Tag Archives: political

Syria – Dictators Do Not Negotiate Internal Affairs

28 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Zimbabwe

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The crack of gunfire keeps an irregular beat in this rugged mountainous region at the Lebanon-Syria border as a Lebanese militiaman, who goes by the name Abu Hamza, explains why he chose to fight in Syria.

France 24.  “Crossing into Syria with Lebanese pro-Assad militia.”  May 28, 2013.

Hezbollah’s unilateral entry from its power base in Lebanon into the fray in Syria may represent a more general principle about the possession of power in the region from Assad-Nasrallah perspective: either you got it or you don’t, and if you have got it, why talk?

* * *

Last night, I watched Mugabe and the White African, a documentary about the displacement of white farmers in Zimbabwe.  In that film, farm owner Mike Campbell  and his family challenged the Mugabe Administration’s invalidation of their title, this after the same had overseen the sale of the land to Campbell and had declared disinterest in acquiring it.

Campbell’s effort to defend his land through the courts grew long and convoluted before winding up in the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal, and while in the end he won his case in that court, which concluded that Mugabe’s efforts were racist, Mugabe rejected the finding, noting that Zimbabwe would not be subject to SADC decisions.

Dictators do not negotiate plunder within their own boundaries.

(The Campbell family may have seen some compensation by way of Zimbabwean government assets seized in Cape Town, South Africa in response to the SADC ruling).

* * *

News these days reports political maneuvering and posturing, not underlying attitudes, beliefs, and self-concepts.

Bashar Assad, having seen what has happened to Mubarak and Qaddafi in the course of the “Arab Spring”, right away took a hard line in response to challenges to his authority.  Brother Maher’s unbridled and sadistic unleashing of state military violence against Syrians in target areas, or not, merely adds emphasis to what such dictators are really about, which is absolute authority, control, and limitless glorification, love, obedience, and praise — i.e., in the coming political psychobabble (borrowed from more sophisticated chit-chat), “narcissistic supply” — all so that they may remain in power  while continuing to live in grim fairy tale all their own.

For Syria at the moment, that tale comes replete with 92,000 dead, predominantly civilians, and 3.5 million internally displaced and refugee.

* * *

Yet, in a remarkable interview this month with ABC’s Barbara Walters, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad 1) denied the extent of violence in his beleaguered country; 2) disputed the evidence in a U.N. report charging him and his government with crimes against humanity, asking, “Who said that the United Nations is a credible institution?”; 3) claimed that the forces charged with cracking down too hard on protesters did not belong to him, but instead to the government; and 4) indicated that the Syrian people supported him — otherwise he would not be in his position.

Post, Jerrold M.  “Bashar al-Assad is Every Bit His Father’s Son.”  Foreign Policy, December 20, 2011.

As I write in the book, it was his Sally Field moment, like when she accepted her second Oscar. “They really love me!” he said. And I guess he was due some of that. He had an aquifer of support in Syria that was not insignificant. But I remember thinking to myself at that very moment that this was a different person — that he was going to be president for life.

This was someone who no longer was the reluctant leader. He had fully embraced the power and trappings of his position.

Horn, Heather.  “To Know a Tyrant: Inside Bashar al-Assad’s Transformation From ‘Reformer’ to Killer.”  Interview with author David Lesch.  The Atlantic, September 18, 2012.

* * *

From Mao to Stalin, Hitler to Putin, Thatcher to Blair, Bush to British royalty, the list of narcissistic personalities who assume leadership is endless. What distinguishes Assad from the crowd is his obvious weakness in having assumed the mantle of power in a hereditary fashion, rather than grasping it in from the hands of a foe.

Nikolas, Katerina.  “Op-Ed: President Assad has narcissistic personality, says psychologist.”  Digital Journal, January 15, 2013.

Nikolas with the above statement gets at the axis of an issue in transiting “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” out of the clinician’s office and on to the political street: how far off normal or normative political behavior is it, really?  My response would be to assess combined empathy expressed and responsibility taken for states of affairs surrounding the leader.  Such detection or measurement would play against the notion that the narcissist, as far as he’s concerned, is never wrong.

There may be other dimensions worth a gander, especially as regards the sense of containment and self-restraint in the person.  A truly unbridled personality expresses not the least quiver of conscience over that which may be done at his bidding.

Is that Assad al-Bashar today?

I don’t know.

Of course, I also wouldn’t so casually lump together Mao, Putin, Thatcher, and British royalty as each displays their own character in relationship to the overall improved lot and wellness of their constituents in their totality.  Mere egotism and nerve neither define nor set the bar.  “Grandiose and messianic delusion” better approach the syndrome, and then the negatives — lack of empathy, lack of feeling, — get in the sociopath element.

Wikipedia’s page on “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” seems to obtain regular updates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder DSM-IV has become DSM-V, from the looks of it and changes have been made.

It’s important to note here, repeat here, emphasis here, regularly, boringly, if needs be, transposing a clinical concept focused on individual psychopathology to a broader social context comes freighted with issues: what are we looking at and what are we trying to fix?

Answer, perhaps: autocrats and deeply autocratic societies.

Also, I would not regard NPD as a psychopathology for the sort, say as with addiction, that might lead the host to ruin; rather, it would seem an embedded complex in personality, and whether or not it works out may have something to do with context in which its lives and its impact on others.

By the king’s assessment, the king is generally okay with his role and remote from his qualities as a tyrant . . . but that’s rather the problem, isn’t it?

Mugabe loves Mugabe, and those Mugabe has patronized may love him too, and a show of love may do where the reality cannot be summoned, but what Mugabe has become by way of example has to do with the evil visited on others by way of his will, which historical reputation will be the one that haunts his death eternally.

* * *

Finally, as an aside, I’ve no reason to abandon “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” (see “Coins and Terms” on this blog) as a possible dimension in political psychology, for the world, whether the part autocratically governed or the other democratic and open, has had an ample experience with dictators, living and dead, and should at this point be able to see how things work with such personalities more clearly and, consequently, attend to the better defense of its own humanity collectively.

Additional Reference

Blair, David.  “Assad blames everyone but himself for Syria’s ‘chaos'”.  The Telegraph, September 21, 2012.

Dalrymple, Theodore.  “The sweet, and deadly, sides of President Assad.”  The Telegraph, March 15, 2012.

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Putin – The Charming Colonel President King

22 Wednesday May 2013

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

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I like him.

At least compared to Robert Mugabe, among others of that sort, I like him.

When one invents a term like “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” or trots out another like “Malignant Narcissism” one might caution — or run for cover as social psychologists tend to do — with the phrase “complex, multi-dimensional”: how much of arrogance, demanding egocentric behavior, grandiose delusion, lack of empathy, messianic passion, paranoia, and resistance to criticism might there be in the mix?

Putin, unlike, say, old Qaddafi, knows containment and restraint.

While the critical wonks will follow the Khodorkovsky story and the world in which old friends are friends indeed, Russia’s charming colonel President (king) Putin runs a modern state, and if imperfectly democratic, still a force of its own and one with which to be reckoned — this as Obama — see previous post — may have by now figured out, not that such a challenge to authority as Masha Gessen failed to warn him (reading recommended: The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin).

The destabilization of Syria has brought untold suffering to Syrians, and while that suffering and its related economic and political costs might serve to compel an average western politician to action, the same may not have the same impact on a post-Soviet autocrat-become-president who may be more interested in the reflection reflection that conveys control and mastery of a situation and further reflects well in terms of practical character, judgment, and statesmanship.

* * *

Obama’s setting out to transform the middle east may be perceived as having backfired: instead of democracy, such as Egypt, for example, have been handed over, even if by election, to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the methods, in part, of another dictator, albeit one with perhaps a new political environment for navigation.

Putin cannot be blamed for the chill President Mursi has injected into Egypt’s “Arab Spring.”

Furthermore, in relation to NATO, Putin cannot be blamed for Erdogan’s rise and subsequent neutralizing of Kamalist rivals and unfriendly press.

So in Syria, while the 92,000 dead and 3.4 million homeless may help drag his name into it, he didn’t arm — or allow the arming — of rebels against the regime, did he?

As I type, this header is just about one hour old: “Syria’s rebels blame Russia’s Putin for prolonged fight” (Michel Stors, YNet News, May 21, 2013).  Toward the end, Stors’ notes:

“Russians have never been very popular with Syrians. During an Islamist rebellion in the 1980s they were targeted by the insurgents for supporting the regime. Pale Americans often complained that Syrians, mistaking them for Russians, jeered at them in the streets.”

In the United States, Obama’s America is emphatically not at war with Islam (nor need it be – my own position is very moderate on this and the related complexity in how the Islamic Small Wars work); in Syria, Obama’s America and some rickety fixing between Saudi (Qatari) and Turkish interests have made the United States an enabler, at least, in the effort to expand Sunni Islam and — eye on the ball, please — isolate the Shiite Ayatollah’s Iran.

Putin, who has made his position clear in Chechnya has similarly made it clear in Syria even while aligning Russia toward Israel and away from playing paddy-cake with Islam.

So far, with the recent deliveries of anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles, he’s given the Assad regime (and Maher Al-Assad) breathing space, reduced Iranian capital (in some measure), and playing defense, held Russia’s position; to continue on to “solving Syria” — and this now that he’s more representative of the polyglot desires of the west than the west! — he may have to alter the character of the regime by bringing to it an improved set of contemporary Russian values, the same as to which he responds in his political life today (specifically: the same that keeps Masha Gessen out of prison and eventually turn the Pussy Riot crew back out the streets, presumably toward the end of their two-year term), while sweeping away the terrors of the old Soviet machinery (the development of the FSB and its purposes notwithstanding).

Whether by way of President Putin or not, Russia has come far from what it was in the Soviet Era, but it’s continuing influence wants for reason, and for that oligarchy and money may not suffice; moreover, if Gessen’s portrait of Putin prevails within Putin, that won’t work for history; add this: if he wants to do what he may behind the curtain — back stage, finally – he may have to do it in a way that alters the atmosphere of the conflict even without visible intercession.

Tall order, that.

I think President Putin bright and clever (quiet and strong), and he will find a way to keep Syria in Russia’s sphere as well as make it more democratic, egalitarian, free and tolerant.

* * *

Perhaps I am dreaming.

We shall see.

Rose-colored summary: Putin may not be moved toward western-style intervention, but he may wish to be remembered well, and for that he may engage the Assad family, seek modification of the demands of the challengers, and set Syria on a progressive track.

On that too, we shall see.

—–

Additional Reference

I placed reference inline on this post, which I think adds to the on-the-fly blogging experience (even that which hails from the second row seat to history).  However, I opened other tabs on this too, and list them here.

Masyuk, Elena.  “Gleb Pavlovskiy: “What Putin is most afraid of is to be left out”.  Novayagazeta.ru, June 11, 2012: Excerpt from the interview: “A leader is the one chosen by others, and a master is a master regardless of whether you choose him or not.”

Wagele, Elizabeth.  “What is Putin’s Personality Type?”  Psychology Today, December 19, 2011.

Wikipedia.  “Narcissistic personality disorder”.  Reference provided neither to condemn nor diagnose, but rather to refer to several of the dimensions involved (in relation to this “complex, multidimensional” topic) in suggesting best political policy courses that must prove psychologically satisfying to the leaders who choose, engage, and promote them.

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FTAC – Post-Cold War Post-Soviet Syria Challenges Putin

15 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, Middle East, Regions, Russia, Syria

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Through the Cold War / Soviet Era, the boundaries and mischief provided by Soviet –> Syrian –> Iranian bonds and similar arrangements produced both enmity with the west and a bulwark against it even though the basis for, say, Soviet and Iranian existence would be wildly different (but not so different with the Soviet : Baathist relationship elsewhere). The ghosts of the Soviet Era have play in Syria’s disaster today: in essence, post-Soviet, post-KGB Russia seems to have maintained its business and military relationships with Syria without influencing or updating the political and social arrangements of the earlier state of affairs, except to better enable the capital interests of a ruling class. Enter Colonel President King and Stakeholder Putin today: how would you have him now address the Assad family (keep in mind he has his own “kleptocratic” track record within key Russian industries), Maher Al-Assad (who has launched jets against the innocents of whole communities and rather only haphazardly found the armed elements arrayed against the family), and fend off the de facto acquisition of another Chechnya?

I happen to think, perhaps alone in this, that Obama has been trying to goad Putin into intervening in Russia’s client state, but neither Obama or the U.S. have “true interest” in Syria: the focus of activity in Syria is (Shiite) Iran, and into that space KSA, with ample investment in U.S. capitalism (with Big Defense contracts, it’s we who are working for them), has handily played its rivalry with Iran for regional influence.

From both humanist and political perspectives, no one knows how to “sort” the collection of civil and religious interests engaged in conflict within Syria, and no one from outside, including bordering state armies like Suleiman’s wishes to step into the furnace (not the best analogy coming from a Jew, but it seems to work). Instead, we would rather have UNHCR beg for $1 billion through the end of the year to address the civilian tragedy attending Syria’s civil war and unresolved hatreds and threats attending western identity and interests.

Syria is Putin’s problem, and while he can and has, I think, embarrassed Obama with it, he hasn’t rolled out a good strategy yet for his modern, post-Soviet state.

One more thing: Putin may have himself for a problem as regards his own narcissistic universe and the at least partial detachment of that from human suffering within his reach. Syria is a hard problem for him, and it’s important the unfolding story of the state’s themes do not serve to dishonor or embarrass him in history.

—–

Some interests are known: Obama’s mom-and-apple-pie bid for a new Syrian secular democracy; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s interest in establishing greater autocratic Sunni-based influence in the region; Israeli reduction in Iranian-backed capability and hostility in general.

What we do not know are post-Soviet Russian interests in Syria today beyond continuing the archaic economic system chaining funding from Iran –> Syria –> Russia.

That system is up and running.

The old motivations are down and the current set are plainly absurd.

Russia, wary of its experience with Chechnya, has zero interest in otherwise supporting or strengthening Ayatollah Khamenei.  In essence, President Putin and the Russians have come to a crossroads in Syria, and they can’t go back, unless perhaps to the age of the czars minus the validation of religion for doing so (but mountains of cold hard cash may suffice for validation these days), and going forward, they’re a bit uncomfortable with us Yanks and perhaps lots of others on the Continent.

The longer Putin peers down the new routes available to him without stepping forward, the more he may contribute to the New World Disorder so signaled by the failure of the Assad family’s Syria to secure their citizens lives (casualties so far: 82,000; combined IDP and refugee figures: 3.4 million homeless).

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FTAC – Fast Note on Syria Dark Star

14 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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One alternative hypothesis: NATO has been trying to goad Putin into taking ownership of what is a long-neglected Russian client, i.e., update the relationship in the post-Soviet era. That didn’t happen. Instead, with the gates to an unbridled capitalism open, the family picked up all the chips it could get and Russian business and military plus oligarchs got something out of the new deal too — just the people got screwed.

Cultural attitudes and beliefs have independent political effects. Whether with the Baloch or Syria, altruistic intervention and sacrifice demand a goodness within and an outcome in goodness achieved as perceived by those who would help. For both Russian and NATO interests, outcomes leading to continuing dictatorship or religious fascism, the prospect of either, keep the superpowers both at bay and apart. Where are the people other people would want to put into power?

That’s where the hesitation is.

The world would rather put $1 billion in the pot for UNHCR than produce a unified response in Syria. However, the conflict is so awful and wrong in so many ways, it’s sucking energy into it — first the wave of democratic revolutionaries, then the sectarian fighters and extremists, then the more powerful states of the world who can’t figure out how to approach it or organize it or help it organize itself in a way that has more positive effects for Israel, frankly, and the region in its totality.

In its most dismal aspect, Syria is reflective of a war in the head, essentially, and of its integration in regional and international states of affairs. A disaster, a dark star, a sucking black hole that holds and pulls in killers while displacing its population (82,000 casualties to date; 3.4 million IDPs and refugees to date).

I don’t know if any of this expressing make any difference at all.

Six million dead in the Holocaust (please, don’t deny it).

Three-point-four million homeless today in relation to Syria’s civil war.

Those are big numbers around which to wrap our heads.

I can barely imagine what it must feel like to wake up as, say, UNHCR staff responsible for drawing up plans and a budget for some portion of the millions of souls for whom Syria has failed to provide basic security.

The Jews know every life has its legend and know this no less so for Syrians, but heroic altruism necessarily stalls at the wall of hate and cannot do much beyond attending to the closest injured.

http://unitedwithisrael.org/seven-syrian-refugees-treated-in-hospital-in-northern-israel/

Humanity has fled Syria.

One hopes it will rediscover its better aspects soon, but then I type naturally with rose-colored glasses.

5-9-2013 – Israel’s Strategic Outlook – A Video Produced by The Washington Institute

13 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Regions

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http://livestre.am/4s6rh (90 minutes)

Introduction: “Tzachi Hanegbi, member of the Knesset, Likud, and former Israeli minister of intelligence, addresses The Washington Institute’s 2013 Soref Symposium.  Thursday, May 9, 2013.”

The concept of “integrity”  constitutes a global western theme in relation to the Islamic Small Wars.  

In essence, the west anchors itself in empiricism, talks policy in the open, and the broader and more inclusive the conversation in participation, comprehension, and reach, the better for mankind.

The cited video, accessible worldwide with exception existing only in states too autocratic or too fragile and tender (or all three) provides a good example of the intellectual process.  It has breadth and depth and may be viewed as easily in Riyadh or Islamabad as it is accessible in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

In this video, the Jewish question, oh my, actually comes up in the final minutes.

I may remind readers, Chomsky’s disingenuous rhetoric notwithstanding, that all of the world’s states contain a something-majority, whether Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim or something else: count on the world’s one Jewish-majority state surviving as such, and that specifically as the center of a global ethnic and religious commune with its heart ever in Jerusalem and its body in the spirit of the Land of Israel.

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In Foreign Affairs – Putin – Analysis From March 2013

13 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Regions, Syria

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For Putin, Syria is all too reminiscent of Chechnya. Both conflicts pitted the state against disparate and leaderless opposition forces, which over time came to include extremist Sunni Islamist groups. In Putin’s view — one that he stresses repeatedly in meetings with his U.S. and European counterparts — Syria is the latest battleground in a global, multi-decade struggle between secular states and Sunni Islamism, which first began in Afghanistan with the Taliban, then moved to Chechnya, and has torn a number of Arab countries apart.

Hill, Fiona.  “The Real Reason Putin Supports Assad: Mistaking Syria for Chechnya”. Foreign Affairs, March 25, 2013.

I don’t think Putin has in any way mistaken Syria for Chechnya, but the question of how to address an Islamic front or wave differs quite between what I would glean as Obama’s vision and Russia’s hard experience.

Obama has approached “Islamist” (I’ve been told the word does not exist in Arabic) aggression with what I call the “least war possible” by showing the “hand of peace” at the start of his first administration, by wiggling away and in every which way, from Fort Hood to Boston, from addressing Quranic instructions taken seriously by such as Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others (Sura 9:29 generally suffices for one vivid example of explicit instruction and intention), and by including some key figures in his Administration, essentially absorbing and by demographics overwhelming an adverse presence.

Simply put, for Obama, so I believe, the world is larger than Islam — or an Islam as Osama Bin Laden would have it — and will wear away at the machinery set in motion by it.  However, taking this tortuously slow and steady route involves slim but telling differentiation and narrowing “true targets” — as those for the drone programs — to their minimum number.

Putin, perhaps, believes that so cautious and limited an approach will not work, not that he wants to step “in it” himself.

So between the two, Obama and Putin, NATO and Russia, and their spheres of influence, and this much with blessings from Iran, which is working with the Assad regime and with Hezbollah against Israel, and from Saudi Arabia, which believes it will pick up greater and Sunni-based regional influence, Syria has become a killing field from which the peaceful strive to flee and the warriors disarmed by their own glorious assessments of themselves haven’t the courage to transform themselves away from themselves and for the betterment of mankind and the pleasure, probably, of God as well.

With Maher al-Assad’s behavior and character associated with his military role noted worldwide and Bashar Assad’s, Obama’s, and Putin’s inability to address it, Syria has sunk into a devouring darkness.

Putin can neither finesse this play nor simply cleave the Gordian knot presented by Syria.

Obama, if I have got a little bit of his script about right — least war possible; court, engage, and prove the western way larger and more transforming than Islam; and goad Putin toward intervention — cannot stick with it much longer, essentially abetting the Saudi expansion of influence in a war zone in which both Shiite and Sunni extremists enjoy, so far, a fair amount of free range.

If the design has been to draw such forces into Syria’s abattoir and have them lead themselves to their own deaths through grinding mutual annihilation —  a rather gruesome form of cooperation, that — then all’s well: let’s just work on getting those displaced by war fed, housed, and ready to resume lives in the Syria that will be when the whole grizzly episode burns itself down to cinders.

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Stratfor on Israel’s Strike Against A Syrian Weapons Center and Iranian Arms Shipping

07 Tuesday May 2013

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

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Let’s call what the politicians do the “Bloody Dog and Pony Show” because Iran’s attempts to shuttle weapons to Hezbollah and Syrian intentions to swipe at Israel have been a part of the country’s Arab Spring Screaming since the git-go.

Politically impotent potentates like Bashar al-Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei have with their self-indulging narcissistic zeal painted themselves into corners from which they cannot grow their state’s peaceful and productive capacities but rather, and primarily, wage war against all.  Their kind devour themselves but not without first inviting the destruction of everything around them.

As noted here, Syria’s chief problem has to do with the complete absence of anything good “in play” in the battle space.  Who today among the civilized, contained, and reasoning should care to support, essentially, Maher al-Assad’s established and continuing sadism?

Who of contemporary western bent should care to see the mixed bag of Islamist rebels, Al Qaeda among them, prevail?

Syria has become the dense sucking black star of the Islamic Small Wars.

None should be surprised about loose chemical warheads or rebels (allegedly) mixing up their own small batches of burning chlorine-based clouds.

Wikipedia’s report of deaths-to-date ascribed to the civil war: between 69,390 and 82,130.  “On 13 February 2013, the United Nations put out an estimate of 70,000 that had died in the war.”

Whatever figure you choose, it’s pretty bad.

And there’s no need to tidy up the Syrian slaughterhouse and its deep well of death with a figure – 70,000 – as fat and round as it is unfathomable: “A boy of 12 sees his best friend shot through the heart. Another of 15 is held in a cell with 150 other people, and taken out every day to be put in a giant wheel and burnt with cigarettes” (Reuters, March 13, 2013).

Presuming that most are not reading this “in-country”, imagine having that obscenity taking place in your backyard.

Countermeasures?

Fill the moats, drop the portcullis, and set free those birds with the baked clay!

All of that the Jews have done and continue to do in the defense of the children of Israel.

And truth to tell when faced with so devouring a black and burning hole in the fabric of our humanity globally as Syria has become, it is to the defense of humanity — all God’s children — for which the “Zionist entity” strikes at the weapons centers and shipments that would bring to the whole world nothing less than the same insensate burning.

Reference

AP.  “Israeli airstrikes add new wrinkle to US diplomacy, debate on greater Syria role.”  The Washington Post, May 7, 2013.

Greenwood, Phoebe.  “Israel’s Damascus attack kills ‘at least’ 15 troops from Bashar al-Assad’s elite Republican Guard.”  The Telegraph, May 7, 2013.

Holmes, Oliver.  “Syria’s children shot at, tortured, raped: charity report.”  Reuters, March 13, 2013.

Oweis, Khaled Yacoub.  “Assad’s brother, the muscle behind the throne.”  Reuters, July 18, 2012.

RT.  “US aims to arm Syrian rebels as Kerry seeks political support in Russia.”  May 7, 2013.

UPI.  “Syria: Israel blasts Hezbollah’s missile chain.”  May 6, 2013.

UPI.  “Syrian mortars land in Israel.”  May 7, 2013.

Wikipedia.  “Malignant narcissism”.

Putin Volunteers Russian Cooperation in Boston Investigation

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Politics

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MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered his country’s assistance in investigating bombings in Boston that killed 3 and injured more than 140 people.

Putin said in a condolences note published on the Kremlin’s website Tuesday that the international community should come together to fight terrorism.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/boston-bombings-investigation-russia_n_3091560.html

Take Putin seriously.

The Colonel President has been squeezed westward by U.S. – Saudi – Sunni opposition in Syria, that old Russian client state the Kremlin seemed to have forgotten or neglected or sustained, lol, at the end of the Cold War Era.  In fact, Syria seemed to have been left to squat as it had been shaped by the Soviet experience.  Continuing state-to-state contracts and relationships probably seemed okey dokey all the way to the “Arab Spring.”

Today, Syria is not so “okey dokey” and it’s more Russia’s role than NATO’s to pick up the slack.  I think that’s why the politics look so upside-down from the American right side perspective: Obama has spun out some reverse psychology Over There, putting the U.S. in the old socialist’s position and casting the post-Soviet socialist and KGB-experienced scion as a defender of “domestic tranquility” and other slogans of the western faith.

Ah, the curse of living in “interesting times” — it is ours.