09 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Hezbollah families: Our sons are cannon fodder for Assad
Families of Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon are growing increasingly angry that their sons are being sent to fight and die for Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan reported over the weekend.
08 Saturday Mar 2014
It’s not Israel, R. A portion of Hamas went to fight with al-Nusra in Syria in keeping with their interests as Sunni Muslims. Also, Hamas, along similar lines, lost a part of the faith invested in it by Ayatollah Khamenei . . . and then, because they had felt their interests aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, they lost that too when the people of Egypt (in overwhelming millions on the streets) won their plebiscite and looked to the Egyptian military to intervene.
Along with the adjective, agitprop, and all that early learning, I want to suggest that real independent journalism, from Fox to Mother Jones, seeks factual data to report with reflection and honesty. It takes a dose of paranoia from elsewhere to view “9/11” as an “inside job” or Hamas as a “Zionist invention”.
The central fact about the Jews is their refusal to accept authority at face value and without insight and to then search for knowledge and insight about humanity every day, if perhaps using the Torah as a basis that works — but it never works without argument, commentary, additional research in every realm — or these days an actualizing psychology (Maslow) or an ethical humanism (Hillel to Adler). Either way, trust a Jew to support others in their development, culturally, individually, according to the unique (and wonderful) qualities of each.
That is something narcissists, who are busy with themselves, either don’t care to do or don’t know how to do: they’re better at exploiting others. Putin-Assad-Khamenei, bound together in Syria’s Civil War, have the qualities of malignant narcissists (http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1). One might add to Khamenei, “Khamenei-Nasrallah” — and what they do themselves, they will tell you the Jews do, Israel does, the west most of all: except the criminality they complain about is not that of the Jews, Israel, or the west: the accusation is the project of what is in themselves and has been allowed or enabled by fate and a vast ignorance. And fear.
______
People who care about people, or say they do, carry their prejudices with them, and that perhaps often with anti-Semitism foremost. The above note, which by the time I got to it seems to have been off-topic, addresses the ad hominem attack rhetoric that passes for thought in some places. At the end, it found its way to the Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation that provides despots the language leveraging tool to launch arms against the innocent and unprepared.
# # #
07 Friday Mar 2014
On Ukraine and Crimea, on democracy and human rights in Russia, forget about Ketchum and company and what they do for money: go with the girls, Femen and Pussy Riot, for integrity.
______
Ukraine action des Femen devant le Parlement – YouTube
* * *
Obama said Thursday that the referendum would violate both the Ukrainian constitution and international law. He called on Russia to help reduce tensions on the Crimean Peninsula, as he ordered sanctions on Russians involved in Russia’s military intervention and Ukrainians who have jeopardized democracy and looted national assets. Obama later spoke by phone with Putin for more than hour.
Crimea solidifies ties with Russia ahead of referendum on leaving Ukraine – The Washington Post
* * *
Putin also claims that “there is every reason to believe” chemical weapons were “used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists,” despite a forthcoming U.N. report that will reportedly finger the Assad regime as the culprit.
Ketchum Placed Controversial Putin Op-Ed – 9/12/2013.
Related: Who’s on Putin’s American payroll? – 3/5/2014.
* * *
Now: which superpower leader do you trust?
I’m going with Femen — those gals put their boots on the ground and boobies in the air every time out, never mind catching cold.
One might wish one could say as much of Russians standing off to the side of Russian nationalists whom Putin means to portray as majority Russians, the only Russians, the Russians who are represented, at least by himself, not by the pestered Alexy Navalny (three hours ago: “Navalny Fined for Participation in Unsanctioned Public Gathering,” RFE — it’s got to be back in business big time with Russia’s rush backwards to despotism) or the now absent-from-Russia-until-Putin-leaves Gary Kasparov:
Mr. Putin belongs to an exclusive club, along with Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Miloševic, as one of the very few leaders to invade a neighboring nation in the nuclear age. Such raw expansionist aggression has been out of fashion since the time of Adolf Hitler, who eventually failed, and Joseph Stalin, who succeeded. Stalin’s Red Army had its share of battlefield glory, but his real triumph came at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, three months before the end of the war in Europe. There Stalin bullied a feeble Franklin Roosevelt and a powerless Winston Churchill, redrawing the Polish borders and promising elections in Poland when he knew that the Communist government the Soviets were installing was there to stay.
Garry Kasparov: Cut Off the Russian Oligarchs and They’ll Dump Putin – WSJ.com
Well said.
In Washington, D.C., Ketchum represents Vladimir Putin and Putin’s Russia. One may trust it was well paid for the September placement denying Assad’s use, well investigated, of chemical warheads in the Syria’s civil war.
At least one might consider Ketchum in the best of like company:
In May 2009, Waldman filed paperwork with the DOJ indicating he would be working with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to provide “legal advice on issues involving his U.S. visa as well as commercial transactions.”
Deripaska had his U.S. visa revoked in 2006 due to longstanding concerns about his links to organized crime and because the State Department was concerned he lied to American investigators who were looking into his business.
American Executives Working For Putin – Business Insider – 3/5/2014, on Adam Waldman representing Oleg Deripaska. Others included in the Business Insider story by Hunter Walker include Ketchum Inc.; Robert C. Jones, an attorney “ultimately responsible to Ketchum, Inc. (the money involved: about $535,000 in contracts devoted to working for Russia); William Nordwind, partner in a consultancy serving both Gazprom and Ketchum (I don’t want to relay the earnings — the story is larger than this paragraph and the curious reader may click to it.
Related: Vladimir Putin Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize – Business Insider – 3/6/2014.
* * *
One more thing about Russia’s apparent politics and perhaps the thugs who make it work:
Pussy Riot attacked in Nizhny Novgorod McDonalds – YouTube – 3/5/2014.
Caption: “On the mourning of March 6 2014 Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, along with Peter Verzilov and members of their prisoners rights NGO “Zone of the Rights” arrived in the city of Nizhny Novgorod to inspect a local prison. At 7.20 am an organized group barged into the McDonalds where members of Pussy Riot with their crew were having breakfast and attacked them with pepper spray, green antiseptic and other weapons.”
So sad to see these two so less wild after gulag time, but they were peacefully doing their new NGO thing, and by that I mean doing what human rights NGOs do, i.e., looking into matters involving the victimization of others.
More on the latest Pussy Riot story: Russia: Violent attack on former Pussy Riot members must not be tolerated | Amnesty International – 3/6/2014; Pussy Riot members assaulted by gang who threw paint on them | Mail Online – 3/6/2014; ‘Pussy Riot’ Band Members Attacked, Left With Burns (VIDEO) – today.
Related: Pussy Riot Unveil Plans for Human Rights Organization | Music News | Rolling Stone – 12/27/2013.
On Ukraine and Crimea, on democracy and human rights in Russia, forget about Ketchum and company and what they do for money: go with the girls, Femen and Pussy Riot, for integrity.
# # #
05 Wednesday Mar 2014
Russia denies controlling pro-Moscow force in Crimea – YouTube – 3/5/2014.
* * *
Ukraine: UN Envoy Threatened By Armed Mob – YouTube – 3/5/2014.
* * *
Ukraine crisis Russian troops ‘besieging navy headquarters’ – YouTube – 3/5/2014.
* * *
Ukraine No Agreements Reached In Crisis Talks – YouTube – 3/5/2014.
______
Give a new revolutionary state a break!
Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians know that the first day or so of establishment is huge as regards the potential defenses of a new state. State leaders, provisional, interim, or old hands know they have got to get on their feet fast; at the same time on this one: where’s the war?
The Ukrainian revolution, what little I’ve seen of it, just hasn’t been about Ukrainian or Russian culture or nationalism — this goes way beyond “hardly” — as much as about kleptocratic and piratical Moscow — Putin’s Moscow –leaning on Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian Ukraine, for favor and loot, and then promoting a dependency-creating energy-based trade policy to chain Ukraine back to The Bear.
Putin-Assad-Khamenei: okay. It’s good to see them in the same arc, the three amigos of dictatorship (with just one capable of reversing his tracks).
Putin-Yanukovych?
It just wasn’t meant to last.
There are only two main themes for the whole wide world and for Ukraine as regards the recent boot given the government of Viktor Yanukovych: integrity in government; autonomy in self-governance.
It’s a big F-U alright, but not to Russia. Or Russians. Or people who speak Russian.
Putin isn’t Russia.
Putin is what he can command and control of Russia with the levers and methods he has at hand — start with his ability neutralize political rivals like Gary Kasparov and, perhaps, one day, Navalny — and to which he may have become accustomed (while we in the U.S. are counting on him to contain and destroy Assad’s chemical weapons, it’s, gosh, hard griping about his irresponsibility as regards the rest of the war . . . oh, that Arab-borne jihadi thing to close to Saudi ambitions gets in the way too.
Ukraine’s different.
Ukrainian Russians aligning with Russia and not on the take, as it were, may want to revisit what they may doing for Putin to keep themselves in Russian money. I would suggest that if arrangements and contracts are commercial or industrial outside of defense or involve shipping and trade, the will be there no matter what.
The state relationships that seem to be at stake are off to the side of these other two central themes: again, integrity vs. kleptocracy; Ukrainian and Russian self-determination within Ukraine.
Ukraine may turn out a long-term neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, but that’s a peaceful position — pretty good one, actually — where the character of leadership on both sides wakes up in good health.
I cannot suggest that good health might also characterize, say, Bashar al-Assad’s mentality as regards his position in Syria. That one left common sense (if children ask you a few questions, do you wipe them out?), prudent statecraft, and sanity behind years ago.
As regards the best possible Bond villain ever — and he doesn’t even have to live in fiction — Putin suffers as I do: we love the charms of 19th Century aristocracy, but mine is like an architect’s model of a life, a spec of an old apartment box lined with books; Putin has the whole estate, carriages with wings and palaces and all.
I can’t wait to see what he does with Marbella!
In the meantime, Ukraine seems to be breathing on its own again and getting on to its feet, nicely graced with Faberge eggs left behind by the former boss.
______
US official denies Russia’s claim that Moscow, West favor EU deal for Ukraine | Fox News – 3/5/2014.
Ukraine crisis: March 4 as it happened – Telegraph – 3/4/2014.
# # #
02 Sunday Mar 2014
Tags
anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, BDS, bigotry, epistemology, Israel, political, political psychology, politics, propaganda, rhetoric
“Arabs were made to pay for the crimes of the Europeans by the creation of Israel.”
I know that is what has been heard and the fiction constructed around it total, but Zionism predates WWII, and thousands of Arabs were drawn before it to the agricultural fields of the nascent Jewish state.
If you believe statehood in the name of religion must go, then Rome must go, as must Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — well, actually all Islamic kingdoms and dictatorships — as the same have become “real headaches for the entire civilized world, completely engulfed in injustice and violence.”
The only “inescapable issue” in the reconstruction that is the modern State of Israel is the 5,000+ year existence of Jews and Jewish culture — beliefs, calendar, customs, language, religion — on the land and continuously. Ancient Israel, the Roman “Palestine”, and modern Israel have never been “Judenrein” (as some might wish).
Jews don’t “deserve a homeland” — Jews have a homeland.
Regarding terrorism, have a look independently into war and low-intensity conflict across 2,000 years.
Regarding genocide, let’s keep these two buddies in mind: http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/…/2-mufti2_jpg… (Hussaini-Hitler handshake).
Also, you may want to look into how Ben Gurion crushed the terrorist Irgun at the earliest opportunity.
Your emphasis tells where you want to go (anti-Semitic / anti- Ziionist, actually, anti-justice) but the deeply poisonous programming and scripting that got you there has to this hour stayed out of the picture.
I beg you for patient new introspection and scholarship, for fresh ears and eyes, for skepticism in regard to a destructive loyalty.
I ask no less of myself and do read, say, Ma’an and look into issues having to do with the refugees of 1948 and their humanity, which one may believe better than that of their leaders who build and disseminate libels for a living.
______
The response was to a writer in India who ran through the common anti-Semites screen, from declaring the State of Israel a colonial project directly and only corresponding to the destruction of the Jews of Europe in the Holocaust of World War II to suggesting the entire state should have been constructed elsewhere.
What a load of fictional crapola one wakes to if participating the “middle east conflict”, which has weirdly become the signifier for Israel’s conflict with the Arab world while the same Arab world melts down in conflicts within its portion of the Islamic Small Wars (e.g., signaled by political violence in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria).
Nowhere is the “Religion of Peace”, nor the states founded on it, at peace, and not even within themselves, the Muslim Brotherhood gangs ever threatening established state power, the same state power incompletely in control of powerful families willing to back al-Qaeda and its affiliates and likenesses.
# # #
20 Thursday Feb 2014
While we figure out how language sustains conflict in the head (and perhaps catch up or re-read — in my case — Benny Morris or Efraim Karsh), perhaps it’s time to transform the Hamas and Fatah sense of civilizational mission in a way that serves rather than ravages their respective communities. 1948, 1967, 1973, the First Intifada, the Second Intifada — these were not about justice but the elimination of Jewry.
The middle east conflict is not the only conflict in the world; X vs Muslim (Burma, Congo) is not the only cultivated paradigm for conflict — nor is ambitious monotheist succession such a great cause for humanity overall, although I like this “one God” thing.
Let’s stop this fighting here.
Five virtues might help with our nurturing our developing global society: compassion, empathy, humility, inclusion, integrity. Dictators and wealthy narcissists use the image of identification with those values to manipulate their followers (track Assad on that, or Robert Mugabe), but they don’t really embrace them. We, however, might and we’ll wind up helping one another.
The wisdom is probably old, but the act of writing includes the writer’s rediscovery of old standbys and themes.
The same words may be incanted by way of the top of the column to the left of this article.
They’re their to help create a world in which a common soul may know what is going on around him with some reliability born of the dignity of being spoken to honestly.
The inspiration for the note was a thread sidetracked toward the middle east conflict, and on Facebook there are plenty of hate-peace peace groups, and some collegial peace groups, and some anti-Semitic peace groups: a place for everyone at the git-go! One hopes, however, for fewer of the hateful — and of the hateful to anyone — over time.
As suggested by this blog, what we call bigotry or prejudice may be a function of earliest language uptake and, for each language culture, the manner of listening (programming) conveyed from one generation to another — some ears obey all; some question all — and then norms and ambitions supplied (scripting) to those ears.
One does not “win” in the world by leaving himself exclusive and isolated in it.
There is in that the tragedy of the “malignant narcissist”.
Some cultures having derived cultural self-concept along similar patterns may lead themselves to similar suffering. By person, place, state, and region, may we turn that inclination away from ourselves, collectively, worldwide.
# # #
17 Monday Feb 2014
What Assad’s air force has done to constituents will never be forgiven by those whose cooperation and loyalty the state must have; on the other side, General Idris remains in business and, it appears, is being favored in the distribution of European arms, probably in concert with official Saudi cooperation, but there are rogue forces, as much circumstances suggest, in the financing of the civil war, and they will have to be blocked and neutralized for a modern society to coalesce between autocratic personalities and then expand and squeeze them out. Syria — and Syrians — have a long way to go.
Putin has chosen the disingenuous position of sustaining a Putin-Assad-Khamenei arc at terrific expense to the humanity in the theater, and, so far, it appears he’s not going to budge from the program. I now call the three named the “three amigos of dictatorship”.
In politics as in life, anything seems possible; however, tendency says the dictator will go, and so will the Islamist fronts, both so aligned against the grain of humanity and nature. Nonetheless, the inherently authoritarian on both sides of the battle — different talk; same walk — remain dominant in the theater and Syrians either neutral to both or supporting neither die and suffer at the hands of both.
At this point, it bears repeating: Syrians — a Syrian People, a community with the legacy of many histories on the land — have no army representing their interests.
Assad’s army, which has been dropping barrel bombs on apartment buildings, is not the army of the people; the other army, which, among other atrocities, appears to have shoved bakers into their own ovens is not the army of the people either; and, to a certain extant, the power bearing against Syria-Iran-Hezbollah-Shiite Islam may not be Syria’s preferred army either, but in the person of General Idris, it would appear, it would be at least Syrian and non-authoritarian in its attitude toward Syrian citizens.
# # #
16 Sunday Feb 2014
Tags
Islamic Jihad, Islamic Small Wars, Islamists, ISW, political, political psychology, politics, Syria
Saudi Commander in Jabhat al-Nusra Gives a Speech Before Aleppo Prison Attack, Asks ISIL to Join – YouTube – 2/15/2014.
Related: Future of Deadlocked Syria Talks in Question – 2/15/2014; French Ambassador to Syria, Eric Chevallier Argues with Syrian National Coalition | – 2/14/2014.
______
The Syrian People haven’t control of any army representing their needs, which today are immense with suffering.
The three amigos of dictatorship — Putin-Assad-Khamenei — have positioned and milked Syria’s productive capacities and strategic location for some time. One may have hoped for Russia in the post-Soviet, post-KGB era to have taken the lead in producing a post-Soviet buffer and client in Syria, which by legacy may be conceded to Russia’s zone of control and influence (if we’re going to have that kind of world with superpowers locked into strategic checkmate for everyone’s security).
No dice.
Post-Soviet has transformed into a 19th Century style oligarchy suspended firmly in favor and patronage around the “vertical of power”. So far. Putin knows what’s needed and is capable of change. Nonetheless, the horror he has back in Syria cannot or will not differentiate between combatants and noncombatant constituents, and state media RT and others have spun barrel-bombing Bashar al-Assad into the hero of Syrian secularism.
While there’s some truth to that, the damage in death and injury, dispersion and lost cities tell that the want of a healthy secularism pales before the ambition to again deeply subjugate the Syrian People to the Assad will.
Al-Nusra and ISIL and a large assortment of fighters, from upside-down European teenagers to old village militia, has looked to the Qur’an for guidance toward the development of Syrian theocracy or caliphate, either way another autocratic system bent on the glorification — today: self-aggrandizement — of leaders and the subjugation of all others. They have discovered instead, so far, the endless divisions and egotism inherent in narcissistic “mobocracy” and “thugocracy”.
Instead of launching war of principle to unseat a brutal dictatorship, the Islamists find themselves fighting over personalities, which, if any may step back from it, they might find a war over the character of leadership personality itself.
The “west” and most of the world able to make itself helpful has now a proven capability for moving humanitarian aid to regions troubled by natural disaster and war, and a part of that involves the volunteering of military assets; however, the world hasn’t got the principle of deploying a military coalition as an invading force in a civil war. NATO “Coalitions of the Willing” have involved at least the chimera of direct threat (Iraq) underscored, again, by the workings — including state support for terrorism — of an obscene dictatorship, or actual attack from foreign lands (Afghanistan).
Those volunteers most passionate about fighting in Syria have repeatedly proven themselves confused about God, humanity, and themselves — or none would have had the chance, much less the motivation, for throwing bakers into their own ovens. Now they and we are in a terrible position: pushing out against Assad-Khamenei (with Putin in a supporting role), there is no expanding middle force. The kernel for that should have been General Idris, but good, much less, civil, even nice, doesn’t seem to work in the Syrian theater.
Between dictatorship-for-money and tyranny attached to an egotistical presumption about one’s self and God, the French, among others, have signaled refusal to support either fascist track.
______
Why Israel should urgently consider saving Syrian lives | JPost | Israel News – 2/13/2014.
Israelis have been providing emergency medical care, including longer-term care, to Syrians injured or in need of medical attention (Syrian mothers have borne children in Israel). They have also pitched in with humanitarian relief even with the erasure of Hebrew or origin labels attached to care shipments.
Related: IRIN Middle East | Briefing: Why humanitarians wary of “humanitarian corridors” | Syria | Aid Policy | Conflict | Early Warning | Food Security | Health & Nutrition 3/19/2012; France to join UN resolution on Syria humanitarian corridors – France – Syria – RFI – 2/10/2014.
It’s not like it hasn’t been thought about, but even the band-aid of an “humanitarian corridor”, a DMZ, a safe zone on Syrian soil adjacent to affected boundaries, requires defense.
Experience with the camps developed for the refugees of 1948 suggests too that such become permanent habitations and develop their own political character, a character sustained and damned by charity across generations and ensured by Arab prejudice and will, the refugees remaining disenfranchised and, so well demonstrated by what has happened to the Yarmouk Camp in Syria, treated as military assets held for war rather than like human beings.
______
It may be taken with a weary nod that Muslim teens and converts outside of Syria have been drawn to the fighting, for such fighting presents to them as noble and packaged with many other directions and emotions about things in the world, while the adults in charge (for the time being) seem not very far from the illusions and passions of youth themselves. They are up there on the ramparts, “loaded for bear” (as hunters say), and full of themselves but now, the evil on the other side exceeding what they have made of themselves, they have to stay, and what the world would fight for, if it could get it together, is what they themselves may have to fight for, and that starts with change within.
So one would wish not to see one tyrant replaced by another, but in Syria’s brutal and frequently absurd medieval fighting, the tyrannical within the opposition needs must recognize itself and bend toward the grain of humanity.
Related: Congress Approves Weapons to ‘Moderate’ Rebels – Middle East – News – Israel National News – 1/28/2014; Syrian Rebels To Receive Anti-Aircraft Weapons from Saudi Arabia | TIME.com – 2/15/2014.
# # #
BackChannels 