have been defensive and perfunctory. Before the Soviet Union dissolved (December 1991), this is how it manipulated latent Jew Hate in the middle east into the Baathist dictatorships — from one of which Assad has descended. In fact, Assad is counting on Syrian anti-Semitism to contribute to his stay in power. https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/ftac-tip-to-the…/

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Syria – “Assad vs The Terrorists” – How ISIS Defends Assad

02 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria, United States of America

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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.

😉

For Moscow — Putin’s post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia, “New Nobility” and all — ISIS serves at least these functions:

  1. A destination for its own unwanted homegrown Islamist terrorists, i.e., a good place to channel as many as may go.
  2. 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”).
  3. 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.
  4.  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.
  5. Even better, ISIS appears to have had great luck appropriating U.S.-backed bases, equipment, and materiel with a minimum of resistance — or maximum of cooperation.
  6. The Islamist pseudo-dictator Erdogan in Turkey, despite the state’s NATO status, may use the same ISIS excuse as cover to get in some licks against the more familiar enemies of the state, i.e., the Kurdish community (NATO has recently reasserted itself in Turkey through military diplomacy).
  7. As goad to the west and cover for Russian intervention, ISIS has handily provided Moscow with an invitation to produce and bulk up a “forward operating base” in Syria.
  8. Most of all, ISIS serves the preservation of a medieval worldview fit to the possession of political absolute power (political absolutism).

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.

Continetti, Matthew.  “The Coming Defeat of NATO: How Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama will break the Atlantic alliance.”  Washington Free Beacon, October 2, 2015.

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.

Akkoc, Raziye and Roland Oliphant.  “Russia kills US-backed Syrian rebels in second day of air strikes as Iran prepares for ground offensive.”  The Telegraph, October 2, 2015.

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.

Perry, Tom and Lidia Kelly.  “U.S., allies demand Russia halt Syria strikes outside IS areas.”  Reuters, October 2, 2015.

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.

Lucas, Edward.  “In [Putin’s] terms, he is winning.  And on our terms we are losing.” First section, Politico, “What is Putin Really Up To in Syria: 14 Putinologists weigh in.”  October 1, 2015.

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.

Weintraub, Jeffrey.  “Who armed Saddam? – Some Reality Checks.”  Jeff Weintraub (blog), March 31, 2003.

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.

Karasik, Theodore.  The erratic ISIS and Baath party connection.  Al Arabiya, April 18, 2015.

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.

Orton, Kyle. “How Russia Manipulates Islamic Terrorism.” The Syrian Intifada, September 8, 2015.

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.

Pamuk, Humeyra and Nick Tattersall.  “Exclusive: Turkish intelligence helped ship arms to Syrian Islamist rebel areas.”  Reuters, May 21, 2015.

Alfred, Charlotte.  “The Strange Irony Hidden Among the Highest Ranks of ISIS”.  The World Post / Huffington Post, September 12, 2014.

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

Gardner, David.  “Turkey: The high price of Erdogan’s power grab.”  The Big Read, Financial Times, September 22, 2015.

Hannah, John.  “Erdogan’s Deadly Ambitions.”  Foreign Policy, September 21, 2015.

Lowe, Christian and Julia Edwards.  “Russia to U.S.: talk to us on Syria or risk “unintended incidents’.”  Reuters, September 11, 2015.

Moore, Jack.  “Iranian Military Mastermind Leading Battle to Recapture Tikrit From ISIS.”  Newsweek, March 5, 2015.

O’Toole, Molly.  “Russia is Setting Up A Forward Operating Base in Syria, Pentagon Confirms.”  Defense One, September 14, 2015.

Pamuk, Humeyra and Nick Tattersall.  “Turkey launches heaviest air strikes yet on Kurdish group.”  Reuters, July 29, 2015.

Sly, Liz and Craig Whitlock.  “Turkey denies reaching accord with U.S. on use of air base against Islamic State.”  The Washington Post, October 13, 2014.

The Economist. “Why Turkey called a NATO Article Four consultation.”  July 28, 2015.

Turovsky, Daniil.  “How Isis is recruiting migrant workers in Moscow to join the fighting in Syria.”  The Guardian, May 5, 2015.

Weiss, Michael.  “Russia Is Sending Jihadis to Join ISIS.”  The Daily Beast, August 23, 2015.

Update – December 5, 2015

Orton, Kyle.  “How Assad Funds the Islamic State”.  The Syrian Intifada (blog), November 29, 2015.

Update – June 19, 2016

Fox News.  “Pentagon, Russia hold video conference after bombing of CIA-backed Syria rebels.”  June 18, 2016.

Update – July 25, 2016

Posted to YouTube 10/16/2015.

Update – August 25, 2016

National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces.  “Harvard University Reveals Secret Documents Proving Assad’s Involvement in Rise of ISIS.”  August 23, 2016.  Article comments from 2015 Der Spiegel article by Christoph Reuter based on papers obtained from the battlespace in 2013.

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Bashar “Barrel Bomb” Assad . . . .

15 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Syria

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian military helicopters dropped barrels packed with explosives in the government’s latest air raids on rebel-held areas of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Saturday, killing at least 23 people, including a family trapped in a burning car, activists said.

In neighboring Lebanon, a car bomb blew up near a gas station in a Shiite town, killing at least three people, in the latest attack linked to the war in Syria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/world/middleeast/syrian-helicopters-drop-barrel-bombs-on-aleppo.html – 2/1/2014.

Ahmad al-Hamoud, Vice Commander of Ahfad Hamza Battalion for Special Missions, al-Sultan al-Fatih Brigade, told VDC that many kinds of the barrel bombs used by the regime forces had been recognizable. These included:

1- Regular Russian-made Barrels. These are believed to have been used by the Russian Army in the middle of the previous century. They were brought from Russia ‘ready to use’. The regime has owned them for decades. Their weight ranges between 300 to 500 kg and they’re filled with TNT and metallic scraps. There’re extremely destructive, yet their range is more limited than that of the other kinds.

2- Medium Destruction Barrels. These are believed to be made by the regime in ‘Defense Factories’ in al-Safira, in the Valley of al-Waha. Most of the helicopters taking off from this valley dropped these barrels on the districts of Aleppo. The weight of these barrels ranges from 400 to 500 kg.

3- Highly Destructive Barrels. These are the most dangerous and destructive of all. Weighing more than 600 kg, they take many shapes like containers, cisterns and, in some cases, green rubbish containers.

“A Special Report on the Recent Air Attacks on Aleppo: Potential Death Falling from the Sky…: Violation Documentation Center in Syria, March 2014.  Note: graphic forensic photographs included in the report.

Posted to YouTube 2/24/2015.

Source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/24/syria-new-spate-barrel-bomb-attacks – 2/24/2015.

Barrel bombs are improvised weapons: oil drums or similar canisters filled with explosives and metal fragments. They are dropped without guidance from helicopters hovering just above antiaircraft range, typically hitting the ground with huge explosions and the widespread diffusion of deadly shrapnel. They pulverize neighborhoods, destroy entire buildings and leave broad strips of death and destruction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/opinion/barrel-bombs-not-isis-are-the-greatest-threat-to-syrians.html – 8/5/2015

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/bombs-kill-dozens-syria-aleppo-150713131000494.html – 7/13/2015

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeraworld/2015/03/150325072934200.html – 3/25/2015 – “Death of Aleppo”.

Footage has emerged showing the Syrian regime using explosive “barrel bombs” on civilian neighbourhoods, killing hundreds, while its representatives attended peace talks at Geneva.

Filmed by activists in the southern Damascus suburb of Daraya, the ten minute video is a compilation of footage showing barrels, loaded with TNT, being dropped on the neighbourhood during the week the Geneva II conference was convened.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10618670/Syrian-military-drop-devastating-barrel-bombs-on-city.html – 2/5/2014.

Nongovernmental organizations researching and working in Syria, including Human Rights Watch and the Syrian Civil Defense, testified during the meeting. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy on Syria, said in a video message that the Syrian government is responsible for the use of barrel bombs and that at the rate the weapons are being used, there won’t be any civilians left in Syria.

http://www.newsweek.com/united-nations-assads-barrel-bombs-continue-kill-syrian-civilians-347782 – 6/27/2015.

Government forces and pro-government militia continue to conduct widespread attacks on civilians, systematically committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity. Government forces have committed gross violations of human rights and the war crimes of murder, hostage-taking, torture, rape and sexual violence, recruiting and using children in hostilities and targeting civilians in sniper attacks. Government forces disregarded the special protection accorded to hospitals, medical and humanitarian personnel and cultural property. Aleppo was subjected to a campaign of barrel bombing that targeted entire areas and spread terror among civilians. Government forces used incendiary weapons, causing superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering, in violation of international humanitarian law. Indiscriminate and disproportionate aerial bombardment and shelling caused large-scale arbitrary displacement. Government forces and pro-government militia perpetrated massacres.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  “Report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.”  Human Rights Council, 25th Session, Agenda Item 4, February 12, 2014.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/barrel-bomb-attacks-syria-aleppo-reported-150622175005995.html – 6/22/2015

While the Assad opposition masks off its own excesses, and, as always in the Islamic Small Wars, it’s hard “seeing” who is fighting exactly for what and how they’re doing it, warrior band by band, and sometimes person by person, there are no doubts as regards the smashing of large business, education, religious, and residential areas packed with noncombatant Syrians.

As Syrian Muslim and Jewish relationships develop — a perhaps “unheard of” now heard of — and Syrian anti-Semitism and anti-westernism comes more into focus as one impediment among several to western intercession, the scales may tip in the direction of the cosmopolitan and modern and therefore away from the medieval worldview that forms the basis for the despotism displayed by Putin, Assad, and Khamenei on the Shiite axis and al-Nusra and ISIS and others on the Sunni complement that serves the former as foils for the cooked up theatrical “Assad vs The Terrorists”.

In Syria, the center could not hold and the rough beast rose to savage the land.

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FTAC – Syria – A Note on Beyond the Burning

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Syria

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The foundations of the invisible wall surrounding Assad start about here:

“In a gloomy interrogation room the children were beaten and bloodied, burned and had their fingernails pulled out by grown men working for a regime whose unchecked brutality appears increasingly to be sowing the seeds of its undoing.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/110423/syria-assad-protests-daraa

And then it builds to about here:

“But there is something legitimately scary about the weapon’s do-it-yourself ethos and its new systematic deployment against the neighborhoods of Aleppo. It speaks to the regime’s single-minded focus on finding new ways to kill, its narrow and obsessive pursuit of mayhem and destruction as seemingly official strategy in the conflict that has run for nearly three years now.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/12/24/what-makes-syrias-barrel-bombs-so-scary/

Being a merely “bloody dictator” in a conflict cauldron that has in it argument over despotism, democracy, egotism, goodness, God, morality, and narcissism (finally) is not merely a bad position.

The condemnation backed by astounding imagery and numbers to match may not be overcome with exigent maneuvering.

I know: faced with Hitler, one might be eager to bargain with Stalin.

Call that yesterday.

This day with Assad having produced a war that has brought al-Qaeda affiliates and such to his doorstep and that has incubated and loosed ISIS on the world, may be different.

How happy should one be to be led by Assad today?

That’s not my question to answer.  It’s a question for Syrians to answer for themselves in whatever condition and place the war now finds them.

If “Assad or Burn It” was the slogan, it has been working a long time, and once burned — in whatever portion — what then?

What now?

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One Day, it Will be an Alawite Who Finally Kills Assad

25 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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One Day, it Will be an Alawite Who Finally Kills Assad

By failing to defeat an opposition he has consistently painted as posing an existential threat to his own Alawite constituency, a narrative that has also made impossible even minor confidence building measures such as permitting aid to the besieged rebel areas, and the release of high profile prisoners such as Dr Khan, measures which could have been built on to eventually ensure a political arrangement to end the conflict, Assad has trapped himself in a course of action that can only end in one way; his death at the hands of his fellow Alawites.

Sochi | Putin – Assad – Khamenei | Barrel Bombs

06 Thursday Feb 2014

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

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CNN Reference: Opposition: Fresh barrel bomb attack kills 15 in Aleppo – CNN.com – 2/6/2014.

Related: BBC News – Syria crisis: US condemns Aleppo barrel bomb raids – 2/5/2014; Barrel bomb – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Syria: Regime’s barrel bombing of Aleppo causing “refugee crisis” | Al Bawaba – 2/6/2014; 10,000 Syrian children killed in civil war, others raped, tortured and maimed: United Nations – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 2/6/2013.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and the world will in about eight to ten hours bear witness to peaceful competition among nations by way of the winter Olympic games in Sochi; however, while they are doing that, Bashar al-Assad and forces beneath his command may continue prosecuting their war as they have since spring 2011; the other side may be mixed with forces still loyal to Idris — there’s a Quixote story somewhere down there in that beleaguered company — but they too will be at play in the killing fields, and one cannot make such as al-Nusra or ISIS / ISIL (I get so confused) look better than they have proved themselves in battle against bakeries and truck drivers.

How beautiful Sochi will be.

______

http://youtu.be/Vjk6tBE03zM

Raw: Syrian Forces Drop Barrel Bombs on Aleppo – YouTube – 2/6/2014.

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“How to Build the New Syria” – Two Videos

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

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

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http://youtu.be/lhoKoE08Odc

Teenage refugee won’t give up on Syria – YouTube – 2/4/2014

CNN Source: Teenage refugee won’t give up on Syria – 2/4/2014.

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Syria’s Lost Generation: The Plight of the Youngest Refugees – YouTube – 15:00 – 1/24/2014.

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Syria offers a three-front conflict zone, and it’s all a bit clouded: Assad vs Idris vs ISIS (more or less).

What appears to be missing, although we know where the displaced and refugee may be in general terms, is the military force of the humane, moderate, and reasoning.  That category was to have been filled by General Salim Idris, but such a conceptual slot seems not to have translated well to the Syrian country-wide realpolitik of autonomous bands and militia — “loose and roaming energy” one might call that.

The two videos presented tell a side of the Syrian Civil War evident in political reality but absent of military representation while the field features “the brutal dictator” on one side and the horrifying al-Qaeda affiliates (in spirit if not in organizational fact) on the other.

With perhaps Putin’s input, to which none in the snoopy notebook class have privy, Assad holds the anti-al-Qaeda position and despite the regime’s own horrific spree of bombings and assaults on noncombatant Syrians, and may find favor on that most morally twisted (wrong actions, right direction) “high ground”.

It’s hard to imagine Assad staying given what millions of Syrians must know about him by way of their own personal losses — and the manner of those losses — but it has yet to dawn on the suffering that Syria may (must) be their fight too: the UN may step in only with the familiar “humanitarian assistance”; NATO and the west haven’t much truck with Assad and can’t seem to get Idris to steal the show; Putin doesn’t seem to care about humanity so much, but he could intervene, making a great grandstanding play of magnanimous post-Soviet Russian humanism during the Winter Olympics at Sochi (wait and see but don’t hold your breath); and “the Islamists” have quite a program — the most dismal on earth — in store for all who fail to impede them.

Additional Reference

Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad – William R. Polk – The Atlantic – 12/10/2013.

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Each Name Opens To A Universe

05 Monday Aug 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too English.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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http://youtu.be/vqkXV1FMcVs

Prestige matters.

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

Additional Reference

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

Official Site of the Bureau International des Expositions.

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

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

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