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October 2012

The Rumble 2012: Bill O’Reilly vs Jon Stewart (Full)

[youtube http://youtu.be/A051B-uPopM?]

The Rumble 2012 – “Daily Show” funnyman Jon Stewart and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly faced off in a debate Saturday tonight at the Lisner Auditorium on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Viewers can watch the event. dubbed “O’Reilly v Stewart 2012: The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium” streaming on the web at therumble2012.com.

Starting at 8 p.m. ET, we’ll be live blogging every jab, joke, and smart-aleck remark with this live blog. Join the conversation and leave your thoughts in the comments.

WASHINGTON (AP) — There were all the trappings of a high-octane presidential debate: the over-the-top declarations, the pre-practiced zingers and the schmaltzy appeals to America’s truest values. But the presidential candidates were nowhere to be found.
In their place Saturday were two celebrity gabbers who have claimed their stakes to the polar opposite ends of the political spectrum: Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart. The political odd-couple came to Washington ready to tangle in an event mockingly dubbed “The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium.”
Choice words not suitable for the faint of heart dotted the 90-minute exchange between the Fox News anchor and the star of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” who bantered aggressively but good-naturedly over birth control, President George W. Bush and the so-called “War on Christmas.”
Stewart came prepped with a mechanical pedestal he used to elevate himself in the air, making the height-challenged comedian appear taller than the lanky O’Reilly when he wanted to drive a point home.
“I like you much better that way,” O’Reilly quipped at one point as he gazed up at his ideological foe.
The political feud between the two caffeinated TV personalities dates back more than a decade. Much like family members who just can’t resist pushing each other’s buttons over Thanksgiving stuffing, Stewart and O’Reilly love to disagree, but appear to hold nothing against each other once the latest spat has run its course. The two have appeared on each other’s programs since 2001, but the face-off Saturday at The George Washington University marked their first head-to-head debate.
Appearing wholly presidential in dark jackets and face makeup under a sign reading “Yum, this banner tastes like freedom,” the two quickly turned to talk of government spending and the 47 percent of Americans that Republican Mitt Romney said in a video are dependent on government.
Stewart, defending government involvement in health care and social programs, said the U.S. has always been an entitlement nation.
“We are a people that went to another country, saw other people on it and said, ‘Yea, we want that,” Stewart said. “Have you ever seen ‘Oprah’s favorite things’ episode?”
Asked who he’d like to see as president, O’Reilly dead-panned: “I’d have to say Clint Eastwood.”
“Well why don’t we ask him,” said Stewart, mocking the Hollywood actor’s widely panned speech in August at the Republican National Convention by getting out of his chair and staring at it while the crowd erupted in laughter.
In an apparent show of bipartisanship, Stewart even got on O’Reilly lap at one point. “And what would you like for Christmas, little boy?” O’Reilly said slyly.
“The display that you saw tonight is why America is America. Robust, creative, no holds barred,” O’Reilly told reporters after the debate. “You can call it whatever you want, but you wouldn’t see this in a lot of other countries. That’s for sure.”
Organizers said about 1,500 people attended the event, but the main audience was intended to be online, where the event was live-streamed for $4.95. On Twitter, viewers complained they missed the event when the video servers crashed. Organizers said video will be available for download and that those who experienced errors will be eligible for a refund.

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Syria mourns man who might have been

Oct 7, 2012

Damascus // The gunmen walked in on a small political meeting in the northern town of Qamishli, asked for the opposition leader Meshaal Tammo by name and, when he answered, opened fire.

In this image taken from video obtained from Shaam News Network (SNN), which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, a fire rages at a medieval souk in Aleppo, Syria. Syrian rebels and residents of Aleppo struggled Saturday to contain a huge fire that destroyed parts of the city's medieval souks, or markets, following raging battles between government troops and opposition fighters there, activists said. Some described the overnight blaze as the worst blow yet to a historic dist

His life, and his assassination a year ago today, encapsulate much about the Syrian uprising, and the frightening underworld of a country now mired in a gruesome conflict. The revolt has inspired revolutionary political vision, hope and generosity of spirit. But it has also unleashed obscene violence, ruthless political calculation, fear and a choking narrative of complexity and conspiracy.

Unlike many well known dissidents – for the most part elderly men seen as out of touch or, worse, as regime patsies by the mass of youthful demonstrators – Tammo, 53, was respected by those risking their lives protesting in the street.

“There are many remarkable activists and dissidents at street level but there’s a big shortage at national level. Meshaal Tammo was perhaps the only one with that kind of potential, to become a statesman,” said a Syrian political analyst who knew Tammo well.

“He is perhaps the only person in the Syrian opposition who you’d look at and think, ‘He could be president one day’, he had that about his character,” the analyst said.

Although himself a Kurd, Tammo wanted none of the special rights demanded by mafia-like Kurdish political groups, and insisted that the answer to the historic persecution of Syria’s ethnic minorities lay in democracy for all, not separatism for some.

He had paid his dues, serving a long jail sentence for political dissent and, having been released, he participated in demonstrations and organised them. Other opposition political leaders stood aloof, preferring to discuss policy in their offices or, better still, in the safety of luxurious hotels in foreign capitals.

Tammo refused to distance himself from the dangers faced by protesters, instead joining the rallies in which unarmed civilians were being shot by security forces.

While a split opposition – renowned for its multitude of preening egos and its dogmatic interpretation of politics – jockeyed amongst itself for position, Tammo worked to create a united platform of those seeking to usher in a new Syria after decades of authoritarianism.

In July last year, he was instrumental in organising a political forum in the Damascus neighbourhood of Qaboun, which, had it gone ahead, would have broken new ground by involving young demonstrators, seasoned political activists and exiled opposition leaders.

A hail of gunfire that killed 16 people outside the meeting hall led to its cancellation.

Tammo wanted to build a modern Syria, founded on a secular legal system, civil rights and citizenship. His solution for the various sectarian and ethnic divisions now tearing at Syria was simple; complete equality for all before the law.

Those qualities – his genuine leadership potential, his push for unity and his refusal to trade in the narrow sectarian and ethnic identity politics lurking so dangerously beneath Syria’s surface – made him a threat to the status quo.

And all of them, to a greater or lesser extent, gave his enemies a motive for killing him.

Openly calling for nothing short of Bashar Al Assad’s overthrow and for toppling the underlying structures of his regime, Tammo was anathema to the Syrian authorities.

By his own account, after the uprising began he had been called in by a particularly feared security chief and threatened in brutally stark terms to stop his activism, or face dire consequences. He had cheerfully answered that he was quite prepared to die for the cause of freedom in Syria if that is what was required of him.

At the same time, he was also anathema to powerful Kurdish political factions, rejecting their strategy of exploiting the uprising to carve out an independent enclave. Syria’s revolution was for all, Tammo said, and its Kurdish minority should stand alongside the Arab opposition and fight with them for nothing more and nothing less than complete equality.

He famously told Kurdish protesters not to fly Kurdish flags at demonstrations, asking them to fly the Syrian flag instead, and he openly sought a close working relationship with neighbouring Turkey, angering powerful Kurdish factions who view Ankara as a greater evil than the Damascus regime.

Old guard Arab nationalists – and they represent a strong sentiment in Syria – were also irritated by Tammo’s suggestion that the country should, in future, define itself as a democratic republic, not specifically an Arab country, for the simple reason that not all of its citizens were Arabs.

And he stood against Islamist militancy, opposing those who called for a state based on Sharia. Only a secular legal system would safeguard Syria’s mosaic of religious and ethnic groups, he said.

No one has ever been convicted of Tammo’s murder. Syrian officials said he had been killed by an “armed terrorist group” and, soon after he died, announced the arrests of 11 men in connection with the case. Nothing has been heard since.

He was one of the few genuinely charismatic opposition figures, a rare mixture of hard experience, energetic youth and political vision, and his story is one of Syria’s great might-have-beens.

If Tammo were alive today, there is a chance – a slim chance no doubt, but a chance nonetheless – that his country would not now be marching so quickly down the path of bloodshed and oblivion.

source

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Syrian activists reach across sectarian divide

Syrian activist holding sign reading "There are two sects in Syria - the sect of freedom and the sect of the regime"The Nabd movement is trying to promote unity among sects working to bring down the Syrian regime

While the Syrian conflict has been characterised by fighting between the Sunni majority and ruling Alawite minority, it has also given birth to some movements which aim to bridge the sectarian divide, as Samer Mohajer and Ellie Violet Bramley report from Beirut.

Nabeel, a 24-year-old Alawite doctor from Homs, describes how he and other Syrian activists first decided to start campaigning against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the summer of 2011.

“A bunch of us were having coffee in Homs,” he said. “We wanted to have some influence on our revolution, so we tried to do something to express ourselves, to express our opinions.”

The result was the creation of the Nabd (or Pulse) Gathering for Syrian Civil Youth – one of the many cross-sectarian movements that have emerged from Syria’s 18-month-long revolt.

They are designed to campaign against the regime, but also to promote unity among Syria’s religious sects in the face of the increasing role of foreign and jihadi fighters and the characterisation of the struggle along sectarian lines.

Syrian rebels celebrate in Idlib
As violence has escalated in Syria, relations between sects have been tested

“We started our work in Homs, addressing the dangerous subject of sectarianism,” explained Nabeel. “We organised some protests involving guys and girls from all sects, distributed flyers and put posters up. We campaigned against violence and distributed flowers.”

Next came a sit-in, in the Khaldiyeh neighbourhood of Homs attacked by security forces, and a week of national unity.

Quickly, “things escalated until we had cells in every city – Damascus, Salamiyah [an Ismaili Muslim town], and Latakia [an Alawite centre],” said Nabeel.

‘Civil and secular’

The movement now boasts a Facebook membership of nearly 8,000. Events are designed to be inclusive, combating sectarian divisions in Syria through civil action.

He outlines more early activities – reconnaissance missions to Khaldiyeh preparing to send medicine; Alawite girls smuggling mobile phones into anti-regime areas; Alawite women visiting women in Sunni neighbourhoods to seek common ground.

The group’s Facebook page draws attention to members of minorities detained by Syrian security forces.

Much is made of sectarianism in Syria’s conflict. The country is 80% Sunni Muslim, with significant Christian and Kurdish minorities and Muslim sects that include President Assad’s own Alawite minority.

Nabeel admits that sectarian tensions do exist, but says the regime is the main culprit.

“They for decades pursued sectarianism to divide society, and they made all the people stay close to their sects,” he said. “Alawites, like all Syrians – Sunnis, Christians, Ismailis, Kurds – have their own fears about getting involved in civil war, because they think what is happening in Syria is armed groups slaughtering and stealing.”

Complex conflict

The uprising is frequently pitched as Sunni versus Alawite, but Nabeel says the situation is not that simple.

Many Alawites and Christians are supportive of the uprising, but are unable to protest in their neighbourhoods. This failure to protest is read, often wrongly, as the result of pro-regime sentiment.

anti-regime Graffiti Nabd activists are continuing with non-violent forms of protest, including graffiti

Nabeel argues that the international media is partly to blame for failing to convey the complexity of the conflict, characterising it simply as an Islamic revolution or a Sunni revolution.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the collection of defected army units and armed civilians fighting the Assad regime, are often referred to as wholly Sunni, but Nabeel says he knows of many FSA members from minority groups and even some Alawites.

“The true activists in the FSA and in the non-violent movement know that there are lots of Alawites working for this.” Nabeel is quick to point out that, while he respects the decision of those who join the FSA, Nabd is “100% against violence”.

“The Alawite activists are doing us a big favour. Lots of communication devices, medical supplies and relief materials wouldn’t pass to the FSA without their help and that of other minorities,” he said.

Nabeel is hopeful that movements like Nabd will play an important role in Syria’s future, and that the shared experiences of activists during the revolution will eventually bring Syria’s different sects and regions together.

“When we sit and talk about our sects we find that this revolution brought us closer to each other,” he said. “We know about Deraa, Hama, Homs, about lots of villages. We see how they are surviving, how they are protesting. They are teaching us how to be brave.”

source

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Opening the Front against Jabhat al-Nusra and Al Qaeda in Syria

 

Posted on October 4, 2012

 

Unlike many of the now familiar images, this is not the aftermath of bombardments by fighter jets, helicopters or tanks. Instead, it is the aftermath of several bombs ripping through Saadallah al-Jabri square in downtown Aleppo yesterday. The targets were two hotels, the officer’s club and the municipal palace. The area was controlled by the regime and according to the perpetrators the buildings served as their headquarters. Car bombs and suicide bombers caused the massive destruction shown above which can also be seen from the BBC’s collection of pictures.

Full article here

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Netanyahu’s UN Speech also had REALLY-NOT-FUNNY parts…

October 4th, 2012 | Add a Comment

…but they were completely upstaged by his Wile E. Coyote climax.

These parts are highly worth revisiting. Bibi’s brazen, out-and-out racism and lunatic brand of nationalist-supremacy, were expressed in no uncertain terms upon the United Nations stage. The man’s true colors were there for all to see.

I owe the discovery of the lesser-known first half of Bibi’s speech, to Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr, a.k.a. The Civil Arab. Myself, I was probably going to ignore the Bibi speech altogether – had the Web not suddenly exploded with images of Acme bombs.

But Zahr, as he says, must listen:

As a Palestinian, I tuned in. It’s my duty. Plus, I say the guy’s name at least 3-4 times a day (I won’t tell you how), so the least I could do was to listen to his speech.

And here’s the speech itself. Some gems (with my comments), starting from the very first sentence:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Three thousand years ago, King David reigned over the Jewish state in our eternal capital, Jerusalem.

Leave aside the universal consensus among archaeologists and historians (except far-right Zionist ones) that the David-Solomon kingdom’s extent, and possibly even existence, was dramatically overblown by the Old Testament writers who lived several centuries later.

There is one fact that is beyond dispute. That kingdom, or city-state, or chieftainship or whatever David presided over (if he really existed), was Israelite. Not Jewish. As even the Biblical record grudgingly admits, the Israelites happily worshipped multiple gods, including regular human sacrifice right there in our eternal Jerusalem, in a ravine we call Gei Ben Hinom and the English transliterated as Gehenna. So much for “Jewish State.”

The Jewish religion in any form recognizable to us today, was still about 500 years in the future, to be born upon the ashes of the Israelite period, and bearing a very distinctive Diasporic character. In fact, the only period of full Jewish sovereignty between the religion’s true birth and modern times was the Hasmonean kingdom, a short-lived, corruption-ridden little operation that eventually succumbed to its incessant internal strife.

Considering Bibi’s bragging later in his speech, and his attempt to pose as the all-knowing teacher lecturing a willfully ignorant world, it is ridiculously ironic for him to begin with such a piece of blatant, crappy, ignorant antiquity-worship in his first sentence. And he’s just getting warmed up:

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Every year, for over three millennia, we have come together on this day of reflection and atonement. We take stock of our past. We pray for our future. We remember the sorrows of our persecution; we remember the great travails of our dispersion; we mourn the extermination of a third of our people, six million, in the Holocaust.

But at the end of Yom Kippur, we celebrate. We celebrate the rebirth of Israel. We celebrate the heroism of our young men and women who have defended our people with the indomitable courage of Joshua, David, and the Maccabees of old. We celebrate the marvel of the flourishing modern Jewish state.

I know Yom Kippur. Dammit, I’ve fasted every Yom Kippur for the past 30 years. This junk of Bibi’s has almost nothing to do with Yom Kippur. And please, let other Jewish (or Judaism-knowledgeable) readers correct me if I’m wrong. Yom Kippur is mostly for atoning for one’s personal sins, and for the community’s sins. Not for reaffirming our collective sense of external persecution and its myth of supremacy. For that, we have plenty of other holidays, thank you very much.

And the central figures of Judaism, surely during Yom Kippur, are not Joshua-David-Maccabees who flexed the Jewish Muscle (the latter are rarely mentioned outside of Hanuka), but the prophets who spoke truth to power and pointed to the community its own sins.

But the speech is just about to get much, much worse:

In Israel, the past and the future find common ground. Unfortunately, that is not the case in many other countries. For today, a great battle is being waged between the modern and the medieval.

The forces of modernity seek a bright future in which the rights of all are protected, in which an ever-expanding digital library is available in the palm of every child, in which every life is sacred. The forces of medievalism seek a world in which women and minorities are subjugated, in which knowledge is suppressed, in which not life but death is glorified.

These forces clash around the globe, but nowhere more starkly than in the Middle East.

Israel stands proudly with the forces of modernity. We protect the rights of all our citizens: men and women, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians – all are equal before the law.

Clash of Civilizations? Really? In 2012?!? Has this guy stepped out of a time machine? And in whose books is the idealization of Medieval times bad, but the idealization of an imagined 3000-year-old past good? Of course, in a hypocritical racist bigot’s books: “my ancient history good, your ancient history bad”.

Regarding the great treatment of non-Jewish citizens, forgive me, dear Smug Prime Minister, but I prefer the direct testimony of their own legal-advocacy NGO Adalah over your childish self-congratulations. Their current headline reads “NCPB (National Committee for Planning and Building) reaffirms plans to build Jewish town on ruins of Bedouin village.” Par for the course of the Enlightened Jewish State.

Where were we? Oh, yes, explaining how great we are. And modest.

Israel is also making the world a better place: our scientists win Nobel Prizes. Our know-how is in every cell-phone and computer that you’re using. We prevent hunger by irrigating arid lands in Africa and Asia.

…And gratuitously induce hunger by strangling the West Bank and Gaza. Let us not forget that if it was not for a certain 2010 Flotilla, to this very day your government would have still rationed the food allowed into Gaza, to make sure those medievalists don’t get too fat and lazy.

And Israel’s exceptional creativity is matched by our people’s remarkable compassion. When disaster strikes anywhere in the world – in Haiti, Japan, India, Turkey Indonesia and elsewhere – Israeli doctors are among the first on the scene, performing life-saving surgeries.

Like they did just a few weeks ago… oops. no. A few weeks ago, Israel deliberately let a group of Eritrean refugees almost die of thirst and hunger inside its own territory, stranded between border fences in plain view of its soldiers who were under strict orders not to offer any assistance, only limited amounts of water. And this was not an isolated incident: Bibi government has set a disgusting precedent, inciting against this recent wave of African refugees, and building massive concentration, sorry, “internment” camps for them.

Should we laugh or cry? I say laugh:

President Abbas just spoke here. I say to him and I say to you: We won’t solve our conflict with libelous speeches at the UN. That’s not the way to solve it.

Says the guy who just slandered the entire Middle East except his own country.

We have to sit together, negotiate together, and reach a mutual compromise, in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the one and only Jewish State.

Because that is what negotiations are all about: me dictating to you a-priori how they must end.

Ok, enough about us good guys. Let’s go back to some bad-guy classics that never get old:

Israel wants to see a Middle East of progress and peace. We want to see the three great religions that sprang forth from our region – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – coexist in peace and in mutual respect.

Yet the medieval forces of radical Islam, whom you just saw storming the American embassies throughout the Middle East, they oppose this. They seek supremacy over all Muslims. They are bent on world conquest. They want to destroy Israel, Europe, America. They want to extinguish freedom. They want to end the modern world.

Where’s Jon Stewart when we need him?

They want to drag humanity back to an age of unquestioning dogma and unrelenting conflict. I am sure of one thing. Ultimately they will fail. Ultimately, light will penetrate the darkness.

We’ve seen that happen before. Some five hundred years ago, the printing press helped pry a cloistered Europe out of a dark age. Eventually, ignorance gave way to enlightenment.

So too, a cloistered Middle East will eventually yield to the irresistible power of freedom and technology. When this happens, our region will be guided not by fanaticism and conspiracy, but by reason and curiosity.

Because hey, nothing even remotely resembling that, has really happened around us over the past two years, right?

In last year’s UN speech, at least, Bibi was careful to pay a completely phony lip-service to the Arab Spring, despite being the most notoriously anti-Arab-Spring world leader from day one. Now all pretenses are gone. He made a boastful “I told you so” Knesset speech in late 2011 (Haaretz summarized, “Netanyahu: Arab Spring pushing Mideast backward, not forward”). By September 2012, Bibi is sure that his anti-Arab-Spring view has been scientifically proven correct, a closed case. He was right and everyone else was wrong, and it’s not even worth deliberating upon.

So what is worth mentioning at length?

Some 70 years ago, the world saw another fanatic ideology bent on world conquest. It went down in flames. But not before it took millions of people with it. Those who opposed that fanaticism waited too long to act. In the end they triumphed, but at an horrific cost. My friends, we cannot let that happen again.

At stake is not merely the future of my own country. At stake is the future of the world. Nothing could imperil our common future more than the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons.

Oh yessssssss, now it’s nearing perfection. To juxtapose Nazism and Iran within two sentences, in one “Islamo-Fascist” fell rhetorical swoop – and to top if off with a modest 70 spoons or so of personal and nationalist megalomania. mmmmmm…

From here, the road is open to an escalating tirade against Iran and its nukes – right up to the Wile E. Coyote bomb that everyone saw.

What I find most amazing, is that among Israelis – this bunch of supposedly savvy, world-weary political cynics – Bibi is considered a great speaker. Haaretz even ran an article, claiming that after the speech Republicans were wishing Bibi could run for President instead of their own batch of clowns.

It has been a while since I’ve read such a bad speech. The cartoon-bomb skit turns out to have been the least douche-baggy part of it!

(crossposted from Daily Kos)

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How to Advocate the Capitulation of a Revolution Without Actually Using the Word “Surrender”

September 8, 2012

A few days ago, the Open Democracy website published an article by “Rita from Syria”, a Damascus based Syrian activist. Titled “The FSA: how to lose support and alienate people in no time“, the writer bemoaned the growing trend towards the militarization of the initially peaceful Syrian Revolution. Civilian activists now feel increasingly insignificant and sidelined, unable to shape events. Syrian towns and villages that shelter the Free Syrian Army suffer under increasingly bloody reprisals and punitive assaults by the Assad regime. The FSA is accused of “miscalculations”, and challenged to “win back its credibility”.

The most telling sentence in the entire article is a quote from “Raghda”, a woman who recently lost her job at a publishing firm; “I just want to continue my life. I don’t see an end to this armed conflict. I agree with the rightful demands of the opposition, but if this means bringing a halt to my life then I will stand against them”

Which is as close one can get to advocating capitulation, without actually using the word “surrender”

Let us be clear on one thing; Assad cannot win this fight. He cannot defeat a guerrilla movement that has spread to nearly every single village, town and city in the county. The FSA, with little to no outside support, has managed the grind the region’s largest military into a stalemate. Whereas in Hama this time last year, twenty tanks were sufficient to bring the entire city to heel after the massive demonstrations in the Orontes Square, now those same twenty tanks are the regime’s loses on a good day.

So what’s a tin-pot dictator to do? What every tyrant on the ropes has done; go after the segment of ones opponents lest able to defend themselves. Just as Hitler desperately tried to knock the British out of World War 2 by indiscriminately pounding London with V-1 and V-2 rockets (thereby killing more civilians in England than his army managed to do on the field in the European theaters of war), the regime’s policy and actions has been to subject areas sympathetic to the FSA to the maximum amount of suffering and bloodshed as possible.

If Assad cannot beat the FSA’s soldiers in Aleppo, his airforce bombs their home towns from the air. Eventually, the logic goes, the misery of the civilian population will be so great, that they will discourage or actively deny the FSA shelter and space for movement. In the case of the recently unemployed Raghda, that seems to have worked. The only way the FSA can lose this fight is if enough of the Syrian population become convinced that the losses and suffering are too great, and the prospects for overthrowing the regime too remote.

In any war, the resilience of the societies engaged in war matters as much as the number and quality of arms those societies deploy. Long before Hitler got around to invading France in 1940, a defeatist mentality had already taken hold of much of French political society and its upper military echelons. The Battle of France had been lost long before the first German tanks broke through the Ardennes.

Rita is correct when she writes “FSA leaders should take heed that a guerrilla army can only attain success if it is mindful of its relationship to the people”. However, laying the blame at the feet of the FSA is misplaced, even if it is convenient from Rita’s point of view. No army in the world can protect every civilian center if its opponent engages in a deliberate policy of targeting those areas. It is the FSA’s job to wear down as much of the regime’s military machinery as possible, and it is the civilian opposition’s job to make sure that the regime pays, in terms of political and popular support, as a result of any disproportionate and indiscriminate retribution by the Assad army against the civilian population.

Or maybe scope of responsibilities isn’t so clear cut in the minds of the revolution’s civilian activists. To quote Rita’s article;

“Armed with a deep conviction in our revolution rather than any heavy weapons, the embryonic FSA used to keep watch in the alleys and alert us to the coming of regime forces and the shabiha.”

Alleys. Alleys and side-streets. Defectors, risking their lives by carrying arms to defend a 15 minute demonstration in some alleyway or side-street, the end result of which would be a few minutes uploaded to Youtube or some material for Al-Jazeera to stream. Amazing that the FSA waited so long and so patiently before concluding, correctly, that the regime was never going to fall through flash demonstrations in some darkened neighborhood corner. The civilian activists had plenty of time to make some tangible headway, to provide some accomplishments to justify the thousands of dead, thousands more wounded, and untold tens of thousands of disappeared and imprisoned.

A military aspect of a society only rises in prominence above that of the civilian, when the latter proves utterly incapable of meeting the challenges of the day. If the civilian activists feel sidelined, it is because in the 20 months of the revolution, they have in all honesty provided next to no tangible accomplishments on behalf of the revolution.

The Assad regime is one that has, as the most recent ICG report stated, mutated into little more than a militia. It doesn’t care for the loss of its border points with Turkey, or the loss of the areas in the north east of Syria to Kurdish control, as long as Assad’s core constituency retains power in the ever decreasing areas still under their control. Do the civilian “no arms lets turn the clock back to when we were demonstrating in the side streets” camp have ANY plan or solution to deal with such a regime? Not likely, if present perceptions of the SNC are anything to go by.

What exactly is required of the FSA? To lay down their arms? And will that turn to clock back to the days before the Dar’a protests? Anyone who thinks is is incredibly naive. A regime that triumphed through the use of terror and brute force will feel that the same formula is an acceptable one to apply to maintain power. Periodic mass arrests and show trials will be the norm. Towns and cities that were most prominent in the revolution will be neglected economically, its people cut off from government jobs. Every once in a while a staged car bomb will go off, to keep people on edge and remind them of the ever present danger of a return to the “bad old days” if the regime wasn’t around to “maintain stability”. And in thirty years’ time, little Hafiz will take the reins of power. But hey, at least Raghda got to “live her life”.

Which is the part of the article I personally find most disgusting and reprehensible. Saying that one is for the revolution as long as it doesn’t get in the way of one’s work, career, dates, love-life, TV-shows, is akin to saying that one would like to compete in the Olympics, if it wasn’t for all the hard training required.

Yep, I’d like to buy a house, if it wasn’t for the mortgage payments needed.

I’d like to go to Harvard to study medicine, but damn those SATs and entrance exams are a real roadblock.

I’d looooove to live in a democracy, as long as someone else is doing the heavy lifting and suffering, and a civil and free society is handed to me on a silver plater. Oh, and someone else can vote for me and keep the vigilance and sense of civic responsibility required to maintain any democracy.

One would have thought that the revolution would have at least freed us from the idea that we are entitled to the best the world has to offer without the need to put in any effort. Sadly, we are not all Al-Assads and get to inherit a country from our daddies. To say that one is against the revolution because it has gotten in the way of our lives, is tantamount to surrender. Our will has been broken, the price has become too high to pay. Brute force and tyranny have won, and just as long as the tyrants leave us to return to our miserable existence, we will soon forget the more than 20,000 Syrians whose lives were cut short, or the thousands of wounded and crippled, or the hundreds of thousands of refugees for whom returning will never be an option. People for whom carrying on with their “interrupted” lives is not an option.

If the civilian activists feel impotent, it is because for many months they acted like they were impotent, with only the FSA between them and annihilation at the hands of Assad’s shabihas. For how long was the FSA expected to carry and babysit an ineffectual civilian movement. No one wants to turn to arms as a first choice, but the Syrian Revolution found itself doing so as a result of the situation forced on it. For over a month, Baba Amr in Homs was subjected to massive artillery and tank assaults. The world community yawned a collective yawn and changed the channel. Were it not for the FSA, non of the 24,000 civilians who made it out, or the well known media personalities and foreign journalists trapped inside, would have come out of there.

If the civilian activists want to regain leadership of the revolution, then it is about time they did something to earn the mantle of leadership. The British did not whine and blame Churchill for the destruction wrought by Hitler’s bombers on their cities, and as a result their “finest hour” has become the stuff of legend.

The only way Assad can win this war is if we hand him victory. I myself spent ten days on the edges of Baba Amr while the army pounded the area. My close family has lost two homes, completely destroyed in the fighting. I have relatives who were and are imprisoned. Several distant family members were lost to us. I know full well the burden of taking on a vicious, unrestrained and barbaric regime. If the civilian activists have a better way than the one the FSA is pursuing, no one will be happier than me to hear it.

Otherwise, talk of the FSA laying down its arms is just a not-too-thinly-veiled plea by those whose will have been broken, for the revolution to surrender. I don’t judge people harshly if they feel they cannot carry the burden anymore, everyone has their own circumstances and pain-threshold. But I at least expect them to have the self-respect and decency to call what they are asking for by its proper name; capitulation and surrender to the Assad tyranny. 

SOURCE

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Syria’s despair has a glimmer of hope

Phil Sands

A fighter injured in the Arqub neighbourhood of Aleppo is taken to hospital as violence in the city intensifies. Activists say with skill and a large slice of luck Lakhdar Brahimi has a chance of breaking the cycle.

DAMASCUS // Amid universally low expectations that United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi can bring peace to Syria, some grassroots activists nonetheless say he may yet help to steer the country out of a deepening crisis.

The veteran Algerian diplomat replaced Kofi Annan, who resigned in “frustration and disgust” in August. Mr Brahimi described his task as almost impossible and said only last week there was “no prospect for today or tomorrow” that the civil war would end.

But a month after his appointment some activists say that with skill and a large slice of luck Mr Brahimi has a chance of breaking the cycle of violence.

“The situation on the ground is so dire that this might help him make a breakthrough. Even a small one would be important,” one said.

The activist met Mr Brahimi last month during the envoy’s fact-finding visit to Syria.

At the time it had been reported that Mr Brahimi had a meeting with the officially tolerated political opposition, figures with little credibility inside Syria who are widely seen as regime proxies, condoned by the authorities to show the outside world Syria does tolerate dissent.

While in Damascus however, the UN envoy also met well-connected grassroots activists involved in protests and medical relief efforts.

“If Mr Brahimi can help reduce violence – we are no longer even talking about a complete halt, just to scale it back – then he might be able to make some progress,” the activist said.

“He needs a quick win to show his credibility and to give the opposition faith that his process and methods will work. If he can reduce violence and get meaningful numbers of political prisoners freed and returned to their families, that will give us a narrow platform to build on,” he said.

Mr Brahimi was appointed special envoy to Syria after Mr Annan’s six-point peace plan collapsed. Under the terms of that agreement – signed up to by the president, Bashar Al Assad, and opposition factions – both sides were required to observe a ceasefire, political prisoners were to be freed and negotiations were to begin.

The ceasefire lasted a matter of hours and, despite the presence of UN observers, none of the six points was implemented.

Since the Annan plan failed, violence has only intensified, with air strikes, artillery bombardments and street fighting now routine across much of the country.

Rights groups say upwards of 30,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March, most of them civilians, and the UN says more than 2.5 million Syrians need humanitarian aid.

According to the activist, Mr Brahimi made it clear the opposition would have to make concessions if the bloodshed were to end.

“I told him we realise that,” the activist said. “It will not be easy to convince the street that it needs to compromise after so much suffering, but if we get some progress on violence and prisoners we will have a window of opportunity and we can at least try.”

That window would not stay open indefinitely, the activist said, suggesting concrete progress needed to be made before the end of the year.

Anti-Assad campaigners who met Mr Brahimi also agreed to a political process without pre-conditions, the activist said. Many opposition groups, including the Syrian National Council and the rebel Free Syrian Army, have insisted Mr Al Assad’s removal would have to come before any talks about a political transition can take place.

“We need to find a rational, realistic way to bring about political change,” the activist said. “We are open to a transitional government as long as there is a clear timetable and as long as it involves real presidential elections, monitored independently by the United Nations.”

A political analyst in Damascus said the rapidly worsening situation might work to Mr Brahimi’s advantage.

“This crisis was never going to end until it had reached every corner or every house in Syria and we are now at that point,” the analyst said. “It is a small chance but if Brahimi can put together the right deal, with the right international backing, a political transition could happen.”

However. another opposition figure in Damascus dismissed suggestions such a deal could be struck, and said both the fractured opposition and Syrian regime were pretending to cooperate with Mr Brahimi without being willing or able to commit to even small compromises.

“The equation that got us to this point has not changed, the opposition will not stop until Assad and his regime has gone, and the regime will not leave until it is physically forced to leave,” said the dissident, who was recently freed from jail.

“The latest UN peace initiative will fail, we are heading into a full scale civil war and there is no end in sight,” he said.

psands@thenational.ae

source

See also this article from the National

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YouTube video shows McClatchy contributor Austin Tice alive after capture

austin Tice youtube-croppedCaptive journalist Austin Tice from a video posted on YouTube. Tice is an American freelance journalist in Syria who hasn’t been heard from in seven weeks. | /YouTube

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By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Austin Tice, an American freelance journalist in Syria who hasn’t communicated with family and colleagues since mid-August, is shown alive and in the custody of armed men in a video posted on YouTube.

In the 47-second clip, headlined “Austin Tice still alive,” he’s shown blindfolded and disoriented, mangling an Islamic prayer before crying out, “Oh, Jesus.” Masked gunmen who act like militant Islamists surround him, calling out “God is great!” and wearing the baggy traditional outfits of fighters operating in Afghanistan.

[youtube http://youtu.be/dNdA0q9j040?]

The video was posted Wednesday but it escaped notice until early Monday, when a link to it appeared on a Facebook page that appears to support the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. Tips and other evidence previously gathered by the news organizations to which Tice contributed have suggested that he’s in the custody of the Syrian government.

“Knowing Austin is alive and well is comforting to our family,” Tice’s parents, Marc and Debra, said in a statement they released from their home in Houston. “Though it is difficult to see our eldest son in such a setting and situation as that depicted in the video, it is reassuring that he appears to be unharmed. It is evident that the current events in Syria are challenging and difficult for everyone involved. Our wish is that peace and stability can once again return to the people of Syria and that our treasured son Austin will soon be safely returned to our family.”

Tice, 31, whose news articles and photos had been published by McClatchy, The Washington Post and other news agencies, last exchanged email with colleagues on Aug. 13. At the time, he was thought to be in the Damascus suburb of Darayya and was expected to travel to Lebanon to meet friends Aug. 19 or 20.

Tice’s editors stressed that there was too little information to draw any solid conclusion from the brief footage other than that he was captured alive – welcome news after so many weeks of silence. Executives at McClatchy and The Washington Post joined Tice’s family in renewing their calls for his swift return.

“Austin Tice is a journalist, risking his life to tell the story of what’s happening in Syria to the rest of the world,” Anders Gyllenhaal, McClatchy’s vice president for news, said in a statement. “We ask in the strongest possible terms for his immediate release.”

“We call on those who are holding Austin to release him promptly, unharmed,” Marcus Brauchli, the executive editor of The Washington Post, said in a statement. “Austin is a journalist who was doing his job. He should be allowed to return to his family.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Monday that U.S. officials had viewed the video but weren’t in a position to verify its authenticity. “We continue to believe that, to the best of our knowledge . . . he is in Syrian government custody,” she said.

The FBI has opened an investigation into Tice’s possible abduction, said the assistant director of the FBI’s Washington office, James W. McJunkin. He declined to elaborate.

Terrorism experts expressed skepticism about the video, saying the production quality, style and method of release don’t match videos typically posted by extremist groups such as al Qaida or its affiliates.

“There’s so much odd about it,” said Will McCants, a former government adviser on violent extremism who’s the founder of the Jihadica website. “There’s no production level, no title page, nothing to indicate it was an al Qaida group. This is just a raw clip of footage.”

There’s no time stamp or other clue as to when the video was recorded. Tice is shown with long hair and a beard; in photos he posted on his Facebook page Aug. 3, he’s clean-shaven.

The jumpy, amateurish footage begins with a shot of a slow-moving convoy of three vehicles snaking through hilly scrubland; the location isn’t given. It cuts abruptly to a noisy scene of masked gunmen roughly escorting Tice, who’s wearing disheveled clothing and a black blindfold, uphill to a clearing, where he kneels and attempts to recite a Muslim prayer in broken Arabic. A militant holding what appears to be a rocket-propelled grenade launcher can be seen in the background.

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus,” Tice says in English, appearing out of breath and frightened and placing his head on the arm of one of his captors.

Murad Batal al Shishani, a London-based analyst of jihadists who’s monitored extremist groups since the early 1990s, said many aspects of the video didn’t jibe with the communiques that al Qaida-style extremists typically sent out. The call-and-response rhythm in the cries of “God is great” seems off, he said, and it would be unusual for jihadists to include Tice’s mangled prayer, or to release such a low-quality clip when they’re known for slickly produced videos distributed via their own media wings.

“If it was a jihadi video, they have their own platforms. They wouldn’t release it on YouTube,” Shishani said.

The YouTube user who posted the video hadn’t previously uploaded to the site, suggesting that the account may have been created to disseminate the video. Analysts also pointed out that the captions include English and Arabic, which would be unusual – but not unheard of – for a jihadist group.

The clip was later shared on a Facebook page and Twitter account associated with a group called “the Media Channel for Assad’s Syria,” which echoes the government’s line that opposition rebels are terrorists intent on destabilizing Syria. The group’s tweet reads, “Important, please publish and share our clip on the truth about the disappearance of the American journalist Austin Tice.”

The Facebook page posting asserts that “the American journalist Austin Tice is with the Nusra Front gangs and al Qaida in Syria,” a reference to Jabhat al Nusra, a jihadist group that’s part of the opposition forces fighting Assad’s troops. For weeks, U.S. analysts have sounded alarm about the presence of an avowed jihadist group on the battlefield, a development that rattles not only Assad’s regime but also the non-Islamist Syrian opposition and its Western allies.

Jabhat al Nusra boasts a sophisticated media wing that produces a Twitter feed and videos that are clearly labeled and edited. The group repeatedly has said that any release outside its established platforms should be considered fake, said Aaron Zelin, who researches militants for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and blogs about them at Jihadology.net.

A typical Nusra video, Zelin said, “would start out with a graphic of the media outlet, then a Quranic verse written out, then a series of videos of attacks or someone reading his last words before going out on a suicide mission, a martyrdom operation.”

McCants, the former government terrorism adviser, echoed that observation.

“Everything about the video is uncharacteristic of a polished al Qaida group like Nusra,” he said. “It doesn’t mean it wasn’t them, but there’s nothing that points in that direction.”

Tice, a former infantry officer in the Marine Corps, entered Syria in May, crossing into rebel-controlled territory via Turkey and traveling in and around Damascus since late July. He contributed more than a dozen articles to McClatchy and three to The Washington Post, with his own military experience adding nuance and detail to dispatches from the front lines of the civil war. He also freelanced for CBS News, Al Jazeera English and the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Since Tice’s disappearance, information has emerged from both official and unofficial sources to suggest that government authorities captured him. References to him in pro-regime social media outlets as well as press mentions in Iran, a close ally of the Syrian regime, paint him as a spy.

A Facebook page in the name of Assad, the Syrian president, includes a Sept. 16 entry that referred to Tice as an Israeli agent who’d “infiltrated” the country. An Iranian news portal claimed that Tice was a CIA agent who faces the death penalty after being captured by the Syrian military and held in connection with killing three air force officers. The Syrian government has denied any knowledge of Tice’s whereabouts.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented a resurgence in dangers faced by journalists in Syria over the past six weeks, noting Tice’s case as well as the disappearance of two other foreign journalists – Turkish cameraman Cuneyt Unal and reporter Bashar Fahmi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin – who work for the U.S. government-funded Al Hurra TV channel.

“We are deeply concerned about the fate and safety of U.S. freelance journalist Austin Tice and call upon his captors to disclose his whereabouts and release him immediately,” Robert Mahoney, the committee’s deputy director, said in a statement.

Email: hallam@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @hannahallam

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All is not quiet in Damascus

[youtube http://youtu.be/9nwc25DLHiY?]
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