Natural ethnolinguistic cultural separation, survival, and co-evolution should be, imho, a global standard in the understanding of the foundations of the peace. Viewed through that prism, Baloch, Hebrews, Kurds, and Pashtun have claim to the lands that bore them into being, culture and language themselves representing a People’s struggle confined to living with themselves and their ecological environment.
The politics in play in Syria have pitted the medieval worldview promoted by despots intent on keeping themselves in “absolute power” against the power-distributing and checking forces of the west in its post-Enlightenment phases. The same has also pitted as post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia against the arc of NATO or westward-moving states. The once Arab and Soviet-promoted anti-Semitism cultivated in Syria has probably contributed to impeding efforts to get in the way of the creation of the tragedy.
In fact, the good of the western world certainly do pray for Syrians. Whether by way of Judaic, Judeo-Christian, and perhaps (or soon) Judeo-Christian-Islamic “Ethical Monotheism” or by way of “Ethical Humanism” or “Secular Humanism”, western ideals involving mankind tend toward egalitarianism (none are supreme by virtue of birth) and universalism (our values and principles are accessible to all).
It is important to see Putin, Assad, and Khamenei or “Syndicate Red Brown Green” or “Post-Soviet Neo-Feudal” Russia as expressive of a medieval worldview now long superseded by arrangements attached to functioning international conventions and law and trade.
Posting to this blog has slowed quite a bit as its editor wishes not to keep saying the same things over and over and over and over . . . again. Certain criminal behaviors involving “non-state transnational actors” and certain state leaders and their followers fit medieval concepts involving their own legitimacy and the concomitant development and sustaining of the immense power and wealth they’re able to personally amass or commandeer. Whatever the superficial banner representing the character of the enclave of a dictator or “malignant narcissist”, the range may be better noted by scale (start with the pirate’s cove and work on up to the national socialist dictatorship) than by nominal affinity with some system of mystical belief. The name of the eternal game for those committed to the latest fascisms: money.
On BackChannels, the concept “Syndicate Red Brown Green” reflects elements from movements within the communist / post-communist worlds, the worldview of the New Nationalists (Orban, Erdogan, among others), and, of course, that of the hipster “Islamists” so devoted to general destruction and the destruction of Israel and Jewry worldwide in particular, and it attaches to the leadership, which cleans up (makes a lot of loot) on what it can “put over” on followers and marks while maintaining vast systems of patronage.
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…/
Those deep into the polarization(s) don’t understand that what Putin, Khamenei, and Assad are trying to cement for the future and for themselves is the medieval worldview. The tough decision shouldn’t be where to stand up, i.e., against feudalism and fascism, but rather how to lead or navigate the medieval world into a more productive — helpful, peaceful, prosperous — and modern global reality.
Conflicts consume attention and destroy time, so the drivers and engines leading to political polarization have to be impeded or slowed down as well.
Some BackChannels posts function as markers — brief remarks; “scraped” reference to other publications that become teasers (made you click!); commentary that turns old the moment read but remains as a snapshot of response to a part of the news of the day — and that above serves as a marker.
Via BackChannels — perhaps especially in the section “21st Century Feudal” — one catches a glimpse of 19th Century Russia revisited in Putin’s Moscow, the same as alluded to or referenced in the volumes of “The Russian Section”. The New Russian Security State is a medieval complex promoting spectacle (like the $51 billion Winter Olympics at Sochi) and political theater (like “Assad vs The Terrorists” AKA “Assad OR The Terrorists”) while failing to produce government responsive to Russians (some would add the term “outside of Moscow”) or responsible to humanity in general. It has taken BackChannels, which is not edited by an hoary Cold Warrior or newly sprung political science major, some time to see the Great Picture aligning a malignant narcissism with an epic that has laid waste to a nation before a horrified and benumbed global audience.
Projected against the backdrop of this bizarre stage: an image of a Russian bishop (unidentified) blessing rockets intended to kill moderate and modern Syrians, not “The Terrorists” incubated into today’s “Daesh”. The exact context of the image (in the linked Business Insider piece) has been contested but the message — there mere act of Christian religious authority blessing weapons intended for extremist Muslim targets — cannot but endorse the medieval script, would that history itself have kept its most bloody religious wars contained.
On stage, center and right: an endless, horrific, and obscene stream of the momento mori of war brought to the innocent, infant and adult: beheaded, burnt, crushed, mangled, poisoned, riddled, and sliced.
The post-Soviet, neo-feudal arc of power connecting Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran continues to blame the bloodletting on the west (even though last November — 2014 — it was Moscow entertaining the listed terrorist organization “PFLP”; even though it was then Assad’s, and today Russia’s, bombing priority to preference the mixed and moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) as targets in bombing runs and spare Daesh as hornets to fill up Syria and lash against her neighbors should the Assad regime be plainly overrun).
Responsible oligarchy focused on internal development may survive Syria by way of the complexity of the numbers subject to authoritarian systems and the difficulty, for example, of offering the methods of democracy to such as the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization ever ready for elections followed by proving itself as demonic as advertised (in Egypt in 2013: so done), but the Moscow story now differs quite from that: Bloomberg Business has spotted the contraction of the Russian economy at 4.6 percent (8/10/2015).
However one may read or skim the above cited articles, business life (and employment) appears simply more tenable, perhaps even pleasant, in the west: more markets for high tech innovators, whether as labor or the heads of new businesses; the power to passively contribute to reduced global oil pricing — by way of North American Energy Independence for Canada and the United States — and, in relation to conflict, imposing sanctions that could only be imposed by the lawful (in banking, business, and trade) on the unlawful — and “unlawful” is what medieval “absolute power” — the rule of the despotic and piratical — has been always about.
It’s too late for “tough” and as demonstrated by Hungary, the same plays to the fascist nationalism and medievalism promoted by Putin and Khamenei.
The way to handle waves of immigrants is simply to program ahead, determined to filter criminals and criminal jihadists from the ranks and produce a path for “acculturation, acclimatization, and assimilation.”
The other part is to go back to the “stink” that’s driving immigration and quell it. That too in Syria and Iraq needs must be done.
Will the west “hold off” on Syria? For how long? — And at what price?
Syria seems a much more confused battlespace with a Soviet / Post-Soviet backbone supporting feudal absolute power. Russia has returned to support of a Christian church — so it can’t be about “godless communism” — but retains strong alignment with the regime in Iran and the ophthalmologist in the middle. It looks to me like the Sunni-side Arab Emirates post by Hasan Hasan favors Sunni expansion (duh smile emoticon ) with murderous ISIS as its edge, not an evil entity worthy of destruction by both Shiites and Sunnis.
Sigh.
From the western perspective, medievalism is on full display, and, post-Enlightenment, battle is not reason and winning or losing in the same says nothing about metaphysics. Modern Obama has invoked the term “dumb war” for staying out of the Islamic partisan wars of the middle east. Having been right to do so, he’s narrowed the American scope to fighting “The Real Terrorists” (as opposed to Assad’s version of “The Terrorists”) and has had U.S. military campaigning against “ISIL” assets and leadership.
The conversation starter — a question: “Afghanistan II?”
Nope — not Afghanistan Two or too.
The prompt for the conversation came from this report on Russian battlefield losses in the Syrian Theater:
Nearly two weeks after the Russian intervention began in Syria, one could say it has not got off to a good start. Last week, the Syrian regime launched its first ground offensive against the rebels under Russian air support.
The assault, in Hama’s northern countryside, failed spectacularly – rebels affiliated to the Free Syrian Army destroyed at least 18 tanks and held their ground.
Considering the source and the role played by partisan opinion and reporting around the Syrian Tragedy, the report of so many tanks destroyed may do with buttressing. Here it is:
The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. Now that Russia has entered the war in support of Assad, they are taking on a greater significance than was originally intended.
“We get what we ask for in a very short time,” one commander, Ahmad al-Saud, said in an interview. He added that in just two days his group, Division 13, had destroyed seven armored vehicles and tanks with seven TOWs: “Seven out of seven.”
هذه هي رؤية قصيرة للسياسة الخارجية الأميركية المقترحة على سوريا.
وكما نعلم جميعا أن الوضع في سوريا يزداد سوءا يوما بعد يوم. تم تشريد نصف السكان السوريين، وقد انحشر النصف الآخر بين الديكتاتور الأسد وISIS الإرهابي الذي لا يرحم.
اسمي الدكتور حسن الصواف، أميركي سوري اشعر بقلق شديد إزاء مستقبل سوريا، خاصة بعد الفشل الذريع لسياسة إدارة أوباما “القيادة من الخلف”.
الأولويات للتعامل مع الأزمة السورية هي كما يلي:
1- وقبل كل شيء، حماية المدنيين، والتي تتم من قبل القوات متعددة الجنسيات على أرض الواقع، وضمان سلامة جميع المدنيين، ومنع خروج أعداد كبيرة من اللاجئين إلى الدول المجاورة.
2- نزع سلاح جميع الميليشيات في سوريا، والتي قد تكون مهمة صعبة لإنجاز، ولكنها تصبح ممكنة مع إرادة المجتمع الدولي.
3- التخلص من جميع المقاتلين الاجانب والقوات الاجنبية غير الشرعية في سوريا.
4- عقد انتخابات وطنية ووضع البلاد على طريق الديمقراطية.
5- التأكد من أن سوريا المستقبل ستكون حكومة اتحادية وغير مركزية فيها جميع السوريين متساوون وحقوق جميع الأقليات مكفولة في الدستور الجديد.
ليس فقط واجب إنساني، ولكن أيضا واجب معنوي وأخلاقي ان يقف العالم معا لوقف سفك الدماء وتدمير البنى التحتية في سوريا ووقف التغير السريع للبنية الديموغرافية في ذلك الجزء من العالم.
ستكون سورية الجديدة دولة ديمقراطية حرة، تعيش في سلام مع جميع دول الجوار وتشارك بنشاط في المجتمع الدولي.
شكرا جزيلا ترجمة ومساعده في الرؤيه والانجاز الأخت الأم
Daad EssaMamary8
This is a short vision for proposed American foreign policy on Syria.
As we all know the situation in Syria is getting worse by the day. Half of the Syrian population has been displaced, and the other half has been squeezed between the dictator Assad and ruthless terrorist ISIS.
My name is Dr.Hasan Alsawaf, a Syrian American who is greatly concerned about the future of Syria, especially after the utter failure of the Obama administration policy “Leading from behind”.
The priorities to deal with the Syrian crisis are as the following:
1- First and foremost, protect the civilians, which is done by multi -international forces on the ground, ensure the safety of all civilians, and prevent the massive exodus of refugees to the neighboring countries.
2- Disarm all the militias in Syria, which might be a very hard task to accomplish, but is feasible with the will of the international community.
3- Get rid of all the foreign fighters and illegal foreign troops in Syria.
4- Hold a national election and put the country on the path of democracy.
5- Ensure that the future Syria will be a federated and non-centralized government where all Syrians are equal and all minorities’ rights are protected and guaranteed in the new Constitution.
It is not only a humanitarian obligation, but also a moral and ethical one for the world to stop the bloodshed and destruction of the infrastructure in Syria and to stop the rapid changing of the demographic in that part of the world.
The new Syria should be a free democratic country, at peace with all it’s neighboring countries and participating actively in the world community.
Thank you very much
Dr. Hasan Alsawaf
Former Senatorial Republican Endorsed Candidate for the State of Rhode Island
Rhode Island Republican Party Delegate.
Founder of the Syrian American Group.
Founder of American Muslims against Violence and Terrorism.
Thank you for hosting this event, and thank you America for giving us the platform to fight for freedom and denounce terror and tyranny.
Syrians want their freedom. Syrians are stuck between the Assad regime and ISIS. Syrians want to be free from their oppressors. They have given up so many lives for their freedom. They do not want to replace Assad with religious theocracy or other oppressors . There have been over 200,000 martyrs in Syria, with over three million refugees and five million citizens internally displaced. Syrians are still fighting for their freedom, but they will prevail. They will win over the tyrant Assad and over the tyrant ISIS.
To the world leaders behind me here at the U.N, I say loud and clear, save the Syrian children,..save the Syrian children from tyrant Assad and fascist ISIS, Syrian children deserve to live a safe and peaceful environment
Make no mistake about it, freedom will ring in Syria and Iran because we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. We are one people in two countries who are fighting for freedom.
The Syrian regime and the Iranian regime have been on the terrorist list since 1979. They are behind the barracks attack on the Marines in1982. They are behind the creation of the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon. They are behind undermining America’s mission in Iraq. They have created a new terrorist organization, ISIS. They are extending their evil and metastasizing their cancer.
The tripod of horror and terror that extends from the Iranian regime to ISIS to the Syrian regime must be dismantled. Destroying one axis would destroy the whole tripod and bring peace and prosperity to the greater Middle East. Whether they wear beards or berets makes no difference. A fascist is still a fascist. It is one enemy, the enemy of freedom, whether it is dressed as dictatorship or religious theocracy or fanatical fundamentalism; it is still the enemy of freedom. May God bless you and bless the United States of America and may Syria and Iran soon be free.
In childhood, the kid with the chessboard chooses his opponent. Why not in adulthood? And what if you could not only control you opponent but make the same another rival’s opponent . . . how cool would that be?
That would be so far beyond cool as to have arrived at deliciously evil.
Bashar al-Assad’s best defense, for the realpolitik theatrical “Assad vs The Terrorists” becomes for the general opposition, including NATO opposition to the tyrant’s rule, “Assad or The Terrorists” (mirroring slogan: “Assad, Or We Burn The Country”).
Related to the previous, ISIS becomes the primary military war-on-terror focus for the west, which comes with diplomatic, human, and financial costs to the west.
Incubated by its own enemy, the Assad regime and its backers, ISIS has been positioned in time and space to destroy the revolution once pressed by the Free Syrian Army and serve as a foil to the combined forces of Assad, Khamenei, and Putin, all of whom today may at will attack the same even if preferring other non-ISIS (and still noncombatant) targets.
In ISIS, Khamenei (he may thank Assad and Putin) has chosen a familiar Sunni opposition for Iran’s purchase in Iraq’s Shiite militia community. Once again, Iranian Revolutionary Guard get to get their boots into battle with their old Baathist foes, now serving as generals in Baghdadi’s cause.
Related Teasers, Links, and Reference
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949, has 28 members devoted to the idea of collective security. Prediction: By the time President Obama leaves office in 2017, the NATO pledge of mutual defense in response to aggression will have been exposed as worthless. Objectively the alliance will have ceased to exist. The culprits? Vladimir Putin—and Barack Obama.
The long-term aim would be to defeat or demoralise the non-Isil opposition, so that Isil became the regime’s only enemy. That would force the West to back President Bashar al-Assad against it. “They want to clean the country of non-Isil rebels, and then the US will work with them as Isil will be the only enemy,” the Damascus source said.
Russia bombed Syria for a third day on Friday, mainly hitting areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting and drawing an increasingly angry response from the West.
The U.S.-led coalition that is waging its own air war against Islamic State called on the Russians to halt strikes on targets other than Islamic State.
Next came Russia’s move on Syria. The weapons that Russia is sending there are not an attempt to settle the conflict. They are there to protect the Assad regime, which is its cause. Moreover, ISIL does not have warplanes: Russia’s air defense missiles are in Syria for a different purpose.
This became clear on Wednesday, when America was given less than an hour’s warning that the Kremlin was imposing, in effect, a no-fly zone in Syria. With this the Russians not only mounted a direct challenge to American authority. They also ripped up the rulebook of military diplomacy. America was aghast, but had no response.
The Ba’ath regime was strongly anti-American, so it’s not surprising that–despite the unfortunate fate of the Iraqi Communist Party–it was primarily a client of the Soviet Union (not the US), and this relationship continued up until the moment when the Soviet Union collapsed.
That Baathists helped ISIS, before the declaration of the ‘Caliphate,’ to rush into Iraq last year, and assist in the battles for key nodes in Iraq, is indisputable. Even in the Second Battle of Tikrit, just fought in the past few weeks, Baathists were a prominent component of ISIS forces. The very fact that Saddam Hussein’s al-Tikriti tribe was tossed out of their tribal domain certainly bore the hallmarks of the ultimate revenge against the Baathist core.
Moscow’s action were in line with the strategy it had used to defeat the separatist movement in Chechnya, infiltrating the insurgency, driving it into extremism, and facilitating the arrival of al-Qaeda jihadists who displaced the Chechen nationalists. In Syria, Russia’s actions accord with the strategy adopted by the regime and its Iranian masters to present Assad as the last line of defence against a terrorist takeover of Syria and a genocide against the minorities. New evidence has emerged to underline these points.
Testimony from gendarmerie officers in court documents reviewed by Reuters allege that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells were carried in trucks accompanied by state intelligence agency (MIT) officials more than a year ago to parts of Syria under Islamist control.
Four trucks were searched in the southern province of Adana in raids by police and gendarmerie, one in November 2013 and the three others in January 2014, on the orders of prosecutors acting on tip-offs that they were carrying weapons, according to testimony from the prosecutors, who now themselves face trial.
While the first truck was seized, the three others were allowed to continue their journey after MIT officials accompanying the cargo threatened police and physically resisted the search, according to the testimony and prosecutor’s report.
BackChannels 