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The Syrian Summary

Saturday, September 01, 2012

 by Maysaloon

Well we’ve finally arrived at a civil war, and no I don’t think that this was avoidable or an accident. It is a deliberate policy and gamble by Assad to hold on to a sliver of power. Reforms were always out of the question because the slightest slip would have spelled the end of his family’s grip on power. Let us be clear about it, this is one family’s grip on a country, not a party’s, not a minority’s, but one family only and with its barons and loyal core of supporters. Assadism is the litmus test upon which you can test the revolutionary credentials of the artificial opposition that is sprouting domestically. These smart suited and highly educated technocrats with their talk of reform and convenient focus on only the transgressions of the regime’s opponents never openly criticize or call for the overthrow of Assad. They have permission to tear the regime to shreds (verbally, of course) but the person of Bashar al Assad is inviolable, and the mere mention of his name in a way that could be construed – even remotely – to be a criticism is avoided.

full article here

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Top Ten Clint Eastwood Empty-Chair Falsehoods

Posted on 09/01/2012 by Juan

You can’t see me, but I’m talking to Clint Eastwood sitting spectrally in an empty chair, and I am replying to his confused rant.

1. Mr. Eastwood, you called the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay penitentiary a broken promise. President Obama was prevented from closing Guantanamo by the Republican Congress, which refused to allocate the funds necessary to end it. Do you remember this this Washington Post headline, “House acts to block closing of Guantanamo”?

2. Mr. Eastwood you called “stupid” the idea of trying terrorists who attacked New York in a civilian courtroom in New York. But what would have better vindicated the strengths of America’s rule of law, the thing about the US most admired abroad? Mr. Eastwood, perhaps you spent so many years playing vigilantes who just blew people away (people who in the real world we would have needed to try to establish their guilt or innocence) that you want to run our judicial system as a kangaroo court.

3. You complained that there are 23 million unemployed Americans. Actually there are 12.8 million unemployed Americans. But there are no measures by which W. created more jobs per month on average during his presidency than has Obama, and there is good reason to blame current massive unemployment on Bush’s policies of deregulating banks and other financial institutions, which caused the crash of 2008.

4. You criticized President Obama for giving a target date for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan of 2014, and alleged that Romney said, “Why don’t you just bring them home tomorrow morning?” But George W. Bush set a target date of 31 December, 2011, for withdrawal from Iraq, and did so in negotiation with the Iraqi parliament. Was that also a bad idea? Have you considered that NATO allies and the government of President Hamid Karzai may have demanded an announced withdrawal date as a prerequisite of continued cooperation with the US there? And, just for your information, Gov. Romney hasn’t called for US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately.

5. Mr. Eastwood, you made fun of Joe Biden as the ‘intellect of the Democratic Party.’ Vice President Biden was chair or ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades, helped to save the Bosnian Muslims from genocide, and passed the Violence against Women Act. I haven’t always agreed with him myself, but he has been among our more thoughtful contributors to American foreign policy. You, on the other hand, like to pretend to shoot down large numbers of people over the course of a violent two-hour fantasy.

6. You criticized President Obama for ‘talking about student loans.’ The Republican Party, especially Paul Ryan, wants to take away the government-backed loans on which millions of students depend, at a time when student indebtedness is at an all-time high. Just because some people are way overpaid for play-acting doesn’t mean that ordinary people don’t need student loans to get the credentials that allow them to make a better life for themselves.

7. Mr. Eastwood, you criticized President Obama for saying he is an ‘ecological man’ but flying in Air Force One. Under President Obama, non-hydro forms of green energy in the United States have doubled from 3 percent of electricity production to 6 percent. Obama’s tax credits have been a big reason why. In contrast, Mr. Romney wants to get rid of credits for wind energy, which will hurt the Iowa economy, e.g., and is in the back pocket of Big Oil, so that he will stand in the way of green energy. I think doubling renewables rather offsets an occasional jet ride. And, it is Obama’s policies that will get us to the solar-driven airplane, not Romney’s.

8. You made fun of Obama because he has a law degree from Harvard. I just want you to sit in your empty chair for a while, and think about that.

9. You called Mr. Romney a ‘stellar businessman,’ but his business appears to have been to send American jobs to China.

10. I don’t know who suggested to you that you address us at the end and say, “Make my day,” with the implication that we should vote Romney-Ryan. But what I remember is, that phrase is a threat you are going to do bad things to us.

source

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Listening Post – Caught in Syria’s propaganda war

[youtube http://youtu.be/8JcOq-uW0yE?]
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Bashar’s cult of personality

Bashar al-Assad is a lot more involved in the security apparatus than many analysts would like to think. (AFP photo)

Last week, the daily Al-Joumhouria published the transcripts of the surveillance tapes in the case of former minister Michel Samaha, who was recently arrested and charged for plotting a campaign of terrorist bombings in northern Lebanon. Samaha was caught red-handed, and his conversations with the head of the cell that was to execute these bombings were taped, as this operative himself had been recruited by the Internal Security Forces.

These transcripts offer a unique window into the Syrian regime’s decision-making process and chain of command when commissioning terror operations in Lebanon. But more importantly, they provide us with an interesting insight into the current structure of the regime. What they reveal is that, over the course of the uprising, Bashar al-Assad has further consolidated the security services. In effect, the regime is little more than Bashar himself.

Misunderstanding the nature and structure of the Assad regime has been a chronic problem that has long affected Western analysis and policymaking. Misinterpretation became even more acute after Bashar inherited power after his father died in 2000. The most infamous example was the “old guard” thesis: that is, the notion that a “reform-minded” Bashar was constrained by entrenched remnants from his father’s time. Similarly, several analysts posited the existence of a “hardline” faction within the regime, and spoke of autonomous security chiefs who were able to pursue certain policies without Bashar’s knowledge, and, presumably, against his wishes. Bashar, in other words, was presented as merely a “figurehead”—the president who, in the words of Paul Salem, “does not command.”

Thus, it was hardly surprising when, following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, many Arab and Western pundits often claimed that it probably wasn’t Bashar personally who gave that order. Even though Bashar reportedly threatened to “break Lebanon over [Hariri’s] head,” these pundits nevertheless maintained that such a decision was either made without his knowledge, or, at best, was forced on him by the powerful elements of the regime who “really” make major security decisions, if not general policy.

read full article here

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Michael Moore on Clint Eastwood’s Delusional Speech at the Republican National Convention

by Aug 31, 2012 6:34 AM EDT

The Hollywood legend growling at an empty chair will live on in infamy as the moment when a crazy old man hijacked a national party’s most important gathering to tell off the president.

Speaking to Invisible Obama last night, in a performance that seemed to have been written by Timothy Leary and performed by Cheech & Chong, Clint Eastwood  was able to drive home to tens of millions of viewers the central message of this year’s Republican National Convention: We Are Delusional and Detached from Reality. Vote for Us!

The footage of Eastwood rambling and mumbling to his “Harvey”—President Obama—will be played to audiences a hundred years from now as the Most Bizarre Convention Moment Ever. The people of the future will know nothing about Dirty Harry or Josey Wales or Million Dollar Baby. They will know about the night a crazy old man hijacked a national party’s most important gathering so he could literally tell the president to go do something to himself (i.e. fuck  himself). In those few moments (and these days, it only takes a few moments—see Anthony Weiner), he completely upended and redefined how he’ll be remembered by younger and future generations.

Clint’s Crazy Speech

A few years ago, at the annual National Board of Review film awards held at Tavern on the Green in New York, I was there to hand out one of the honors. When it came time for Eastwood to accept his, he went up to the microphone and growled to me in front of the audience, “If you ever show up at my house with that camera, I’ll shoot you on sight.” The audience laughed, I laughed, but the person who issued the threat wasn’t laughing. That creeped me out a bit. I made sure never to go stand on Clint Eastwood’s lawn.

But as I said, the best outcome from the incident last night was that it showed just how out of touch Republicans are these days. It’s as if they want a divorce from us, the American mainstream, so they can go live in the land of legitimate rapes and ice caps that don’t melt. Most Americans don’t live there on Planet Koo-Koo, and I don’t suspect many will be visiting there any time soon.

Thanks, Clint, you made our day!

source

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Michael Moore is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and author. He directed and produced Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko. He has also written seven books, most recently, Mike’s Election Guide 2008.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

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Obama Admin. Blatantly Lied About SEAL Team Killing Bin Laden in Self-Defense

 

John Glaser, August 29, 2012

From the Washington Post, news that the Obama administration completely lied about the killing of bin Laden being in self-defense:

Bin Laden apparently was shot in the head when he looked out of his bedroom door into the top-floor hallway of his compound as SEALs rushed up a narrow stairwell in his direction, according to former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, writing under the pseudonym Mark Owen in “No Easy Day.”

…The author writes that the man ducked back into his bedroom and the SEALs followed, only to find the man crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood with a hole visible on the right side of his head and two women wailing over his body.

Bissonnette says the point man pulled the two women out of the way and shoved them into a corner. He and the other SEALs trained their guns’ laser sights on bin Laden’s still-twitching body, shooting him several times until he lay motionless. Only when they wiped the blood off his face, were they certain it was bin Laden.

These revelations illustrate two important points from the bin Laden raid. First, the Obama administration pathologically lies about the nature of their secret operations in order to make targeted killings seem like self-defense when they are not and thus to immunize the operatives and the administration. This should be a lesson coloring our perceptions of everything from drone strikes to other elite commando raids, most of which we know comparatively little next to the Abbottabad operation.

The other point falls somewhere along the lines of what Noam Chomsky wrote immediately following the assassination operation on bin Laden. “It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law,” he wrote. “There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition…In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial.” But if President Obama suspects you’ve done wrong, no court or trial or judge are needed; he’ll just kill you by royal decree.

source

see also Pentagon may take legal action against author

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Shooting and laughing

[youtube http://youtu.be/Cq4PDcC5RzU?]

LEAKED VIDEO – Assad’s gangs enjoy shelling appartment builiding and find it a good occasion to laugh

Assad’s troops laugh and joke while shelling apartment buildings:

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Why Aren’t More Iraqi Stories Being Written?

Iraqi-American author Layla Qasrany reflects on Iraqi and American “Angel” cities, and the difficulties of writing Iraqi stories:

By Layla Qasrany

There are countless stories that need to be written since the fall of Saddam in 2003: There was the absurd eight-year war with Iran, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the attack on the Shi’ite cities in the same year, the displacement of Assyrian and Kurd people from their  villages  and the bombing of old churches that go back to the early Christian century. It’s necessary to tell stories of the years of famine, the killing and the mass murders; all that, worth documenting, is worth documenting badly. It is the duty of the writers.

But the time is passing and I just wonder, where are they, the stories and their tellers?

Perhaps the writer is still under shock, while still trying to either survive in the struggles of the daily life in an unsecure country, or  he or she is busy trying to make ends meet in the Diasporas. Living under the brutality of the Ba’ath party that controlled our daily life in all its details was a challenge. It was something that  no other nation  experienced except perhaps the North Korea of today. Saddam’s gang put their hands on everything: arts, curriculum books,  history,  and of course the media. They disrupted radio stations, such as the  broadcast of Voice of America in Arabic, not to mention controlling television station.

In the early 80’s, an FM station was installed in Iraq and it broadcasted the best from the classic songs and the big hits back them. But even the songs were under scrutiny, and the famous Bahamanian band, Boney M, had their songs banned by the Ba’athists because of their famous Psalm/ song,   “By the Rivers of Babylon.”

During the years of Saddam’s ruling,  there was only one television station  that was strictly controlled by the Ba’athists. First thing the Iraqis did after the fall of Saddam nearly ten years ago was to have sattelite stations. Today, there are more than fifty stations, far exceeding the number of such stations in any other Arab country.

Back in the 80’s, as I was still living in Iraq, each week my siblings  and I looked forward for Sunday nights and Wednesday nights — for those were the foreign movie nights.  Even if Saddam strived to make the west look immoral and unjust,  for us it was simply a way of entertaining, and a form of  getting to know the West.

The films were carefully censored by the Ba’ath party members who controlled the television stations. Most of the films broadcast on the sole channel were Hollywood films; very seldom we would watch a European films by Fellini or a good  French one. The end of “The D. H. Lawrence “The Virgin and the Gypsy” is still a mystery for me, for it was censored and was cut at the end (perhaps rated as restricted!). To know the ending of the “Virgin and the Gypsy”,  I might have to see this masterpiece of Franco Nero or  read the book, whichever comes first!

The American films were picked carefully. Most of the time a movie was played more than once in a short period of time for a propaganda purposes. This what happened with Angel City, an American television film (1980) starring Arnold Waite. The film is about a poor family that moves to Florida to work in a cucumber farm. Later, they encountered challenges such as the rape of the teenage daughter. The family soon finds there is no way out. It’s an ideal film to be easy translated as if there were no justice, no mercy, and no freedom.

I kind of liked to watch this film, even if it was a depressing one; something reminds you of the John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath. Today, I live in the States, and I’ve seen for myself the real Angel City of America, and still laugh, or sometimes cry, when I think of the Iraqi “Angel City” of Saddam!

I’m sure there are lots of anecdotes waiting to be told. What’s so sad is that such a story might seem very outdated in the day and age where the sectarian conflicts have overshadowed the years of Saddam’s ruling and a notorious tyrant is no longer seen as a common enemy.

Layla Qasrany an Iraqi-American writer who published her first novel in Arabic (Sahdoutha) in 2011.

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Syria: Government Attacking Bread Line

Civilian Deaths at Bakeries Are War Crimes
August 30, 2012
  • Children wounded in an air raid on a bakery are treated for shrapnel wounds in one of the main emergency hospitals in an opposition-controlled area on August 16, 2012. At least three bakeries in Aleppo city were hit that day.
    © 2012 Ricardo Garcia Vilanova

(New York) – Syrian government forces have dropped bombs and fired artillery at or near at least 10 bakeries in Aleppo province over the past three weeks, killing and maiming scores of civilians who were waiting for bread.

The attacks are at least recklessly indiscriminate and the pattern and number of attacks suggest that government forces have been targeting civilians, Human Rights Watch said. Both reckless indiscriminate attacks and deliberately targeting civilians are war crimes.

One attack in the city of Aleppo on August 16, 2012, killed up to 60 people and wounded more than 70. Another attack in the city on August 21 killed at least 23 people and wounded 30.

VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED

[youtube http://youtu.be/YMfE9_q6kvw?]

“Day after day, Aleppo residents line up to get bread for their families, and instead get shrapnel piercing their bodies from government bombs and shells,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch who has just returned from Aleppo. “Ten bakery attacks is not random – they show no care for civilians and strongly indicate an attempt to target them.”

continued here

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