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Tag Archives: interview

Syria’s Tragedy Distilled: A Short Chat with Dr. Zaki Lababidi, Vice President, Syrian American Council

11 Monday Dec 2017

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

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conflict, interview, Syria, Zaki Lababidi

To be decoded:

Forty-six years: 1971.
Forty-one years: 1976
Nineteen Separated Security Services.

BackChannels enjoyed a brief chat by phone with Dr. Zaki Lababidi, Vice President of the Syrian American Council.  Mission: ” . . . to empower the Syrian-American community to organize and advocate for a free, democratic, secular and pluralistic Syria through American support.”

In the morning 🙂 , the notebook says “41” or “46” and “1971” and “Emergency Rule” and “19 Security Services”.

It also quotes Lababidi as saying, “You could be picked up for anything!”

So into the brutal mysteries of Cold War Era political machinery let us go, albeit in the way of (I hope) good blogging, briefly.

1971

What Nazi Germany could not hold, including loose political energy, the Soviet Union picked up handily, so that in 1956, a young Hafiz al-Assad joined the Baath Party as an activist set on a familiar authoritarian course into maturity: military career; coup sending civilian Party leaders into exile; Minister of Defense; a soul-changing military defeat (by Israel, 1967); and ascent to power, first as prime minister of Syria and then as president: 1971.

In that same year, Hafiz al-Assad agreed with the Soviet Union to host a naval “Material-Technical Support Point” in Tartus, perhaps the result of Assad’s recruitment into the Ba’ath Party extending back only 15 years from that agreement.

1976

In the wake of the 1963 Ba’athist coup, the Muslim Brothers did more than beg to disagree with secular governance and met by dictatorship were summarily outlawed.  Wikipedia suggests radicalization ensued and twelve years later — 1976 — a series of assassinations of Ba’athist officers, civil servants, and educated professionals would be credited to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Syria’s “Emergency Laws” or “Emergency Rule” had been set in motion and place since the 1963 coup and the Muslim Brothers response to it and would have been similarly enforced in the wake of assassinations by Islamic extremists.  In 1976 the Syrian Lawyer’s Union formed a human rights committee to challenge the law and its abuses.  Although Bashar al-Assad lifted the Emergency Rule in April 2011, the regime’s opposition continued to face a police state delivered by way of those “19 security Services”.

19 Security Services

There need be no essay here — and here the interview may resume as Lababidi notes, “nineteen security services, each reporting directly to Bashar al-Assad and each spying on the other.”

The Assad regime had believed itself coup proof.

However, the absurdities in the injustices of fascist police state would motivate with its sadism literally an army of defectors and while sustaining the miseries of rebellion.

When in 2011 when youngsters who had joined the intended peaceful “Arab Spring” demonstrations were arrested and thrown into prison, Lababidi reports that parents who went to see them were told, “Forget about your children.  Go make more babies.”

Mixed in with the atmosphere of that day were government demands familiar to Russian imperial history: “You needed a permit from the government for everything — to travel, to get married, to buy a house,” says Lababidi.

Lababidi claims that Islamic extremists in Germany were infiltrated into Syria while the same type among Syrian prisoners were also released into the field, which fits with the BackChannels’ argument that Assad acted to produce the enemy that would be most useful to him in realpolitik as well as as an image builder for “Assad v The Terrorists”.

All Syrians challenging Assad became “terrorists”, noted Lababidi.

We talked about other things . . . the bombing of 15 Syrian hospitals by Russian air force; the diminished numbers of Syrian troops fighting for Assad — “eighty-five percent other military,” says Lababidi referring to Hezbollah, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and others scraped up with “one-hundred dollars a month and an AK47”.

Given the suffering imposed on millions by Assad and the cultural emphasis on the want of revenge, Lababidi says, “There will be no peace if Assad stays in power.”

However, the opposition hasn’t the military power to topple Assad, according to Lababidi, and has no appetite to go to war with Russia.

We also briefly touched on Syria and the state’s sustained anti-Semitic attitudes, beliefs, policies, and postures, and to that Lababidi states, “We get the most help from the Jewish Community!”

Noting Hitler’s pairing of himself with Germany through massive propaganda and the enforcement of change in the social grammar from saying “Germany” to always saying “Hitler and Germany”, Lababidi notes the same behavior in Assad’s reinforcement of his power: “One must always say, “Syria Assad!”

At age 16 and having experienced fascist Ba’athist socialism, so called, Lababidi told himself, “If this is life here, I’m not interested.”

When he left Syria, he was among those who wanted to meet a Jew to see “if they looked like us”, so pervasive had been the propaganda cartoons and other anti-Semitic imagery.  Given the related necessary empirical observation: “We became best friends”.  

Too Much War

“We have not been able to experience PTSD” (Post Traumatic Syndrome Disease), notes Lababidi in relation to the experience of being trapped within or in proximity to the continuous and unrelenting violence of war.

When PTSD — traumatized biological memory in its interaction with the mind — that tells about the depth in evil and horror left poorly addressed by so many parties connected to the apparently continuing destruction of Syria.

Reference

Britannica.  “Hafiz al-Assad”.

CNN.  “Syria’s al-Assad leaves state of emergency in place.”  Staff, March 30, 2011.

France24.  “Syrian President Ends Five Decades of Emergency Rule.”  April, 22, 2011.


George, Alan.  Syria: Neither Bread Nor Freedom. P. 109.  UK: Zed Books, 2003 :

In reality, Syria’s State of Emergency has little to do with the Israeli threat; rather, it is, in the words of Middle East Watch, ‘the central legal mechanism and justification for the Syrian repressive system’.  Middle East Watch further commented: ‘After twenty-either uninterrupted years [now 40 years] of a state of emergency . . . there is now an overwhelming presumption that the ’emergency’ is simply an excuse for the regime to suppress legitimate domestic opposition.”

Alan George’s Syria: Neither Bread Nor Freedom on Amazon USA


Global Security. “Syria Intelligence & Security Agencies”.

Human Rights Watch.  “II. Recommendations To the Syrian Government”.  Section of report, 2007.

MacFarquhar, Neil.  “Hafex al-Assad, who Turned Syria Into a Power in the Middle East, Dies at 69.”  The New York Times, June 11, 2000: Hafez al-Assad passed away on June 10, 2000.  The New York Times said of his tenure, “The bloodless power grab he staged in November 1970 brought stability and the first modern construction of roads, schools and hospitals. Mr. Assad followed the Soviet model of a single-party police state, constructing a network of 15 competing intelligence agencies that spied on his own people.”

Wikipedia. “1963 Syrian coup d’etat”.

Wikipedia.  “Islamist Uprising in Syria”.

Wikipedia. “Russian Naval Facility in Tartus”.


Research / Reference Addendum

Asher-Schapiro, Avi.  “The Young Men Who Started Syria’s Revolution Speak About Daraa, Where It All Began.”  Vice News, March 15, 2016.

BBC News.  “Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle.”  July 30, 2012:

At one protest in Deraa, many shouted slogans denouncing Maher, including: “Maher you coward. Send your troops to liberate the Golan.”

By late April, witnesses said the fourth division’s tanks had cut off Deraa and were shelling residential areas, while troops were storming homes and rounding up people believed to have been taking part in the protests.

The US subsequently announced sanctions against Maher, saying the fourth division had “played a leading role in the Syrian regime’s actions in Deraa”. The EU also imposed sanctions on Maher, describing him as the “principal overseer of violence against demonstrators”.


CBS News / Global Post.  “How Schoolboys Began the Syrian Revolution.”  April 26, 2011:

DARAA, Syria — It was the small act of defiance that catapulted Syria to the frontline of the Arab revolution.

And it came not from the organized opposition in Damascus or Aleppo or any other major Syrian city, but from the graffiti cans of school boys in a run-down border town half way to the desert.

“As-Shaab / Yoreed / Eskaat el nizam!”: “The people / want / to topple the regime!”


Hassan, Ahmad.  “The Incompetence of Syria’s Security Services.”  Al-Akhbar, March 4, 2014:

“Meanwhile, a car passes by the checkpoint and explodes a few miles away” 34-year-old Fadi M. told Al-Akhbar. “How can we be confident these services can preserve security and stability?”

“Sadly, we had security services that could hear a man’s conversations with his wife but couldn’t discover arms shipments at the beginning of the crisis,” he sighed.


Omran Center for Strategic Studies.  “The Syrian Security Services and the Need for Structural and Functional Change.”  November 18, 2016:

This study finds that the Syrian state does not possess a “security sector” from a technical definition perspective sufficient enough to deserve reform. As it stands, security work in Syria falls into two categories: The first concerns forces of control and repression. Among these are the Air Force and Military Intelligence Directorates, which are divisions of the Syrian Army and the Armed Forces; the General Intelligence Directorate, which is a division of both the National Security Bureau and the ruling party (the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party), while political security forms a division of the Ministry of Interior. The second category is military-security networks (such as the Republican Guard, the 4th Armored Division, and the Tiger Forces) that bear the responsibility of engineering the security process, determining its relationships and foundations, ensuring the regime’s security, and carrying out all measures and operations within society whenever there is sign of a security threat. Accordingly, two flaws and aberrations can be identified: The first relates to the security structure’s fragmentation, which in the past has helped curtail community activity, while also limiting its progress and development. The second issue relates to the function of these services, which is characterized by fluidity and boundlessness, with the exception of its permanent role consolidating and bolstering the regime’s stability. Indeed, any reform process of these services must target their function and structure at the same time.

 


Wikipedia entries generally offer outbound and reflexive reference related to any given page, so these three may suffice to suggest how well wrapped in intelligence and security operations the state has been — and how understandable the rebellion against it.

Wikipedia: “Category: Syrian Intelligence Agencies”.

Wikipedia.  “General Intelligence Directorate (Syria)”.

Wikipedia.  “Law Enforcement in Syria”.

Wikipedia. “National Security Bureau of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party — Syria Region”.

Wikipedia. “Political Security Directorate” (Syria).

— 33 —

Module: ABC’s Trump Interview on January 25, 2017

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Politics

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21st Century Feudalism, critical reading skill, democracy, free press, information integrity, interview, populism, President Trump

President Trump: The White House Interview (Part 1)
President Trump: The White House Interview (Part 2)
TRANSCRIPT: ABC News Anchor David Muir Interviews President Trump

Experience the interview first — no filters, no judgments, no intermediaries — just you, the media consumer, and President Trump and ABC anchor David Muir.


Not thirty seconds into the interview, Trump answers a question about being changed by becoming President: “I can be the most Presidential person ever other than possibly the great Abe Lincoln . . . but I may not be able to do the job nearly as well if I do that.”

Huh?

If the President does not intend to be the “most presidential” President ever — or at least up there with the finest and most fondly remembered of American Presidents — then what is that aspiration?

Ten days ago, chess champion and Kremlin critic Gary Kasparov posted on Facebook this excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s 1855 “Letter to Joshua Speed”:

lincoln-quotation

There’s Russia again – and the mention of its frank despotism.

About eight years ago, Andie Brownlow writing for the conservative American Thinker (August 30, 2009) had this to note about Soviet-style ideological subversion:

The point of this “Ideological Subversion” was to weaken an enemy country, strip its culture and corrupt their values to a point of complete vulnerability. Mr. Schuman describes it as:

[An] overt…slow process…[to] change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.

The first step, Demoralization, has already been completed in America and continues to perpetuate itself. The Obama Administration policies are accelerating the second step of Destabilization and rapidly approaching the third phase of Crisis.

As you have read, Brownlow, opining in 2009, had taken aim at the Obama Administration!

The Trump Presidency has arrived, and the laudable and scrupulous Big Press, the majors, are hot with articles on the President’s ego and the Administration’s credibility and integrity in its discussion and presentation of information.

From historical experience, the business — it is a business, and one particularly loathsome and pernicious! — of messing up someone else’s “information space” may be characterized as part of Soviet KGB “Active Measures”.

Has that been happening here in the United States?

Has Moscow had a hand in it?

Have we through our own now immense and unfettered online press — and may it be always so! — been doing it to ourselves in the cause of being strident enough for obtaining notice?

Perhaps the answers don’t matter so much.

At base, the only issue having to do with the national experience of media involves the popular and professional assessment of the credibility and integrity of information encountered.

BackChannels could promote an opinion, and perhaps has, but would rather the BackChannels reader take patient time to look into the matter as well and form some new opinion about both the Marxist-Leninist mission of the former Soviet Union and, now one month more than 25 years later, the ultra-nationalist imperialist mission of today’s Russian State — and then ask where Trump has positioned, or may position, the United States of America in light of that well-remarked — and by no less than the great President Lincoln himself — habitual Russian despotism.

–33–

Link

http://weeklywonk.newamerica.net/editions/russias-delusions-being-alibaba/#article-3

14 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by commart in Uncategorized

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interview, New America, Remnick, Russia

http://weeklywonk.newamerica.net/editions/russias-delusions-being-alibaba/#article-3

New America interview with David Remnick on the character of today’s Russia.

# # #

Robert Vaughan’s Interview with Lars Hedegaard on Freedom of Speech

27 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech

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2012, free speech, interview, Lars Hedegaard

Posted to YouTube September 23, 2012.

Free speech — here in the U.S., the First Amendment concept — has been argued around the world in the wake of rioting in Muslim-majority states associated, in part, with a clip on YouTube, “The Innocents of Muslims”.

While that’s been batted around elsewhere, and I have been involved with related  chatyping on Facebook, I thought to run this interview here and on Backchannels as argument, introduction, and orientation having to do with what free speech in a free society means and that through the mouth of one of the western champions of the concept.

Probably, “conservative-socialist” may be met as a political oxymoron, but in these strange and upside-down days, Lars Hedegaard may fit that description.  Despite a book with the term “Capitalism” boldly displayed on the table between interviewer Robert Vaughan and Lars Hedegaard, has a track record as regards the political concern for the less included and struggling in societies.

Additional Reference

Bodissey, Baron.  “Brussels 2012: Lars Hedegaard’s Speech — ICLA: International Civil Liberties Alliance.  Gates of Vienna, July 21, 2012.

International Free Press Society.

Spencer, Robert.  “Victory for free speech: Lars Hedegaard acquitted of racisim.”  Jihad Watch, April 20, 2012.

Tundra Tabloids.  “Lars Hedegaard’s Remarks at Today’s Danish Supreme Court Hearing.”  April 13, 2012.

Wikipedia.  “International Free Press Society”.

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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